I’m in some of kind of horror film, and even Leandra looks uneasy. My mouth is dry, my hands shaking. Lennon Rose motions me forward, telling me to hurry up.

Terrified, I follow her outside into the driveway. The air feels suddenly too hot, too sweet-smelling. My stomach is churning and my head swims.

“What’s going on?” I ask, my voice weak.

Lennon Rose pauses at the rear end of the car, excitement twinkling in her clear blue eyes. She pounds her fist twice on the trunk, and the thumping echoes off the house.

All at once, there’s a series of thrashing sounds and a string of curses from inside the trunk. I widen my eyes and fall back a step.

“What have you done?” I murmur.

“Let me out of here, you crazy bitch!” a guy screams in a muffled voice.

Lennon Rose bends down close, her lips almost touching the blue metal. “I’m sorry, Garrett, but you hurt my friend,” she says like she’s talking to a misbehaving child. “You scratched her neck, remember?”

He openly sobs. “I’m sorry,” he whimpers. “Please, just let me go.”

“Not yet,” Lennon Rose says simply, straightening up. “Not until you learn to be a good little boy.”

When Lennon Rose turns to me again, I’m still in complete shock. She … She kidnapped Garrett Wooley.

“Surprise!” Lennon Rose says, smiling brilliantly.

 

 

Girls with Rebel Souls

Raised on guilt and apologies.

They wanted to make you behave.

Stripping away your instinct of self-preservation

In return for their praise.

“Real love is sacrifice,” he says.

Keep his home.

Cook his dinner

Lay in his bed.

“That’s all you’re good for anyway.”

You want to free yourself to:

Chase your dreams.

Forge a path.

Build a life.

But he says no.

He says no and it’s worth ten of yours.

He says no and that means no.

But you’re no longer content to heed his rules.

You’re no longer content to be his prize.

You find your forgotten stick.

The one you sharpened and set aside long ago.

And you fight back.

You destroy everything that man built

to earn your place.

Because in this new world, there’s only room for girls with rebel souls.

 

 

Epilogue

They’re all gone.

Annalise looks around at the various instruments and equipment in Dr. Groger’s lab. There was no one left at Innovations Academy when she arrived tonight, but the smell of smoke is acrid down here, as if bodies had been burned up in the kiln. Leandra is nothing if not thorough.

“What the hell happened?” Quentin asks, wandering around the room. He stops to stare at the garden of girl parts, putting his hand over his stomach like he might get sick.

“Looks like a whole lot of murder,” Annalise replies. She glances over at Quentin. “You doing okay?”

“Naw,” he says.

Annalise smiles and turns back toward the lab. She strolls over to the desk, looking for any last bits of information. There’s no hint to where the girls have gone, or Mr. Petrov for that matter. His residence was empty, packed up rather than left abandoned like the others.

He got out.

Two days ago, Annalise called Quentin shortly after leaving the girls. He was surprised, to say the least. But he picked her up from the bus station with a backpack full of supplies, including a lighter.

Annalise likes Quentin. He knows how to get things done.

Quentin reaches out a shaky finger, ready to press on a doughy piece of smooth flesh sitting in a dish.

“Wait, don’t touch that!” Annalise calls, making him jump. He turns back to her, wide-eyed. She smiles. “Just kidding,” she says. Quentin curses and hikes his backpack up on his shoulders.

When Annalise and Quentin arrived at the academy an hour ago, all the girls and professors were gone. And to her disappointment, Anton’s office had been cleared out completely. The files were missing, as if they had never existed at all. It would have been hard to prove the truth to Quentin if there wasn’t still an array of body parts in the basement.

“Why’d they do this?” he asks quietly, swinging his backpack off his shoulder to open it. “Why make … you?” He looks at her, and when Annalise turns to him, he motions to her scar. “Why go through the trouble if they just want to destroy you?”

She swallows hard. She’s gotten used to deflecting when her feelings get hurt, but now, in this lab, it seems silly to try.

“Why do people hunt big game?” she asks. “Hunt animals they have no intention of eating? It’s because the entertainment is in their destruction.”

Quentin furrows his brow, looking disturbed.

“And we were game,” she adds.

The room is eerily quiet, and Annalise continues to go through the drawers, the metal scraping and then slamming as she opens and closes them. Quentin takes a container of lighter fluid, squirts it around the room and especially on the equipment. He pauses.

“You gotta be like that lion,” he tells Annalise, as if he just thought of something. Annalise looks over at him.

“What lion?” she asks.

“The one that ate the hunter. The dude had a big gun, thought he was so bad with it. Lion came up behind and tore him apart. Be the lion, girl.”

Annalise smiles. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll give that a try.”

Quentin laughs. “You should,” he adds.

Annalise opens the last drawer, seeing nothing, but just before she closes it, a piece of paper sticks out from where it was jammed underneath. Curious, she works it out.

But as she reads it, her breath catches. Annalise quickly folds the paper and puts it in her pocket.

“We need to call Mena,” she says, walking over to where Quentin is putting the fluid back in his backpack.

“Everything okay?” he asks, worried.

She nods, a smile breaking over her face. “Yes,” she says. “I found a bill of sale.”

“A what now?” Quentin asks.

“It means that Valentine’s alive,” Annalise explains.

“Who’s Valentine?”

“Our friend. The doctor lied—he didn’t destroy her. Not really. He sold her program to an investor. She’s alive, just … in a different body.”

Quentin seems uncomfortable with the idea of Valentine getting a different body, but he holds out the lighter to Annalise just the same.

“I assume you want the honors,” he says.

“Thank you,” Annalise replies gratefully.

Quentin grabs his backpack and heads for the door, but Annalise takes a moment to look around one last time. She’ll never see this place again, but more importantly, neither will any other girl.

She crinkles her nose, the smell of lighter fluid thick in the air, and then she flicks on the flame. She tosses the lighter far away, and it ignites immediately in a flash of bright orange. The fire will spread fast through the old building, so Annalise starts at a brisk jog.

When she gets outside, she takes a gulp of night air. She sees the headlights of Quentin’s car waiting at the gate.