19
VASILY HAD ESCAPED. WITH THE looming threat of his father’s disappointment hanging over his head, Brendan dispatched several units to find him, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. He’d escaped through the tiniest cracks in the Sect’s defense structure with the help of several agents who were now missing. Of course, no one was more displeased than the Surgeon, who’d lost one of his favorite toys. It was everything Cheryl could do to keep this mess a secret from the press.
Meanwhile, I had other worries.
“Okay, Maia, we’re all done.” The technician spoke through an intercom from the other side of the glass. With an angry mechanical whir, my flat white bed slid back out of the hole in the CT scanner.
“Did you find anything?” I asked as one tech came into the room and started removing the straps from my neck.
“Well,” she said, helping me up, “you know, we need to go over it further—”
“Please.” It was cold in the room and the hospital gown was too big, so I felt the chill brush up my bare legs. I reached out with the arm they’d punctured with an IV line and tugged at his shirt. “Can’t you tell me anything? I need to know what they did to me.”
He turned to the other technicians waiting behind the glass.
“Well, in vivo CT molecular imaging can only give us so much,” one said through the intercom, “but from what we can see so far, our targeted probes did detect the presence of a similar molecular structure to the one in the dead soldier you found in the desert.”
The dead soldier. Philip. Thinking back, he’d said someone was forcing him to do something . . . before he broke free and ran to the hideout. He wanted us to find him. To help Alex, maybe the others too . . .
“Pete and Dot told us it was a nano . . . thing,” I said. “Nanomachine?”
Jessie had it at the base of her neck. She said it hid her frequency for as long as it didn’t degrade. That guy we’d found in the desert. Once his degraded, the Sect could track him.
But maybe that was what he wanted. A defector.
I rubbed the back of my neck. “So it wasn’t the neck-band Dot and Pete gave me. . . . Wait!” My head snapped up. “Mellie. Mellie injected me with something before I put it on. We should question them!”
“They’re questioning Mellie Beasley as we speak, as well as other personnel. Though Beasley is cooperating.”
“What about Dot and Pete?”
“Those two fled not long after Vasily escaped.”
My stomach gave a painful little lurch. You didn’t run unless you were guilty. The band was a front—even if it’d done its job in dulling Natalya’s consciousness, it still gave them a convenient excuse to plant something in me. Not to mention Mellie was the one who’d done the deed, so even if she was cooperating with the Sect, I wasn’t ready to believe she was innocent. Dot, Pete, and Mellie . . . They’d seemed nice too. . . .
“The good news is that it’s mostly degraded—so degraded it’s lost its functionality,” said the tech. “That’s why we couldn’t quite tell what it was at first.”
Jessie had called it an earlier, weaker model; she knew its sway over me wouldn’t hold for long. That’s why she was so desperate. She only had the one shot, all or nothing, but they couldn’t get me. The combined strength of Natalya and me had shorted out the machine’s effects before it was too late. I guess the two of us made a pretty powerful team. That is, when she wasn’t trying to hijack my body. I’d buried her deep now, very deep. She was too weak after her last stint to try anything again. But how long would that last?
“Jessie used a phone that sent out a signal,” I said. “It sounded like radio interference.”
“That could have been the trigger. We have to let R & D figure that out, except they’re under investigation now too.” The tech sighed. “This whole thing is a mess.”
“That seems to be the common theme these days,” I said, getting off the table.
At least my neck was free and a little less sore. But I couldn’t relax.
Mind control. The very thought made me shake my head, incredulous. Well, they’d tried and failed, but I knew that wasn’t the end of it. I could only imagine what they’d come up with next, especially after regrouping with Vasily. I was supposed to meet Naomi in a few days. But in the meantime, I had to be prepared.
I needed the other girls.
• • •
“Sounds like a rough night,” said Chae Rin back at the dorm. She was still sweaty from training, sitting cross-legged on the chair at the right side of the coffee table. Perhaps in a show of support, she slid the open pizza box on the table closer to me. “Now I feel kind of guilty for having such an easy time during that boring mission in Glasgow. Have you even eaten since you got back? Here, have some. It’s only like a day or two old; it’s still good.”
Everyone was treating me rather nicely after they’d heard what had happened to me. I didn’t hate it. It was like being with friends. I had a feeling that Chae Rin, at least, would throw something at me if I ever used the term out loud, but it was a comforting thought nonetheless. A team. Friends. Didn’t have much of those even before my family died. It was nice to finally gain some after I’d lost so much already.
Why was that? Why was it that no matter what I did, I just end up losing something else?
“Maia, you okay?” Lake said, and the weight of her body plopping onto the long couch next to me snapped me back to reality. “You don’t look too good.”
“I’m okay,” I lied. “As okay as I’ll ever be.”
Lake grimaced at the stale pepperoni and flipped the lid closed. “How’s Rhys?”
I tried to pass off my flinch as an awkward stretch. “He’s at the hospital.”
“You didn’t go see him?”
I did, once. Just like all those other times, I went while he was sleeping because after that night, I couldn’t handle facing him. Couldn’t bear it.
That night in Blackwell’s courtyard had turned my hopeless suspicions to reality. I thought once I knew for sure, everything would become clear. But everything was worse.
I thought of Belle, my insides churning. What do I do?
He’d begged me not to hate him, just as he’d begged Natalya for death. There had to be more to the story. Why did I want to believe that so badly?
Ignoring Lake’s question, I rubbed the back of my neck. “Is my neck still red?”
Lake rolled onto her knees and brushed my hair back to check. “Yeah, a bit. They really did a number on you, didn’t they?” She plopped back down. “I can’t believe Pete’s a bad guy,” she said, sinking deeper into the couch. “He’s a bit odd, but really quite good-looking. I was even thinking of asking him out after the TVCAs. Oh, well.” She started fiddling with her phone.
“We don’t know for sure,” I said. “The investigation’s still ongoing.”
I flinched, surprised when Belle suddenly placed a bowl of fresh fruit in front of me, pushing away the pizza box.
“Right now we have to treat everyone as a potential enemy,” she said, her long French braid sliding across her back as she took the chair opposite Chae Rin. “You said that this Jessie Stone is one of Saul’s soldiers. We haven’t located the others from Fisk-Hoffman, but we have to assume they’re like her. And there could be more.”
It took me a while to answer her. I wiped my clammy hands on my legs but didn’t know where to put them. Quickly, silently, I buried the thought of Rhys deep within me. Only then could I answer.
“There are two from that facility still unaccounted for.” Two left like Philip and Jessie. And Alex. The memory of his dead, rotting face hitting the pavement still made me shudder. “But they’re not Effigies. Right?”
“Dot said they found an entire ‘electromechanical network’ down the spine of that dead guy. The first dead guy,” Chae Rin clarified. “Philip. Not the undead one that tried to eat you.”
“Got that.” I plucked a cherry out of the mix of fruit and tossed it into my mouth.
“Dot and Pete definitely made it seem like we could be looking at the possibility of something man-made,” Chae Rin continued. “And, hey, it’s not like there wouldn’t be a basis for it. Some people out there already think Effigies are government experiments. There was a whole special about it on the Conspiracy Channel.”
Lake snorted as she tapped away at her phone. “Watching the Conspiracy Channel. Sounds like a rousing Saturday night.”
“It’s interesting, okay?” Chae Rin glared at her. “Anyway, people have been trying to figure us out and re-create what we can do for so long. You heard about all that illegal research in Europe decades ago, right?”
“Wait.” I sat up, my mouth sticky and sweet as I chewed another cherry. “When I was under control, Jessie mentioned someone. Grune . . .” I frowned, waiting for the name to come to me. “Grundewall. No, Grunewald? She said the mind-control tech was his. Ever heard the name?”
“Grunewald.” Belle folded her arms. “No. I don’t recognize it.”
Grunewald. Was he a scientist working for Saul? Was he part of the Sect?
“Ugh, this is confusing.” Lake flopped sideways, kicking her bare legs onto my lap and curling her toes as she rested her head against the arm of the couch. A bit intrusive, but I didn’t mind. It was the kind of familiarity that came more easily with her. “What about the Castor Volume? Did you find anything about the symbol that Natalya drew?”
“No, but I didn’t have the chance to search long.”
“Of course not.” Groaning, Chae Rin jumped to her feet and wandered behind the couch.
“We have this.” From her pocket, Belle slipped out the white flash drive she’d pried out of Philip’s hand. “I’ve been trying to fiddle with it with no luck.”
“We just have to find a way to crack it, then,” Lake said. “Belle said it herself: We have to get ahead of Saul, right?”
“Yeah? How?” challenged Chae Rin from behind the couch. “None of us can do it. We’re not about to take this to the Sect after they tried to fry Maia’s brain. And if I’m being perfectly honest, I don’t even think we’re safe here anymore. We need to run the next chance we get.”
“Run where?” Lake mumbled.
Belle turned the drive around in her hand, considering it carefully. “We have to give this to someone. Someone we can trust.”
“No shit,” said Chae Rin. “But do you know anyone who can do it?”
“Wait, yes!” I stood up so fast, Lake’s legs slid off my lap, her left heel banging the coffee table. “Sorry,” I said when she started cursing in pain, “but I know. I know someone!”
I wasn’t sure why I didn’t think of it before. Just thinking of him now, of the possibility of seeing him again, made the weight on my chest lighten for the first time in what felt like forever.
“Uncle Nathan!” I said.
Chae Rin cocked her head to the side. “Who?”
“My uncle Nathan! He’s supersmart. He’s one of those tech geniuses that work New York’s Needle at the MDCC—the Municipal Defense Control Center.” I said all this with a kind of breathless urgency that sent the words flying out of my mouth in rapid-fire succession. “Hell, he chose to work at the MDCC. He had people in the government practically throwing jobs at him, but he said he wanted to stay in New York and ‘take it easy.’ If anyone can do it, he—ow!”
Chae Rin slapped me in the back of my head. And just when my neck was starting to heal. “Okay, you were waiting until now to mention this?”
“Well, I’ve had a lot on my mind,” I answered, my teeth clenched. “Besides, with Sibyl’s family ban, I didn’t think I could contact him even if I wanted to. I mean, despite everything, I’m technically still in the middle of my training period.”
“Well, Sibyl’s not the director anymore,” Lake said.
“No . . . ,” I said. “No, she’s not.”
It’d been two months since I’d seen him: my only tether to the life I used to live before monsters swallowed it whole. After everything that’d happened, if I could find any excuse to see him—it didn’t matter what it was.
But soon the corners of my mouth sagged, my hands slowly lowering. The thought of Uncle Nathan filled me with the kind of hope that these days wasn’t easy to come by. There was only one problem.
“If we walk right up to him and hand him this flash drive, we’re putting him in danger,” I said, sitting back down. “I mean, let’s say he cracks it and the Sect or Saul or whoever finds out. What if it traces back to him? Saul is after me. What if I lead him right to my uncle?”
“Well, obviously we can’t just walk up to your place and hand it to him.” Chae Rin thought. “We have to meet him somewhere secret.”
A rendezvous at a secret location. Well, Uncle Nathan was obsessed with spy movies, so I suspected he wouldn’t mind temporarily living in one.
With one sharp jolt, Lake sat up from her slouch and excitedly shook my shoulders. “The TVCAs! They’re this Sunday!”
“Oh god, not that again.” Chae Rin rolled her eyes. “Yes, Lake, we still remember, and sadly, we’re still going. But we’re kind of in the middle of talking about something here.”
“Yeah, and I’m talking about the same thing.” Lake flashed us her phone displaying the main website of the awards show. The sleek black-and-red logo popped out at me first, but underneath it in white letters: 299 QUEEN STREET WEST, TORONTO, ONTARIO. “I’ll ask my agent to get him a reservation at our hotel under a pseudonym. He’s too busy ironing out the details to my single promo to ask questions one way or another. He won’t think twice about it.”
“Thank you, Lake,” I said. “Really.”
I looked at my phone lying flat on the table, wedged between the pizza box and the bowl of fruit. All the times I thought about calling his number, knowing that he wouldn’t pick up under the Sect’s orders. Sibyl had said it was supposed to make me stronger, more focused. But right now, I needed him.
I just had to make sure I didn’t get him killed in the process.