Imagine Me

Terror.

“You know my name,” he says softly. “You’ve always known me, love. I’ve always known you. And I’m so—I’m so desperately in love with you—”

The pain begins in my ears.

It collects, expanding, pressure building to a peak so acute it transforms, sharpening into a torture that stops my heart.

First I go deaf, stiff. Second I go blind, slack.

Third, my heart restarts.

I come back to life with a sudden, terrifying inhalation that nearly chokes me, blood rushing to my ears, my eyes, leaking from my nose. I taste it, taste my own blood in my mouth as I begin to understand: there is something inside of me. A poison. A violence. Something wrong something wrong something wrong

And then, as if from miles away, I hear myself scream.

There’s cold tile under my knees, rough grout pressing into my knuckles. I scream into the silence, power building power, electricity charging my blood. My mind is separating from itself, trying to identify the poison, this parasite residing inside of me.

I have to kill it.

I scream, forcing my own energy inward, screaming until the explosive energy building inside of me ruptures my eardrums. I scream until I feel the blood drip from my ears and down my neck, I scream until the lights in the laboratory begin to pop and break. I scream until my teeth bleed, until the floor fissures beneath my feet, until the skin at my knees begins to crack. I scream until the monster inside of me begins to die.

And only then—

Only when I’m certain I’ve killed some small part of my own self do I finally collapse.

I’m choking, coughing up blood, my chest heaving from the effort expended. The room swims. Swings around.

I press my forehead to the cold floor and fight back a wave of nausea. And then I feel a familiar, heavy hand against my back. With excruciating slowness, I manage to lift my head.

A blur of gold appears, disappears before me.

I blink once, twice, and try to push up with my arms but a sharp, searing pain in my wrist nearly blinds me. I look down, examining the strange, hazy sight. I blink again. Ten times more.

Finally, my eyes focus.

The skin inside my right arm has split open. Blood is smeared across my skin, dripping on the floor. From within the fresh wound, a single blue light pulses from a steel, circular body, the edges of which push up against my torn flesh.

With one final effort, I rip the flashing mechanism from my arm, the last vestige of this monster. It drops from my shaking fingers, clatters to the floor.

And this time, when I look up, I see his face.

“Aaron,” I gasp.

He drops to his knees.

He pulls my bleeding body into his arms and I break, I break apart, sobs cracking open my chest. I cry until the pain spirals and peaks, I cry until my head throbs and my eyes swell. I cry, pressing my face against his neck, my fingers digging into his back, desperate for purchase. Proof.

He holds me, silent and steady, gathering my blood and bones against his body even as the tears recede, even when I begin to tremble. He holds me tight as my body shakes, holds me close when the tears start anew, holds me in his arms and strokes my hair and tells me that everything, everything is going to be okay.

KENJI

I was assigned to keep watch outside this door, which, initially, was supposed to be a good thing—assisting in the rescue mission, et cetera—but the longer I wait out here, guarding Nazeera while she hacks the computers keeping the supreme kids in some freaky state of hypersleep, the more things go wrong.

This place is falling apart.

Literally.

The lights in the ceiling are beginning to spark and sputter, the massive staircases are beginning to groan. The huge windows lining either side of this fifty-story building are beginning to crack.

Doctors are running, screaming. Alarms are flashing like crazy, sirens blaring. Some robotic voice is announcing a crisis over the speakers like it’s the most casual thing in the world.

I have no idea what’s happening right now, though if I had to guess, I’d say it had something to do with Emmaline. But I just have to stand here, bracing myself against the door so as not to be accidentally trampled, and wait for whatever is happening to come to an end. The problem is, I don’t know if it’s going to be a happy ending or a sad one—

For anyone.

I haven’t heard anything from Warner since we split up, and I’m trying really, really hard not to think about it. I’m choosing to focus, instead, on the positive things that happened today, like the fact that we managed to kill three supreme commanders—four if you count Evie—and that Nazeera’s genius hacking work was a success, because without her, there’s no way we’d have made much headway at all.

After our sojourn through the vents, Warner and I managed to drop down into the heart of the compound, undetected. It was easier to avoid the cameras once we were in the center of things; the rooms were closer together, and though the higher security areas have more security access points—some of them have fewer cameras. So as long as we avoided certain angles, the cameras didn’t notice us, and with the fake clearance Nazeera built for us, we got through easily. It was because of her that we were in the right place—after having unintentionally killed a super-important scientist—when all the supreme commanders began to swarm.

It was because of her that we were able to take out Ibrahim and Anderson. And it was because of her that Warner is locked up with Robo J somewhere. Honestly, I don’t even know how to feel about it all. I haven’t really allowed myself to think about the fact that J might never come back, that I might never see my best friend again. If I think about it too much, I start feeling like I can’t breathe, and I can’t afford to stop breathing right now. Not yet.

So I try not to think about it.

But Warner—

Warner is either going to come out of this alive and happy, or dead doing something he believed in.

And there’s nothing I can do about it.

The problem is, I haven’t seen him in over an hour, and I have no idea what that means. It could either be really good news or really, really bad. He never shared his plan with me—surprise surprise—so I don’t even know exactly what he’d planned to do to once he got her alone. And even though I know better than to doubt him, I have to admit that there’s a tiny part of me that wonders if he’s even alive right now.

An ancient, earsplitting groan interrupts my thoughts.

I look up, toward the source of the sound, and realize that the ceiling is caving in. The roof is coming apart. The walls are beginning to crumble. The long, circuitous hallways all ring around an interior courtyard within which lives a massive, prehistoric-looking tree. For no reason I can understand, the steel railings around the hallways are beginning to melt apart. I watch in real time as the tree catches fire, flames roaring higher at an astonishing rate. Smoke builds, curling in my direction, already beginning to suffocate the halls, and my heart is racing as I look around, my panic spiking. I start banging on the door, not caring who hears me now.

It’s the end of the fucking world out here.

I’m screaming for Nazeera, begging her to come out, to get out here before it’s too late, and I’m coughing now, smoke catching in my lungs, still hoping desperately that she’ll hear my voice when suddenly, violently—