Page 24 of The Infinite Glade (The Maze Cutter #3)

The child’s palm was sweaty and gross, but Alexandra squeezed it and led Newt’s great-niece into the Villa. “Are you kidding? Your bloodline is the one they’ve been waiting for.”

“Are you the one who told them about Sadina?” Trish asked.

Alexandra decided she needed to put Sadina’s girlfriend into another room, keep her busy while the women tested on Sadina. Inside. Outside. In the basement. Somewhere the Goddess wouldn’t be hammered by her incessant questions.

As always, Alexandra tried to hide her annoyance at their ignorance and lack of faith.

“These women worked hard to make sure the Cure would come to be.” She turned to Sadina and placed her hand against her cheek.

“The Evolution was always meant to be, we just needed you for the ultimate and final phase.” She squeezed her face gently and smiled. “And here you are.”

“Hello?” Alexandra led Sadina down a hall and up a stairway to the lab where Mannus practically got them all killed. Last time, the women greeted her with weapons as soon as her foot reached their soil, and today . . . they weren’t anywhere to be found.

“What will they do to her?” Trish asked loudly right on Alexandra’s heels. The girl was practically stepping on her cloak.

Alexandra had to force a smile this time.

“It’s not what they will do to her, it’s what they’ll be able to do with her .

” There. That should reassure her. It didn’t matter what they needed to do to Sadina to get the Cure.

If the scientists had to break every bone in the girl’s body and suck the marrow out with a straw to get what they needed, Alexandra would allow it. Hell, she’d encourage it.

“Hello . . . ?” She called again, stepping foot in the lab.

“It doesn’t look like anyone’s here.” Minho had returned to the group, lowering his weapon.

“Nonsense.” Alexandra shook her head. What did a lowly soldier know? “They have to be here.”

“Every room’s clear,” Orange said.

All the younger ones and Roxy filled the room.

Alexandra scanned the entire place and her vision went static when she realized nothing had changed since their last visit.

“We were just here . . .” She swept the items off the table with one swift motion of her arm.

Mannus. He must have scared them so completely that they left.

Mannus be damned.

That idiotic horned-freak.

Alexandra needed a new plan, and quickly. The orange-haired soldier set up guard in the window. “You can see the war fires from here. They probably heard the bombs, panicked, and?—”

“Scientists don’t panic,” Alexandra snapped, but it only made her head pound harder. It felt a thousand pounds on top of her shoulders. She recited the digits to herself and started pulling vials out of the cabinets.

“So, what do we do now?” Sadina asked, practically on top of the Goddess.

Alexandra moved around Sadina and looked through the cabinets.

She would figure something out—she had Newt’s bloodline and that was the most important thing.

She’d go mad and jump off a cliff before she wasted this opportunity for the final, ultimate Cure.

She looked for needles. “I’ll just . . .

do it myself . . . 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 .

. .” she mumbled to herself, not caring.

She said things that hardly needed repeating.

Madness. Madness. Madness! But she kept searching, digging, thinking. Talking.

“The Cure. The Evolution will ignite. The code will be complete.”

She tore the place apart.

Orphans have no history, know nothing about where they came from.

And the Orphan named Minho only knew where he was headed.

“Hey, can you take it easy on the Goddess?” Sadina asked softly. That was the problem—Sadina was too soft for her own good. She cared too much about things that didn’t matter. Especially people she hardly knew.

Minho leaned in close. “Don’t you remember what Frypan said?”

Her face scrunched up. “What are you talking about? When?”

“Back along the coast, when you two would have your late-night fireside talks. He said Don’t trust the trustless .”

“Exactly, and you don’t trust her , so maybe I shouldn’t trust you .” She straightened up as if making herself taller would make herself right, but she couldn’t be more wrong. Frypan wasted every breath he had left on this girl who didn’t understand the simplest thing.

“No, that’s not it. He said to trust yourself the most.” Orange said over the railing of the balcony, on watch.

“Do all orphans eavesdrop on private conversations?” Sadina snapped.

“We can’t help that we were trained to have sniper hearing.” Orange shrugged before going back to her lookout post. “You two were loud and woke me up.”

“Most nights I didn’t sleep but laid there on watch, protecting everyone from danger.

” Minho wasn’t just annoyed that Sadina forgot everything Old Man Frypan had taught her, but her weaknesses made it easier for the Godhead to manipulate her.

She wouldn’t have survived an hour in the Remnant Nation.

None of these islanders would have. Weak and malleable, all of them.

Sadina didn’t act intimidated. “Well, whatever Frypan told me, I’m sure he didn’t mean for you to throw it in my face later.”

“We’re trying to help you,” Orange said.

“Look around. Look where she brought you.” Minho pointed out all the shelves of equipment. Devices he had never seen before but he sure as hell didn’t want to know how they worked. “She brought you here to do all kinds of tests with your blood and who knows what else. She doesn’t care about you!”

“You’re crazy! Your whole nation is crazy . . . and you’re lucky the Godhead doesn’t turn you over to them!” Sadina shouted at Minho before storming away, down the hallway. It was getting harder and harder for Minho to keep his promise to Isaac about protecting her.

“Hey, Happy. You’ve got to cool down.” Orange walked over and kicked the broken glass away from the doorway.

Minho ignored her, instead looking behind framed maps hanging on the wall, searching for a hidden safe or a secret room.

Nothing was ever hung in the Remnant Nation unless it concealed something else.

He knocked against the walls of the room, listening for a hollow sound or any change in sound.

Anything that might hide a hidden doorway. He threw framed maps on the floor.

“Seriously, Minho, stop. You’re going to scare the others . . .” Orange looked out into the hallway.

“Yeah? Well, they should be scared. We’re sitting targets here and the Maze Cutter is worthless.

The Godhead is worthless!” He tore down another map off the wall, then ripped it to pieces, as many pieces as possible.

He was angry at Sadina, but more disgusted in himself that he had ever wanted to join the Godhead.

The stupid, useless, evil Godhead that brought them there to an empty Villa with a room full of nothing but black curtains, stationary equipment, and useless maps.

“What are we supposed to do now?” Minho asked.

Orange looked around the room and shook her head. “I don’t know. Camp here until the war dies down?” She looked back to Minho and adjusted her weapon. “What options do we have?”

He stood and stared at the map of the Americas torn to small bits on the floor.

The map. He pulled Kletter’s captain’s log out of his back pocket.

He recognized the symbol on Alexandra’s wrist from the Remnant Nation, but there was something similar on Kletter’s map.

He flipped through each page to find it.

At first glance, it looked like a pencil drawing of a hurricane or something on the map over an island, but as Minho examined more closely—it was basically the symbol from both the Remnant Nation and the Godhead.

Minho pulled Orange by her wrist to the center of the room, “I need to tell you something . . .” He couldn’t let anyone else hear.

“You need to get off that fortress wall in your mind.” Orange grimaced. “I can see it in your eyes. In your mind, you’re right back on that wall and defending. . . . I don’t know what you’re defending . . .” She let out a breath. “And everyone else is starting to turn against you. I don’t think?—”

“It’s the Godhead—that woman.” Every time Minho called her that word, his gut burned. She wasn’t a God.

Orange softened. “Is it the training? Trust me, I’ve thought of a hundred ways I could have killed her just from the ship to here. Put your tongue on the roof of your mouth, that’s what I’m doing. And pinch your big toe and your little one to the ground while you?—”

“I don’t need archery tricks to focus, I’m focused.” Minho was at least relieved she hadn’t lost her soldier instincts. He looked back at the others in the group to make sure no one could hear them before he whispered, “I saw her kill the Great Master and the way she did it . . .”

But Orange just shrugged. “So she wasn’t lying about that. What did the Great Master look like?”

“I don’t know, an old man.”

Orange turned away from Minho, lowering her head. The only other time he saw her so defeated was when Skinny died.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“I didn't think The Great Master was real. Thought he was just something they threatened us with. A way to make the lessons and the punishments stick.” Orange shrugged and adjusted the gun strap on her shoulder again. “Well . . . I guess it’d be fair that the person a whole army was trained to kill would be trained to kill, too. Wouldn’t it?

” Despite Orange making sense of it all so quickly, Minho almost didn’t want it to.

“Look, if you still want to kill her I’m down, but we’ve got to have a plan because the others will absolutely freak .

” Orange looked over her shoulder at the group.

Yes . Everything inside Minho screamed yes, kill her before she gets them all killed , but another smaller voice said, No, wait.

Use her for as long as she’s good for. Like an injured jackrabbit as bait.

With Alexandra alive he could find out more about the city of Gods and the Evolution.

He still wanted to know if everything he grew up believing was a lie or only some of it.

Or maybe none of it. Maybe he should kill her right there in the next room where she stood.

“We can’t kill her, at least not in front of the others,” Orange said. “Not unless the safety of the group depends on it. Deal?”

“Unless the safety of the group depends on it,” Minho repeated and agreed. But their safety already did depend on it. “Orange . . .”

“Yeah?”

“That tattoo on her wrist . . .” Minho’s skin itched just thinking about what he was about to say. “The Great Master had the same one.”

“The same exact one?” Orange pulled back in surprise.

“Identical.” Minho handed her the map and pointed. “And here it is on Kletter’s map.”

Orange held the map close to her face. “Same swirly thing with lines. What do you think they’re hiding here?” She looked up at him.

“Another Remnant Nation . . . ?”

How could it be that the Great Master and the Godhead had anything in common, let alone a marking so distinguishable, tattooed on the same exact spot.

How many Remnant Nations were there?