Page 42 of The Infinite Glade (The Maze Cutter #3)
“No. NO!” She had no time to think. “It’s true, I killed Mikhail, but .
. . but doesn’t that make me your master now?
Isn’t that how it works? Who better to lead you than the one who’s defeated the greatest?
” Someone pushed her down; she landed with a thump, temporarily lost her breath.
She struggled against the ground—the ground of this hallowed Glade.
“And Nicholas, his head is here, here in the Maze!” She could show them.
She could convince them all. She could ? —
The Grief Bearer spoke one last time. “The Great Master has no face and no name.” He turned away, as if condemning her by the action, and then it seemed as if everyone in the Glade shouted at once.
“It’s time for her to die!”
“Kill the Godhead!”
“Kill the Godhead!”
“Kill the Godhead!” The chant grew from there, grew until even the most faithful of Pilgrims watching nearby began to mouth the words, themselves. Kill the Godhead .
All had been lost. Alexandra struggled pitifully against her restraints, writhed in the dirt. The movement made her hood fall from her head, and Pilgrims and Remnants alike stared at her beauty.
“It’s really her . . . Alexandra Romanov!” a Pilgrim screamed with bloodlust in her eyes.
“She admitted to killing Mikhail and Nicholas. Traitor!” More chaotic shouts and screams, words, countless words, filling the air like toxic fumes. But eventually they bled together, came fully in sync. And the chant rose like a prayer to the stone heaven above.
Kill the Godhead. Kill the Godhead. Kill the Godhead.
Groggy and confused on the floor of the cave, Ximena rubbed her neck where the Griever had stabbed her.
She checked for blood. None. Her mind raced even while her entire body relaxed.
The half-animal, half-machine hovered over her with its arms and legs planted around her.
A cage she couldn’t escape. She could think about moving away from the mechanical beast, but her body wouldn’t move.
The Griever tilted its bulbous, head-like thing as if to question Ximena, then scuttled away to rejoin the other monsters.
The islanders were just as stunned as she was.
She breathed deeply, forced her body to catch up with her mind. “What did those things do to us?”
“The Grievers . . .” Old Man Frypan rubbed his hip and sat up. “Alby . . . Zart. . . . What they did in the Villa with Cowan. The Grievers in the Maze always had some other plan, like a mind of their own. Some hidden purpose.”
“Yeah. Exactly.” Erros rubbed his arm—where the Griever had stabbed him —but didn’t say any more.
“What was in the sting?” Isaac yelled, grabbing his leg, where apparently the knife wound still hurt him more than the needle had.
“A basic anxiolytic,” Cian pronounced, as if every human walking the earth learned the word while still in cloth diapers.
He climbed back to his feet, seemingly unafraid of the machines still hovering in the far corner of the lobby.
“It’s merely a calming agent.” He picked up his box of supplies, while Ximena could barely hold her own head up.
“More like a tranquilizer,” Erros said.
“Why . . .” was all Ximena could ask.
An unknown voice answered her.
“The Sequencers don’t let anyone into their levels without testing them first.” A tall man with dark hair, dressed in blue, walked out of the farthest tunnel. The Grievers clustered together, then assembled one-by-one into a line. “And treating them.”
“Senator Tove.” Cian lowered his head.
“Cian. Erros. So glad you two could find your way home, but you know the rules . . .” The man held an instrumental pad in front of him, just like the one Professor Morgan had at the Villa.
“These aren’t other-worlders, sir. They’re part of the Sequence.” Cian rushed the box of supplies to the Senator and motioned to the islanders, but Tove held his hand up.
“Stop. Don’t embarrass yourself. Wait until the processing is done.” The blue-suited man wouldn’t even look at Cian, as if the man and his brother were beneath him.
Erros walked over to Ximena, his eyes expectant.
She didn’t know what he wanted until he lifted her hand into his.
Her thoughts were so dazed she’d forgotten she still had the Cure.
She found her backpack, unzipped it, reached inside, hoping she hadn’t crushed the vial while trying to escape the Grievers.
The machines clicked and whirred to themselves as they bunched more tightly against the far wall of the carved-out tunnels.
“Where is it?” Erros whispered impatiently.
Ximena pulled her hand from the backpack, relieved to have a vial that wasn’t broken.
“Here,” she muttered to Erros. She’d kinda grown attached to the thing.
“What are you testing us for?” Jackie asked, rubbing her head.
“That thing stabbed me twice but guess I can’t complain.” Miyoko leaned against the wall, looking very calm. “I had a killer headache from all the crying but it’s gone. Completely gone.”
Frypan stood tall without his walking stick; he tapped his hip. “I could’ve used a shot like that years ago. What is it?”
The Senator spoke like a senator, all fancy and high-minded.
“It’s likely you all received different doses of different sequences.
If you were dispersed an agent, then it was the one you needed.
Diagnostics don’t lie.” The man peered down at his tablet as if it held all the answers to all the secrets in the world. Ximena didn’t like him.
“Cowan . . . at the Villa.” Isaac looked at Ximena like she might know something, but Cowan had looked closer to death when they left the Villa than when she’d arrived. Nothing like the islanders looked, now. Taller, happier, healthy.
Ximena shrugged. “I just feel confused and groggy. Doesn’t seem all that great to me.
“Oh.” Erros laughed quietly into his shoulder. “Anger is an emotional toxin that the Sequencers treat with all sorts of different stuff. I guess they read you right.”
“A toxin?” Ximena moved to her hands and knees and then got to her feet.
“Stress. Anger. It’s all frequency. They gave you a relaxant. You’ll balance out to a happy medium, but you’ll probably feel pretty tired in the meantime.” As conspicuously as possible, he handed the Cure vial to his brother, almost bowing afterward like a buffoon.
“Senator Tove, we did it!” Cian said it loud enough to echo through the adjoining tunnels. He held the vial up high.
“Did what?” The man tapped his tablet in frustration.
“These are inconclusive for transient markers. All of them but one?” He lifted his head and looked at Cian in anger.
“They’ll need to test again.” With a push of the tablet the Grievers all came back to life, churning with noise and movement.
A strong thrumming vibrated the ground beneath them.
Ximena groaned.
“No!” Cian lost his mind. He ran at the Senator and pulled the tablet from the man’s hands; he tossed it across the lobby where it landed with a loud crack.
“Look, they’re missing transient markers because they’re not part of the otherworld.
They’re Immunes. From the original Sequence!
Can’t you listen to a damned word we say? ”
The Senator was nonplussed, as if this very scenario happened to him every day. “That can’t be,” was all he said in response, showing no anger whatsoever.
“It’s true.” Frypan stepped forward. “I was one of the original Gladers. Test me all you want to know I ain’t lying.”
“They’ve come to meet the Senate,” Cian said.
The man in blue stood there, unmoving, without emotion, without blinking.
“Please,” Erros begged. “Let them be interviewed by the Levels and the Senate before your next vote. The Sequencers deserve to know the truth. All of it.”
Ximena stood in the silence, waiting for some verdict she didn’t even understand. She stared at the line of Grievers and the man in blue, who apparently could change the fate of the Sequencers, maybe the world, with a single wave of his hand.
After what seemed like an hour, he finally spoke. “The third level, then, but only to meet the Senate. Then you must vacate immediately.”
Cian whooped with joy, then picked up his brother, swinging him in a circle while they hugged.
Ximena stared at them, baffled beyond measure. What weirdos . But she had to admit, she was starting to feel pretty good inside. What had that Griever stung her with?