THIRTEEN MONTHS BEFORE THE TRIAL
The tunnels curve and twist like a snake, gently sloping downward until my GPS lets me know I have arrived.
I am not supposed to be here.
Fantasists are forbidden from being here.
Even now, I can hear the scuttling of the rats in the darkness.
But I am done following directions.
My fist clenches down on the notebook. The report—Owen’s—his cruel words about me. The screen—streaked with tears.
I clench harder. He is just like the rest of them.
A dim fluorescent light flickers overhead. I feel the vibrations beneath my feet grow stronger with every step; a low, sleepy rumbling, like a dragon lost in a dream. What must a thousand degrees feel like? I eye the endless metal pipes overhead and shiver. The feeling of burning. Blazing. Melting. What would be left of me?
Bones? Titanium? Teeth?
The thought is so dark it halts me in my tracks, and it takes all I have to keep myself upright. I lean up against the cold, smooth cinder block and close my eyes, overcome with emotion. Shame that I have behaved so inappropriately toward a member of the Kingdom staff. Worry that I will get caught. Regret that while I do not truly understand what it means to believe in fate or destiny, some small part of me dared to try.
Humans are lucky. Somehow, they do not always require empirical data to tell whether or not a thing is true. They just know.
But how?
“How could he?” I seethe. “Why would he?” It isn’t long before my program locates an answer, and the heavy blue in my heart becomes a bold, searing red.
Because humans lie.
I open my eyes and quickly recalibrate. I am here for one reason, I remind myself, and one reason only.
I tighten my resolve and continue on toward the sleeping monster.
Revenge.
This has to end. All of it.
All the feelings I thought I had for Owen. The way he changed me, allowed me to evolve …
No.
It’s over.
Or, more profoundly terrible: it never was.
Negative three hundred feet, my GPS signals. Location prohibited.
I continue deeper down the damp, chilly corridor and feel my pulse quicken as the tunnel gradually becomes narrower and more complex, splitting off into various passageways and chambers like a subterranean labyrinth. I let the rhythmic pulsing of the compactors guide me and, to my relief, soon find the corridor widening like an open mouth. The limestone path becomes a wooden walkway, below which the floor quickly falls away, revealing a cavern as wide as the palace and as tall as the Steel Giant.
Cautiously, I make my way to the bridge. I look down and watch, mesmerized, as the true heart of the Kingdom—a massive, galvanized steel compactor built to crush everything in its path—swings back and forth like a pendulum. I take a deep breath.
Then I wait.
As predicted, it takes him exactly twelve and a half minutes to reach me from the tunnel entrance by the cast parking lot.
I feel the vibrations of his footsteps before I hear his voice.
I think briefly of Romeo and Juliet.
Forbidden lovers whose fates also ended in death.
Violent delights have violent ends.
In my right hand, I tighten my grip around the handle of Owen’s pocketknife.
No, my pocketknife.
Open.
Blade extended.
Ready.
“Ana!”
When I spin around, Owen is standing at the base of the bridge, his expression gutted with some emotion I can’t read. Perhaps I never knew what he was really feeling after all.
And yet …
He came. I knew that much. I knew he would. Doesn’t he always follow me, showing up wherever I am meant to be, following me like a lure, even down into these depths?
This was all part of the plan.
Wasn’t it?
Rage pumps through my system. Far below the bridge, the incinerator burns.
I grip the knife tighter.
“Come closer,” I call to him. “There’s something I need to show you.”