“Scrub?”
Adjutant opened the door again, gesturing for me to precede him. “Erased,” he explained. “Wiped. The only way to ensure no lingering, well-hidden program remains hidden inside is to completely destroy its memory and replace it with entirely new programming.”
I let Adjutant propel me down the hallway, too sick with confusion and grief to resist. My eyes blurred, and this time the only halos I saw were from the tears fighting to escape.
It was just a machine, I told myself angrily, trying to pull myself together. What does it matter? It had no feelings. No soul to destroy. It served its purpose.
But it didn’t help. Every time I glanced up, the thing that had once been Nix was flying steadily, its white eyes staring straight ahead, its wings a monotonous blur. There was no joy in its flight. No curiosity, no engagement. All it did was what it was told to do.
I longed to reach out and touch it, see if somehow giving it a jolt of my power would jar it back to life. But I knew it didn’t work like that. Everything that had been Nix was gone—all that was left was its shell, formatted with new orders. But even though it didn’t have the brilliant blue eyes, the tendency to shapeshift when startled, the expressive buzzing and clicking of its wings when irritated—it was hard not to see it as my Nix.
And yet—why hadn’t it alerted Adjutant to the fact that I had possession of my full faculties? I felt certain that if I wanted to, I could have swatted it out of the sky with a second thought. Perhaps it couldn’t sense me the way it sensed ordinary Renewables?
Perhaps it had chosen not to alert Adjutant.
I closed my eyes for half a second. Wishful thinking, I knew. Nix is gone, I told myself. Stay focused. We were going to see Prometheus. I was supposed to be there with Oren and Wesley to back me up, but I had no chance of finding them now, even if I could overpower Adjutant and Nix. The pixie, I corrected myself, struggling to change the way I saw it.
So I would have to face Prometheus on my own. Maybe it was better that way. If I ended up needing power and leveling the entire room, then at least Wesley would be spared. I hoped that, wherever they were, they weren’t being mistreated. Especially Wesley—if they’d discovered his treachery, there was no telling what might be happening to him.
And if they discovered Oren’s secret? There was nothing to stop them from killing him as soon as they found out what he was.
I clenched my jaw. Focus. The only way I could help them now was to take out Prometheus himself. If I could manage that much, then someone would be able to rescue them when the resistance took over CeePo. And they’d find Basil too, if he’d defied the odds and managed to survive in Prometheus’s holding cells for this long.
I tried to imagine seeing him, but I couldn’t think past the confrontation with Prometheus. Surely the instant the Eagles realized I’d done something to their leader, they would kill me. In my mind there was no time after that. Just him, and me, and the confrontation . . . and then nothing.
I tried not to think about what that meant for me. I paid only enough attention to walking as I needed to avoid falling on my face. The rest of my focus I turned inward, running through Wesley’s meditation exercises in fits and starts, trying to calm the too-fast beating of my heart. I needed control. I needed deliberation.
Dimly I was aware of riding in the elevator again, although I couldn’t tell whether we were going up or down. Adjutant spoke now and then, but didn’t press me when I said nothing in reply. More hallways. Always more hallways—whether it was here, or the Institute, or even the world in the walls that had adopted me. It was always corridor after twisted corridor, never the straightest path.
Eventually we reached a pair of intricately carved bronze doors that were swung outwards, framing an archway. Through it was a large cavern with throngs of people inside. The crowd wasn’t as dense as the one outside, and it was comprised of much more richly dressed citizens. My dazed eyes picked out Eagles here and there, monitoring the crowd.
The crowd parted as Adjutant half-pushed, half-dragged me forward. Conversations everywhere began to die as heads turned toward us. As the people drew back, giving us more space, I was able to see the room more clearly. It was some sort of audience chamber, culminating in a series of chairs on a raised dais at the far end. Most were simple, but one—the one in the center—stood out like a throne. Although it was not significantly larger or more ornate than the others, it was clearly Prometheus’s chair. Made of blown glass and copper, it shone like a beacon.
The moment I saw the glass chair I grew lightheaded, dizzy. There was magic here, more than I had even after the experience with Adjutant’s talon.
A number of men stood at the far end of the room, and I turned my dazzled eyes toward them. Although he was facing away from me, I recognized him instantly. All the others arranged around him in a semicircle deferred to him with their body language.
And when I looked at him with the Sight, I nearly lost my balance. He wasn’t a Renewable, and he wasn’t a shadow. But he wasn’t an ordinary human either. I could see a dazzling tracery of violet and gold magic mottling his skin, surging and roiling as though some fiery disease was consuming him.
I stopped short a few yards away, surprising Adjutant into releasing me. His voice buzzed in my ear, but I paid no attention to him. Here was the man I’d come for, standing within easy reach.
I had no way of knowing whether Olivia was carrying out her end of the plan. What if, after everything that had happened with Nina, she decided she’d rather see me captured and killed here? She wouldn’t be the first friend to betray me.
If she was true to her word, the Eagles would be leaving here to go deal with the rebel uprising happening outside in the courtyard. If she’d turned back, though, I’d be left on my own in a room full of soldiers with all their weapons trained on me.
“Prometheus,” called Adjutant, clearing his throat. “The girl, the one you asked to see.”
The man on the dais straightened, saying something to his advisors, dismissing them with a wave of his hand.
Now or never. I reached for the power this place had unwittingly given to me and gathered it to strike.
Prometheus somehow sensed me, and with movements so quick my dazzled eyes struggled to follow, he ducked to the side and leaped for the glass chair. The moment his hand touched it, brilliant power flared all around him. He looked as though he were on fire, blinding me.
I cried out and jerked away from my second sight. And froze.
It was Caesar.
My mind raced. It couldn’t be Caesar—I’d left Caesar behind at the foot of our fire escape, broken and bloodied. He was in the city; he couldn’t have come after me. He couldn’t be here—he couldn’t be Prometheus. Prometheus was here years before I ever even left my home.
But there was his nose, his stern jaw, the thick dark stubble that shaded his face when he skipped a shave. There were his brown eyes, hard and cold.
And then Prometheus saw me, too. His expression went from one filled with icy fury to one of confusion. Then recognition flared all across his features—confusion turned to horror. “No,” he whispered.
And then I knew who it was. It wasn’t Caesar. Of course not—because that was impossible. Caesar was still at home.
It was my other brother. It was Basil.
PART III
CHAPTER 23
