18

I’m surprised at how measured and calm my voice is. “What are you even talking about?”

Margot’s face flames with embarrassment. “I-I didn’t want to tell you.”

I picture Leo Resnikov, his face a mask against a room on fire. His eyes haunting my sister, raking over her as though he owned her. Because he thought he did own her. The way he’d kissed me—thinking it was her. A kiss of pure possession.

“Why?” But she won’t answer—can’t answer as she bursts into tears. “Mar. Mar—stop it,” I say, cool as ice. “We don’t have time for this right now.”

She looks out at me from under a dirty lock of hair, eyes red-rimmed and angry. “You’re always so perfect. You always know what to do. I hate it, Lu. I can’t stand feeling like I never get anything right.” A bright, hot strip of her jealousy rips through me.

What is going on with you, Margot? It never occurred to me that my sister could harbor, let alone hide, such awful feelings for me. But I don’t have time right now to process or deal with it. I have to get smart. And I have to get Margot back on task. There are things we need to do.

Jared has drilled it into me again and again. If you’re ever in a real bind, never just sit there. Never just let it be. You have brains, Princess. Use them. And then he’d repeat his instructions as though I were a child. At the time, he’d wanted to warn me about the dangerous game I’d been playing, gathering information for Storm.

And now I’m in a real bind, a life-and-death situation, and I’m grateful that his words come flooding back to me.

“Listen, Mar,” I whisper. “We need to focus. We don’t know how long it will take for them to find us—”

“If they ever find us.”

I shake my head. “No, they’ll find us,” I say. What had Serena told me? I can see your blood through walls, Lucy-Lu. “In the meantime, though, we need to do our part. What do we know about these people?”

“Why don’t we just sit tight, then, if you’re so convinced they’ll find us? What if we bungle things?” Margot gazes steadily back at me, her face bathed in shadows.

“We know Father Wes is here—or was. We know they want us to cooperate. We know what they’re after.” It’s in the blood. No need to voice it.

Margot hiccups. “They don’t make sense because they’re nuts who believe in some prophecy. And—and they’ve got terrible fashion sense.”

My head splits with pain as I crack a slight smile. “But they haven’t killed us yet.”

“What are you saying? They’re not going to kill us?”

“I’m saying they have a need for us. For now. We can use that as leverage.”

Her voice rises. “To do what?”

“Shhh. Quiet-quiet time,” I tell my wild-eyed sister. “Did Father not teach you anything?” I joke, trying to penetrate the fog Margot has wrapped around herself. “Gather your wits, Mar. Pay attention.” Her eyes narrow as she blinks and focuses.

I clench and uncurl my fingers several times, trying to break free of the sharp pins and needles, and tap two fingers on my leg. Margot closes her eyes with a shiver, then nods.

Then I hatch my plan.

…

“My hands are numb,” I explain to the broad-shouldered Brother Noah. For good measure, I send him a small, apologetic smile with a bit of teeth. I wiggle my bum on the chair. “Let me get up and walk around the room a minute first?” The tray of food he’s brought me sits untouched on my lap, but not because it looks about as appealing as a room full of corpses.

He makes me wait another thirty seconds before taking up the tray and letting me get to my feet. I’m shaky, and for a moment the room spins so hard I wonder if I’ll be able to move. Margot must be worried about it, too, as she spies me from under her hair.

The door to our cell room isn’t closed. It’s clear as day they’re not worried about escape. As I walk by the metal door, I count two Watchers standing guard just outside, long hoods cutting shadows on their faces. A few more steps and I’m at the far wall. I brush my toe against the dirt and stumble, holding out my hand to catch myself. In the far corner, at the ceiling, is tucked a small black box. It sits there watching us like a spider.

“Stand up,” Noah says.

“Sorry.” I pull away from the wall sheepishly. “Need to get my sea legs under me.”

Brother Noah looks not the least bit impressed. “Hurry up.”

“Yes.” I stagger down the length of the hall, my hands rough against the caked dirt walls. Here and there my fingers trace through the red, leaving faint pink flakes on my fingertips.

There’s nothing else to discover on the walls, so I stagger back and fall onto our captor’s burly chest. “Must be hard working down here, like a rat in a maze. I’m sorry you’re stuck babysitting us.” I give him a shy look. “I’m so dizzy,” I tell him as he grabs the flesh of my arms, holds me there against him for a second or two longer than he should, a slight smile splitting his not-unhandsome face.

“You promise you’ll come back to let me use the bathroom after?” I say it like I trust him, like he’s a good man. Our jailor, though, seems fairly immune to my innocent act. He nods once before disappearing out the flat metal door.

Margot examines me as I daintily take up the tray and shove the mystery meat into my mouth.

“Get everything you wanted?” she asks drily.

All I can do is nod. I tap once, then lift my finger in the direction of the camera. “Eyes on us. Likely ears, too.”

“Well, we’ve always been good at giving a show, haven’t we, Lu?”

I swallow past the disgusting lump of food and smile at my twin. “Haven’t we just?”

“Speaking of which…don’t you think you were laying it on a little thick back there?”

I bat my eyes at my sister. “It worked, didn’t it? He didn’t have a key on him. I suspect it’s bolted from the outside, which is why they have guards rather than just locking us in. Besides”—my smile splits into a grin—“I bet you a Dominion dollar that he lets me have more time than you in the bathroom.”

“You and your little pantomimes.” Margot wheezes and rolls her eyes. “Where did you learn to do this, sister dear?”

“Only from the best, dear sister.” I smile sweetly. “From you.”

…

It’s the voices that pull us from our light doze, the sleep that fills uncertain hours. Black-red rain had been falling behind my eyelids. The sky was a black cloth, wrapping over the crumbling ruins of Dominion City as I gazed down at it. Tears. Endless tears. The empty park was a wasteland. The canopy of the giant tree, like a weeping eye, stared back at me.

I pull my head up, sure that someone is in the hallway just outside our room. But no—I turn my head. The sound comes from somewhere inside. Just the hushed-hushed murmur of someone speaking quietly. Or with the volume turned down low.

The ploy worked. Jared would be so proud.

…

I had finished bathing myself as best I could in the rust-filled sink. Noah grunted and nodded as I stretched my arms behind my head and chirruped brightly, “How is Father Westfall able to speak to us from wherever he is?”

“Didn’t you ever hear curiosity killed the cat?”

“I’m okay with being a cat. Cats have nine lives,” I prevaricated, stretching out the remaining tether of my freedom.

“You better hope you got nine lives.” Brother Noah snorted before nodding up at the ceiling at the camera eyeing us at the end of the hall. “The cameras are one- way. The sound sure ain’t.”

“Oh.” I was actually startled that he’d answered. “You mean I can hear you guys talking from—from wherever you are, if only you turned on the sound?”

Noah took two steps and opened a small, discreet panel in the wall. Tucked inside was a vid screen, buttons and dials. He fiddled with one and the hallway suddenly filled with the static of dead air. Voices in the hallway. The scuffle of shoes on dirt. Quick as air, he spun the volume down and shut fast the panel.

…

But he must not have turned it down all the way, I realize now. It’s the only explanation I can come up with for the strange, disembodied voices we hear.

“…behind schedule. We’ll have to ramp up production if we’re going to make the deadline.” I’d know that distinctive, rolling preacher-man voice anywhere. It’s the voice that haunts my nightmares.

Westfall.

“Increase the draws, then,” a second voice nags.

A pause ripples through the conversation. “If we do that, they could die, which would jeopardize the supply if something were to go wrong.”

“What could go wrong?” The other voice rises. “I’m living proof, aren’t I? It works. It’s successful. They’re no longer needed.”

That voice. That voice, my mind yells at me as Margot pulls herself from a drowse and looks at me. I shake my head, draw a short line on my thigh. Quiet-quiet time. Time to be like mice in the walls.

“That’s not good business.”

“Look, Westfall, how much proof do you need? The bombs worked, didn’t they? Look at that damned tree. You can’t even burn it down. Remember? We tested the technology and it worked. Now that we have the girls you’ll see. It works in humans, too.”

“It’s not meant to be a full cure. The girls are insurance.”

The bombs…The girls. Us. It makes a horrible sense. They must have used the same kind of acceleration technology in the magic bombs as they did when they engineered us. So how do our captors know what we were made with?

“Since when are preachers businessmen? Why don’t you leave the heavy thinking to us?”

“Watch yourself. You don’t get to make those decisions.”

“Yes.” The voice rolls out its vowels. Not quite Upper Circle but close. Not quite Laster, either. But something about the snarky, arrogant tones…

My eyes seek out Margot’s as recognition finally dawns on me.

“Don’t forget. The partner is on his way, Westfall. Prepare yourself,” says a voice carrying the twang of the country.

The voice belongs to Senator Theodore Nash.

My mind is buzzing so hard I nearly miss their next words. “…Next Protocols… Sending in Noah now.”

Margot and I immediately drop our heads, feigning sleep. The voices disappear, as though they’ve walked into another room. And just in time: Noah tromps his way into the room, a brother with a tray bearing the quaint instruments of Protocols torture by his side.

They don’t bother to wake us. Noah simply bends down and pushes up Margot’s sleeve, taking only the faintest trouble to disinfect her skin before plunging in the needle attached to the bag.

Her blood ebbs quickly, painlessly after the first sharp jab “What are you doing?” Margot asks in a sleepy voice.

“Nothing.” He doesn’t bother to look at her. But his eye drapes over me like a secret. Then it’s my turn. He takes his time with me, running rough fingers against my arm before jabbing in the needle.

“Please don’t,” I start to say. Noah shakes his head and nods to the corner of the room where the camera watches us. His fingers tap a small beat on my arm as the blood trickles out. I feel light-headed more quickly than I can ever remember. A sharp pain throbs behind my eyes. “Can I have some water, please?” I must look terrible. Noah pulls out the needle as I begin to slump over, calling out at someone in the hall.

But for me, the world slips away, and behind it, a screen of black-red rain.

…

Margot is humming a song I’ve never heard before. I open my eyes. She stops her humming mid-bar. “Thank the gods,” she says in a breathy voice before taking up the chorus again.

The walls are still the same: earthen and crumbly like moldy cheese overlaid with the stain of red paint. Evolve or die. There’s a tang of blood where I must have bitten my tongue. I blink at my twin. She stares back at me like a stranger.

“Picture,” she says in a bright voice.

A game, then. A game to keep us safe while we converse.

“A bed, feather duvet. Soft like a cloud. After a bath, of course.” I frown down at my wrinkled, sore body. The pain in my head is gone, but it’s been replaced by something large and thick that keeps me from thinking too quickly. I feel my eyebrows knit together unhappily. “Did they give me something?”

Margot nods, another deep, fake smile on her beautiful face. “Uh-huh. Okay, my turn.”

I nod grudgingly. “Okay, fine. Picture.”

“Knights coming to the rescue.” She sighs. “Combing through the city until they find us.”

The True Borns are looking for us? How does she know? I think feverishly.

“A life of no more Protocols.” She sighs again, dramatic and heavy, and pulls against her restraints.

I need to know more. I throw in a note of teasing. “Father and Mother giving us a loving embrace?”

“No.” Margot shakes her head. The mask of the game slips. “You don’t understand. Father and Mother. They left me there with him.”

“Who—the Russian?”

Margot blushes. “God, I want to tuck my hair behind my ears so badly. Yes, the Russian. Him.” The blush floats scarlet down her neck, tints the tip of her pearly ear that I can only just get a peek of.

“Picture a crush,” I throw back. I only mean to tease, but my sister’s face takes on a stormy look. Her emotions pulse through me like lightning. And it’s only then, as her walls collapse, that I see.

“Oh my gods,” I murmur, unable to stop staring at her as though she’s a complete and utter stranger. “You love him.”

There is a long beat of silence between us before she throws back defensively, “So?”

“So nothing. How did you manage to keep this from me?” I say with a note of marvel.

Her lips come down over her teeth, turning her smile into a broken string of pearls. “You always did think I couldn’t escape you, little sister. But I’ll find a way.”

It’s a terrible thing to say. I don’t even know how to respond. I fidget and struggle to get comfortable on the chair. The coin at my neck jangles against my skin.

“You think maybe hubby is the partner?” I forget all about the pretext of the game as I stare hard at Margot.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

“Because. Because he’d never—”

The sound of footsteps cuts off her answer, not in the hallway outside the room but on the elusive sound system. Westfall’s familiar voice carries over the air. “…I told him not to take too much. We could accidentally kill them. I told him you’d be here to assess—”

But it is the accompanying voice that has the skin on the back of my neck skittering.

“Gather more genetic samples and then we’ll see,” the cold, clipped voice orders. “We’ll take no chances until we’re certain that we can manufacture it. And we need a little more time to study our little human guinea pig.”

“Of course.” I can practically hear Father Wes bowing and scraping.

Margot mouths the word I cannot bear to think, the man whose life consists of people bowing and scraping to him. I picture the man: the tight line of his shoulders. The hands, strong and squeezing the life out of a pair of black leather gloves.

Father?