“Stop what? Who did this to you?”
His rasps turn into a wet gurgle. His nails claw at my suit. Those eggshell eyes roll back into his skull. Then one last breath wheezes from deep in his throat and he slumps over. Silent. Still.
I choke back a flash of the past… it’s the same thing that happened to Digory. The memory of him lying there in my arms, saying our goodbyes.
This is not some random coincidence. There has to be a connection.
I lunge for the monitor, hoping against hope that I’ll be able test my theory. The terminal is still logged onto the central system. Whoever jabbed the med tech must have snuck up on him while he was entering data, which now gives me access to some of the Establishment’s secrets.
My fingers fly over the keyboard, accessing menus, submenus. But it all might as well be in another language. Projects and names that mean nothing to me. If only I had enough time. There’s a trove of information here that could help me strike strategically at the Establishment’s weakest links, as opposed to the random targets I’ve selected up until now. When I get to an alphabetized list, I begin to scroll down to search for intel about the virus, past the As, Bs, Cs, further and further down the list, my eyes flitting back and forth between the screen and my holotracker, hoping I have enough time to find what I’m looking for and escape before I’m discovered or the building self-destructs.
I’m at the Ss. Only a few more to go…
Two words stop me cold.
Spark, Cole.
My heart surges. All thoughts of the virus are ripped away. As much as I’m thrilled by the prospect of maybe learning my brother’s whereabouts, seeing his name in stark bold-face in an Establishment roster feels like a knife in the gut.
I press the tips of my fingers against the keys, which for some reason feel more resistant to the touch. I press harder and highlight the entry before hitting “enter.”
I hold my breath. The screen goes dark. For a second, I think the connection has been severed.
An image of Cole fades into view, accompanied by a block of text. Key words jump out at me. Brother recruited. Orphaned.
Every muscle in my body tenses. He’s not an orphan. He has me.
I continue skimming, hoping to find some information on how he’s doing, why he’s in the medical research database. And that’s when I see it. Almost near the end. Highlighted in red.
Scheduled for U.I.P. on 12-24.
That’s less than a week away. What the hell does it mean?
The last line in the entry says:
Currently under the tutelage of the Priory.
The Priory—the guardians of the Establishment’s mandated state religion. The ultimate hypocrites. The Priory’s creed might be to serve the Deity by demonstrating compassion for the poor, the sick, and the less fortunate, but their only true masters are the Prime Minister and the corrupt political parasites feeding off her power.
The thought that my brother is being brainwashed by this crazed and sadistic cult—and facing this mysterious U.I.P. procedure by the Establishment—turns my blood into an icebreaker plowing through a glacial wilderness. They won’t have him. I’ll crush every single one of them with my bare hands if I have to. At least now I know where to find him.
Ta Dum! Ta Dum! Ta Dum!
I scramble to inspect the holotracker, which is now displaying a solitary heat signature. Someone’s approaching. Coming down the corridor toward this lab.
I jam my index finger on the scroll key, whizzing through the last of the Ss. But before I make it very far, my finger springs from the keyboard, pausing the entries on the last of the Ts.
Tycho Syndrome—U.I.P.
Tycho?
Digory.
And once again, the same mysterious U.I.P. designation.
Just underneath this entry, there’s another one marked in red:
High Level Classification. Bio-Weapons Division. Infiernos. Containment Lab 5.
The ball of my finger highlights Tycho Syndrome and jabs the enter key once more.
Footsteps shuffle on the grates just outside the lab.
Instead of a static image arising, the screen dissolves into grainy black-and-white video surveillance footage that only takes a moment to register. It’s me. Crouching down beside Digory, holding him in my arms as we’re saying our last goodbyes in the darkened corridors of the Skein, just before I left him there, alone. Just after he sacrificed his life so that I could complete the final Trial and save Cole. Just before we told each other how we felt about one another.
At the time, Cassius said that all the surveillance in that sector was shut off. So where did this video come from?
As Digory and my lips touch onscreen, I can feel my mouth burning with the power of that moment. I brush my forearm against my eyes, trying to wipe away the feeling of violation.
I’m glued to the screen, my emotions asunder. As soon as the footage shows me running off, I watch as three figures converge on Digory. The two burly, sadistic Imposers Styles and Renquist, and—
No. Not him.
Cassius Thorn.
He kneels by Digory. My fingers curl into claws and my skin crawls as I watch him grip Digory’s wrist. He’s listening for a pulse. The bastard’s making sure Digory’s dead. Then Cassius is up and barking orders that I can’t hear. The next thing I know, a medic team moves into camera range and lifts Digory’s body into a hovering, transparent cryogenic tube, the kind used for injured elite and military personnel who have suffered grave injury and are frozen until they can be safely revived at a medical facility. Such as this one.
Cassius had Digory placed in cryo? But why? And does that mean his body’s here?
My heart’s trilling at a million beats a minute.
Oomph!
Something slams into me from behind. The impact shoves me into the monitor. It plummets from its stand and smashes in a shower of glass, sparks, and smoke.
Pain jolts through my shoulder when it smacks into the ground. The holotracker flies from my grip. Then I’m rolling on the floor, locked in a scuffle with a nightmarish, ghost-white form. A set of gloved hands grips my helmet, trying to tear it off my head and expose me to the contaminants polluting this place. I grasp the steel-like fingers, trying to pry them loose as I force my eyes to focus on the face above me.
It’s a boy no more than twelve or thirteen, clad in a rag-tag envirosuit that looks like it’s been patched together from various castoffs. What I can see of his face is as pale as a burial shroud; his dark eyes are cold and expressionless, mere slits cut into face. His teeth are gritted and the veins in his temples pulse.
Before I can reach for my weapon, he kicks it away from my hand. It clatters into a dark corner of the room. What this kid lacks in size he makes up for in skill. But unfortunately for him, I don’t have time for child’s play.
Ignoring every instinct screaming in my brain, I let go of one of the kid’s hands and grope at the med tech’s corpse, ripping out the hypodermic needle still sprouting from its wound. I slash an arc in the air with the needle, stopping just short of plunging it into the thin layer of suit protecting the boy’s neck.
The boy releases my helmet and I fling him off me. His eyes bulge as he stares at the gleaming hypo. He knows that whatever’s in this ampule is lethal. Perhaps he’s the one that killed the med tech.