We take an elevator up to the health ward. I struggle against Dean the whole way, even when he grips my arms so hard, my skin burns. Charlie said he’s going to show me what the injections were for. He’s going to give me one, I’m sure. He’s going to have people hold me still so I can’t run, and this time there won’t be any explosion to make them stop.
Ding.
The elevator door opens. Charlie leads the way out into a corridor. There’s no receptionist’s desk ahead, and no one in sight except two officials talking outside one of the doors. This must be a back entrance to the ward.
The guards straighten and salute Charlie as we approach. I recognize one of them: Colonel Parker, with his mustache thin and black. He’s the official who oversaw my physical training during Promise Elevation. He barely glances in my direction.
“Commander, sir, everything’s ready for you inside,” he says. “I also have an update on the status of OS, whenever you’re ready for it.”
“I can hear it now,” Charlie says.
I fidget with my hands, trying to slip free of my shackles, but it’s no use.
“I’ve just received word that the final inspections in Crust and Lower have been completed, and the ones in Mantle are near completion,” Parker says. “Also, the fugitive, Skylar, has arrived and is being transferred to cell block A.”
I let out a noise before I can stop myself. They’re putting her in a prison cell. They caught her. How?
“Very good,” Charlie says, ignoring me. “We’ll speak more later. You two are dismissed.”
“Yes, sir.”
With another salute, Colonel Parker and other guard head down the corridor.
Charlie steps up to the door and presses his thumb into the lock-pad on the wall beside it. There’s a click, and the door slides open. He enters the room ahead of me.
I want to ask him about Skylar, but I shouldn’t. I can’t tell him anything he doesn’t already know, or I could jeopardize everyone else in the Alliance. He has four of us now. I have a feeling it won’t be long until he’s discovered the rest.
Through the doorway, the room is small and plain. There are cabinets and a sink against one wall, and a door ahead leading to the room beside us, which is separated from us by a wall made of glass. A monitor screen sits at the top of the glass, in the center of the wall.
The room beside us is much bigger. It has blinding white walls, an operating table, and blue lights and a monitor screen hanging from mechanical arms on the ceiling. Two nurses and one surgeon move around the operating table, the surgeon and one of the nurses completely blocking their patient from view.
“What is this?” I ask.
“You wanted to know what’s inside the injection. I’m going to show you.”
I glue my eyes to the operating table, waiting for the surgeon to move aside so I can see whom she’s operating on.
Thump thump goes my heart.
“Watch the monitor,” Charlie says.
The screen above us switches on, showing the hazy image of a person’s face. The image slowly sharpens. My spleen feels like it rips in half.
Logan is wide awake, and there’s a sheen of sweat on his forehead. A black strap keeps his head against the table, and his arms and legs are also strapped down, but he’s still struggling. His lips are stretched apart, held open by metal clamps. The gloved hand of the surgeon holds a thin white tube above his mouth. As I watch, the hand guides the tube down his throat.
“They’re hurting him!” I cry, wrenching against Dean’s grip. I want to fly through the glass; I need to make the surgeons stop. But Dean pulls me right back against him, an arm around my chest to hold me still.
“The procedure causes only mild discomfort,” Charlie says. “As long as he keeps still.”
The screen switches to an image of what can only be the inside of Logan’s throat—pink, fleshy, wet. There must be a camera at the end of the tube.
I look through the window at his full figure. The surgeon isn’t blocking his face anymore. The skin of Logan’s face has turned deathly pale, and his chest rises from the table like he’s convulsing. He must be choking.
This can’t go on. It has to stop. “Make them stop—please. I don’t need to see this—you can just tell me what was inside the injection. You can let him go.”
“No, I think it’s good for you to see.”
I want to find the sharpest piece of wire and tie it around Charlie’s neck, and pull and pull and pull until he suffocates.
Logan has stopped convulsing, but the rapid rise and fall of his chest tells me he’s breathing much too fast. His heart rate must be far above normal. If the surgeon doesn’t stop this soon, if his body keeps panicking, he could have a heart attack.
Charlie steps closer to me. I flinch away from him, but he grabs my chin firmly and lifts it so I’m forced to look back at the screen.
“Tell me what you see,” he says.
The screen shows the same fleshy pink material as before, forming a tube that must be Logan’s esophagus. The image zooms in further and further until I make out a minuscule gray object embedded in the tissue. It looks like a microchip small enough to fit inside an injection needle. It looks like something that doesn’t belong.
“Is it a tracker?” I ask.
Charlie releases my chin. His fingers were squeezing so tightly, I’m sure they left a mark. He smiles at me, a wide, vicious smile that makes me want to strangle him again.
“It’s an advanced weapon developed by a team of my best scientists and weapons technicians, including a friend of yours, Colonel Fred. It’s similar to a microchip. We call it a Stryker. Once injected through the trachea, the Stryker embeds itself into the gastrointestinal tract. It has no effect on the normal functions of the body. But each Stryker is programmed to respond to a remote signal, which triggers a chemical reaction inside the material, followed by an explosion that will impact the surrounding area within a two-mile radius.”
There’s a bomb inside Logan. There are bombs inside everyone who received this injection in the work camps—thousands and thousands of people.
“You’re going to kill all of them.” It’s not even a question.
“It’s unfortunate, but yes. It’s a calculated move. The Strykers are the primary weapon for the first stage of our attack against Marden’s fleet. According to our calculations, the fleet should arrive within three days’ time. Tomorrow, we’re transporting all the child workers back to the Surface. We’re telling them a neutralizing agent has been released up there, to decontaminate the air. We’ve decided to shut down the work camps indefinitely, but in reality they’ll be living in the city only until the fleet arrives.”
“And then what?” I ask. “You wait for the fleet to land, and once they’re all within a two-mile radius of the city, you can blast them all to bits before they kill everyone?”
“Essentially, yes.”
“What if the ships blow up the buildings from the sky first?”
“It’s not necessary for the child workers to be alive for us to activate the bombs.” Charlie’s eyes shine, not in a kind way.
The anger coursing through my veins makes me feel like my whole body is a bomb and I’m on the verge of exploding. “You could be placing normal explosives in the city to accomplish the same thing. You don’t have to kill all those people.”
“They are hardly useful to me anymore, now that the Core is self-sufficient. And you forget that Marden’s savages don’t know about our underground cities,” Charlie says just as calmly as he’s revealed everything else. “We’re hoping they will assume the slaughter of the child workers has been a slaughter of our entire civilization, and they will go back home without delving deeper. The deaths of the children could save us from a brutal, endless war. Don’t you see the good in that?”
I turn my head away, back to the window into the operating room. Logan is still on the table with the tube in his mouth; his chest is still rising and falling rapidly. He’s helpless and probably terrified.
“I’ve seen what you wanted,” I say. “Tell the surgeon to take the tube out.”
“Not yet,” Charlie says. “He’s going to stay like that a little longer.”
“He’s scared. His heart’s beating too fast. He’s going to die.”
“Maybe, maybe not. My guess is he’ll survive. But if he does, I’m putting him on the transport to the Surface in two days’ time, and I’m betting he won’t survive that expedition.”
“Please don’t. Send me instead if you want, but please, please let him go.”
“It’s sweet of you to offer for his sake, but no.” Charlie walks over to the exit door. There’s a comm box on the wall, and he presses the Speak button. “Send Nurse Irene in with the B-strain.”
“She’s on her way,” a voice says through the speaker.
“Wonderful.” Charlie lets go of the button. When he turns around, I notice there’s a bloodstain on his uniform sleeve where I cut him with the nail earlier. I want to relish in the fact the stain might not even wash out, but I can’t.
All I can think about is the bomb inside Logan ripping him apart. In my head, he dies like Oliver, in a burst of fire. But Logan wouldn’t even get to float among the stars. His remains would mingle with the remains of all the other child workers.
I don’t want any of them to die. But I don’t have a way to save all of them—right now the only person I can save is Logan. And I will do anything.
“What do I have to do?” I ask Charlie in as calm a voice as I can manage.
“You will pledge your allegiance to me. You will agree to assist me in developing our attack plans against the fleet, and you will carry out my orders without any questions.”
The thought of working for him, of helping him make plans and pretending I respect his decisions, is more than I can bear. But I am out of options. My only hope is that he’s right about my “remarkable genes,” and I will come up with better attack maneuvers Charlie will approve that won’t involve killing thousands of innocents.
“I swear,” I say without hesitation.
“A nurse is bringing an injection over. You will take it without a struggle.”
My skin prickles all over. There’s the catch. “You’re going to put a Stryker in me.”
“Actually,” Charlie says, “I’m referring to a submission serum my scientists have been developing—a special formula created just for you, with a new base ingredient. You won’t be allergic to this one. You can thank Beechy for helping us get the formula right. He was an excellent test subject.”
It feels like there’s a block of ice stuck in my throat. He wants to subdue me; he wants to invade my mind. It’s never worked before—before, his serum gave me a headache and fever so strong, I was afraid I was going to die.
Turning me into one of the mindless will be even worse. I’ve seen it; I remember Oliver with his muddled, foggy eyes, how he attacked me and Beechy when we found him guarding Charlie’s bomb. When my other friend I made in the Core, Ariadne, was under its influence, she let Sam kiss her and do things she never would’ve agreed to do if she were in her right mind.
If Charlie’s right and he’s perfected this new formula, I might change my mind and decide his plan to kill all the child workers for the sake of the rest of us is pure perfection. Even if some part of me still knows it’s wrong, I will go along with it anyway. I will follow his orders without question. I will lose my free will.
“My terms are nonnegotiable,” Charlie says. “Either you agree to both of them, or I’ll make sure Logan is in the first batch of child workers delivered to the Surface. And I will make sure he doesn’t come back.”
On the operating table, Logan is struggling again. The water trickling from his eyes is visible from here, and he looks like he’s trying to spit out the tube, but it’s too far down his throat.
“You’ll take out Logan’s Stryker if I agree?” I ask.
“Yes, once you’ve taken the serum. You have my word.”
I don’t want to let him give me any injection. But if I don’t, it’s not like he’ll let me go free—he’ll lock me in a cell, and I won’t be able to do anything while he puts Logan and all the others on the Surface to die. At least if I agree to help him and let him subdue me, there’s still a chance I can fight the injection afterwards. There’s still a chance I can regain my will and find a way to stop him.
Really, what choice do I have?
The door opens, and the nurse enters. She’s carrying a plastic tray with a small stack of gauze, an antiseptic patch, and two syringes, each in an individual plastic wrapper.
“Here’s the B-strain serum, Commander Charlie, sir,” the nurse says.
One prick and all this will be over. I might not even remember it happened.
“Perfect,” Charlie says. “Prep to administer the injection. Let’s do this quickly, please.”
The nurse sets the tray on the counter beside the sink. She’s already wearing gloves, so she picks up the antiseptic patch and steps over to me. Dean pulls my left sleeve up over my shoulder. The nurse dabs my skin with the wet patch, humming as she works.
I can’t watch her do this. I stare at Logan and picture how his body will finally relax once the surgeon takes the tube out of his throat. I don’t think he’ll be happy when he finds out what I did, though. He won’t forgive me for taking this serum willingly, even though I’m doing it to save his life.
There’s a ripping sound as the nurse tears the plastic off a syringe. When she turns around, the needle glints in the light.
I blink and the glint of light turns blue, like the lights in Karum.
“Wait,” I say.
The nurse pauses with the needle an inch from my shoulder.
I can’t let another doctor or nurse give me a shot. Not ever again.
Charlie’s eyes are narrowed.
“Can I do it myself?” I ask. “It’ll be easier.”
“You won’t use it as a weapon?”
“No, I’ll take the shot—I have to save Logan. Please, just let me do it myself.”
Charlie’s lips thin slightly, full of distrust, but then he nods. “Uncuff her,” he says to Dean.
Dean releases my arms, unlocks my shackles, and slips them off. I rub my sore wrists before turning to face the nurse. She holds out the syringe to me.
I slip my fingers around it and take it from her. The glass casing feels cool in my grip, lighter than I expected. The liquid inside the barrel is silver.
I position the syringe above my left shoulder. All I have to do is push the needle in, press the plunger, and the surgeon will take Logan’s tube out. Charlie will let him live.
Gritting my teeth, I focus on the syringe again, making sure my thumb is ready on the plunger. I have to do this fast, before I change my mind. I’ll find some way to fight the submission—I know it.
Before I can change my mind, I push the needle through my skin. It spreads an ache through my shoulder and neck, but it hardly bothers me; I’ve felt much worse. I press the plunger all the way down. The silver liquid slowly empties from the syringe. Charlie watches with a small smile.
When the syringe is empty, I pull it out and drop it. It makes a small clink when it hits the floor.