The Aftermath (19 page)

“No.”

“Look, I’m sorry about lying about who I was. I just—”

I interrupt him. “Don’t assume everything is about you.” I stare down at the ground, at his shoes. Faint strains of sunlight make the bloodstains on them visible. I square my shoulders and sigh. I can hear Wesley and Mia coming closer, and I promise myself I’ll keep my emotions in check, for her. “Can we just finish this?”

His lips pull into a tight line. He draws me slightly closer, so that our faces nearly touch, then opens his mouth to say something. Or do something. I can’t decide which it is, or which I want. Then Wesley claps him on the shoulder. “Ready to go?”

“Let’s finish this,” he repeats, to Wesley. His gray eyes never leave mine.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

For our next break a few hours later, we stop inside a warehouse Mia spots off the main highway. She’s skittish, but she has the sharpest eyes of us all. While they eat and share a couple of bottles of water—we’re running low, since we only managed to snag a dozen or so from the flesh-eater den—I sneak away to the second floor. I hide in a corner between several stacks of crates and the wall as I check in on Olivia.

She’s no longer with Dr. Coleman but is instead on a covered bridge. It’s made of thick teal-colored glass squares with recessed lighting in the ceiling and connects two of the skyscrapers. A sea of faces surrounds us, coming and going. Advertisements play on every other block of glass. Injury and cosmetic regeneration in low monthly installments, LanCorp-prescribed games that are available for patients of every age and a vacation getaway in an underwater compound that offers everything from relaxation chambers to a genetics spa—whatever that is. But Olivia’s eyes focus on just one thing—the thin boy walking right toward us with bouncy brownish hair. Landon. His striking blue eyes catch hers and as they brush shoulders, he slips something into her hand. Then he’s gone. She doesn’t glance behind us, but I can tell she wants to by the way she clenches her fists.

I hang on to her mind long enough for her to enter the building on the other end of the water. She goes into an enormous room and crouches between a gleaming white platform and table. So similar to the way I’m hiding it suffocates me. She opens her palm to reveal a flat rectangular chip. It’s black and as small as the tip of my thumb. Olivia places the disk in the middle of her AcuTab, then lays it down flat on the platform. A hologram of Landon floats over us. He smiles at her. There’s a little gap between his top teeth that I didn’t notice when he sat next to us on the bench on the rooftop garden. She reaches out to touch him. Her hand drifts right through the projection.

“Archaic, I know, but I had to get this across to you. It’s so hard being in the same province as you and not being able to see you or touch you or talk to you in person,” he says, and she slumps over, her dark hair falling over her eyes.

“I can’t wait until we’re together again next week in our place. Somehow, someway, someday...it will be in person again. I love you, Liv.”

“Wait, Landon, there’s—” But the projection fades away, and Olivia supports her weight against the white table. “Ugh...what’s wrong with me?” Breathing heavily, she rakes her hands down her face. When she pulls them away, I’m shocked to see that her palms are damp.

“I’m losing control,” she whispers, her voice furious. “I’m going to lose everything.”

She’s crying.

My harsh, terrifying gamer is crying.

If Landon and Olivia’s place wasn’t The Aftermath and seeing each other wasn’t a pretend romance between Ethan and me, I would hurt for her. As she smashes the chip into pieces with her foot, her tears blur what I’m able to see. Witnessing her in pain like this embarrasses me—I feel as though I’m an intruder. I release my grip on her brain.

And I come face-to-face with Wesley.

I scream and then clamp my hands over my mouth. “What are you doing up here?” I snap.

He holds out his hand, and I wince reflexively, but he pulls me to a standing position and stares down at me. I was wrong before—his eyes aren’t quite like Declan’s. They’re pale gray. Like an overcast sky.

“Dec wanted me to check on you. He’s running a simulation on his AcuTab right now to see if there’s a quicker way to get out.” He pauses for a second. “Claudia, are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You called out a name. Landon. You said ‘Wait, Landon.’ And why are you crying?”

I open my mouth to argue with him, tell him I’m fine again, but then I press the back of my hand to my cheek. Feel the dampness. For a long time, I look at him, mouth open with my hands on my face. Then I clear my throat, dry away the tears and wipe my fingertips on the hem of my shirt.

Why am I crying?

“It was a dream,” I say lamely.

He shakes his head. “Are you sure? I mean, your eyes were wide-awake and your face looked like—” His hands ball up by his sides. It’s as if he’s fighting to get his words out. I touch his forearm, and we both take in a shaky breath.

“Like what?”

“Like a character. Not a person, but a character.”

I imagine my face, void of any emotion, with tears streaming down it. I squeeze his arm and force out a laugh. “I’m fine. I swear.” I don’t bother looking him in the eye to see if he’s convinced—I can’t even convince myself—but as we head downstairs, I hope he won’t mention this to Declan.

Wesley’s not like Ethan. I can’t simply boss him around—tell him to keep quiet—and expect him to listen.

We go to a room in the back of the warehouse. At some point before this state was evacuated, it must have been an office—there’s a desk covered in stacks of paperwork that are yellow and crisp with age and a computer coated in a thick layer of dust. I sit between Wesley and Mia. Declan’s across from me, eating. He cocks an eyebrow.

“You okay, Virtue?”

I draw a burning breath in through my nose. “Yes,” I snap. I don’t want to be asked if I’m okay anymore. I’m fine.

For the rest of our time in the warehouse, I make myself laugh when they laugh. Make myself eat another bite as they eat. Try my hardest to come up with something intelligent to say when Mia tells us stories about her brother, Daniel.

“And the day my foster mom turned us over to LanCorp because we couldn’t afford the treatment, I saw their van before it even pulled into the driveway. I told him to run. He was—is—the fastest kid I know. He’ll have made it somewhere safe.” Her brown eyes are shiny, but this is the strongest I’ve heard her voice since Declan disconnected her link from her commissioned player.

We’re all quiet for a few minutes. I imagine the thoughts running through my head are the same as theirs. Ominous vans coming after us in the night. Sick children and homeless people selling themselves to a company because they were born with an alleged gene that makes them dangerous. And I think of Daniel—picture him, a faceless boy with brown eyes.

Mia still believes he’s ten and that she’s only been in The Aftermath for a few short weeks instead of years. I don’t have the heart to tell her I lied. Her brother is at least thirteen, and that’s if he’s still alive. If he’s not in the game, too.

I’ll tell her, but after she makes it out. And somehow I’ll make sure she finds him if there’s anything left to find. I owe her that much for me being a coward and keeping the truth from her.

She and Wesley take a head start once they’re finished. I’ve a feeling Declan put them up to it, but I don’t call him on it as we make sure we’re not leaving anything important behind. “She’s nice,” he says.

My lips quiver, and I bend down to zip a compartment in my bag. “You’re horrible at small talk, Declan. Just say whatever it is you want to say.”

“I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be.”

“You haven’t been the same since we broke out Wes and Mia. I realize I lied, but I need you all here.”

Lifting my bag by the straps, I turn to him and smile. I start to speak, but he’s in front of me before I manage two words. He covers my mouth with his fingertips. My lips part just a bit, and I involuntarily lean in close to him. “And stop doing that—smiling when you’re angry. It makes you look like you’ve contracted dysentery.”

I grab his wrist, pulling his hand from my mouth. He spins us around and pins me to the wall. “Well, I’m not angry,” I whisper. “Now let me go.”

He shakes his head. “You know, being so close to you...it makes me realize that—” He lets out a frustrated noise.

What?

“I realize that I’m more afraid to leave this game than I’ve ever been of anything else,” he says.

He presses his lips to mine. Static tingles spread across my face—sweet and delicious. My body goes limp as he releases my wrists, skims his fingertips down my arms and to the small of my back. He pulls me even closer to him. So close I can hear and feel our hearts beating. So close every part of me is on fire and I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing. All I know is that I don’t want this to end. I curl my fingers into his hair. Memorize every angle of his face as his mouth moves against mine.

Gasping, he drags himself away from me. “I know you’re tired and I know you’re angry, but hold it together, Virtue.” He touches my face, rubs the tip of his thumb over my lips once more.

I want to ask him how I’m supposed to do that. I want to know how he could do this to me now, just when we most need to focus. But I say nothing and leave with him, a foot of space between us and a million and one words left unsaid.

* * *

We come to a brick house with a pond behind it a few hours later and decide to make it our halfway point. It’s quiet and off the beaten path. Nobody will find us here. While Wesley, Mia and Declan rest on the pond bank, I sneak off to see what Olivia’s doing.

There’s a pile of bricks at the front of the house, and I place my bag against it and sit down. Closing my eyes, I concentrate on getting into my gamer’s brain. A moment later, I’m surrounded by utter blackness.

Maybe she’s asleep.

Maybe...

Then I hear her murmur something and the world in front of me transforms. Instead of darkness, there’s sunlight. Overgrown grass. She’s leaning against a pile of bricks, and when she stands up, there’s a ramshackle brick home behind her. Three people lounging a few feet away from a murky pond—two boys and one girl.

This is The Aftermath.

This is not Olivia’s gaming room—there are no screens or projections or any of that—but she is definitely inside the game. And it’s as real as if I were in my own head.

She’s playing the game right now—in what must be some type of new gaming platform that makes it seem as if she’s physically inside The Aftermath. And I’m not where she left me. Olivia pauses, probably trying to come to grips with what she’s seeing. I hear someone ask her something in a frantic voice, but the words are too muffled for me to decipher.

“I’ve got it under control,” Olivia snarls, and I can hear the sound of my own voice speaking in unison. “I can handle this myself, so don’t do
anything.
”

What is she going to do?

And then, to my horror, she makes me reach for the Glock. I fling myself back into my own mind just as she forces me to charge the gun.

I lock my fingers, dropping my weapon to the ground. My hand twitches. It stretches downward, toward the gun, and I feel as if my arm is being yanked from the rest of my body. I grit my teeth. Clench my fingers into a fist. Try to keep myself upright and my hand away from the—

Olivia forces me to grab the Glock. Compels me to walk several steps toward the pond. She plans to kill Declan and Mia and Wesley, and I can’t let that happen.

I drag myself to my knees and dig my fingernails into the dirt and grass. I can feel her trying to maneuver my body and it burns. Like buckets of scalding water being poured over my skin. I have to bite my tongue not to scream.

I see Declan glance up at me and frown. I try to shake my head, but all I manage to do is twist my neck into an unnatural position. He rises from his spot beside the pond. “Don’t,” I make myself say as loudly as I can. But he doesn’t listen. He’s by my side before I can mutter another word, kneeling over me. Before I can stop myself—stop Olivia—my elbow jabs into his forehead.

He doesn’t even falter. Grabbing my wrists, he stares down into my eyes and says, “Virtue?”

My foot draws up and kicks him in the knee. We both tumble to the ground. When his arms tighten around mine, pinning them to my sides, I’m not sure if it’s for my own protection or to prevent me from hurting him.

“Leave me...
How could you be so stup—
Get out of...
You’ve ruined everything and now there’s nothing—
Olivia, stop it!”

I scramble back into her head. I imagine all the horrible things she’s made me do and say. All the characters she’s forced me to murder. I imagine how I want to choke her right now. Her hands move up unwillingly and wrap around her own neck. The Aftermath dissipates, and now she’s staring up at a sleek metallic white wall and a blue light flashing right above her eyes, gagging.

Declan was right. I can control her.

I concentrate on blocking her out of my mind, and I fall back into The Aftermath, landing in my own head. The hold over my body is gone, and I’m on my side, wheezing. Tears trickle down my face. “I wasn’t paying attention— I should have known,” I say to Declan. “I should have questioned what she was doing. Should have known to check in on her more.”

When his eyes turn hard and he steps away from me, I know he’s finally aware of everything I can do.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“You can see what she’s seeing.” Declan’s voice is a low growl. I hear his footsteps come closer, feel the fury breathing down my neck. “Claudia...say something!” The pile of bricks to my right tumbles over. He curses sharply. My body tenses up as I carve half-moon indentations into my palms with my fingernails.

Then he touches my bare shoulder blades. I shiver because his touch contradicts his anger. It’s soft as weightless cotton, and warm, too. Dangerous. I start to inch away as he trails his fingertips across my shoulders, but then he tugs me gently around so that I’m facing him. His face is red and pinched.

When he speaks again, his words hiss out between clenched teeth, like air seeping from a broken valve. “You know everything she does.”

I tilt my head to one side and locate Wesley and Mia edging far away from us. They go around to the back of the house, toward the pond, pretending like they’re looking for something. Wesley’s gray eyes meet mine for a split second and he mouths something that looks like, “I’m so sorry.” I can’t be sure. Still, I want to mouth back, “Coward.”

Mia never lifts her dark eyes from the ground.

“Not everything,” I whisper at last. I want to break away from Declan. Run into the woods and forget all this. Except then I’ll be alone again.

“But you can get inside of her head? You can see what it is she’s seeing?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you think you could’ve told me?” he demands. “Do you know how useful what you do is? How could you be so ridiculously selfish?”

I feel as though everything in the game is crumbling around me. The old brick house Mia and Wesley dart in and out of as they try to avoid and listen in on our argument. The blades of scorched grass, sharp as they slice into my sunburned skin. The sun itself.

And suddenly I realize I’m shaking. I tremble as if it’s thirty degrees out here instead of more than triple that. My ears ring.

I want to hit Declan.

A tingling sensation races through my head, from the center to my forehead. It’s been so long since Olivia’s actually managed to power me down that I’ve forgotten what it feels like. It’s not at all pleasant. My head jars forward, then back, like a rag doll. One moment I see Declan’s face and the next I see other faces—Dr. Coleman, the man with the moon-shaped scar, the group of men and women in suits from one of my first memories, the faces of people my hands are responsible for killing in the game. I press my fingertips to my temples, but it does nothing to stop the pain. “We should keep moving,” I pant.

If I don’t walk away, I will hit Declan. And Olivia has nothing to do with my urge to do it.

A strange sound hitches in his throat. He shakes his head. “Definitely not. Not until we—”

I shove my sweaty palms into his chest. He staggers back. Stares at me with wide incredulous eyes as I scoop my bag off the ground and stalk past him toward the house. Every step makes me feel as if my brain is on the verge of blowing up. I have to pause several times to gather my bearings.

“Wesley, Mia, we’re going!” I shout, glaring at them through squinted eyes.

They’re sitting on a brown floral-patterned couch in the den. Both are holding CDS packages but neither has opened theirs. “Didn’t you hear me?” I ask. “We’re leaving.”

Mia wrinkles her nose at me and stands up. She puts her food into the pocket of her shorts before walking silently past me and out the front door.

Wesley gets up, too, and gestures toward the doorway with his chin. Declan is leaning against it, his face contorted and fists clenched. “Wouldn’t you rather resolve your issues with him first?” Wesley asks, concerned.

I take a deep breath, and then I turn with my arms outstretched. Like I’m inviting Declan to take a shot at me. “Sure, why not.” I hand my gun to Wesley, glaring at Declan all the while. “But just so you know, there’s a psychotic gamer trying to get into my head at this very moment, and she’s really, really pissed off.” My words are slurred because the static current is creeping down my face. Declan takes a step closer when I drag my hands through my hair, screaming, but I back away from him.

“Don’t touch me,” I growl.

A muscle twitches in Declan’s jaw. He comes over anyway. He waves his fingers toward the door and Wesley leaves, glancing at me over his shoulder as he steps into the sunlight.

This time, I call him the word that’s on my mind.
“Coward.”

Flesh-eating, overly friendly coward.

“We’re alone now. So come on, moderator—I want to hear what you have to say.”

“You didn’t have to lie to me,” Declan says.

I shake my head, trying to let his words settle. They don’t. “You’re such a hypocrite. You knew who I was the moment you saw me. You evade the truth for weeks to get my help—you use me—and now you’re angry with me for keeping this from you.”

He swallows hard. “What do you mean I knew who you were?”

“I remember what happened back in the courthouse. I know you’re the one who hit me, who made it possible for me to be like this.”

His expression hardens. “I was trying to hit the boy. Ethan. I was looking for my brother, and I thought you were flesh-eaters.” There’s something different about his voice when he says this—something that I can’t quite pinpoint—and I hug myself tightly.

“Then why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Look, I—” But then he stops and shakes his head. “Claudia, there’s a lot that I haven’t been able to tell you... I hope you can understand.”

He’s looking at me so intently, and I know he’s about to say something important. But the buzzing is back, starting in my skull and seeping down my spine. My hearing goes hazy, and my vision, too. I try to move my body, but I only manage to take two steps. I can’t walk or flick my hand or turn my head. I can’t do anything but stand perfectly still, with my fingers reaching out for something in front of me, and my lips parted. It’s as though someone has shoved a needle into my veins, injecting ice into my bloodstream, freezing me.

Declan is by my side. He cups my face between his hands, says something. But I can’t hear him. All I hear is a loud hum, like flies inside my head. I stare helplessly at him. Before I go under, my hands reach for his throat and Olivia makes me say, “I’ll make you wish you were dead for betraying me.”

* * *

I hover somewhere between delusion and reality for a few endless moments before I’m sucked completely into the dream—one where I’m standing in the middle of a playground, the one from The Aftermath that Declan had taken me to. There’s nobody else around, and the only noise comes from the swings as the wind rattles the chains, making a sound that reminds me of chimes.

It makes me feel cold.

Tentatively, I sit down on one of the swings and grasp the chain with both hands. “Wake up, Virtue,” I whisper in a furious voice. “Wake up now.”

A firm but gentle hand clamps over my shoulder. My heart feels as if it’s jumped into my throat, and I jolt up off the swing. Stumbling around, I look at the girl standing behind me.

I’m staring at myself. The person I would be if I never entered The Aftermath. My face is filled out—there’s color in my cheeks and the dark circles that have become a permanent fixture beneath my eyes are gone. My ear is whole, too, and my hair is long and brown, just like it was when the last memory hit me while I was here. Mesmerized, I take a step forward toward myself, expecting the hallucination to disappear.

It doesn’t.

“Wake up now,” she orders. “You have got to wake up.”

“I’m trying to.”

She shakes her head in frustration. “You’re not trying anything. Get up. Break free. You’ve got to help yourself or they’ll kill you first and ask questions later.”

“Then help me,” I plead. “You’re me— You get me out of this.”

“This is something you have to do yourself.” There’s a strange smile on her face as she says this. “Use that anger, that violence that got you here in the first place.”

Even though I know this is nothing but a dream, I lunge forward. “I am not violent,” I growl. I punch her as hard as I can, but my fist goes right through her body, banging into a metal post instead. Pain shoots through my arm, and I hug it to my chest.

The corners of the other Claudia’s mouth lift up as she turns to me. “Yes, you are. We all are. So focus that energy and wake up
right
now.”

“Claudia.” I hear Declan’s voice. It sounds far away and fuzzy, like a bad cell phone connection.

The hallucination grabs my chin, turning my face to hers. “Go back now!” she snaps. “If you stay here, you won’t be able to leave and they will delete you. Is that what you want?”

“Claudia, come back.” Declan’s voice is a fraction closer this time. A hundred miles away instead of a thousand.

“You’re taking too long,” the other Claudia whispers. “And we’re not getting killed. Not today. I’m so sorry about this—about everything.”

“Sorry about—” But my words are cut off when her fist slams into my head.

Then my world goes dark.

* * *

I wake up on a couch with Declan hovering over me, shaking my shoulders. My breath comes rushing into me, and I gasp.

He presses an open water bottle to my lips. I drink it greedily, choking and coughing when I squeeze the plastic too hard. “Careful,” he warns. He helps me sit up.

My brain is blurry, as though there’s static humming through my head—in one ear and out the other.

“I thought you were—” he swallows hard, pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a tremulous breath “—dying. You stopped breathing a few times. And you kept swinging out at nothing. I didn’t know wha—”

“A dream. A horrible dream of myself.”

He sinks down onto his knees in front of me. Clasping my hands between his, he leans his forehead against mine. Out of the corner of my eye, I see strands of his dark hair intermingling with mine. “And what did she—or you—say to yourself?”

“I tried to punch her.” I don’t tell him that I actually wanted to hit him for all the lies, that I was taking all that aggression out where it was safe to let my anger loose. Because I’m
still
angry.

He gives my hands a tiny reassuring squeeze, and then he laughs. This is a good sound because it’s the first genuine one I’ve heard from him in a while. I feel it vibrating through my entire body. “You can’t hit what’s not there, Virtue.”

I clench my right hand, but the pain that raced through it on the playground is gone. “Look, before we leave I want to say I’m sorry,” I say. “About before.”

“Don’t apologize for Olivia.”

I don’t have the energy to tell him I’m not apologizing for what Olivia said or did—I’m saying sorry for my own words and actions. So I give him a tiny ghost of a smile. He leans away from me, so that we are still eye to eye, and brushes damp strands of hair from my face.

“We had better go,” I say.

“Claudia.”

“It doesn’t matter if Olivia knows. Or if she tries to get into my head every twenty minutes. I’m stronger than it—than her—I think. We can get out.” Part of me still believes this. Another part knows I’m better off staying put, saving every ounce of my strength for the fight that’s bound to happen.

“Claudia,” he says.

“Where are Wesley and Mia? Where’s my backpack? Where—”

He presses his mouth to mine, drowning my words. Drowning my thoughts. Consuming me. His lips are soft, warm, but I shiver nonetheless. He moves his body close again, running his fingers up my neck and entwining them into my hair. And I decide something. I will stay in this smoldering room in this strange, uncomfortable position all day if it means he won’t let me go.

But then there are several raps on the window, and I open my eyes. Wesley presses his face to the glass. He’s grinning, saying something, but I’m too dazed to understand. I pull away and press my back into the corner of the couch. Shift my eyes to a large rip in the fabric.

Declan puts something heavy on my lap. My bag. “Claudia, I have to tell you something else. Something that—”

“No,” I say. Because that
something
is probably just more lies. And right now I can’t take not knowing if he’s telling me the truth. I avoid his eyes. “Forget it, Declan. Let’s just do this, get out, okay?”

“But—”

“Just leave it alone,” I snap, and our intimate moment is gone. I stalk out of the brick house, into the open air. Declan follows, reluctantly, yelling for Wesley and Mia to join us.

And as we walk together, away toward the hazy horizon, my anger melts away. Declan looks at me and smiles questioningly, and before I know what I’m doing, I’m smiling back. His fingertips find mine. Gentle and hesitant. And I know this is as safe as I’ll ever feel within The Aftermath—hunted by my gamer and probably by mods very soon.