Across the room, Beechy looks as panicked as I feel, desperate to find a way out of this. I’ve got nothing.
Cadet Waller speaks up, abruptly. She has a hand to her ear-comm; she’s relaying a message from someone else. “Commander, sir, security says the Mardenites are massing toward the main entrance to the bridge. There are at least fifty of them. It looks like they’re trying to storm us.”
Commander Charlie and the other Developers give quick instructions to some of the soldiers in the room, sending a few of them out to help guard the entryway. The rest will remain here in case the vul break through the blockade.
“We won’t need to hold them off long,” Regina says. “Colonel Fred’s machine is almost to the detonation sight. Once we set it off, we’ll announce that the rest of the vul army has been demolished, and they’ll have no choice but to surrender.”
Charlie turns back to Logan and me. “We’d better get the tests and executions over with. Clementine, we’ll have you go first, shall we?”
He’ll subdue me before he kills Logan, he means. So Logan can watch me slip away from him forever, and then I can watch Logan die without being able to do a thing to stop it.
Sam sets the metal box down on the table and holds up the syringe.
I can’t let him give me the shot. I try to slide my wrists out of the grip of my guard, but he’s holding my arms too tightly.
Sam moves beside me and pushes the edge of my armor aside, exposing part of the skin of my neck. I subdued him before, and now he’ll get me back for it. I should’ve killed him when I had the chance.
As he lowers the needle over my neck, there’s a tremor through the walls. Distant shouting. The vul are here; the fight has begun outside.
“Sam, you don’t have to do this,” I say quietly, so only Sam can hear me. “Do you really think you’re so special Charlie wouldn’t kill you, like he’s killed so many other people today? You don’t have to fight for him. You can be free from him. We all can, if you help us.”
His lips thin slightly, but he doesn’t say anything in response. He slowly lowers the needle over my neck.
I’m not going to be able to stop him. The water in my eyes spills over as I find Logan’s bent-over figure at the bottom of the steps. I lock eyes with him.
“Logan,” I say, not caring who else hears me. “I love you, and I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry I left you again without saying good-bye. But this isn’t good-bye, okay? We’ll see each other again.”
I don’t know what world lies on the other side of death, but I have to believe it’s kinder. I have to believe it will bring us together again.
Logan makes a noise through his gag. His eyes are overflowing with tears too.
I feel the needle pinch my neck, and a sob breaks in my throat. I’m not ready for this. I’m not ready to lose control again.
There’s another, louder tremor through the walls, like a bomb went off close by. Commander Charlie and the other Developers turn swiftly in the direction of the door leading out of the bridge. Almost everyone else’s attention shifts that way too. Including Sam’s, and my guard’s.
“Now!” Beechy shouts.
I don’t know what his plan is. But I wrench my arm out of the grip of my guard and knock Sam’s hand away from my neck. The syringe drops on the floor, but it’s made of plastic, so it doesn’t break. Sam goes to pick it up, and I reach and grab the gun he has in his back holster.
Out of the corner of my eye, Beechy and Mal and Skylar are moving too. All three of them break away from their guards and grab guns from the soldiers’ holsters. We’re all armed before anyone has even given an order.
And three of us are pointing our guns at the Developers. I turned my weapon on Sam, to keep him from picking up the syringe. He scowls at me.
“Don’t draw weapons, or we’ll shoot,” Beechy says.
Most of the soldiers around the room were halfway to drawing their guns, but they halt, awaiting orders from the Developers. My eyes flit to Logan, still on his knees with Dean holding a gun to his head. I need to get to him and free him. But I can’t take my gun off Sam, or he’ll subdue me.
“You don’t want to shoot us,” Charlie says. He should not sound so calm.
Beechy laughs. “Oh, and why is that?”
“Because Colonel Fred has been ordered to detonate the contraption as soon as it’s ready. The only thing that will stop him from destroying the outer sectors is a direct order from one of his commanders.” Now Charlie is the one laughing. His voice echoes through the room, over the noise of the battle going on outside.
Fury fills every part of me, knotting my veins and making my rib cage feel like it’s about to explode. What he’s saying is that this fight has been hopeless from the beginning. The Developers have stacked up all the cards in their favor. Even if we kill them, we’re going to lose too much. The humans left on Kiel won’t be enough to sustain a population.
“We’ll shoot the other people in this room unless you call off the detonation,” Skylar snaps. “The people you wanted to save.”
“There won’t be anyone left who is loyal to you,” Beechy says.
“You can shoot everyone in this room, if you wish,” Regina says with a slick smile. “We will still destroy the outer sectors.”
Silence hovers over the room as her challenge sinks in.
“Fine,” Skylar says, and shifts her weapon and shoots Cadet Waller through the head.
I gasp aloud, and there are cries around the room. Waller slumps to the ground. Blood seeps through the hole in her head and pools around her body.
Regina and Charlie barely flinch.
“Keep going,” Charlie says.
I’m still aiming my gun at Sam. I meet his eyes and see the realization churning through them: I could shoot Sam and Charlie wouldn’t stop me. Charlie doesn’t care whether Sam lives or dies.
“I told you he wouldn’t protect you,” I say.
There’s a flicker of fear in Sam’s eyes. He thinks I’m really going to shoot him.
My finger hovers over the trigger, but I hesitate. Sam isn’t my real enemy. His death won’t save the people I care about.
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice something lying on the ground. My eyes dart to it—it’s the syringe full of orange control serum.
When I look back at Sam, he’s noticing the syringe. Anger courses through his face, popping the veins in his neck. His eyes flit to Commander Charlie.
Charlie gives the command so quickly, I almost miss it: “Shoot the rebels.”
All around the room, the Core lieutenants and generals draw their weapons. Sam doesn’t; he grabs the syringe from the floor.
The shooting starts before he can move toward Charlie. Laser fire fills the bridge. My guard lifts his gun, and I shoot his arm before he can get a shot in. The vul weapon has no trouble blasting through his armor at this close range. The soldier lets out a mangled scream.
I scramble to take cover under the hologram table, barely avoiding another blast near my head. At the corner of my vision, I see Logan fighting Dean at the bottom of the stairs. He broke free of Dean’s grip, and he’s struggling to knock the gun out of his hand. Screw taking cover—I need to help him.
But as I move to crawl out from under the table, a blast hits the wall behind me. I turn my head away, raising an arm to block my neck. Fragments of glass and metal impact my armor, and I cry out. I’m not hurt badly, but my ribs are on fire again. It doesn’t help that I’m stuck crouching under the table.
When I look back at Logan, he’s gone. The body of a soldier who must be Dean is limp on the floor. I hope that means Logan took cover, but I can hardly see through the smoke to tell where he went. Nor can I tell who’s firing at whom anymore. I’m pretty sure some of the Core soldiers aren’t shooting at us rebels; they’re shooting at each other. They’ve turned against the Developers, like Sam.
Sam. I’ve lost track of him and Commander Charlie in the madness of everything. I crawl toward the other end of the table, looking for them between the laser blasts.
There’s a body on the floor at the end of the table, a few feet from Cadet Waller. Commander Regina’s eyes are closed, and blood pools from her temple. She’s dead.
Where did the rest of the Developers go? I don’t have a good enough view from under the table. I crawl out of my hiding spot, raising my gun in case I need to fire.
That’s when I see Sam catch up to Charlie. He’s fleeing toward the door on the right-hand side of the room, the one leading to the security control room. Two lieutenants defend Charlie from gunfire on his left, but they don’t notice Sam coming behind them, or they don’t realize he’s a threat until it’s too late.
Sam lunges at Charlie, stabbing the syringe’s needle at the exposed skin of Charlie’s neck. The lieutenant to the left of Sam turns to stop him, but I take him out with a blast to his side.
Charlie punches his elbow back and knocks Sam’s arm away. The syringe drops on the floor and rolls several feet. It’s far away from me, but I can still see it’s empty. The serum has entered Charlie’s bloodstream.
He staggers, his face contorting with pain. I need to reach him and command him to call off the bomb’s detonation. I hurry toward him, ducking as a laser flies in my direction.
The other lieutenant who was protecting Charlie shoots Sam in the leg, knocking him to the ground. The lieutenant looks up and I see who it is—Brand, from the strategy meeting. I aim at him and shoot, but Brand ducks and it hits a monitor on the wall instead, sending metal fragments flying everywhere.
“Clementine, get down!” someone yells. Beechy. He runs at Brand from behind, lifting his gun to fire.
But Brand turns around too soon. He fires his own weapon.
The lasers and dust and smoke around me become a blur. The only thing in focus is Beechy.
He falls onto his knees with a choking sound, blood gurgling out of his mouth. His gun slips from his fingers, clattering on the floor. His eyes meet mine across the room, wide and flooded with disbelief. And fear. For what seems like an infinite moment, he stares at me, still breathing, still fighting. Then his eyes roll back into his head.
Beechy falls face-first onto the ground, limp. He can’t be dead. He can’t be.
“No!” I scream.
The rest of the room comes back into focus. A laser flies at me, coming from Brand, and I barely duck in time to avoid it. Clenching my teeth, I raise my gun and aim at him. This time I don’t miss.
I keep running until I reach Beechy. I drop to my knees beside him, feeling his wrist for a pulse. There’s nothing.
Around the room, the fighting is letting up. Mal and one of the Core soldiers hold the other three Developers—Marshall, Talbin, and William—at gunpoint. There are a lot of bodies amid the smoke. I look frantically for Logan and find him in the corner of the room with Skylar. They’re both crouching over the Tessar, who seems to have been wounded. There’s a gun in Logan’s hand he must’ve stolen from someone. He’s alive, and that’s all that matters.
Beechy is dead. But I can’t think about that right now. Not until this is over.
I grip my gun as tightly as I can and get back on my feet, turning toward Commander Charlie. He’s leaning against a table with his back to me, looking as if he’s struggling to breathe. The serum is still taking hold.
“Charlie,” I say, and he turns around without hesitation. His eyes are becoming murky, hazy.
The sounds coming through the door leading out of the bridge tell me the war is still going on outside. Vul and humans are decimating one another. And for what? For old, ruthless tyrants who don’t care about any of them.
“Call off the detonation and tell everyone to stop fighting,” I say. “You’ve lost. It’s time to surrender.”
I hope Fred hasn’t set off the bomb yet. I hope we’re not too late.
For a moment Charlie seems to be struggling with himself, fighting against the serum’s hold. But it’s too much for him. His hand moves to his ear-comm and he switches it on, and swiftly gives the command: “Colonel Fred, abandon your previous orders. Do not detonate the device. I repeat, do not detonate the device. We have lost and we are surrendering to the Mardenites.”
I wait until I hear the buzz of a reply through his comm. “Does he copy?” I ask.
“He copies.” Charlie’s voice is monotone, lifeless. “He will return to the Core.”
“Now, tell the rest of your people to surrender.”
Like a bot, Charlie moves to the wall to the left of the hologram table and flips a switch on one of the control panels. His voice spills out of a speaker in the ceiling. Everyone still alive in the Core will be able to hear him.
“Core soldiers, surrender your weapons,” he says. “The war is over.”
He flips the switch again and turns back to me. The color in his eyes is almost completely gone, replaced by the serum he created with my help and Logan’s. This is what he would’ve turned me into, if he’d had his way.
I could let him live like this, trapped in his own body. An endless torture. But I’d always worry he’d find a way to escape from it. And I’ve lived too long in a world where I feared him.
No longer.
“Commander Charlie, you are charged with treason,” I say, and squeeze the trigger.