Into the Abyss (10 page)

And suddenly I realize: “Someone sent you to cause this accident, didn't they?” This is not a coincidence, or another one of their casual, violent attempts to remind me of my place among them. They're serious about creating this accident. I can see it in Josh's eyes, hungry as they are in a way I don't quite understand, and in the still-not-quite-committed shuffling of some of his group by the stairs. Maybe the older, more experienced CCA members aren't quite ready to make a demonstration out of me like this, however much they might want to. But it doesn't mean some of them wouldn't sink so low as to bribe the younger, more reckless among them to do their dirty work.

“What did they offer you?”

“Offer?” Josh says, moving closer. “They didn't have to pay me for this. I've been planning this ever since you woke up. I only had to wait until we had enough on our
side that we wouldn't have to worry about whatever retaliation this might cause from the president and her mindlessly loyal drones.”

“And you think you have that now?”

“Let's just say that it's a shame you won't be around long enough to see the way things are changing around here,” he says. “We're on our way toward quite the revival.”

“I don't want to fight you,” I say quietly. But it isn't true. I don't know why I say it. I do want to fight them. I want to tear them all to pieces and then parade those pieces across headquarters as a warning, as a promise that if they want to paint me a killer, then I can live up to their expectations. I can make them regret every word they have ever said against me.

I don't, though. Not yet. Because some part of me is still desperate not to be like them, any more than I wanted to be like those clones.

But my choices are narrowing, along with the distance between myself and the stairwell group. That group moves almost in unison across the deck, their eyes burning with the reflection of the sun creeping up behind me.

“You don't have to fight,” Josh says, drawing my gaze back to him. “There's still time to jump.” There is something about the way he says it. Still so casual. Without a hint of the chill a mention of death should carry with it. My fists clench. My pulse quickens. My control slips—for only a moment.

But I am lethally fast.

So a moment is all it takes.

I lunge, slam hard into his side and knock him into the crumbling stone wall. Hard enough that a few bits of it chip free and scatter down around him. He's slow to get up, but the others have reached me now; I spring sideways to avoid one of their punches, only to be met with a knee to my side that sends me stumbling and almost tripping over myself to regain my balance. When I look up, I find myself staring into the eyes of a dark-skinned girl with hair the color of coal and lips stained a startlingly bright red. She smiles. I catch a glimpse of a lipstick stain against her teeth, and it is the last thing I see before a sudden sharpness lightnings through my neck. I reach up, and my fingers close around a thin metal dart.

Tranquilizer.

As I yank it out, another hits near the hollow of my throat.

I don't think these are normal tranquilizers either. I have heard other CCA members talking about them; they're doctored by some of the scientists and weapons specialists here, strengthened past the point of anything you could legally obtain outside these walls. They're strong enough to kill a normal human with just a small dose.

And more importantly, strong enough to stop most clones with relative ease, even in spite of their genetically enhanced bodies and organs.

My neck tingles where the poison's seeped in, itches just out of reach beneath my skin. It takes only a few seconds for my vision to start to fade. For the roof to start spinning. The space around me seems to collapse, the entire group around me falling into one blurry shape of hatred.
I fight to stay on my feet as that shape breaks apart and allows a single piece to step forward. Josh, I realize—but only once he is mere inches from my face. There is blood dotting his skinned cheek. Not much, though, and being slammed into that wall doesn't seem to have shaken his confidence much either. His smug grin is still there as he leans in close, whispers words that I am just barely still lucid enough to understand: “I'll tell Catelyn good-bye for you, don't worry.”

My wrist feels oddly heavy as my attention shifts to it, dimly recognizing the device resting there. Communicator. Full of messages from Catelyn that I never answered. My eyes close, and I can somehow still picture her much more clearly than I can see anything that is happening now. And I can picture Josh talking to her, wearing that same awful smile as he tells her what he's done.

That burning, that itching along my neck grows more intense, spreads down through my whole body.

I know what should come next. I am waiting for it: that flash of black, the violent shock of my mind unhinging, releasing its grip on the strength it usually makes me hold back. I am hoping for that darkness, almost. Because it likely would end this, and I wouldn't have to think about what I was doing, or even remember it.

But that darkness doesn't come.

The tranquilizer is to blame, maybe. The way it seems to be dulling my world, softening the sharp edges of my furious thoughts along with everything else.

Josh's hands grab my arms and shove me against the
wall. The edge of it digs into my lower back, and my feet fly up, and suddenly I'm flat against the top of it, my head and shoulders hanging out over emptiness. My eyes dart open to wide sky above, interrupted a second later by Josh peering down at me as his right hand moves to my throat.

I'm not sure where the strength to do it comes from, but I grab that hand and I twist, pulling him off his feet and crushing him down against my body. I'm not strong enough to hold him, though, and the two of us roll over and over along the perilously uneven wall, breaking and shifting even more of the cracked bits of concrete as we go. I can't shove him off me—I don't have enough control left in my muscles to manage it. And I am losing what little bit of strength I managed to muster; bit by bit he keeps shoving me farther out over the edge, and I can't fight my way back.

I am tired of fighting.

Now I am just hoping to scramble enough power and momentum together to bring him over the edge with me.

The group behind us has gotten louder. Or maybe my hearing is getting stronger, to make up for my vision and everything else that continues to fade. What I originally thought was that group jeering and cheering Josh on sounds more frenzied and frustrated now—more like the sound of scuffling. As if they can't be still, can't help fighting among themselves since Josh is taking care of me alone.

My attention is ripped brutally from whatever they're doing, though, as my now mostly numb body is spun over
and thrown against a particularly run-down bit of the wall. There isn't enough concrete left to support me here, and the entire upper half of my body slides down along the crumbling slope. My legs make a feeble attempt to close over something—anything.

But all it takes is one last shove from Josh, and then I am falling.

There is no sensation of
being crushed toward the ground like I expected. There is only a careening, out-of-control weightlessness. And I should be terrified of it, I suppose, but the only thought in my mind is:
Josh is still up above.

I wanted to drag him down into this weightless abyss with me, but I've failed.

My hands stretch out, as if I still had some hope of snatching him. They hit something else instead. Even in my numb, drugged state, I feel the pain of impact strike up through my arms—such an unbelievable amount of pain that it's all I am aware of for several moments. Then my eyes flutter open much like my hands reached out—on their own, with me only distantly aware that I once had the full power to control them.

It takes what feels like hours to make sense of what I'm seeing.

A dark level of the parking garage unfolds to my left. Both my arms are lying out in front of me, and underneath me, from my stomach upward, I feel solidness. Only my legs are dangling in open air now; the rest of me is safe on that solidness underneath—on the narrow top of one
of the giant, faded signs affixed to the side of the garage. That is the only thing I can think of that it might be, and I can't seem to get my body to cooperate, to move so I can see if I'm right.

All I remember are my hands hitting, and that pain. . . . I don't remember pulling myself up. Yet here I am. Alive. And once again, I don't understand how or why I am breathing. But maybe now isn't the time to question it.

What I do wonder, though, is how much worse that impact against this sign was. How much of it I didn't feel. If I don't remember moving and pulling myself up here, what else is my brain blacking out? Why can't I make myself move? Is it still the tranquilizer at work, or something worse?

How broken and bruised am I, really?

The thought is fuzzy at first, but it repeats itself enough that soon it becomes clear—the only clarity I have. Everything else feels scrambled, rimmed in darkness along with my vision.

And very soon I grow tired of caring even about my injuries. About not being able to move. Why do I need to move? I am fading into that darkness, the edges of it expanding and engulfing. It feels warm. Comfortable. I don't need to make sense of the noises above or below me.

I don't need to do anything about that figure crossing the parking garage, moving toward me. They can't want anything to do with me—nothing in this world has anything to do with me anymore.

So I close my eyes again, and I keep falling.

•  •  •

Strange voices.

“She's lucky. Bit deeper and this cut probably would've caused some serious hardware issues.”

“But it hasn't, right?”

“Chip's a bit banged up now; probably why she seemed so scrambled. But everything on it should still be intact—just needs cleaning, and then we can let the healing program work its magic and cover things back up, safe and sound like.”

Strange smells.

Industrial smells, mostly—metal and rust and oil—but with an overlay of something that doesn't seem to belong. Vanilla? Or honey, maybe? I've only had honey once, but when I swallow to try to clear the dryness in my mouth, I can taste its sticky bitter-tinged sweetness all over again.

“It looks like she might be waking up.”

I don't remember falling asleep.

“Violet? Can you hear me?”

Why does this strange voice know my name?

“Can you move anything?”

Maybe I can, but I don't rush to prove it. This voice, these people looming over me, waiting and watching my every move . . . I feel vulnerable—like they already know too much more than I do. I don't like it. I don't know what I will see when I open my eyes, how surrounded I might be, and I just want to be still for a few more moments until my mind and my senses have gathered as much as they can with my eyes still closed.

But then I hear a more familiar voice.

“I know there's no way you'd let those assholes kill you.”

Seth.

“Language,” the other voice scolds with a light
tsk
of her teeth.

Seth ignores her. “You're fine, Violet,” he says. “It's been almost two days. Stop milking this and open your eyes already.”

I stubbornly keep them closed. There is a rustling sound to my left, and then the woman speaks again: “Don't rush things, Seth,” she says. “Just keep a watch on her for a moment. I'll be right back.” I listen to her footsteps fade as she leaves the room.

“You look like a corpse just lying there, you know. It's sort of freaking me out.”

Maybe the familiarity of his voice should be a comfort to me. But it only makes my muscles tense more, because it sends a deeper flood of uncertainty washing over me. I refused to follow him earlier. I didn't meet him like he asked me to on the phone, and I had more or less made up my mind that the best way to win this so-called impossible game we're playing would be for me to keep avoiding him.

So how did I end up here alone with him?

And more important is that ever-persistent, ever-annoying question: Why? Again, I'm not sure I want to know; whatever his motives, good or bad, my life so far has only proven more complicated with every person I have tried to get close enough to understand.

But I can't keep my eyes shut forever. So I open them, and I find Seth more than a little too close, crouched down beside me with his gaze leveled into mine.

I fight the cornered-animal instinct to strike that ridiculous smile off his face.

“You're alive,” he declares. “Awesome.” He's either unaware or indifferent to the way my body is bristled, possibly prepared to attack, because his grin doesn't so much as twitch.

“I'm a miracle of life,” I deadpan, and then quickly roll over so I can stare at the ceiling instead of him. It soars high above me, exposed beams and ductwork crisscrossing through the wide-open space. Three small windows near the top let in a minuscule amount of daylight through grimy glass, but most of the space is lit by the warm glow of mismatched lamps strewn throughout the room, perched haphazardly on tables here and chairs there, and most of them connected by extension cords and power strips that look far from fire safe. And there are plenty of tables and chairs to perch them on too, more tables and chairs than I think any one room could ever possibly need, and all of them overflowing with more than just those lamps and electrical cords. There are books on some of them—dangerously teetering towers of books—computer parts on others, along with random tools, colorful piles of scarves, and even half-empty bottles of paint beside stiff, unwashed brushes. None of it seems to follow any sort of organizational pattern. It is simply a trove, a hoard of anything and everything in a space that doesn't make any
more sense than its contents; because while the exposed ceiling and ancient windows clearly make this feel like a dusty old factory or warehouse of some sort, the lamps warm walls that—even though they're braced with metal poles and piping—are splashed with soft shades of brown and ivory, and floors that are covered in mismatched rugs that look like they belong in a model-family living room.