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I have so many questions, but Shweta disappears the moment we’re back in the gathering room. Everyone’s sorting themselves into their teams, but my head’s spinning, and I can’t even think about where I’m supposed to be or what I’m supposed to be doing. Everything in me feels like it doesn’t belong here, in this world—and I don’t. Not this timeline.
I take a deep breath and try to remember the arrangements from yesterday. I was in a team with someone...but who? I look around. Everyone’s already filing out now—and I blink, stunned. Have I lost time? It’s like I’ve just jumped forward.
“You okay?”
I turn to find Evor behind me. His bald head looks strangely shiny in the candlelight.
“Not like you to be nervous, eh?” He laughs.
I laugh too, but then I stop. “Something’s wrong with me,” I say.
“Wrong?”
“I don’t feel well.”
“Well it really is just nerves,” he says.
“No!” I cry. I take a deep breath. “I banged my head.”
He peers at me, his face suddenly serious.
“Have you got your medicine bag? You need to have it,” I say. Because we need it when it’s just us out there. And I can stop him being killed this time.
And I look around. I should take a bag. I know what’s going to happen. I should—
Evor shines a light into my eyes so suddenly I nearly jump a foot in the air—or at least I would if I had the energy.
But I haven’t. My body’s just slow and sluggish, and everything feels too heavy. And my heart—it won’t stop pounding. Too fast. It’s making me nauseous again.
“I think you’re okay,” he says. “Your pupils are dilating as they should. Here, follow my finger.”
I follow his finger with my eyes as he moves it from side to side.
“Yep, you seem okay. Are you all right to free-run this morning? Maybe we should tell Maggot.”
But I inhale sharply. “No. I’m fine.” I’ve already done things differently.
“After you,” he says.
Numbly, I move forward. And everything’s happening at once. We’re moving out and we’re in the city, and it’s me and Bhavesh, heading away from the other teams—
And I frown. Shweta says that every single time the Enhanced know of our plan. Every single time there’s a traitor. Yet she lets our people file out every time? Lets us die? Get converted?
Is that what I’m just supposed to do too? But what if things aren’t reset this time?
I take a deep breath.
“Stop!” I shout. “The Enhanced know!”
And I expect my words to have some sort of effect.
“What the hell?” Bhavesh turns to me.
And things move too quickly. A series of snapshots around me, one after another.
Three Enhanced men. One of them is Red.
Bang.
Bhavesh firing his gun.
Bang.
Me, running—but I trip and fall. Face in the dirt.
Bang.
An augmenter rolling toward me. Neon pink. Angry words in the air above me.
Bang.
“No!” I scream.
Bang.
#
I OPEN MY EYES, STARE up at a ceiling. Yellow. The same ceiling.
I sit up—and nearly faint. Shit. What is wrong with me? I pull my legs up to my chest, feeling sick and weak.
Red enters the room. “Hello,” he says.
“Hello?” My voice is a wispy scratch against my face.
He locks the door—he didn’t do that last time—then steps up to my bed. He’s peering at me intently, and though he’s got mirrors I can’t detect any sign of recognition in him this time.
He doesn’t know me this time? I frown. Doesn’t recognize me?
So this is a different timeline, for sure—an alternate one? It’s not a replay of yesterday? Of course it isn’t. Things have already happened differently.
“Yes,” he says suddenly. “You’ll do.”
I’ll do?
I blink and my head’s spinning, and my vision’s so blurry, like I’m looking at everything underwater. But that’s good—that means I’m definitely not Enhanced, right?
I take a deep breath, but my lungs don’t feel right. Neither does my chest. I can’t breathe deeply enough.
His hands go to his pockets—and I notice he’s wearing a white lab coat this time. He produces an augmenter and an ID card. My mouth dries when I see the augmenter. But he’s undercover, still, right?
“This is you,” he says, giving me the card.
I take it and stare at it. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust and my vision to unwobble enough to read the name on the card.
“Keelie Lin-Sykes?”
“That’s you.” His tone is sharper this time.
“No.” I try to lean back away from him. “I’m Kacey.”
“But from now on you’ll be Keelie. You’ll be my best friend. My girlfriend. My wife.”
“What?” I stare at him, feel sweat beading across my forehead.
“I loved her, and I lost her,” he says, and his voice sounds weird. More robotic. “And I want to feel that love again—and I can, with this augmenter.” He holds up the vial. “But I’ll need a subject. And you look enough like Keelie. So you’re going to be her. I need a replacement, and we’ll get married.”
Lightheadedness pulls at me. What the hell?
I stare at him. Wait for him to say something else. To laugh. To say that this is a joke.
“We’re just waiting for the conversion rooms to free up,” he says. “There were a lot of you.”
He’s not undercover this time? Not even going to pretend that?
“We’re going straight there?” I ask.
He nods. “Be easier for you if you don’t put up a fight. Remember who you’re dealing with here.”
“But you’re not giving me the augmenter,” I say, and my eyes are on it in his hand.
“Oh, I am. I know exactly what to do, and I will do it,”
He tries to force my mouth open, his fingers pulling at my lips.
And shit—this is real.
This is real.
Electric shocks bolt through me, and I scream. Adrenaline pours through me and—
The door flies open, hits the wall. A cacophony of sound and—
“Shweta?” I cry, just as she lifts her gun and shoots Red.
He falls to the side, sliding off the edge of my bed. And blood—blood on the floor. So much blood.
“Let’s get out of there,” she says, and then she grabs my hand, and I’ve never been so happy to see her.
But when I start running, my head gets heavier. Darkness fogs the edges of my vision, and my lungs seem to disappear.
I slow, wheezing, pain in my chest.
“What is it?” Shweta demands.
All I can do is shake my head as my vision dims even more. Can’t speak. Can’t think. Can’t—
“Stop them!” a voice cries, and then Shweta’s pulling me along.
I pant, feeling sick. Feeling like my insides are too hot, they’re burning me, trying to burn their way out of my body. I can’t—can’t breathe.... can’t....
I’m losing track... can’t hear anything... my vision...
And there are voices, but I can’t hear them...
And then there’s nothing.
#
“YES, SHE FAINTED IN there,” Shweta says. “She hit her head.”
“How long ago?” Evor’s voice.
“I don’t know. She was mumbling about hitting it.”
Was I?
“And now she keeps fainting.”
“Keeps? How many times?”
“This is the second that I’ve seen. But this Enhanced man had her, and he was—”
“Red,” I say. “It was Red.”
They all give me an odd look.
“She didn’t look right,” Shweta says. “She still doesn’t. She’s too pale.”
“How did I get out?” I whisper, staring round at them. We’re in the sand, out by the rock where I told Clive we’d meet before. Only... My body grows heavier. “Where’s Clive?”
“Enhanced,” Shweta says.
He’s Enhanced? My eyes widen and my stomach twists. He’s Enhanced because I didn’t go and get him? Or he’s in that cupboard still, hiding.
“We have to go back,” I say. “Clive’s—”
“I saw his conversion,” Shweta says, her eyes sharp and on me.
His conversion?
Of course. Things are happening differently this time.
“It’s just the four of us,” Maggot says.
I nod slowly.
“Something’s wrong with her,” Shweta says to Evor, and I don’t know why it takes me a moment to realize she’s talking about me. Huh, like she could be talking about anything else.
“I’ll look her over,” Evor says, and he’s got his medicine bag. He takes out his stethoscope. He stole it on a raid once, along with a book about the autonomic system, and was delighted with both those things, and the stethoscope is always with him.
Except it wasn’t last time.
Evor presses the cold metal disc to my chest and tells me to breathe evenly. “Are you feeling faint now?”
My legs feel too hot pressed to the sand. “No. But I’m sitting down. If I stand, I think I would.”
He nods, his brow furrowing, and then he’s counting with that cold metal disc still pressed to my chest. “Okay, stand.”
I don’t want to get up. Everything tells me not to, but I do. Maggot’s frowning, looking annoyed.
“We need to work out how the Enhanced knew of our plan,” she says to Shweta, who nods. “They knew everything...”
But then I can’t pay attention to their words because a heaviness grows around the base of my skull, down my neck and across into my shoulders. There’s a rough, abrasive sensation in my chest and a rushing sound in my chest.
“Her heart’s too fast,” Evor says, looking at them. “She doesn’t appear to be concussed. But her heart rate is rising way too much when she stands up. I’d say that’s the cause of her fainting. If the heart gets too fast, blood pressure’s going to drop in response. It’s a type of dysautonomia. I’m sure of it.”
“Caused by the concussion?” Shweta asks.
“Could be—though some just develop it. And Kacey hasn’t got any signs of a concussion. It’s relatively common in teenage girls.”
“I’m not a teenager,” I grit out, but I’m having to concentrate hard on not falling, not swaying. “I’m twenty-one.” I frown. Aren’t it? Or am I twenty-two? I only know roughly when my birthday is... I might be twenty-two.
“And women in their twenties,” Evor adds. “It’s postural. Kacey, sit back down.”
“So every time she stands she’s going to faint?” Maggot asks. She shakes her head, and I know exactly what she’s thinking—that I’m a liability. Because of course I am. How the hell am I going to outrun the Enhanced if I faint every time I’m upright?
“We’ll see if we can treat it,” Evor says. “And if we can’t, we’ll adapt.”
“Adapt?”
“There were plenty disabled people at my old group, and they were Untamed. Never got caught.”
Disabled?
I recoil at the word. I’m not disabled. This is just... This is temporary. It’s my concussion.
“My free-running,” I say. “How soon can I do that?”
“You can’t until you’re better,” Evor says. “If you’re better. But you can still do other things. Try not to be too down. If this is because you hit your head, it might just be temporary anyway.”
Well, it is. It has to be. Because this can’t be my new normal. It can’t.
“Right, well we better set off,” Evor says. “We need to get as far away from New Zeralzi as we can.”
“But is she gonna faint all the time?” Maggot asks, casting her eyes over me.
“If she does, we can carry her. Or the movement—if it’s just walking—might be enough to keep pumping her blood, keeping it from pooling in her calves. I believe, in cases like this, it’s standing stationary or running that are the worse. But, Kacey, you must let us know when you need to stop.”
I nod, numb. How can this have happened?
How?