Page 7 of The Infinite Glade (The Maze Cutter #3)

“Evolution . . .” He reached for his back as he continued to cough.

“True Evolution . . .” He spat a wad of yellow phlegm.

A peasant would have had more class. “You’ve learned nothing from being a part of the Godhead?

You think the power you hold is real?” He gagged on his own coughs. “Nothing is real . . .”

The man couldn’t be more wrong.

She spoke with measured calm. “You never had any power in the Godhead.” He’d always held them back. She’d felt him working against her; she just had no idea the scale of it. “That’s how we’re different, you and I . . .”

He opened his eyes and his giant pupils met hers.

For a moment he stopped his mumbling and his squealing and just looked at her like he used to, before everything—including their names—changed.

After Nicholas brought him back from Crank Palace and The Gone, his mind never quite recovered, despite the visions he claimed to see.

She wondered how much of Mikhail’s reality was purely manufactured by Nicholas—telling him what to see and how to see it.

She’d never forget the week or two in between Alexandra losing Mikhail for good and finding herself, her true self , as Nicholas called it.

The version of Mikhail after The Gone was never really him .

That bodied human held the memories of his life inside of it, but that body wasn’t Mikhail anymore than Mikhail was a Godhead.

“We’re not that different,” he whispered. Wrong again. Alexandra leaned into the pilot seat of the Berg and she gently, lovingly, caressed Mikhail’s face until the lines etching his pain slowly smoothed themselves out.

“We are different, dear Mikhail.” She leaned closer and closer, like she might kiss him, give him one last forgiving moment of affection.

Or maybe help him out of the tangled mess of the Berg’s safety latch.

But when she leaned in close, she whispered, “Because I can easily do what you never could.”

She pinched his nose shut.

And nodded her head as if to convince herself that yes, this needed to happen .

Yes. It was time.

She pressed herself hard against Mikhail’s chest, trapping his arms, and took the corner of her long mustard-colored Pilgrim’s cloak with her free hand.

She shoved the thick material deep into Mikhail’s mouth, pushed it all the way to his throat.

His nostrils tried to puff out, but her fingers kept them pinched shut.

He tried the usual squealing and wiggling, but like a pig already caught, he wouldn’t struggle long.

His eyes widened, as if in that exact moment Mikhail escaped his own mind and finally saw Alexandra fully for all that she was and all that she had been.

The Berg straps only tightened as he struggled, his muffled noises sounding no different than a dying pig as they faded.

She never wavered, never weakened. Finally, the straps that tangled Mikhail loosened themselves from the slack of his lifeless body. Flaring Justice, Flaring Justice.

The Flare be damned.

The Remnant Nation be damned.

Mikhail be damned.

At last, there was only One.

Soldiers were trained for stealth.

To remain unseen while at the same time seeing everything.

He watched as Alexandra took a step back from the Berg and smoothed out the wrinkles in her Pilgrim’s cloak.

Minho ducked down behind a thorn bush. After witnessing the supposed Godhead snuff the life out of someone with her own clothing, he couldn’t take chances.

His finger rested on the trigger of his gun with the woman in his sights.

Kneeling in stealth-mode, he watched through the scope as she walked back in the direction of the coast. Years of training from the Remnant Nation pumped through him as he slowed his breath.

Steadied his gun. And exhaled, ready to shoot.

She abruptly stopped walking, and Minho lost her in his scope.

Did she see him? Every instinct from childhood told him to realign and pull the trigger.

She’d be dead before she even knew it. No one in the group would know it, either.

He could time any shot with the sounds of war in the background.

In half a second Minho could end the Remnant Nations’ lifetime fight to kill the Godhead, dispose of her body with the other body in the Berg, and fly everyone the hell out of there.

It sounded like a good idea. The best idea in a long time.

They could all go back to Roxy’s house, eating warm stew every night and reading her grandfather’s books, living a simple life where the only things they killed were wild animals and feral Cranks.

But all this stuff about Evolution had been knocking at his brain.

His consciousness. Alexandra wasn’t the only one who seemed to believe in this thing.

He never cared about disappointing people as a soldier .

. . but now Sadina, Dominic, Orange, and Roxy were the voices in the back of his mind.

Having people he cared about meant caring about how they felt, too.

Life was easier as an orphan.

Easier when he had no name and no friends.

But those things that made his life more complicated also made life better.

He lowered his gun and stepped out of the brush. “Are you okay, Goddess?” He shouted to purposefully startle Alexandra. He held his gun, ready to fire, just in case.

“Oh . . . yes.” She looked over her shoulder to the Berg as she walked closer to Minho.

He looked past her shoulder, too . . . at the Berg in the distance, making sure this fraud of a Goddess in front of him knew that he knew what she had just done.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “I told you I’d be fine; you don’t know how many crazed ones might be out here.” She shook her head with every word she spoke. “You’re just as mad as them. Mad.” She wiped her hands against the cloak.

“That’s exactly why I came to check on you . . . Goddess.” He’d call her whatever she wanted. He could play along even though in his mind, his heart, and in all his bones he knew one thing for sure—she was no Godhead.

Quite possibly the opposite.

Some form of a devil.

“I appreciate you checking on me.” She winced a smile.

“A good thing I did. It looks like you ran into some trouble back there . . .” He motioned with his gun.

She’d killed that man too easily; the poor guy was injured from a crash and would have died in the Berg anyway.

A mercy killing. Minho had surely committed enough of those killings himself.

He still wondered some days—the darkest days—if he should have killed young Kit out of pure mercy when he found him in that shaft, all but beaten nearly to death.

But a tiny, quiet hope let Minho believe that maybe Kit had survived that beating in the lower levels of the castle.

In the place they’d called Hell, deservedly so.

Maybe Kit had gone on to begin a strong soldier’s life.

“Trouble? No trouble at all.” She smiled and lifted the hood of her cloak to rest on her head, draped across half her face.

But the wool couldn’t cover the lie. Minho once again fought the urge to kill her right there, be done with it.

Snap her neck before she even felt his hands touch the hood of her mustard yellow cloak.

But he wouldn’t.

He needed to find out what she was trying so hard to cover up. And why. His new friends needed to know that truth before he could do anything too drastic.

The Remnant Nation never gave its soldiers any reason for the war other than the Godhead was evil and the Evolution was bad , but Minho made it his mission to find out why.

What was Alexandra hiding that the Great Master and the Grief Bearers knew, but no one else?

One thing, above all, made him feel a tremble of uncertainty.

Who were the good guys?

Isaac crept toward the fire.

The bushes stabbed him with tiny prickly, pokey things.

Even the berries on the bush looked like they had thorns growing right out of them.

He motioned for Old Man Frypan and Ximena to stay back while he and Jackie got closer.

“Hey, be careful . . .” he whispered to Jackie as she leaned against the same bush. “It has spikes on it.”

“Why does everything on this island double as a weapon?” she whispered with full annoyance. Isaac didn’t bother correcting her that the four of them weren’t on any island. They might never be on an island again. But as long as he could find his friends, Isaac would be okay.

He leaned into the bush and his ears stretched as far as they could to hear Dominic’s laugh or his singing.

Dominic’s awful, dreadful singing. He reached with his senses, hoping to hear Trish scolding Minho, or Roxy telling one of her tall tales from all those books of hers.

But as much as Isaac wanted something—anything—he could only hear the swooshing of his own blood inside his head, followed by the heaviness of his breath as he exhaled.

He looked over at Jackie hunched down in the brush next to him. “Can you see anything?”

She shook her head. “No. But it smells like fish.”

Isaac smelled the cooked fish, too, but almost thought he was imagining it.

He couldn’t even remember the last time they ate a proper meal.

He leaned in closer to the thorny bush and moved a thick branch from his field of vision so he could see the size of the fire just on the other side of the clearing.

Flames sparked high. It was certainly a big enough fire for all of their friends to sleep beside .

. . but Isaac only counted two shadows. Two adult-sized shadows.

Ugh . All his hopes fell to the back of his throat.

He swallowed hard and backed himself out of the thorn-trap, but not before getting one of those damn spiky things stuck in his finger.

“Wait . . .” Jackie said. “No way . . .” She pulled at Isaac’s elbow.

“What?” he whispered as he pricked the thorn from his finger.

“Doesn’t that look like those people . . . the ones who kidnapped you?” She pulled on him harder.

Isaac shook his head without leaning back into the bush.

He didn’t need to look. There was no way Lettie and Timon had survived and were the two shadows sitting in front of the fire.

No way. But what if? He couldn’t leave any question unanswered.

He held his breath and leaned into the gaping hole in the brush to take another look.

He prepared himself to see the fire-lit faces of his kidnappers—but the two shadows were gone.

What the heck?

Isaac peered at every corner of the clearing, waiting for them to re-appear when Old Man Frypan suddenly cleared his throat right behind him.

The exact same way he did at the Villa, every time one of the Assistants approached the glass pod cell, to signal that they were no longer alone.

The blood swooshed harder in Isaac’s ears.

He slowly turned to see two tall strangers, no longer shadows, and definitely not Lettie and Timon.

Older than Isaac’s two kidnappers, but much more dangerous, as they each held a crossbow, aimed and ready to shoot.

Isaac held his hands up to show that he had no weapons, but thought about the knife strapped to his ankle, the one Minho had given him.

“No sudden moves . . .” the one wearing a red scarf said.

Very slowly, Isaac looked over at Jackie.

They should have listened to Ximena’s second-sight.

They shouldn’t have been so stupid as to think they’d find their friends this soon.

He tried to show how sorry he was, and she looked back at him with an emotion in her eyes that he’d only seen once before . . . when Carson and Lacey died.

Sad. Devastated. Helpless.

Something deep inside of him broke.