AT WELL OVER SIX FEET, director Chafik with his stocky build towered over all of us, except maybe for Lake, who was model tall in her own right. After a short greeting, we followed him into the facility.
There must have been one standard design for all Sect facilities. So far I’d been in two headquarters—one in Argentina and one in London—and the twisting, sterile corridors looked just the same. Communications, too. Once Chafik typed the security code into a keypad by a set of wide silver doors, and once the small screen scanned and verified his face with a gentle blue light, the door slid open and there it was, two stories of busy agents in suits hurrying past one another as they carried information to different stations. Most of the agents sat at rows of computers, typing away at a furious pace, speaking into headsets to whom I could only guess were agents in different parts of the facility, or maybe even agents at other facilities.
Since the Sect was an international nongovernment organization, they had facilities all over the world, some specifically for training agents while most were for base operations. Others, like the headquarters in London, were equipped for training Effigies. Not this one. This one was more research-based than anything else. Judging by what Chafik told us, their Research and Development building was even bigger than the one in London. That’s where they’d taken the mysterious young soldier.
“We are holding the body there,” said Chafik in an accent that made it sound as if he were slurring his words a bit. “First we will perform the autopsy and then continue on with other examinations. It will be a few days before we can send over any information from our findings.”
Director Chafik’s thick black beard stretched to his ears. The wrinkles across his face may have come from age, but I was sure the permanent frown lines cutting across his sandy brown forehead could only be attributed to having an intense stare as his resting face. As he and Belle kept pace with each other through Communications, I could see that they both matched in the severity of their expressions. It was like each was trying to outserious the other.
“Thanks, we appreciate it,” I said, my footsteps heavy against the tiled floor.
I looked over at Belle, who probably had the flash drive still on her somewhere, maybe in the pocket of her checkered flannel shirt. It was a delicate dance, trusting the Sect without trusting too much. Natalya’s own parents had warned us against them, and as it turned out, they’d had a point. The Sect was involved in Natalya’s death. But we were still part of the organization, still party to their rules. And if we were going to recapture Saul and get to the bottom of the mysteries that surrounded him, we had no choice but to work with them. Even though there was no telling how many agents had played a part in Natalya’s demise.
Agents. My mouth dried again, and my chest felt tight just like it always did whenever my thoughts drifted to him. I squeezed my eyes shut. Don’t think about him.
Shaking the half-formed thought away, I crossed my arms over my chest, about to speak again when I caught the eyes of some agent who swiveled back around in his chair in an instant.
Sigh. Now that we were here, some of the agents couldn’t help but peek up from their computers to take a gander at us. No matter how many weeks it’d been, I still couldn’t get used to the curious, unsubtle glances of those who didn’t, couldn’t, see Maia Finley the Girl because to them, I was only, always, Maia Finley the fire Effigy. They gave us that quick, self-conscious look, the kind people give when they know they shouldn’t stare but can’t help it. Lake stood a little taller when she noticed their eyes on her, while Chae Rin sighed with obnoxious volume. Belle never seemed to care. I, on the other hand, shifted on my feet, uncomfortable in my skin. It was like walking into every room perpetually smelling like a litter box.
“You said you had some info for us?” I said once he’d reached a terminal at the center space of the room. Unlike the rows of benches in front and behind us, this small, circular area just had the one terminal with two flat-screens sutured together on the surface. I guess this was specially made for the director of the facility. “What kind of information?”
Chafik gave me with a curt nod as he tapped the computer screen awake. “Yes. Rousseau has told me the circumstances by which you came to find the body. You tracked an Effigy frequency to the desert.”
“Yeah, we figured it was Saul’s,” Chae Rin said before adding under her breath, “But after finding that other guy instead, we’re not so sure anymore.”
Every once in a while, when Chafik was deep in thought, he’d breathe out a deep, baritone grumble like the one I heard now. It sounded a little like the earth should have been trembling beneath my feet. “Yes. This is a strange situation. Stranger than usual. Our facility has been checking for Saul’s spectrographic signature.”
I perked up. “And?”
He only needed to tap the computer screens with his fingers to bring up the satellite map of the world. A dull red circle blinked over the Sahara hideout like a pulsating heart. The thick green words hovering over it spelled out LAST WHEREABOUTS.
“This is the only signal we’ve been able to pick up in weeks,” Chafik said.
“The only signal in weeks,” I repeated. “And it may not have even been his.” I sucked in a breath to calm myself down. The Sect’s scanners may have actually been picking up Dead Guy’s frequency all along. It was a possibility. But none of us knew what to do with its implications. The discovery of Saul, a man with Effigy-like abilities in a world that only had room for four of us, was shocking enough. The mere idea of countless others grew more disturbing each time I considered it.
“We did have reason to believe it might have been Saul’s,” Chafik continued, thankfully sparking a little glimmer of hope. “According to our scanners, an Effigy signal did appear just after your battle in France. First it popped up suddenly outside of London.” As Chafik spoke, he tapped the screen so that the blinking lights representing his frequency appeared over their location. “Then, shortly after, it reappeared in Greenland before vanishing. We searched the area, of course, but didn’t find him. He was off the grid.”
“Saul fled shortly after Maia cut off his hand,” Belle said, and when she turned her head, her blond ponytail swished gently to the side. “He must have gone back to London. Why? To see someone? And why would he then go to Greenland? Why would his signal end there?”
“Usually, an Effigy’s signal will show up on the monitor, pulsing at a particular rate. However, while we were monitoring his signal, it was erratic, arrhythmic, even as he jumped from area to area.”
“Sibyl said Saul’s spectrographic signature had been unstable for several days after we faced him in France,” I told him. “Then nothing until now.”
I thought back to that day I’d watched Sibyl interrogate him in lockup when we had him captured at the London facility. I could still picture him clearly: caged in that cold, metallic chamber, drugged and rambling. But the tired fear in his eyes as he sputtered out incoherent phrases eventually dissolved into an expression wholly different—and sinister. The fear and desperation had flickered out, leaving only that glimmer of malice I was too familiar with . . . and that vile smile. The same he’d worn as he and the phantoms under his control had torn through bodies in New York.
“Well, I mean, Saul’s nothing if not unstable. The last time Saul was in Sect custody, they measured his spectrographic signature and his brain waves,” I said. “That’s how we learned that Saul actually has two personalities: Alice and—”
“Nick Hudson.” Chafik tapped away the satellite map and, in a few seconds, there he was. Saul—no, Nick.
He was handsome, almost beautiful. It was a fact I couldn’t escape even after all the evil he’d done. Then again, Nick wasn’t Saul. The black-and-white image Chafik showed us was of a young man in a nineteenth-century frock coat and trousers smiling boyishly without a care in the world outside a stone building. He was just one of a group of boys packed into the stairwell leading up to the grand entrance, but he stood out through his beauty alone: the same full lips, petite nose, and sculpted face, which was maybe a little chubbier in this picture. He was still slender, though with the slight muscular build of a casual athlete. If the photo were in color, I might have seen the ghostly sea blue of his eyes.
The hair alone was enough to make the difference. His was dark, not the silver I’d come to associate with Saul.
“After the interrogation you spoke of, Ms. Finley, we were able to research his history. Nick Hudson, born in 1847 to a wealthy British family that owned a small but lucrative railway company in Argentina before it was bought out and absorbed into a larger British firm.”
“So Nick was a little rich boy.” Chae Rin scoffed.
“But then he became an Effigy,” Belle said.
“Alice is the more vicious personality,” I said, thinking back to that terrible night in New York, the bodies strewn across the lobby of La Charte hotel. Saul had stood atop his serpent-like phantom as if it were his personal steed, lapping up the sight of the corpses like it were the only oasis that could quench his thirst. But it was Nick I’d faced in France, a boy who’d maintained an almost gentlemanly etiquette even as he held me against my will while threatening a train full of innocents with the phantoms at his beck and call. It made no difference. “Even still, they’re both murderers.” My lips pursed as I stared at Nick’s gorgeous face beaming in monochrome.
“But then who’s Alice?” Lake asked. “Did you find any information on her?”
Director Chafik shook his head. “We have not found anything so far. With only her first name to work with, we’ve cross-checked the name against all known Hudson associates and acquaintances, but nothing has come up.”
“But if he’s an Effigy, then she was the last one before him,” said Chae Rin. “The little voice in his head. Only she is the one driving.” And after a short pause, she laughed as the joke dawned on her. “Grand theft body,” she said with a little chuckle. “Whoever Alice is, she sure took the poor guy out for a joyride and . . .”
The words died on her lips once she turned and looked at me. She must have seen the way my body was hunched over, my head lowered, my eyes downcast as I recalled the feeling of being ripped away from my own flesh and trapped inside my own mind. Another perk of having someone else’s consciousness bubbling just under the surface. One wrong move—
I held my arms tightly, squeezing the flesh for reassurance before lowering them again. “If Alice is really the last Effigy in his line, then she would have lived and died in the same time period,” I said. “But people aren’t immortal. Even as an Effigy, Nick should have died by now.”
“What is Saul?” Lake said. “What else can he do beyond teleporting? Oh, wait, he can control phantoms!”
“Nah, he used the ring to do that,” said Chae Rin, and she would know because her old circus boss had used the one she’d stolen from Natalya’s apartment for a phantom-Effigy performance act. I always wondered whether Chae Rin missed the feeling of riding phantoms for fun and profit. Having recently done it myself, I could safely say it wasn’t an experience I wanted to relive.
“Accursed,” I whispered, thinking back to that night in France. “He’d called himself accursed. Like us. He said his life span was just one part of his burden. Maybe he can live forever.” A terrible thought. What if we couldn’t kill him? “We have the power of the elements, but for him . . . teleporting and immortality . . . it’s almost as if he can bend space-time.”
“One of the researchers at your London facility, Dot Nguyen, has a theory,” said Chafik. “For hundreds of years, philosophers have been theorizing the existence of a fifth element: ether. Experiments were conducted in the nineteenth century to examine its properties as a medium for gravitational and electromagnetic forces. Nguyen believes it’s possible that there were originally five Effigies created, not four, and that Saul has the elemental power of ether. But all we have are our theories. What we need is a way to test them.”
He brought up the satellite image again. “Like you said, Saul can appear and disappear at will. Weeks after Saul’s signal went dead in Greenland, London Communications once again caught hold of an Effigy frequency, this time in the Sahara desert. Of course, they thought it was his, which is why they sent you to capture him. But this time something was different. This time, the signal did not just appear at the location. Rather, it developed gradually tens of meters away from the site before resting at the location.”
He played the footage sent over from the London facility, and sure enough, I could see the red blinking dot materializing from nothing, fading into existence as it traveled through a phantom-infested Dead Zone. It grew brighter and brighter until it came to a resting point, a bloodred heartbeat.
“We know from the time that Langley had Saul in custody that his ability to mask his spectrographic signature only appears when Alice’s personality is in control,” Chafik said. “It would have been Nick that we tracked after your battle in France. Like Sibyl suggested, the fight may have destabilized him. However . . .”
He trailed off, pursing his lips tight, his exhale seeping out from his throat in another deep grumble.
“However?” I prodded him.
“He can still appear and disappear at will,” Chafik said. “Indeed, it would make little sense for Saul to risk traveling through a nest of phantoms to reach that location, especially since he was injured from your fight.”
“So the signal you tracked to the desert may not have been Saul’s, but that dead guy’s,” I said, my mind filling in the blanks. “I mean, if the guy can’t vanish and materialize at will, then he’d have to go through the Dead Zone. Vanishing is Saul’s power, after all, and Effigies . . .” I raked my tongue over my dry lips. Effigies each had their own unique ability. “There really are more Effigies out there. . . .” I shook my head. No matter how many times I thought about it, I couldn’t accept it.
“Perhaps. However, an Effigy’s signal does not fade or grow stronger, nor is it ever unstable,” Chafik continued. He tapped the screen again, and three silver dots appeared just a few miles away from the desert hideout. In Marrakesh. The blinking lights were us. “This is why the Sect can track you once you have come into your powers. Wherever you go,” Chafik added, unhelpfully. I don’t think he realized how creepy it sounded.
“So, number one: That signal we chased out into the desert probably wasn’t even Saul’s.” Chae Rin counted it off with her fingers. “And number two: Even if it did belong to that soldier we found, he may not be an actual, legitimate Effigy? He may be something else?” She pressed a hand against her forehead, fingers sliding against the sweaty black hair matted to her skin. “Then what the hell was he?”
“We need answers.” Chafik stared at the monitor. “How was this soldier able to travel through the Dead Zone on his own? And what are the circumstances behind these unstable frequencies—Saul’s signal in Greenland and the one that appeared in the desert hideout? Is masking a frequency one of Saul’s abilities? Or is it a special property that appears only upon the reappropriation of the current Effigy’s body by the previous Effigy in the line?”
Still too many riddles. Effigies, like the phantoms, were discovered in the nineteenth century. Even after all the studies, all the research, there was so much we didn’t know about them. But I was more concerned over where this conversation was heading. Especially once Chafik’s eyes were on me.
“The truth is, Sibyl Langley spoke to us while you were waiting in the Sect van. We both think it may be time to use our own assets in order to seek out the answers to these questions. For that, we need you.”
My breath hitched. Some of the agents from the bench in front of us were listening even as they worked at their terminals. I caught the shift in their heads as they waited to see how I’d respond.
“What . . . exactly do you need me to do?” I asked, my hands feeling strangely numb.
“It’s our understanding that you have scried before.” Chafik scratched his black beard as he considered what he must have been told by Sibyl. “In New York. Intimate contact with Saul forced you to prematurely open up the connection between your mind and the scattered psyches of the fire Effigies inside you. It is perhaps because of the connection between Nick or Alice and an Effigy in your line. The contact might have awoken that girl, if even just for a moment.”
“Marian,” I whispered. The girl both Alice and Nick were desperate to find for the answers she carried with her.
“Whatever that ‘connection’ was,” Lake said, “had to have been pretty intimate if a kiss woke her up.”
Intimate. Romantic? It seemed so by the way Nick had talked about her the last time we faced each other in France. That faraway look as he said her name . . .
“In either case, Maia’s ability to cross through the psychic barriers into another Effigy’s consciousness can give us a way to study this issue with the frequencies. Are both Saul and the now-deceased soldier you found Effigies? Is it the unstable crossing of two personalities—in Saul’s case, Nick and Alice—that makes the difference in the ability to mask one’s signature? Langley has proposed that we use you, Maia, to look into the matter. And I agree.”
My jaw clenched. “You want to experiment on me?” I took a short step back. “You want to, what, keep me locked up here like a lab rat?”
“We only want to measure your brain waves and spectrographic signature as you scry. It should not take more than a few hours.”
“But the whole point of this is to see what happens when one personality takes over the other. Like Alice did with Nick.” The implications of everything tore through me like a scream. I felt numb from the neck down. “You want the same thing to happen to me.”
“Natalya,” Belle said with an odd, wistful quirk in her voice. It sent a violent shudder through me.
“No. No, no, no.” My head was shaking side to side with each “no.” “She took me over the last time. Do you understand what that means? There’s no way—”
“We will be monitoring you precisely to make sure that doesn’t happen.” Chafik looked sincere enough, the seriousness in his small, dark eyes easing a little as if it’d make the blow any softer. “We want you because of the instability of your scrying. We see you as a closer estimate to Saul’s own psychic battles than, say, Belle, who’s studied and practiced the skill over a period of years.”
My mind was a better measure to figure out what was happening in Saul. We were alike. Nick and I. Unlike Belle, we’d both experienced the horrors of having someone move your bones and stretch your limbs without your say-so. But this was still too dangerous. I didn’t . . . I couldn’t.
I looked at the other girls for help, and thankfully, Lake and Chae Rin looked just as skeptical as I did. Belle, on the other hand, had a pensive tilt to her head that told me she was mulling it over.
“It may be of help to us,” Belle said. “We need to figure out the nature of Saul . . . and the soldier. This could be a crucial first step. And perhaps understanding the pattern behind Saul’s frequency can give us a way to track and capture him.”
“She . . . has a point, kid.” Chae Rin gripped my shoulder. “I’m not totally sold on this, but there are questions that need answers.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Shrugging off her hand, I wrapped my arms around my chest. “You and Lake have never even had to scry before, so how would you know? And none of you know how horrible it feels to . . . to . . .” To have your body taken over. I shuddered.
“No, we don’t,” Chae Rin replied coolly. “But what other options do we have?”
“This is kind of an urgent situation,” Lake chimed in.
I knew it too. But I didn’t have to like it. With a heavy sigh, I looked up at Chafik with my teeth gritted. “You’re one hundred percent sure you won’t lose me in there? Ten hundred percent sure?”
Chafik nodded. “Don’t worry. Our technicians will do everything in their power to make sure you are safe and secure. We already have a lab prepared in the Research and Development wing. Like I said, we will be monitoring you carefully to make sure there are no accidents. We only want Natalya’s consciousness to graze the surface. We want to see what happens when your minds interact. We won’t let it get beyond that.”
“Don’t worry . . . um . . . we’re all here,” Lake said reassuringly, though she didn’t seem too sure if it was worth anything. “It’ll be fine.”
“You say that now. Just watch. In a few hours you’ll have Natalya as a roommate instead of me.”
Lake thought about it. “Well, then, hopefully she won’t snore as badly as you do.”
She waited for me to catch on to her smile, but I couldn’t say I appreciated that joke. Once Lake realized her misstep, her shoulders slumped sheepishly.
Chae Rin scratched her head. “Look, kid, I get that we’re not exactly best friends or anything, but none of us want you gone. Right?”
“That’s a no-brainer,” Lake answered. “You said it yourself: We’re a team, yeah?”
But Belle took a little longer to respond than I would have liked. Her languid eyes stared off in the distance. She looked tired suddenly, as if all the energy had been sucked out of her in a moment. Perhaps fatigue had finally settled into her bones. But you never knew with Belle.
She nodded absently. “Let’s go,” she said in an almost whisper.