29
WE ARRIVED BACK IN LONDON in chains. Well, at least they’d given us a bit of hospital time in Prague first. I heard they’d kept me sedated for about twenty-four hours, letting my cylithium levels rise to heal me enough for transportation before inoculating me again. They’d inoculated all of us, so they had nothing to fear while they hauled us through the front gates of the London facility in the back of a transportation van. They gave us the strong stuff. Top-grade.
What could we have done anyway, in front of the crowd of horrified protestors and fans alike begging us for an explanation or else just calling us murderers? The agents kept burlap sacks over our heads so that the news couldn’t capture our faces, but if the Sect truly wanted secrecy, they could have taken us back through one of the secret paths.
Rhys wasn’t with us. Since he was technically an agent of the North American Division, Director Prince had stepped in to negotiate his “freedom” in Prague. The son was to be released into the father’s custody. For Rhys, that was probably worse. But as for us, we were going in the Hole.
Brendan himself led our grim procession through the same path he’d taken me before. Director Prince had apparently flown to London to advise him as they coordinated the Sect’s next steps. I tried to get Brendan’s attention without words, to signal to him that I hadn’t been responsible for the current state of his mother, but there was a wall of agents between us. I saw only a glimpse of his face before they threw me into my cell. I don’t think he meant to show me his confusion, his hurt. But when I grabbed hold of his pants cuff with my hands and spoke Rhys’s name, his expression turned cold.
“The Sect—maybe the people here—they’re responsible for what happened to your mother, not me,” I blurted out. I didn’t care how many agents were glaring down at me with narrowed eyes.
“Yeah,” said Chae Rin, who was fighting with her own group of agents as they tried to shove her into a separate cell. “The Sect’s corrupt, and yet we’re the ones being thrown into jail? What bullshit!”
“Stop,” Belle hissed at us.
We shouldn’t reveal our hand; we shouldn’t let on what we knew. I figured as much, but I needed to get through to someone. Saul’s clock was ticking down and time was almost out. Less than a day left. We couldn’t be locked up in here.
“You’ll be readied for interrogation soon,” Brendan said, his back still facing me. “Save your conspiracy theories for them.”
“Please. You saw Saul’s video, the message he sent all of us. Whatever he has planned is going to happen soon. We need to fight him.” When Brendan didn’t answer, I let out a frustrated cry. “Please! I’m not lying! Ask Rhys. He’ll tell you!”
Brendan jerked his foot out of my grasp. “Rhys,” he said, his voice hoarse and deep. “Rhys is my mother’s maiden name.”
He didn’t look at me when he left. I had to move my hand out of the way to protect my fingers when the agents shut the heavy iron door in my face. Three more such slams echoed against the cold hallway. The four of us were in our cages.
Time ticked away. Minutes. Hours. I was alone and shivering in this cold, tiny room, its walls of red clay different from the deep, blinding white cell Brendan had taken me to—the cell Vasily had been tortured in. Though Brendan had called that an interrogation too. Was that what we were in for?
There was no bed, only a dirty toilet I was never going to touch no matter how many days they locked me in here. The walls were soundproof, so I couldn’t know how the other girls were doing, couldn’t even ask them as I curled up against the wall, wrapping my arms around my knees. Vasily had already promised that Saul’s plan would launch soon. We couldn’t be here.
Hours passed. I didn’t know how many. I had just begun to fall asleep when the door creaked open.
“Howard,” I said. Or tried. My voice scratched painfully against the inside of my throat. I had just enough energy to lift my head. Howard kept his eyes concealed behind a pair of shades; maybe it was better. That way I wouldn’t have to see the distrust in them. In his standard agent black suit and tie, he held a tray of food. Beans, corn, and a slab of meat—who knew what kind?
“Howard,” I whispered just as he approached. “There’s something happening inside the Sect. Howard . . .” When I looked past his body, I could see five other agents, fully armed, including his wife, Eveline. She was in Lake’s room, directly opposite mine, giving her a similar tray of food. From what I could see, Lake looked worse for wear, and when she wiped her face and thanked Eveline, I knew she’d been crying.
“Ask Rhys,” I tried again. “Wh-where is he? If you ask him—”
“Agent Rhys is otherwise disposed,” Howard answered coldly. He didn’t get too close, but he was near enough that I could hear him speak even as he lowered his tone. “On a mission.”
“What mission?”
He looked behind him with a slight shift of his head and knelt down a few steps away. “Director Prince Senior sent him to Oslo.” He placed the tray on the floor. “To help stop Saul.”
The tray clattered against the cold floor. The terrible sound battered my shot senses as I stared up at Howard. “Saul attacked.” The words limped off my tongue.
“It’s none of your concern.”
I launched at him, desperately clinging to his jacket, but with a hand he pushed me back against the wall.
“I said it’s none of your concern,” he said. “In four hours, some people from the R & D department will come down to record your vitals and administer another inoculation. Until then, I suggest you eat. Unless you’re planning on starving yourself in here.”
“Saul’s finally attacked, and you’re keeping your best weapons drugged and locked up in a hole underground,” I whispered just as he turned his back. “Or are you another traitor, Howard?”
Howard didn’t answer.
“If Oslo’s APD went down, then there must be a ton of phantoms already.”
“It hasn’t gone down,” Howard said, so suddenly it gave me a start. “Not yet. It’s the most fortified city on Earth. Maybe that’s why Saul chose it. He’s sending a message.”
Through the door, one agent stared at the two of us with narrowed eyes. “Quiet down in there. Agent Day, if you’re done—”
“I’m done.” Howard got up, dusting off his hands. “Like I said, Finley, this is no longer your concern.” He turned his back. “The only thing you can do now is eat. Eat, Maia.”
Only my own reflection stared back at me from his dark lenses as he turned around one last time. Stroking the stubble on his chin, he left the room, slamming the door behind him.
The food looked sickly and dehydrated, as if it’d come from cans with expiration dates several years past. But my body was weak and my head was throbbing. I needed something. I pulled the tray toward me with a finger and picked up the disposable spoon, the only utensil they’d given me. Saul attacked. Oslo—that was in Norway, wasn’t it? But before, Saul had only attacked cities after their APD had fallen. How in the world did he manage to subdue the most protected metropolis on his own without the help of phantoms?
The food was ash in my mouth. It went down in lumps like coal. I had to do something. We had to figure something out, not stay locked here like rats, but for some here in the Sect, that was obviously the plan.
I prodded the mysterious slab of meat with my spoon—veal, maybe? I’d staved off eating it all this time because it smelled a bit funky, though maybe it was my imagination. I lifted it up to make sure.
Wait, what?
Furrowing my brows in disbelief, I leaned in for a closer look at the device that had been tucked underneath the meat—an earpiece. Dropping my spoon, I plucked it off the tray quickly and examined it. A little tawny-colored piece of plastic shaped to the curvature of the inner ear—it couldn’t have been anything else but one of the Sect’s communication devices, the same I’d used in so many of the missions they’d given me. Howard did this.
After rubbing the grease off carefully, I stuck the device in my ear.
“Hello? Hello?”
“Finally, you’re on.” It was Chae Rin. “I wondered whether she’d ever figure it out.”
“Well, Eveline could have been clearer about it,” Lake said. “I almost ate mine.”
“Lake, are you okay?” I asked because I could hear the weakness in her voice.
“Thanks for asking, love. I think we’ve all been better,” she answered. “Even still, we need to figure a way out of here.”
“They’re coming in four hours.” Belle kept her voice quiet, controlled. “We’ll need help if we’re going to escape.”
“We know.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. It was Eveline’s voice this time.
“That’s why we took the risk.” Howard.
“Howard,” I said, “you—”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re speaking on a secure line. Though—” He stopped to greet someone. My earpiece caught the sound of his footsteps and those of others. He must have been in transit.
“We’re going to have to be careful,” finished Eveline.
“How many of you are there?” Belle asked.
“This is a delicate operation,” she answered. “We had to keep the circle small. But we need to get you out. Saul attacked Oslo only an hour ago. But we didn’t anticipate how he would infiltrate.”
I was almost afraid to ask, but I did anyway. “How?”
“With an army,” Howard said. “Traffickers, gang members, criminals. People on the outskirts with access to powerful military and Sect-grade weaponry.”
Jin was right. Saul really had been attacking and gathering up all those groups.
“Not just them.” It was almost imperceptible, but I could hear Eveline’s breath coming out of her in a shudder. “There was one . . . with powers. That girl, the one we met in the tunnels. There are dead bodies attacking with Saul’s army, and she is the one controlling them.”
“Jessie Stone.” My fingers naturally curled into fists as I spoke her name. “She’s one of the special soldiers helping Saul. We think she was created as part of the second phase of Project X19.”
“Project X19?” Howard repeated.
“Some secret project of doom we’ve been looking into. Saul and part of the Sect are involved. Phase II was called the Silent Children Program. There’re supposed to be two more like Jessie—the rest of the Fisk-Hoffman kids that supposedly died in that fire. Engineered Effigies.”
“They really engineered . . .” Howard caught his words.
“Gabriel and Talia are the names of the other two,” I said. “They could be there too. If you managed to capture one of them, you could interrogate—”
“We have to focus on the chaos in Oslo,” Howard said. “People are already dying, Maia.”
Rhys. My throat closed up as I thought of him struggling in that nightmare thanks to the orders of his father.
“Saul infiltrated the city and took over the defense center,” Howard continued. “It won’t be long until their APD is down. The place is a war zone now, but once the phantoms come in, there won’t be much we can do. We need the real Effigies.”
“And I’m betting that’s exactly why we’ve been locked up here without so much as a word,” Chae Rin said. “Damn it!” I heard the slam from her fist against the wall and the grunt of pain immediately following. “Okay,” she said. “I really need my powers back.”
“We’re working on that. Your next inoculation is coming in just under four hours. Once you cross the four-hour mark, you’ll start to feel your powers return rapidly. There’ll be one, at most two people coming to your cell. Check underneath your tray.”
There was another surface underneath the bottom of the tray. I lifted off the first layer. A small syringe.
“It’ll knock them out temporarily,” Howard said. “But you’ll have to be fast. And you’re only going to have one shot. After that, one of us will tell you where to go.”
We had a plan. In four hours, we’d strike. I just hoped it wouldn’t be too late. Howard and Eveline couldn’t use even a secure connection for too long at the facility when you never knew who could be around the corner. But the girls and I could talk. Belle explained how to hold the syringe while concealing it, which tissue to hit for maximum effect.
“It’s a bit creepy that you know this,” Chae Rin said.
“It was part of my training,” Belle answered, annoyed. “It’s small enough to fit inside your palm. You can use a napkin to hold it.”
“Then what? We force them to take us to Saul?” Lake sounded skeptical. “I don’t see how that would even work.”
I picked up the syringe and inspected it closely, turning it every which way. “Have a little faith, I guess.”
But only one hour had passed when my earpiece picked up the sound of a door opening to one of the cells.
“What’s happening?” I said. “Are you guys—”
“What is it that you want?” I heard Belle ask whoever had entered her room. “My inoculation isn’t scheduled for another three hours.”
“Director Prince Senior’s orders. Your interrogation over the attempted murder of Naomi Prince starts now,” said one agent, and though his voice grew farther away, I could still hear him when he said, “Congratulations. You’re first. Take her to the interrogation cell. And prep her for the Surgeon.”
First I was on my feet. Then I was at the door pounding it with my fists. There was no point; it was soundproof. I knew they couldn’t hear me yell, but Belle could. Her earpiece would have picked it up.
“Belle, fight them! Use the syringe!”
She didn’t. She couldn’t. First, from the sound of their voices, it was clear there were more than two of them. If she attacked, she’d give us all away, and we’d never see the other side of these cells—until it was our turn to be “interrogated.” But I was well aware of how liberally the Princes interpreted that word. And I knew all too well the horrors the Surgeon was capable of.
“Belle, it’s okay!” I cried, and the other two girls agreed with me. “Save yourself!”
“Quiet,” she said suddenly. “You think I can’t take this?”
Her words were followed promptly by a slap to the face. I heard the impact crisp and clear over the comm.
“This one’s got a mouth. The little uppity French bitch,” the agent said. I was sure she’d made them think she was talking to them. She wasn’t.
I kicked the door in frustration as I heard Belle’s tray skid across the floor.
“Take her!”
Belle waited for the agents to leave and the door of the interrogation room to slam behind her. I could hear her earpiece moving, muffling between her fingers, then inside her palm.
“Welcome.” A deep, chilling voice. One I remembered.
It was the last I heard before Belle crushed the earpiece.