Defy Me Page 7

  “That’s why he shot her,” I say, remembering what Juliette—Ella—told me after Omega Point was bombed. “Anderson wanted to kill her to teach Warner a lesson. Right?”

  But something changes in Delalieu’s face. Transforms him, sags him down. And then he laughs—a sad, broken laugh. “You don’t understand, you don’t understand, you don’t understand,” he cries, shaking his head. “You think these recent events are everything. You think Aaron fell in love with your friend of several months, a rebel girl named Juliette. You don’t know. You don’t know. You don’t know that Aaron has been in love with Ella for the better part of his entire life. They’ve known each other since childhood.”

  Adam makes a sound. A stunned sound of disbelief.

  “Okay, I have to be honest— I don’t get it,” Ian says. He steals a wary glance at Nazeera before he says, “Nazeera said Anderson has been wiping their memories. If that’s true, then how could Warner be in love with her for so long? Why would Anderson wipe their memories, tell them all about how they know each other, and then wipe their memories again?”

  Delalieu is shaking his head. A strange smile begins to form on his face, the kind of shaky, terrified smile that isn’t a smile at all. “No. No. You don’t—” He sighs, looks away. “Paris has never told either of them about their shared history. The reason he had to keep wiping their memories was because it didn’t matter how many times he reset the story or remade the introductions— Aaron always fell in love with her. Every time.

  “In the beginning Paris thought it was a fluke. He found it almost funny. Entertaining. But the more it happened, the more it began to drive Paris insane. He thought there was something wrong with Aaron—that there was something wrong with him on a genetic level, that he’d been plagued by a sickness. He wanted to crush what he saw as a weakness.”

  “Wait,” Adam says, holding up his hands. “What do you mean, the more it happened? How many times did it happen?”

  “At least several times.”

  Adam looks shell-shocked. “They met and fell in love several times?”

  Delalieu takes a shaky breath. “I don’t know that they always fell in love, exactly. Paris seldom let them spend that much time alone. But they were always drawn together. It was obvious, every time he put them in the same room, they were like”—Delalieu claps his hands—“magnets.”

  Delalieu shakes his head at Adam.

  “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you all this. I’m sure it’s painful to hear, especially considering your history with Ella. It’s not fair that you were pulled into Paris’s games. He never should’ve p—”

  “Whoa, whoa— Wait. What games?” Adam says, stunned. “What are you talking about?”

  Delalieu runs a hand across his sweaty forehead. He looks like he’s melting, crumbling under pressure. Maybe someone should get him some water.

  “There’s too much,” he says wearily. “Too much to tell. Too much to explain.” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “I need you to try,” Adam says, his eyes flashing. “Are you saying our relationship was fake? That everything she said—everything she felt was fake?”

  “No,” Delalieu says quickly, even as he uses his shirtsleeve to wipe the sweat from his face. “No. As far as I’m aware, her feelings for you were as real as anything else. You came into her life at a particularly difficult time, and your kindness and affection no doubt meant a great deal to her.” He sighs. “I only mean that it wasn’t coincidence that both of Paris’s boys fell in love with the same girl. Paris liked toying with things. He liked cutting things open to study them. He liked experiments. And Paris pit you and Warner against each other on purpose.

  “He planted the soldier at your lunch table who let slip that Warner was monitoring a girl with a lethal touch. He sent another to speak with you, to ask you about your history with her, to appeal to your protective nature by discussing Aaron’s plans for her— Do you remember? You were persuaded, from every angle, to apply for the position. When you did, Paris pulled your application from the pile and encouraged Aaron to interview you. He then made it clear that you should be chosen as her cellmate. He let Aaron think he was making all his own decisions as CCR of Sector 45—but Paris was always there, manipulating everything. I watched it happen.”

  Adam looks so stunned it takes him a moment to speak. “So . . . he knew? My dad always knew about me? Knew where I was—what I was doing?”

  “Knew?” Delalieu frowns. “Paris orchestrated your lives. That was the plan, from the beginning.” He looks at Nazeera. “All the children of the supreme commanders were to become case studies. You were engineered to be soldiers. You and James,” he says to Adam, “were unexpected, but he made plans for you, too.”

  “What?” Adam goes white. “What’s his plan for me and James?”

  “This, I honestly don’t know.”

  Adam sits back in his chair, looking suddenly ill.

  “Where is Ella now?” Winston says sharply. “Do you know where they’re keeping her?”

  Delalieu shakes his head. “All I know is that she can’t be dead.”

  “What do you mean she can’t be dead?” I ask. “Why not?”

  “Ella’s and Emmaline’s powers are critical to the regime,” he says. “Critical to the continuation of everything we’ve been working toward. The Reestablishment was built with the promise of Ella and Emmaline. Without them, Operation Synthesis means nothing.”

  Castle bolts upright. His eyes are wide. “Operation Synthesis,” he says breathlessly, “has to do with Ella?”

  “The Architect and the Executioner,” Delalieu says. “It—”

  Delalieu falls back with a small, surprised gasp, his head hitting the back of his chair. Everything, suddenly, seems to slow down.

  I feel my heart rate slow. I feel the world slow. I feel formed from water, watching the scene unfold in slow motion, frame by frame.

  A bullet between his eyes.

  Blood trickling down his forehead.

  A short, sharp scream.

  “You traitorous son of a bitch,” someone says.

  I’m seeing it, but I don’t believe it.

  Anderson is here.

  Juliette

  I’m given no explanations.

  My father doesn’t invite me to dinner, like Evie promised. He doesn’t sit me down to offer me long histories about my presence or his; he doesn’t reveal groundbreaking information about my life or the other supreme commanders or even the nearly six hundred people I just murdered. He and Evie are acting like the horrors of the last seventeen years never happened. Like nothing strange has ever happened, like I never stopped being their daughter—not in the ways that matter, anyway.

  I don’t know what was in that needle, but the effects are unlike anything I’ve experienced. I feel both awake and asleep, like I’m spinning in place, like there’s too much grease turning the wheels in my brain and I try to speak and realize my lips no longer move on command. My father carries my limp body into a blindingly silver room, props me up in a chair, straps me down, and panic pours into me, hot and terrifying, flooding my mind. I try to scream. Fail. My brain is slowly disconnecting from my body, like I’m being removed from myself. Only basic, instinctual functions seem to work. Swallowing. Breathing.

  Crying.

  Tears fall quietly down my face and my father whistles a tune, his movements light and easy even as he sets up an IV drip. He moves with such startling efficiency I don’t even realize he’s removed my manacles until I see the scalpel.

  A flash of silver.

  The blade is so sharp he meets no resistance as he slices clean lines into my forearms and blood, blood, heavy and warm, spills down my wrists and into my open palms and it doesn’t seem real, not even when he stabs several electrical wires into my exposed flesh.

  The pain arrives just seconds later.

  Pain.

  It begins at my feet, blooms up my legs, unfurls in my stomach and works its wa
y up my throat only to explode behind my eyes, inside my brain, and I cry out, but only in my mind, my useless hands still limp on the armrests, and I’m so certain he’s going to kill me—

  but then he smiles.

  And then he’s gone.

  I lie in agony for what feels like hours.

  I watch, through a delirious fog, as blood drips off my fingertips, each drop feeding the crimson pools growing in the folds of my pants. Visions assault me, memories of a girl I might’ve been, scenes with people I might’ve known. I want to believe they’re hallucinations, but I can’t be certain of anything anymore. I don’t know if Max and Evie are planting things in my mind. I don’t know that I can trust anything I might’ve once believed about myself.

  I can’t stop thinking about Emmaline.

  I’m adrift, suspended in a pool of senselessness, but something about her keeps tugging, sparking my nerves, errant currents pushing me to the surface of something—an emotional revelation—that trembles into existence only to evaporate, seconds later, as if it might be terrified to exist.

  This goes on and on and on and on and on

  Lightyears.

  Eons.

  over

  and

  over

  whispers of clarity

  g a s p s o f o x y g e n

  and I’m tossed back out to sea.

  Bright, white lights flicker above my head, buzzing in unison with the low, steady hum of engines and cooling units. Everything smells sharp, like antiseptic. Nausea makes my head swim. I squeeze my eyes shut, the only command my body will obey.

  Me and Emmaline at the zoo

  Me and Emmaline, first trip on a plane

  Me and Emmaline, learning to swim

  Me and Emmaline, getting our hair cut

  Images of Emmaline fill my mind, moments from the first years of our lives, details of her face I never knew I could conjure. I don’t understand it. I don’t know where they’re coming from. I can only imagine that Evie put these images here, but why Evie would want me to see this, I don’t understand. Scenes play through my head like I might be flipping through a photo album, and they make me miss my sister. They make me remember Evie as my mother. Make me remember I had a family.

  Maybe Evie wants me to reminisce.

  My blood has hit the floor. I hear it, the familiar drip, the sound like a broken faucet, the slow

  tap

  tap

  of tepid fluid on tile.

  Emmaline and I held hands everywhere we went, often wearing matching outfits. We had the same long brown hair, but her eyes were pure blue, and she was a few inches taller than me. We were only a year apart, but she looked so much older. Even then, there was something in her eyes that looked hard. Serious. She held my hand like she was trying to protect me. Like maybe she knew more than I did.

  Where are you? I wonder. What did they do to you?

  I have no idea where I am. No idea what they’ve done to me. No idea of the hour or the day, and pain blisters everywhere. I feel like a live wire, like my nerves have been stapled to the outside of my body, sensitive to every minute change in environment. I exhale and it hurts. Twitch and it takes my breath away.

  And then, in a flash of movement, my mother returns.

  The door opens and the motion forces a gentle rush of air into the room, a whisper of a breeze, gentle even as it grazes my skin, and somehow the sensation is so unbearable I’m certain I’ll scream.

  I don’t.

  “Feeling better?” she says.

  Evie is holding a silver box. I try to look more closely but the pain is in my eyes now. Searing.

  “You must be wondering why you’re here,” she says softly. I hear her working on something, glass and metal touching together, coming apart, touching together, coming apart. “But you must be patient, little bird. You might not even get to stay.”

  I close my eyes.

  I feel her cold, slender fingers on my face just seconds before she yanks my eyelids back. Swiftly, she replaces her fingers with sharp, steel clamps, and I muster only a low, guttural sound of agony.

  “Keep your eyes open, Ella. Now’s not the time to fall asleep.”

  Even then, in that painful, terrifying moment, the words sound familiar. Strange and familiar. I can’t figure out why.

  “Before we make any concrete plans to keep you here, I need to make sure”—she tugs on a pair of latex gloves—“that you’re still viable. See how you’ve held up after all these years.”

  Her words send waves of dread coursing through me.

  Nothing has changed.

  Nothing has changed.

  I’m still no more than a receptacle. My body exchanges hands exchanges hands in exchange for what

  My mother has no love for me.

  What has she done to my sister.

  “Where is Emmaline?” I try to scream, but the words don’t leave my mouth. They expand in my head, explosive and angry, pressing against the ridges of my mind even as my lips refuse to obey me.

  Dying.

  The word occurs to me suddenly, as if it were something I’ve just remembered, the answer to a question I forgot existed.

  I don’t comprehend it.

  Evie is standing in front of me again.

  She touches my hair, sifts through the short, coarse strands like she might be panning for gold. The physical contact is excruciating.

  “Unacceptable,” she says. “This is unacceptable.”

  She turns away, makes notes in a tablet she pulls out of her lab coat. Roughly, she takes my chin in her hand, lifts my face toward hers.

  Evie counts my teeth. Runs the tip of one finger along my gums. She examines the insides of my cheeks, the underside of my tongue. Satisfied, she rips off the gloves, the latex making harsh snapping sounds that collide and echo, shattering the air around me.

  A mechanical purr fills my ears and I realize Evie is adjusting my chair. I was previously in a reclining position, now I’m flat on my back. She takes a pair of shears to my clothes, cutting straight through my pants, my shirt, my sleeves.

  Fear threatens to rip my chest open, but I only lie there, a perfect vegetable, as she strips me down.

  Finally, Evie steps back.

  I can’t see what’s happening. The hum of an engine builds into a roar. Sounds like scissors, slicing the air. And then: Sheets of glass materialize at the edges of my vision, move toward me from all sides. They lock into place easily, seams sealing shut with a cool click sound.

  I’m being burned alive.

  Heat like I’ve never known it, fire I can’t see or stop. I don’t know how it’s happening but I feel it. I smell it. The scent of charred flesh fills my nose, threatens to upend the contents of my stomach. The top layer of skin is being slowly singed off my body. Blood beads along my body like morning dew, and a fine mist follows the heat, cleansing and cooling. Steam fogs up the glass around me and then, just when I think I might die from the pain, the glass fissures open with a sudden gasp.

  I wish she would just kill me.

  Instead, Evie is meticulous. She catalogs my every physical detail, making notes, constantly, in her pocket tablet. For the most part, she seems frustrated with her assessment. My arms and legs are too weak, she says. My shoulders too tense, my hair too short, my hands too scarred, my nails too chipped, my lips too chapped, my torso too long.

  “We made you too beautiful,” she says, shaking her head at my naked body. She prods at my hips, the balls of my feet. “Beauty can be a terrifying weapon, if you know how to wield it. But all this seems deeply unnecessary now.” She makes another note.

  When she looks at me again, she looks thoughtful.

  “I gave this to you,” she says. “Do you understand? This container you live in. I grew it, shaped it. You belong to me. Your life belongs to me. It’s very important that you understand that.”

  Rage, sharp and hot, sears through my chest.

  Carefully, Evie cracks open the silver box. Inside are
dozens of slim glass cylinders. “Do you know what these are?” she says, lifting a few vials of shimmering, white liquid. “Of course you don’t.”

  Evie studies me awhile.

  “We did it wrong the first time,” she finally says. “We didn’t expect emotional health to supersede the physical in such dramatic fashion. We expected stronger minds, from both you. Of course—” Evie hesitates. “She was the superior specimen, your sister. Infinitely superior. You were always a bit doe-eyed as a child. A little moonier than I’d have liked. Emmaline, on the other hand, was pure fire. We never dreamed she’d deteriorate so quickly. Her failures have been a great personal disappointment.”

  I inhale sharply and choke on something hot and wet in my throat. Blood. So much blood.

  “But then,” Evie says with a sigh, “such is the situation. We must be adaptable to the unexpected. Amenable to change when necessary.”

  Evie hits a switch and something seizes inside of me. I feel my spine straighten, my jaw go slack. Blood is now bubbling up my throat in earnest, and I don’t know whether to let it up or swallow it down. I cough, violently, and blood spatters across my face. My arms. Drips down my chest, my fresh pink skin.

  My mother drops into a crouch. She takes my chin in her hand and forces me to look at her. “You are far too full of emotion,” she says softly. “You feel too much for this world. You call people your friends. You imagine yourself in love.” She shakes her head slowly. “That was never the plan for you, little bird. You were meant for a solitary existence. We put you in isolation on purpose.” She blinks. “Do you understand?”

  I’m hardly breathing. My tongue feels rough and heavy, foreign in my mouth. I swallow my own blood and it’s revolting, thick and lukewarm, gelatinous with saliva.

  “If Aaron were anyone else’s son,” she says, “I would’ve had him executed. I’d have him executed right now, if I could. Unfortunately, I alone do not have the authority.”

  A force of feeling seizes my body.

  I’m half horror, half joy. I didn’t know I had any hope left that Warner was alive until just this moment.