Gods of Blood and Bone (Seeds of Chaos Book 1) (30 page)

I squeezed Jacky's hand. "But I'm fine. How about you guys. Are
you
okay?" I let my voice soften on the last sentence, speaking directly to her.
 

"Yeah, because you saved me. Thank you. Words don’t even cut it.” She, squeezed my hand painfully, swallowed, and shook her head, blinking suddenly shiny eyes.
 

I nodded my understanding and smiled. "Good. And you, Sam? Are you all right?"
 

His face was pale from the injuries and pain he'd been absorbing from me, but his cheeks flushed at that. "I killed someone today. I took a life, with my bare hands, while you—
because
of you. Do you
think
I'm okay?"
 

Adam stepped forward and yanked on his arm, pulling Sam away from me. "She saved you, you idiot. She kept you alive when you were too stupid to stand up and save yourself. If not for her, you'd be dead."
 

Sam stood and yanked his arm away, still staring at me. "You didn't save me. You made me betray myself. You're a murderer.
I'm
a murderer." His voice broke on the last bit, and he choked off any more words.
 

I stood up to match him, feeling the sharp pain of my heart breaking for him. "No. I helped you choose to live. NIX made murderers of us all tonight. There was no other choice for us. Kill or be killed. If I'd let any of you die when I knew I could stop it, would I be any less a murderer, then? This is...horrible beyond words. I know it. But we can't blame ourselves. You can't blame yourself. If not for this Game, tonight would never have happened. We are monsters of circumstance, not of choice."

I knew the words weren't enough. Nothing external could absolve someone from guilt if they couldn’t forgive themselves. And in truth, I called myself a murderer, too, just not aloud. “There’s nothing we can do about this except get out of this Game. What happens if the next time, it wants us to turn on one another?” I looked at my team. “It won’t ever stop as long as we’re forced into the Trials, unless we die, or find a way to escape. So we’ve got to find a way, because I won’t let any of you die.”
 

I turned to Blaine, who’d watched the exchange with wide eyes from behind his glasses. “Please tell me you got something useful from monitoring the transfer.”
 

“W—well, I’ll have to examine the data more closely, but I think so…”

Sam clenched his fists and left the room in red-faced silence.
 

China smiled bravely. “We’ll find a way.”
 

I gave her a small smile of gratitude and started to hobble toward the bathroom. Sam had left before getting to my twisted knee, but hell if I was going to call him back and ask for his services now.
 

Jacky immediately slipped my arm around her neck and half-carried me, despite her smaller size. “What crawled up his butt and died?” She snorted. “And what the hell was that thing he did? Nucking futts, he turned that kid into one of those pretty rock crystal things. What are they called?” She looked to the others for help.
 

“A geode?” Adam supplied.
 

“It was a Skill,” I cut in. “One he wishes he didn’t have, for obvious reasons. Let’s leave it to him to talk about, when and if he feels like it.”
 

Jacky pursed her lips. “Just seems like he’s been holding back on us. If I had a cool Skill like that—”
 

I shot her a look, and she clamped her mouth shut, pursing her lips. “Let me know if you need me,” she said as she deposited me at the bathroom entrance.
 

“Thank you.” I opened the door and limped inside. The mirror over the sink showed a face covered almost completely in blood from a cut at the edge of my hairline. My clothes were torn and bloody, and my skin was covered in scrapes and string-burn.
 

I struggled to take off my jacket, and paused in surprise when the door swung open.
 

Adam stepped through with a chair in one hand and a first aid kit in the other, and set the chair behind me. “Sit down.”
 

I did, gratefully, and reached for the first aid kit.
 

He pulled it back from my reach. “Nope. You’re in no shape to fix yourself up right now. Let me help you, since the self-righteous jackass didn’t finish his job. Besides, I brought numbing cream.” He held up the tube of numbing antibiotic ointment with a teasing grin.
 

“Hurry up, then,” I said with a grin of my own. I was exhausted and in pain, and I’d take any break I could get.
 

He unwrapped some steri-pads first, and wiped my bloody face down with them till they came away clean. He did the same to the rest of my cuts and scrapes, squeezed a small bit of salve onto his slender forefinger and carefully applied it to the cuts, then bandaged them with a layer of camouflaging, second-skin patches. They would help me heal without scars and also disguise the events of my evening from my family.
 

His fingers were gentle, and I relaxed into the chair back and closed my eyes, letting some of the pain flow away. Salve, bandage, repeat, until my little surface cuts were all clean, numb, and hidden.
 

When he finished, I tried to stand up, but he held me back down. “I’m not done yet.” He pulled out a can of numbing spray, pushed up my pant leg, and misted the bruise already forming on my shin from when I’d tried to kick the Oracle. “Feel better?”

“Yes,” I sighed.
 

“You did the right thing today. With Sam, I mean.”
 

“Did I?”

“Yes. We become what we need to, to survive. He doesn’t understand that. Someday he will, or he’ll die or cause someone else’s death because he can’t make the hard choice. But you can make those choices. That’s what leaders do.”

I thought I should put some strength in my spine, thank him, and leave. “Leader? Is that what I am? Because I don’t feel like it. I’m flailing just as much as the rest of them,” I said instead.
 

“But you don’t show it.”
 

“What am I doing right now, if not showing it?”

“I can handle it. Besides, I know that when the time comes, you’ll do what you always do when it counts.”

“And what is that?”

“You’ll get your way.”
 

We both laughed.
 

He sprayed the side of my face, noticeably avoiding eye contact. “I’ll be the first to tell you when I think you’re making the wrong decision. But as a leader, you did the right thing today. I understand that. I understand what you’re dealing with. And I know you’re not a stone.”
 

What? Was he offering support?

He clamped his mouth shut then, and finished spraying. “Okay, all done. You ready to go?”

“Yeah. Uh, do you think I could get a ride? Home, I mean? I’d rather not go on foot, and paying a transport pod leaves records.”
 

“Of course. Let me bring my bike around. I’ll come get you when it’s ready.”

I nodded silently, and when he was gone, slumped into the chair. I took my link sheath out of my bag and slipped it onto my arm. “What a crappy day,” I said into the silence.
 

YOU DON’T LOOK SO GOOD.

—Bunny—

“I’ve heard that one before. When do I ever look good, after a Trial?” I worried for a second Bunny must have cameras in the base to be able to see me, but then I realized he was using the ID sheath. He must have been waiting for it to be taken from its protective spot in my pack.
 

ARE YOU OKAY?

—Bunny—

I took a breath, and then another while my answer built in me. “No, I’m not freaking okay. Tonight, I killed three people! I—” I stopped myself, as I heard the resemblance to Sam’s earlier reaction. “Do you know what the Trials are like, Bunny?”

BASICALLY, YES.

—Bunny—

“No, not basically. Do you
know
?”

I’M NOT AN EVALUATOR. I DON’T FOLLOW MY PLAYERS TO THE TRIALS.

—Bunny—

“Let me tell you about them, then. I’ll try to help you truly understand. NIX takes kids, children, sometimes ones even younger than China. They put them into the Trials, places where nothing but monsters live, with no explanation and no help. Everything within the Trial is designed to either terrify or harm you in some way. Did you know, in my Characteristic Trial, a little boy died in my arms? He must have been younger than twelve. Did you know that, Bunny? Did you?”

NO…I DIDN’T KNOW THAT.

—Bunny—

“He was innocent. He did nothing to deserve this. Why would NIX do that to him? What kind of people could hold down a little kid and make him a Player, even knowing what it meant? That he could die in the acclimatization process, and that dying before becoming a Player might actually be the
kinder
option?”

Bunny didn’t respond.
 

“What about what happened tonight, then? We were trapped in cages where the floor rose up in the shape of our nightmares. We had to kill the person across from us to be released, so that we could live. If neither of us was able to kill the other, then both of us would die. What could possibly be a good reason to do that to a group of kids? To
anyone
? Do you seriously believe there’s some good purpose behind all of this? That they’re doing it because they need to? That’s what you told me, but I think you were lying. Bunny, let me tell you what the Trials do. They make us so desperate to survive that we’ll do anything for more Seeds. We’ll do anything to become less and less human, and further the course of this sick little experiment. We’re like little ants in a terrarium to them. You watch us, and you monitor us, and you give us drugs to enhance our performance, and do tests to examine our behavior.” My claws dug into the arms of the chair.

“Have you ever killed someone, Bunny?”

I waited a long while for him to respond.
 

NO, I’VE NEVER KILLED ANYONE. BUT YOU’RE TRYING TO SAY I
HAVE
KILLED, THROUGH BEING A PART OF ALL THIS.

—Bunny—

“You said it. You said it because you know the answer in your heart. You’ve judged yourself, Bunny. And I think—I think you’ve been found lacking.”

WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO, EVE? I CAN’T JUST STOP BEING A MODERATOR. IT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT. I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE TRIALS, I CAN’T STOP THEM AND I CAN’T HELP YOU THROUGH THEM. THE MOST I CAN DO IS GIVE YOU QUESTS IN BETWEEN SO YOU CAN GET MORE SEEDS AND PROTECT YOURSELF.

—Bunny—

“You’re lying again, Bunny.” My voice was soft, but the words were hard, and as forceful as I could make them. “I and my team are going to escape NIX and its Game. You can lie to me, but not to yourself. And that’s why you’re not going to try and stop us. If you won’t help, the least you can do is keep silent, and not get us caught and killed. Because then you
will
have killed someone, no escaping or denying it. And trust me, you don’t want to know what it feels like.”
 

I stood and moved stiffly out of the bathroom and to our resident scientist. “So what did you get?”

Blaine looked up from the screen in front of him. “How they are doing it is a bit of a mystery. Well, that is obvious. They are teleporting you like some science fiction film! They must know
exactly
where you are. The sensors picked up the anomaly instantaneously. But the algorithms that know how to keep you clothed, now those must be interesting…”
 

I’d lifted my hand to my neck. “They must use the GPS to teleport us. So when we short them out, they’ll lose connection, right?”

“I would imagine so. Unless they have some other way of tracking your exact location, I do not see how they could possibly continue to do…whatever it is they are doing.

Chapter 21

This horror will grow mild, this darkness light.

— John Milton

I jerked from a nightmare into the afternoon sun knifing my bleary eyes. The light through my window cleansed my memory of the dream I’d been having like bleach. Except the dark stains of the nightmare remained, in the way I felt sick to my stomach, and my sheets, damp from sweat. A shiver swept through me, and every inch of my body ached. Every injury seemed to have bloomed into maturity during the night. I grabbed loose clothes that would cover as much skin as possible and snuck into the bathroom without being noticed.
 

After a long, hot shower, I looked at myself in the mirror. "God. That's going to be hard to hide." I could have easily passed for someone who'd just been in a pod accident. "Or fallen out of a plane with no parachute," I muttered to myself. Sam had healed the serious injury—my shoulder—and no more than that. I debated for a moment whether or not to put one of the Seeds I'd earned into Resilience. I had gained a record six Seeds from the Trial.
 

Instead, I snuck into my mother's room while she messed around in the kitchen making breakfast for the family, and took her makeup. I didn't know what I was doing, but we had similar pale coloring, and thirty minutes later I'd managed to cover up most of the bruising on my face. More liquid skin camo bandages over the cuts and scrapes, some powder to make them blend in, and I was ready. My face wouldn't stand up to scrutiny, but if I hung my now-dry hair over it and didn't interact with Zed or my mother too much, I might be able to slip by.
 

I passed by my brother on the way around the table, trying not to walk too stiffly.
 

My mom bustled around the kitchen, cooking with the commanding concentration of a conductor at a symphony.
 

"Whoa, Eve," Zed said.
 

I gritted my teeth as I wondered what had given me away.
 

"Did you get taller than me again?" He tilted his head and looked me up and down with a frown.
 

As children, we'd traded places for the title of “tallest” for years. It had been a bit of friendly sibling rivalry when we were younger, and in recent years, a title I gladly conceded to him. I had a model's height, if not one's thinness, but any taller and it would start to stand out as strange. My mother said our father had been huge, head and shoulders above other men. That was all well and good for Zed, but as a girl, I didn't
want
to be head and shoulders above other men. But, better that question than the one I'd been expecting. "No, I'm the same size. It's just that you're sitting down."