DEAD. HE WAS DEAD. BELLE checked for a pulse, but it was clear even before she shook her head.
“I think I’m going to be sick.” Lake said it before I could. Turning away from us, she crouched down and buried her head in her knees.
“Belle. You said Effigy.” Chae Rin’s mouth parted as she considered it. “What do you mean? Whose frequency did we track here?”
“He said we were family,” I whispered. “What if he meant—”
“No.” Chae Rin shook her head resolutely. “He was clearly delirious.”
“Everything else he said was coherent enough,” I argued. “It has to mean something. What if it meant—”
“That he’s an Effigy?” Chae Rin looked like she was having trouble accepting it. Furrowing her eyebrows and scrunching her lips made her beautiful face shrivel like a dried prune. “He said ‘my family.’ Those exact words. He could have meant anything. I mean, he was dying. His cognitive abilities were probably on the fritz. That’s it, isn’t it? Right?”
If Chae Rin was having a mini-freak-out, I couldn’t blame her. I’d learned in school what we all had learned growing up: that there were four Effigies, each with the power of different elements—fire, earth, water, air. And when one died, another took her place in an endless cycle. Despite all the resources the Sect and various government agencies put into researching where we came from, where the phantoms came from, no one knew for sure.
Four girls and a world full of phantoms. That was the only truth we could cling to. Until Saul appeared as the fifth.
The rules had changed.
But if there were more . . . where did it stop? Were there dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? We already knew so little about the world. Now we couldn’t even trust what we did know.
“Belle, what were you thinking before?” The several seconds Chae Rin waited for Belle to respond was clearly too long. She grabbed Belle’s arm. “Hey! Did you hear me? What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Belle snapped, pulling her arm out of Chae Rin’s grasp. “Just stay calm.”
But the look of dread on her face betrayed her.
My eyes drifted back to the young man in her arms. Dead. And I was close to the body. With a sudden surge of panic, I stumbled back, almost slipping on the sheet of ice covering part of the floor. The whites of his eyes popped against the dark dreariness of the bunker as they rolled to the back of his head. Belle must have seen the expression on my face because after a quick glance my way, she closed his eyelids.
“Well, good job, Barbie. Dude’s dead. You killed him.” With her arms folded over her chest, Chae Rin scoffed in disbelief. “At least we could have pumped him for information that actually made sense. Like who he is. And what that is.”
Belle turned over the sleek drive in her hand. “My attack wasn’t . . . It wasn’t forceful enough to kill.”
“But you attacked him anyway when he was clearly no danger to anyone. You basically admitted that yourself,” Chae Rin pressed. “Look at this place.” She motioned around the hideout. “It’s a freaking winter wonderland. You panicked. Just admit it.”
Belle’s attack did scream overkill. It wasn’t like her to jump the gun.
Wasn’t like her.
A phrase I’d been thinking a lot these past few weeks. Since France.
Since the consciousness of her dead mentor had found life again through my body, even if just for a moment.
And then I remembered the dull fear that had seized me that day as she’d turned her curious gaze from Saul’s ring to me. As she’d mulled a dangerous thought over and over in her head. The flicker of decisiveness that shattered almost as quickly as it’d appeared, dissipating into tears.
Weeks later, she was still struggling against something. I could tell by the way Belle wavered despite keeping a brave face, swallowing and tightening her jaw.
Belle didn’t have an answer for Chae Rin. Instead, sucking in a deep, silent breath, she looked at the young man lifeless in her arms. “This man . . . He said no one could heal him. . . .”
“He also asked us to find Alex.” I remembered the soft glow in his eyes, soon to be dimmed forever. “Alex . . . Is that what he meant by family?”
Frowning, Belle leaned over sideways, her sharp eyes trained on the young man’s neck.
“What are you looking at?” I asked, afraid to step closer.
Gingerly, Belle shifted the body onto its right side so that she could inspect the white flesh more carefully. “What is this mark?”
Guess I didn’t have a choice. Steeling myself, I inched close enough to lean over Belle’s shoulders. The body had many scars, but the one I found at the back of his neck looked almost deliberate. A deep red, circular bruise, the size of a penny, right at the base. The jagged slashes across it told me he’d scratched at it more than once. Secrets etched bloodred into his flesh.
Short staccato warning signals came from each of our goggles. I pulled mine down over my eyes. “Five minutes,” I said, then pulled them back up. “We don’t have much time here.”
“This place must be phantom-proof. Maybe EMA.” Chae Rin looked around until she nodded and pointed at the corner of the room. “There it is.”
She pointed at the small gray metal half circle drilled just below the ceiling like a CCTV camera, except without the camera inside. From behind the glass, I could see the wires and machinery sparking a light blue charge.
“Traffickers usually use some crude technology out here in Dead Zones,” Chae Rin continued. “This might be a base that a group of them once used. That guy said he ran here. . . . Maybe he knew about it too. Was Saul ever even here?”
“Traffickers usually take their tech with them, don’t they?” I’d learned a little about it during my training.
“They obviously meant to come back. Otherwise they wouldn’t have left that there.”
“That’s not what I mean.” I peered around the room. “They’re nomadic. They’d have to take certain technology with them to travel in, out, and around Dead Zones.”
“She’s right,” Belle said quietly. “They take their equipment with them wherever they go.”
I nodded. “But this guy said he ran here, probably by himself.”
“So, how did he get here on his own? Do you see any antiphantom tech on him?”
No. Nothing but his uniform and helmet.
“He had to have had help getting here.” I paused. “Right?”
“No idea, kid.” Sighing, Chae Rin traced her hands along the brick wall. “Wait.” She inched closer to the wall. “What is this?” She was peering at something tucked in the corner of the room by the hatch.
“What do you mean?” I went over to take a look.
It was hard to see since the dim lights above didn’t seem to reach the dark corner, but I could still make out the pattern: a swirling circle, spiraling into itself. It had been carved into the brick with something sharp but inexact, like a rock. The edges around the circle were harsh and jagged, but even still, as my eyes traced the line curving up into a point, the image forming in my mind took shape, growing stronger the longer I stared at it.
“A flame?” I whispered. “It looks like a flame.”
Without thinking, I turned to the painted shadows on the wall. “What . . . what is this?”
“Take a picture of it.” Belle began pulling up the dead body. “Take a picture of everything. Use the function in the visors. And Lake—Lake, get up.”
With a whimper, Lake wiped her face and turned around with red eyes.
“Search the room. We’ll do a quick sweep before leaving.” She stood, hoisting the corpse over her shoulder as if it were half its weight. The young man’s helmet dangled from the fingers of her free hand. “We don’t have much time. Work quickly.”
With a crisp, derisive chuckle, Chae Rin pulled her goggles down over her eyes. “Okeydoke,” she said, giving a humorless smirk. “Let’s make this quick.”
• • •
Maia . . .
Maia . . .
Are you listening . . . ?
Not for the first time, I heard her voice, softly, dangerously whispering in the recesses of my head. It’d been happening like this for weeks. It was how I knew I’d fallen asleep. It was how I knew I had to wake up.
The slow, deliberate notes of a secret melody drifted out from the dark. Humming. I couldn’t see her—I couldn’t see anything—but if I calmed my breath, I could hear her calling.
Maia . . . ?
Then I saw it emerge from the dark—the image of an arm going limp over a couch, of a glass cup slipping from the grasp of Natalya’s long fingers.
No, not again. I tried to tear my gaze away, but it was as if I’d been petrified. That’s when I saw him slipping out of the shadows, his hands shaking as the woman tumbled out of her living room chair, his head lowered as he stared at the body on the floor.
“I’m so sorry.” Tears stung Rhys’s eyes as he whispered it.
Maia. Don’t be afraid, Natalya told me. Come to me. . . .
“No!”
My eyes snapped open as a stream of short, violent breath escaped from my lips, erratic, uneven. Bending over in my car seat, I placed my head in my hands.
Don’t think about him. Don’t think about him. Don’t think about any of it. I repeated it until the image of his sweet face, his strong jaw, and his soft lips disappeared completely from my mind’s eye. Once it did, I could breathe again.
“Hey! You okay?” said Lake from the seat next to me, shaking me by the shoulder. “Breathe, girl, breathe.”
“Yeah.” My mouth was dried-up and tasted bitter. I swallowed whatever saliva was there and gave her a reassuring nod. “Just a nightmare.” One I’d been having far too often lately. One I wanted to never have again. “It’s okay. I’m good.”
“Had me scared for a second there.” Lake tilted her head before leaning in to inspect my face. “Um, you’ve got a little . . .”
After she pointed to the corners of my mouth, I wiped the drool off and sighed.
The clay walls of the Sect facility shimmered orange and red under the sun. The gentle breeze in Marrakesh, Morocco, was a nice change from the desert torrents we’d faced hours ago, but the heat was just as relentless. Our Sect van was parked outside the premises, the dulled black automatic gates locked behind us. But the air-conditioning was broken, which meant that to keep ourselves from cooking, we had to keep the car doors open. A couple of flies buzzed in with the heat, one flitting annoyingly close to my ear. Waving it away, I lay back against my seat, wincing from the sun’s onslaught.
Her voice lingered somewhere deep in me. Maia . . . Maia . . . steady like a drumbeat, each strike an assault on my nerves. My fingers twitched as I brought them up to my forehead and shut my eyes, trying to block her out.
Effigies fought and died, and each death opened up the door for another girl to inherit the power of the last. No, not just the power—the legacy, the memories, and the consciousness, even if just in pieces. Natalya Filipova was the last in my line. That meant parts of her lived on inside me. The Russian-born legendary fire Effigy who had lived as a hero.
But she hadn’t died as one.
And she would never let me forget it.
It took me a moment to realize my hand was shaking against my forehead. Quickly, I brought it down and stared at it. The soft, sandy skin tone was mine. The dark lines stretching across the red of my palm. The white nails, cut short. This was my hand. Mine.
Even though I could remember how it felt to have Natalya move it through her will alone.
Mine. I clamped my hand shut as if the sharp pain of my nails digging into my skin sealed my desperate thoughts as truth.
Shivering, I checked the time on my phone. I hadn’t been asleep for thirty minutes, but that heavy, languid feeling lingered stubbornly in my bones. It still took my body time to recover from these missions. I’d traveled here and there, back and forth so many damn times, all the cities were starting to blend together—as was, apparently, my vision, right now. I rubbed my eyes. The weight of the stress of battle came down hard on my bones. Belle always said that the more you train, the more you get used to it, but apparently nobody told my muscles.
Well, at least I wasn’t the only one who’d conked out. Having taken the whole back bench for herself, as she usually did, Chae Rin curled up on her side with her headphones plugging her ears and slept peacefully, her bare legs sticking to the leather through the natural adhesive of heat and sweat. She was out of her Sect fatigues and back into her civilian clothes. We all were. It was hot enough in Morocco without torturing ourselves needlessly.
In the seat next to me, Lake fiddled with her phone with one hand and kept her minifan trained on her with the other. “They’re still out there?” she asked, peering out my door. “Should it be taking this long? Didn’t they already take the . . .” She paused and bit her lip. “The . . .”
Body. The body of the mysterious young man we’d found in the desert hideout. Sibyl ordered that he be processed at the African Division headquarters several miles away. This meant that even after surviving a dangerous, body-breaking mission, we still had to stick with the body, stowed safely away in its sterilized white bag, as it was transported to Morocco to ensure its successful arrival. The moment we passed through the tall black gates, a medical team was already waiting for us. We should have been able to leave by now, but after half an hour had passed, Belle was still outside talking to the director of the facility.
“While the untalented and undeserving are releasing rubbish singles that get rewarded with money and praise, I am going on secret missions, fighting for my life, and hauling away dead bodies.” Sighing, Lake closed her eyes against the fan-generated wind lapping against her face. “My one consolation in this whole dreadful scenario is Sibyl okayed us going to the TVCAs. Attending an awards show because you’re nominated for something and not because your agent wrangled an invite from some poor underpaid intern. How novel!” With her eyes still closed, she grinned. “It’s gonna be so great. I’m back in the game!”
I stared at her. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
But Lake was already checking out the nominations list on the awards show’s home page. There we were, under Favorite Badass Role Models, next to an eclectic list comprised of a teen physicist, a social media star, an Olympic athlete, and a pop star fresh out of rehab. The weird thing about being an Effigy was you could fit in perfectly among any of them.
Ah, the strangest beast of all: celebrity.
Well, Effigies were known all over the world. Even as we fought monsters in a kill-or-be-killed lifestyle that usually ended in our bloody, gruesome deaths, the media still reported on us as if we were no different from your typical reality star or starlet stumbling drunkenly out of a limo into the latest LA party. When I was a kid, I worshipped the Effigies. I bought the posters and the trading cards the Sect put out just like every other obsessed fangirl. But it was the hero part that thrilled me. The fame part I could do without.
“You’re not actually still planning on making us go to that,” I said wearily. “Are you?”
“In fact, I’ve already picked out your dresses!”
“Oh god.” My head rolled to the side and came to a rest against my seat belt. Unlike me, Lake relished the spotlight and thrived in it. Going from auditioning for some cheesy televised British talent show to debuting in a pop group to becoming an Effigy, staying famous wasn’t something she had to worry much about. Still, it’d been months since her solo pop single was supposed to drop, but her record label was delaying the release, and her fans were beginning to think it was a myth.
“Did you check out Doll Soldiers? Wait, let me go there.” On her phone, Lake signed in to the online forum of Effigy enthusiasts, the site I’d spent an unhealthy amount of time on before I’d, somewhat ironically, become an Effigy myself. I leaned over for a better look. Ah, the Belle Kill Count thread was still racking up the views, as expected.
Lake pointed at what was creatively called the Official TVCA Thread and grinned widely. “Our fans are organizing mass voting parties. Isn’t it awesome?”
She clicked the link. She really shouldn’t have.
“Oh . . .” Lake grimaced as she read the screen.
[+299, - 173] LOL @ Icicles acting like they’re too good to vote for a damn Teen Viewers’ Choice Award. Like don’t you think if Belle were “above it all” she wouldn’t be going? Think again, they’ve all been confirmed by their publicist. What now, bitches?
[+230, - 101] People honestly think Swans are pushing for this shit just because of Lake and her personal career. Well, the reality is we’re not, and if you think that, it just makes your bitterness toward her that much more obvious. Doing this kind of stuff helps the girls. Do you know how much pressure they’re under? Every Effragist that supports OT4 should take this shit seriously, so Icicles need to get over their damn selves and vote.
“What’s OT4?” Lake asked me because she correctly assumed I’d wasted enough time on the internet to know the lingo.
“One True Four,” I said. “All four of us. The whole crazy Effigy gang.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying!” Lake nodded excitedly as I read another comment.
[+220, - 180] Okay, but Belle fans don’t actually call themselves Icicles and never did. We’d like you to stop this immediately.
“Yeah, when the hell did that start?” I narrowed my eyes because it only got messier and messier down thread.
[+218, - 194] I love the girls, but Swans are so desperate, pathetic, and transparent. Like fave, like fan!
[+218, - 150] I’m voting for Aaron. He just got out of rehab and hasn’t shown any dick pics or peed in a public establishment in like a month—that takes real courage.
[+210, - 130] I’m screaming—these girls are supposed to be warriors; there is literally no reason for them to be attending parties designed for the detritus of the entertainment industry! Wake up!
They had a point with that last one. Unfortunately, after Saul’s escape from the London facility and the PR disaster that followed, embracing our Effigy fame was the best option we had to distract the masses while the Sect pulled its shit together.
“When did they come up with ‘Icicles’?” Lake cocked her head to the side. “A bit on the nose, isn’t it? And why in God’s name are they all fighting each other instead of voting?” She scrunched up her face as she whined, like a child throwing a tantrum. “Ugh, be unified, you wankers. I want this win.”
Even I knew that expecting unification in Effigy fandom was like asking time to move backward. And in fact, you’d have a better chance of achieving the latter. The angrier people were, the longer and more frequent their online vitriolic rants. Hell, I was the former poster child of messy Effigy fans, so I had no room to judge.
Leaning back in her seat, Lake kept on scrolling through comments. With nothing else to do, I laid my head against the car window, readying myself for another nap, when the door opened with a yank. I would have fallen straight out of the car if I hadn’t grabbed the seat.
It was Belle. “You three, come with me. Chae Rin,” she added sharply and, being the gentle girl that she was, picked up a pebble off the sandy floor and threw it hard at Chae Rin’s forehead. The Effigy awoke with a start, swearing the typical profanities I’d gotten all too used to during the past few weeks. She looked as subtly murderous as she always did whenever I had to venture into her dark jungle of a room in the morning and force her awake to start our training.
“Director Chafik has some information to show us in Communications,” Belle said.
“Is it about the dead guy?” I asked, admittedly with little tact or respect for the dearly departed. “Or the flash drive?”
Belle quickly looked over her shoulder to where Chafik was waiting by the front entrance of the building. “I haven’t given it to him. Not yet. Just a feeling.”
“But—”
“Don’t mention it to him either until I decide what to do.” She straightened up. “Come, let’s go.”
None of us much liked being bossed around, but we stumbled hot and groggy out of the car anyway.
“Not feeling the new arrangement,” Chae Rin, never one to let her displeasure go unnoticed, grumbled as she shut the door behind her. Lake shrugged and obediently went ahead of us. I was about to follow when Chae Rin grabbed the short sleeve of my T-shirt. “Look, I know back in that hospital after France, I was the one who said we should stick together, and we all agreed. And that’s fine, but are we really just going to let Belle call the shots?”
“Isn’t that what she’s been doing?” My nonchalant shrug couldn’t mask the weary sliver of dread in my voice.
“Hey, guys!” Lake called to us just as she, Belle, and Director Chafik were about to enter the facility. “You coming?”
“Yeah, we’re coming!” I called back with a little wave. “Give us a sec!”
“You know as well as I do, kid.” Chae Rin peered over at Belle and Lake as they disappeared through the entrance. “Something hasn’t been right with Belle since—”
“Since she almost wished for Natalya to take over my body for good.”
Chae Rin straightened up and sighed. “Since she found out Natalya’s death wasn’t a suicide like the Sect had told everyone it was.”
And that the Sect could be involved. I was the one who’d seen her death scene myself in my dreams. The perks of having other Effigies’ memories live on inside you.
Perhaps that was why Belle wasn’t keen on handing over the flash drive.
“We have to cut her some slack,” I said quietly. “This isn’t easy for Belle. She’s going through stuff.”
“Like none of us are?” Chae Rin shook her head, exasperated. “I’d ask why you’re so willing to overlook her bullshit, but then you are her number one ass-kisser, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“That’s not it!”
“It’s not? Then what is it?”
I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell her why my fingers were curling with guilt. Why my heart beat a bit heavier with dread every time I saw Belle.
I hadn’t told Belle yet about the memory Natalya had shown me in France. I hadn’t told anyone.
Chae Rin flicked me right in the middle of my furrowed eyebrows—a soft flick, thankfully. With her strength, she could have caved my skull in. “Come on, you can’t tell me you’re one hundred percent comfortable with this. You saw what she did in that hideout.”
I did. But it was all the same. After our penultimate run-in with Saul two months ago, we’d decided that we had to work as a team from now on if we were going to be able to face the challenges up ahead. Well, every team needed a leader. That was Belle. I guess. It wasn’t a verbal agreement. We didn’t shake hands or anything. It was just . . . understood. Belle had the most experience out of all four of us. Unlike Lake and Chae Rin, who had only become Effigies in the past two or three years, nineteen-year-old Belle had somehow managed to survive fighting phantoms for six years. For an Effigy, that was pretty damn massive.
It was the Seven-Year Rule. Belle had told me once before. A little saying among the Sect. If you could survive more than seven years fighting monsters, you had either spent your life hiding or honed your skills enough to become a godlike fighting machine. Natalya held the world record, having spent fourteen years battling as an Effigy. Only fourteen.
Effigies didn’t live long. The truth of it still terrified me.
“Regardless, she’s the best equipped out of all of us for the job. Besides, it’s not like it’s a dictatorship. If she gets out of line, we can do something about it,” I told her, but I wasn’t too confident about that.
“Yeah.” Chae Rin’s expression darkened as she cracked her knuckles. “I’ll do something about it. Better believe it.”
Great. I sighed as Chae Rin went on ahead. As if I didn’t have enough to deal with. An Effigy brawl was the last thing anyone needed. But these days, despite our “arrangement,” you could never really know when one bad day would get us there. We were a team. We were supposed to be. I kind of wanted us to be.
Maybe “team” was too strong a word.