Unchanged (35 page)

I keep crawling. Willing myself forward. The memory of that horrific, teeth-rattling blast is enough to make the throbbing in my arm feel like background noise.

“Flux! Sera!” There's terror in Lyzender's voice. He's reached the first puddle of blood.

I find a grate that leads to the outside. I pivot around so I can kick it out with my feet. It gives way easily and I scoot to the edge of the drop and let myself fall. I land in a crouch on the ground.

“Sera!” He's behind me now, pushing himself out of the opening.

“What did you say about the explosion?” I scream at him.

He blinks. “What?”

“You said it wouldn't make a sound. You swore we wouldn't hear it. Because it would be contained by the bunker.”

Comprehension weighs on his face.

That blast was deafening. Earthshaking.

Which means it didn't detonate in the bunker.

Which means it wasn't contained.

“Seraphina,” he tries.

I don't wait for him to finish. I take off at a run, scanning the Medical Sector with my limited vision as I go. Everything looks intact. There doesn't seem to be damage to any of the buildings. Even the pathways are perfectly manicured. Not a flower petal out of place.

I know we entered the bunker through the Medical Sector. Lyzender guided us right under that familiar rectangular archway. The VersaScreen that concealed the lift was in Building 2.

I remember!

But I also remember that long, white corridor that seemed to stretch on for miles.

“Which way was it heading?” I whisper. I close my eyes and try to picture the way we were facing when we stepped off the lift. I spin in a slow circle, trying to align myself in the right direction.

When I open my eyes, I feel my knees give out. The world collapses around me.

I'm looking right at the Residential Sector.

Lyzender's winded voice is behind me. “Sera, wait! It's not safe!”

I take the shortcut through Buildings 3 and 7, sprinting as fast as my weak legs will carry me. I'm still frustrated by my inadequate speed. When is this glitching inhibitor going to wear off?

By the time I reach the school, I can hear the screaming. Anguished cries from people in pain. People in mourning.

When I turn the corner and burst onto the Rec Field, I see the smoke. Rising up from a giant chasm carved into the ground. It's three times the size of the field I'm standing on. A jagged, gaping hole where the residential apartment buildings once stood.

Where Diotech employees and their families slept and ate and shared stories about their day.

Gone.

Gone.

Gone.

My legs go numb. The only organ I can feel is my pounding heart.

The only thought in my brain is that it's my fault.

It's all my fault.

If I hadn't warned them—if I hadn't sent Kaelen the message—none of this would have happened. The plan would have gone off without a hitch. The device would have been triggered inside the airtight bunker. The explosion would have been contained.

All that would have been lost was some stupid useless data!

But instead, it ripped a hole in the earth, leaving behind nothing but rubble and ash.

And bodies.

Bodies everywhere. More than I can count. More than I woke up with in the ocean after Freedom Airlines flight 121 plummeted from the sky.

I feel a similar chasm opening up inside of me. Threatening to consume me whole. Swallow me into the darkness.

And wouldn't I love to let it?

Wouldn't I love to just disappear right now?

Fall into this giant crack in my heart and never resurface.

I nearly trip over a large piece of rubble. It looks like a chunk of ceiling. Angrily, I bend down and push it. It takes all my strength to move it even an inch, but somehow I manage to roll it over.

I immediately wish I hadn't. More bodies await me underneath.

I stagger away, my vision tunneling. My knees buckling.

A sharp wail slices through the air, snapping me back into myself. I turn around to see Crest, my darling friend. I want to kiss the sky and thank the heavens that she's not dead.

She's alive. Alive and running.

Not to me, though. To a contorted body splayed on the ground. When she reaches it, she drops to her knees. I hurry toward her, stopping short when I see the face of the man she's huddled over. He's handsome. With a chiseled jawline and high cheekbones. His eyes are closed, revealing long vibrant green lashes.

“Those lashes,”
I can hear her say.
“They can turn a good girl bad in three seconds flat.”

This must be Jin. The lab assistant she always talked about. The one she called her Dark Matter.

He's so still. So very still. The only movement is a single nanotat on his left arm. A swirling, high-speed journey through dark sky and blinding white stars.

I feel a hand on my shoulder and I jump.

“Sera?”

It's Lyzender. But I don't turn to look at him. Instead, I look up. Into a morning sun that shouldn't be shining. That shouldn't be so eager to get up and brighten the day with its luminance.

My body is heaving in dry sobs.

He steps in front of me, his expression grave. “Sera. We need to get out of here. We need to get back to the hover.”

I shake my head. “No.”

“Seraphina.”

“NO!” I scream, shoving him hard. “I did this to him! I killed him! I'm not leaving!”

I turn back to Crest. She's pushing Jin's hair from his forehead and brushing the dust and ash from his cheeks, revealing cuts in his skin. Blemishes in his pale white skin. With her thumb, she rubs at a gash above his eyebrow, trying to erase it. But her hands aren't magic. She only manages to smear the blood across his forehead. And now he looks worse.

This makes her cry even harder.

“I'm sorry,” I whisper to her. “It's my fault. All my fault.”

She doesn't seem to hear me over the deafening noise of her own pain.

Suddenly, behind me, there's a deep, angry roar. The sound of trapped wolves and vengeful murderers. When I turn around, I expect to see someone charging toward me, a weapon drawn and poised to slay, but instead I see someone running away from me. Running like the world is chasing him.

It's Lyzender.

Finally giving up on me. Finally accepting the fact that I'm a lost cause, just like Paddok said. That I will never be
me
. I will always be
them
. Diotech—good or bad, helpful or evil, protective or destructive—runs in my veins. Their science is my body. Their inspiration is my life.

I was made here.

And here is where I must stay.

A voice calls my name from across the chasm. A voice full of desperation and heartbreak. I look up and see the face I was made to love. The face that lifts me from nightmares, quiets fears, and makes earth-splitting chasms feel like mere cracks in the ground.

His dark blond hair shines brilliantly in the sun, finally giving reason to the yellow orb's presence on this dark morning. His eyes sparkle as they meet mine across the great divide. There is no smile on his face. I'm not sure how anyone could smile in this devastation.

But there is relief.

The same relief that's coursing through me right now, giving me the will to move. To run to him.

“Kaelen!” I cry as my feet falter uneasily on this rubble-laden path. I don't look down. I refuse to see what I'm stepping through. I know it's more than rubble. I know it's people, too. People I once knew. People I might have said hello to in the mornings. Faces I would surely recognize.

Right now I have to stay focused on the one thing that's keeping me from collapsing in on myself: Kaelen is alive. He didn't perish in this disaster.

My foot catches on something and suddenly I'm plummeting downward. Into the horrors that lie beneath me. I thrust my hands out to break my fall and something sharp slices through my right palm.

“Sera!” Kaelen calls. Even though I know he's moving toward me, it sounds as though he's getting farther away.

Blood gushes from my hand. I lift it up to see what cut me and my gaze falls on a pair of red-handled trimming shears.

No.

Please, no.

I'm crying again before I even look down. Before I even see his face.

I lost him once before. Logic tells me it should be easier the second time around. Like I've had practice or something.

But logic is nowhere to be found in this chaos of smoke and death.

There is only sorrow. There is only pain. The kind that blinds you and makes you feel like you're drowning on land.

I pull Rio's head into my lap and stroke his face. It's marred with scratches where the demolished building came crashing down on him. He was probably outside trimming the hedges.

So many hedges.

I can feel blood from a gash in the back of his head trickling between my knees.

I open my mouth, open my throat, open my soul, and let out a wail.

The gruesome sound terrifies me. I have trouble believing that it actually came from me. It was animalistic. No, more like someone ripping something animalistic apart. I've never heard such a noise escape me before.

A quiet groan startles me and I look down to see a tremble of movement on his face.

“Rio!”

“Sera.” I can hear the injury in his voice. The fading strength. Death waits nearby, ready to take him from me, but somehow he's still here.

He coughs, a spittle of blood trickling from his mouth. I wipe it away with my hand.

His eyes fight to open. I feel a clench in my chest as I wonder which eyes will be staring back at me. The Rio I remember? Or the eerie barren version they replaced him with?

I resolve to stay with him no matter which one I see.

“Seraphina?” he says again, and I wilt in relief.

Seraphina.

Rio was the one who gave me that name. The real Dr. Rio. The man who created me. Who brought me to life and treated me like a daughter.

When his eyes drag open, I see him again.

I grab his hand and squeeze it. “I'm here.”

Another cough as he struggles to speak. “Do you know why I helped you escape?”

I bite my lip and shake my head. I only know the reasons Dr. A told me. And who knows if those are true anymore.

“Because you're free,” he tells me. “You were always free.”

“Rio, I—”

“I never told you who you really are. I should have told you.”

“I'm an ExGen,” I say numbly. But the title no longer holds the same pride it once did.

He tries to shake his head, but the movement only makes him cough up more blood. He winces against the pain.

“Stay still,” I urge him. “Please.”

He tries to speak again but the words are too quiet. I lean down and press my ear to his lips. “Find out who you really are,” he says.

I feel a delicate shudder of breath against my cheek. There's a finality about it. A release of suffering. He's gone. No longer suspended between life and death. Between sanity and madness.

I didn't think there were any tears left inside me. I thought I had cried them all. But somehow, from somewhere, a single drop of rain leaks onto his cheek.

Like a miracle.

Like the beginning of a storm.

 

58

CROSSING

“Stay right where you are, lover boy.”

I feel the sharp steel against my neck before I see the man holding it. I look up. Kaelen has crashed to a halt only an arm's reach away. He glares somewhere above my head, at the knife's owner. Then his gaze finds me and I watch the fear take shape in his eyes.

“Up you go,” the man says to me, easing me to a stand by the elbow. The blade stays firmly pressed against my throat. “Very good.”

Kaelen is frozen. Everything is still except the twitch of his fingers. He can't decide whether to follow the man's orders or charge and take his chances.

“Thought you could get away with it, didn't you?” The stern voice is breathy and warm at my ear. He smells of smoke and desert dust and deer meat.

“Jase.” I finally place him. I assumed he was dead.

“You thought you could tip off your little Diotech friends and not pay for it, huh?”

“I didn't—” I start to argue, but the blade crushes my windpipe, rendering me silent.

“Shut the glitch up,” he roars. “How'd you do it? How'd you warn them?”

I flash a look at Kaelen but don't answer. The truth will only aggravate him more.

“You got out,” I squeak.

It's not a question. It's a statement of hope. If he got out of the bunker before it blew, maybe others did, too. Maybe they're not all gone.

He laughs maniacally. “What? Are you disappointed? That you weren't able to kill us all? I escaped the same way you and that coward Lyzender got out. I ran. But not before detonating the device on those glitching baby killers.”

“You
…” I'm unable to finish the thought.

“I had no choice,” he growls, pressing the knife harder against my skin. I feel it prick the surface. A dribble of warm liquid trails down my neck. “They are all dead. Paddok, Davish, Nem, all of them. Because of you. Now Manen's death will never be avenged. Or my daughter's. Or any of them.”

Kaelen takes an uneasy step toward us. “Jase, is it?”

Jase whirls me toward him. “Don't move. I'll slit her throat. I swear.”

“She'll heal,” Kaelen challenges.

Jase lets out a dark laugh. “Not with the inhibitor running through her system.”

Kaelen tilts his head, not fully understanding.

“That's right. We weakened her. Took away her superpowers. So she couldn't beat the flux out of us.”

Kaelen looks to me.
Is it true?
his eyes ask. I respond with the subtlest of nods. Comprehension passes over him like a shadow. He gets it now.