Mason pauses for several seconds before his fingers tap against the keyboard.
My time is now. This is my chance. I’m alone in this room, and a copy of the data I need is before me. The data that was in the study, and the data left out. The proof is stored inside. I can clear June’s name of blackmail. I can free us both. I just need to figure out how to transfer the data. How to copy what I need …
“I know this name,” Mason says, and I go back to the window in the door. Mason pushes back from the desk, turning his body away, averting his eyes, as the information pulls up onto the screen.
He keeps his back to Casey, to Cameron with the gun, and I know this cannot be good.
Casey moves behind the computer, her face too close to the screen, her eyes too wide, and Cameron, looking way too pale, on the other side of the room.
“I want you to know,” Mason says, “that I am not responsible.” He turns from the window, talking to Cameron since Casey still has not moved. “I get the names, that’s all. I cannot predict who will go along and who will run.”
I close my eyes, and I picture June running. I picture Ava running. I know what happens to both.
Casey cannot move from the screen. She cannot speak. Cameron pushes off the door frame, the gun held with more intent, more authority.
“She had just accessed her inheritance,” Mason says. “Crooked money left behind by a very crooked soul. They had plans for her, and how she should use that money …”
I know, from Mason’s words, from Casey’s expression, that Ava has a soul before and a soul after.
I know from the tears running silently down Casey’s face.
I know from the tension in Mason’s body.
And Cameron knows, too. His body, leaning limply against the door frame. The gun hanging loosely from his slack fingers.
I press my hands against the glass—I want to go to them.
Mason keeps talking to fill the silence. “Do you know who that is? That name before Ava?”
Casey looks at Cameron and says, “She received a huge inheritance when her entire family was killed. Then a year later, she went on a two-day killing spree before being gunned down by the cops. She snapped.”
“That she did,” says Mason. “Afterward the police discovered that she was the one who killed her family. I think, more than anything, Ava was afraid she might do the same. Couldn’t concentrate on what we were saying. Couldn’t think of what we were offering. We gave her time, but she couldn’t get past it. The fear of who she might be, that was worse than the fear of us revealing that information. And so she ran. As if you can run from yourself …”
I back away from the door, my limbs trembling, my breath shaking. This cannot be what we’ve traded everything for. This cannot be what we’re left with. There’s no meaning in this. There’s nothing for us here.
I look at what’s surrounding me. The servers that tower over me, the machines humming through the room, the power lights flashing with life. The information Ivory used for her research is in here somewhere; Mason said as much. In here is the proof. But in here is also the thing that binds us in this life to the last. In here is the thing that June died from, that Ava died from. This room is a prison. It’s a prison full of information that some would twist to contain us.
But the information is stored on machines. Wires and cables and electrical circuits. I know what to do with them. I know what to do with all this information.
I studied this. How to make things. A phone. A stun gun. A fire.
It does not take me long. I strip wires with my teeth, and I pry circuit boards from their computer units with my fingernails. I know exactly what to do.
There’s yelling in the other room—it’s high and nonsensical, and I try to shut out the pain in Casey’s voice, but I can’t. It seeps into me, the contagiousness of grief, as my fingers fumble with the exposed wires.
I smell the smoke before I can see it.
Like something changing. Something happening.
Something dying.
Something coming to life.
It sparks and singes the tips of my fingers, and I drop the wires. The smoke curls in dark clouds, crawling upward—the promise of destruction.
But then the smoke becomes something more, something I cannot escape, multiplying and giving life to itself, sucking the oxygen from the room—how insidious smoke is when set free. How dangerous it becomes in a closed room.
I did not imagine how suffocating smoke could be, but here, in this room, it burns my lungs before it destroys the machines. I suck in air, but it’s poison. I try to breathe, but the room is full of a grayness that burns my eyes, and so I close them. I lean against the nearest server, sinking to the ground, the sound of sparks igniting behind me.
He can get me out. I know he can. I know he will.
I close my eyes, and I imagine instead.
I imagine Cameron, uninjured, smiling before me in the open doorway. And Casey, finding her sister. My father, being released from prison. And my mother, pulling me from the water.
I listen for the sound of his voice through the door. But the noises have changed. The sound of grief has turned to panic, to rage. There’s another voice out there now.
I feel a sudden burst of clearer air in my lungs. The door is open in front of me, and Cameron pushes through the thick smoke. I see his pale face, and his arms pulling me up, as the sparks and smoke become something more. Becoming flames, becoming fire.
I barely make it out of the room before Dominic has me by the arm. Casey is frozen in the hallway. Mason is frozen beside her, his face unreadable. And Dominic stands among us all. Cameron was right—Dom didn’t come unarmed—he moves the gun quickly from one to the next as smoke fills up the space around us, the fire alarm blaring, the sprinklers overhead, the lights flashing at the exits.
“What did you do?” he shouts over the alarm. “What did you do?”
“It’s gone!” I shout back, but my voice comes out raspy. I cough, but my lungs feel too tight. And the heat on my back, the smoke growing thicker. “We have to go.”
“No,” he says. “Fix this!” He grabs the fire extinguisher with his free hand and thrusts it at Casey. “Fix it now!”
Mason is screaming for help, but I don’t know what he’s looking for: help for his lab, help from the man with the gun, or help from us. Which is the most dangerous. Cameron is beside me with an empty gun, but he’s in no position to be fighting. It’s a miracle he’s still standing.
“The police are coming! The firefighters will be here! Campus security. We can’t be here!” I say, shaking free of Dominic.
I grab Casey’s arm and head down the hall. Dominic fires a shot at the ceiling to stop us. “You don’t get to do this,” he says. “You don’t get to decide this.”
Except I already did. “There’s nothing here anymore. I destroyed it. It’s gone.”
Dominic stares into the smoke and then strides back to me, taking me by the arm again. “For them, and not for me, Alina?” he asks, like I have betrayed him. And maybe I have. I don’t like the look on Cameron’s face. The empty gun in his hand. What he might use it for.
Go, I mouth to him. I turn to Casey. Please. Go. But they do not.
Mason grabs the fire extinguisher, trying to salvage what’s left of his lab. Dominic watches, stunned, angry, all the things I’d be in his place. But there’s a gun in his hand and a price on our heads, and he is a man with nothing left to lose.
“Liam and June were wrong,” I say. “And June was trying to set it right after Liam’s death. The study was a lie. We’re not bound to be the people we once were. We can take a different path.”
He fixes his eyes on me, the gun tight in his fist.
“Did you hear me?” I ask, because I have to yell over the alarm and my voice is barely working. “We’re not the people we were!” But his face twists, his fingers tighten.
“I don’t believe that,” he says. “And neither do you.” He doesn’t want to believe it, because if he does, he’s staked his life on something that no longer exists.
“I can’t help you,” I say. “There’s nothing left here. Let me go. Please. We’re running out of time.”
He doesn’t move, but he doesn’t raise the gun, and I guess that’s as good a sign as any. I yank my arm from Dominic, and he lets me go. I wonder if there’s still a chance for him. If he believes in redemption. In this life, for this life. I believe it. I believe it’s not too late, for any of us.
The fire trucks are coming. The authorities are coming. Everyone is coming. “Dominic,” I say, because I do owe him something—or maybe June does, but I am the only one here. “Run.”
“They were willing to die for it, once before,” he says.
“Not for this,” I say. “Not for data or money or power. Dominic. Run.”
He runs, but he runs in the wrong direction. Into the room with Mason, trying to save the information.
I feel a twinge of regret for this man—who believed we had a love and a purpose that transcended one lifetime. Maybe it’s possible. Maybe it happens. But we’re more than just the history of our soul. More than DNA. More than our past lives. We’re the choices we’ve made in this life. Every one of them, giving us purpose.
We run down the hall, Casey leading the way, and I hear Mason and Dominic shouting behind us, for water, for blankets, for anything as the lab goes up in flames. But I hope it’s too late. I hope it’s destroyed. I hope there’s nothing left.
Because as we race down the hall, down the stairs—all of us in stunned silence—I know there’s nothing left for us, either.
Nowhere left to go. Mason told Casey he called the authorities. We don’t have much time.
But time for what? What next, June? She doesn’t answer. She never has. The only one who’s been here, this whole time, is me.
We race down the stairwell out into the night, and we stumble across the grass, across the road, to our hidden car.
Casey wordlessly yanks the keys from Cameron’s hand, as he’s leaning against the side of the van, bleeding and coughing underneath the willow tree. I pull him into the back with me, and Casey begins to drive, despite the sirens. But they’re coming from everywhere. I don’t know whether it’s the police for me, or the fire trucks for the building. Cameron rests against the inside of the van, his head in his hands.
Casey idles at the end of the street, then randomly turns down an alley. We’re still on campus, and there are only so many ways out. She stops for a moment, pulls something out of her bag, and extends her arm to the back without looking at me. It’s Mason’s phone, the one he had in the office. I don’t know what she intends for me to do with it, until I see that she’s already set it to video recording.
Cameron raises his head, looks at me, and takes the phone. He points it in my direction, and the red light flashes, recording. “Talk,” he says. “Make them believe.”
I’m covered in blood and soot in the back of a stolen van, in clothes that don’t fit, with a bag of hard drives and a notebook that belongs to June—and this is all we have. Nothing else. There’s nothing left to do. Action, nothing. Words, everything.
I look straight into the screen, but I have no idea how to make them believe.
I guess this is the part where I trust in myself and humanity. That the words, the truth, will be enough. Please, let them be enough.
I begin to talk.
“My name is Alina Chase,” I say, and my voice is still raspy from the smoke. I clear my throat and begin again. “My name is Alina Chase, and seventeen years ago I was placed in containment because of a lie. June did leave me something, but not the way into the database. She left me the truth, the reason she was killed.” I hold up June’s notebook, now tattered and crumpled, and I say, “She discovered that the study on violent souls was a lie. Fabricated by a woman named Ivory Street, and potentially others, to control people in power and affect public policy and laws. And when that didn’t work, she used it for money and power, blackmailing others with this information and framing June. June wasn’t innocent, but she wasn’t guilty of that. We’re here on the campus of Elson University because this is where the information is. Mason Alonzo is a professor here now, and he left himself access to the database at Ivory’s request. There’s a portal he can access through his office, and he stored the data they accessed in his computer lab.” I hear the sirens, getting nearer. “His lab is on fire now.”
This story I’m telling is not just mine and June’s, but everyone’s. It’s Casey’s and Cameron’s and Ava’s, and it’s the story of the others who have been kept silent.
“Ivory Street is locked in the cellar of her home. Dominic Ellis is the third person involved in breaking me off the island. He was once a guard. He wanted access to the database, and he thought I could give it to him.” I think of telling about his soul, about Liam White, but that is not mine to tell. “But it’s bigger than blackmail. They’ve been using people. Moving people into positions of power to give them whatever they want. I was contained because Ivory Street saw me as a danger to her scheme. Not for any other reason. But I am not the danger. I am not the threat.”
Casey stops the van, backs up, turns it around. My heart picks up speed. Faster, I will need to go faster. And do better.
“The other people who rescued me …” I reach for the phone, and Cameron hands it to me. I point it at him for a moment, and then to Casey as she drives. I hold the phone myself, and turn it around, facing me. “Cameron and Casey London. They’ve been looking for their sister, Ava. She was approached by these people—blackmailed because of who they said she was in her past life and the inheritance she had just accessed—and when she wouldn’t do what they said, she ran.” I take a deep breath. “June ran, too. But you’re not allowed to run.”
Casey slams on the brakes and turns around. “We can’t get out of here in the van,” she whispers, but I’m sure the camera is picking up her voice. I nod, and I speak into the camera once more.
“They’ve done nothing wrong, other than seek the truth to help the sister they love. They are the most selfless people I know. My name is Alina Chase, and this is the truth. I’m tired of running. I’m going to get out of this van now, but before I go, this is what we have.” I show June’s old hard drives, and I methodically flip through page after page of the notebook for the camera, committing them to the memory of this machine. “June replicated the study, with all the data. The results are not the same.” I take the gun from Cameron, open the back doors, and toss it outside. “We are unarmed,” I say, and then I hit End.
Casey takes the phone, and though she’s still sucking in air—from crying, I think, and not the smoke—her fingers move effortlessly across the screen. “Posted,” she says.
“Where?” I ask.
“Everywhere,” she says. “It’s been e-mailed to news stations and uploaded directly to video-sharing sites in its entirety.”
We get out of the van where the alley dead-ends, and Casey says, “Are we running?”
I’m not sure if Cameron could run, even if we wanted to. Even if we had somewhere else to go. I picture June and Liam’s hole in the ground. I picture June, alone, for over a year. I understand why she came out of the woods. Why she risked it all.
“I’m done running,” I say. I gesture toward the phone in her hand. “That will have to be enough.”
Casey drops it to the ground as the first red-and-blue lights pull up the street and stop in front of us. Two more cars soon follow. And the helicopters circle above. I look up, and I see several have the symbols for different news stations. For once, I hope this will keep us safe. We have no weapons. The police are here, shouting instructions through a loudspeaker. I hold my hands up, straight over my head, and I turn around like they tell me to. And I place my hand on my collar when they tell me to, lifting my shirt so they can see I have no weapon, slowly spinning around. I do everything they tell me to, and I hope that Casey and Cameron do as well, but I’m scared to look, to turn—I’m scared if I make even one misstep, they will see some element of danger. I walk backward, like they instruct, and the shouting grows. I drop to my knees, like they insist, and the footsteps race toward me.
I feel hands on my arms and metal on my wrists and a knee in my back. I cannot see Casey or Cameron as I’m yanked to my feet and led to the back of a police car. Someone guides my head so I don’t hit it on the roof, and then I’m tossed across the seat, no free hands to brace my fall. The door shuts behind me.
I can’t see what’s going on outside, through the chaos of the people. I can’t hear what’s happening, through the static of the radio. I can’t do anything more.
I close my eyes, and I picture my mother out there somewhere. I wonder if she sees the news. What she thinks of this. Of me.