Page 22

Rosabelle

Chapter 22

I turn my hands over, staring at my wrinkled fingers. I’ve been sitting under the hot water for so long my skin has begun to itch and still I can’t bring myself to get out. This is luxury: the thundering white noise, the steam beading along my limbs, the peaceful quiet.

The peaceful quiet.

I’d forgotten what it was like to be alone. I’d forgotten what it was like to experience privacy. I keep forgetting that the people here aren’t connected to the Nexus. That it’s not standard to surveil people everywhere, all the time.

I close my eyes, let the water pelt my face.

My hospital room was swarmed not long after my humiliation, nurses storming inside, barking hazmat protocol at James. They carted him away from me even as he protested. No doubt they’ll be checking him for trace amounts of poison or explosives, sending my vomit to a lab just to be sure I didn’t do it on purpose.

The thought nearly prompts a bleak smile. The rebels aren’t stupid, though they appear to have overestimated me in this case. In the aftermath they handled me as I expected them to, shuffling me into the shower in quick, rough motions, stripping off my hospital gown with cold efficiency.

It’s time to pull myself together.

Clara is not dead.

Clara is not dead.

I know this with absolute certainty; they wouldn’t have killed her when they could use her to manipulate me. The problem is that I keep losing control of my imagination. I keep allowing my thoughts to wander, to wonder how they might be torturing her. But losing my head means making mistakes, which is no doubt the surest way to guarantee her death.

I will compartmentalize.

I will hermetically seal Clara into my heart. I will accept the paradox that in order to save her life I must ignore her suffering. Clara, I will manage.

It’s James I don’t know how to control.

I don’t understand what’s wrong with him. I’m tired of trying to make sense of him. He confuses me at every turn, rewarding me with patience and kindness when he should be assigning me a prison cell and a violent inquisition. I’m not practiced in this kind of subtle warfare. He’s manipulating me with sophisticated mental disruptions, and the consequences are disturbing. I’m beginning to make positive associations with his name, with the sight of his face. When I think of him, I don’t feel fear at all.

It’s making me angry .

I realize I’ve clenched my fists only when they begin to hurt. I look down at my hands, exhaling as I release them. I’m breathing too hard. Emotions are building inside me unbidden; my quietest thoughts are beginning to unspool. I feel it growing, this desperate desire to finally occupy more than a small corner of my own mind. For years I choked myself into silence, and spirals of thought are now unraveling from around my throat, the danger of forbidden words and feelings rising up inside me like a scream—

I’ve always hated The Reestablishment.

I stiffen even as I think it, bracing for the familiar stutter of my heart, the compression of my chest. I press my hands to the hard floors, searching, instinctively, for something. Paranoia swells and retreats within me, fed by fear, starved by logic. They would not risk watching me here, I tell myself. Never before has The Reestablishment successfully delivered a mercenary from the Ark into the nucleus of The New Republic; they would not risk my exposure during this unprecedented mission. My gaze pings around the simple, industrial shower, searching through steam for the familiar strobe of blue light. I remind myself that I’m far from home; that I am alone.

My heart does not slow down.

I remind myself that I hate the rebels, too—and this more acceptable direction of my thoughts calms me.

I take a deep, steadying breath, tasting water.

The truth is, I hate everyone equally.

The founders of The New Republic are responsible for thousands of deaths and indescribable violence, yet they’re always quick to condemn The Reestablishment, claiming moral superiority. They promise fantasies of unsustainable freedoms to a populace even while exposing them to the ills of famine, anarchy, ignorance, conflict, and bloodshed—and a climate beyond repair. They challenge the breakthroughs of science and modern technology. They insist that self-governed chaos is preferable to regulated world order.

The Reestablishment is an iron-fisted, immoral authoritarian enterprise, but The New Republic is worse than naive, and for this reason alone they will never prevail.

It still astonishes me that my father pledged his allegiance to a revolution doomed to fail, and in so doing, sentenced the rest of his family to a fate worse than death. I always wanted revenge against the rebels responsible for the destruction of my life and the upheaval of the world—even as I found the actions of my own regime to be worse than despicable. I aligned myself with what I believed to be the lesser of two evils, trusting that no government could be trusted.

And yet—

I draw a finger down the condensation of the tiled wall, marveling that I’ve just had terrible, treasonous thoughts about The Reestablishment, and no one will be interrogating me next month to find out.

A sound leaves my body, something like a laugh.

I test the muscles in my face, run my tongue along my teeth, touch the pad of my finger to the soft give of my lips. Water runs in rivulets down my heated skin, skimming the dips and curves of my body.

While I’m here, at least, I belong to myself.

“I’m cutting off the water now,” calls the nurse. She’s been waiting just beyond the shower door all this time. “I’ll be here with a towel.”

Too soon, it’s over. The thunder, the steam.

The quiet.

The heat has turned me bright red, and I stare down at myself in the proceeding moments, a steady drip drip battering the tile underfoot. I pull myself up off the floor, my skin embossed by the windowpane design of the tile work. My head is steaming. My stomach, screaming.

The nurse, as promised, is waiting for me.

She does not avert her eyes; in fact, she looks me up and down as if to ascertain that I’m unarmed. I grab the towel and wrap it around myself, and when I finally exit the shower into the cold, concrete bathroom of the holding cell, my hot feet seem to shrink against the icy floors. A chill moves through my body, and I wrap the towel more tightly, hair dripping. I look at the nurse.

She’s tall and middle-aged; dark skin, dark eyes; her face angular and interesting. I remind myself that people in The New Republic still have preternatural powers. Even an unassuming nurse might possess a secret strength, capable of killing me with a single motion.

As if sensing my appraisal, she raises an eyebrow. Then she looks intently away from me, and I follow her gaze to a corner, where a neat pile of folded clothing is set atop a small, unmarked box.

“Those are for you,” she says, watching me again. “Get dressed. You’re being transferred in ten minutes.”

“Transferred?” This information animates me.

Concerns me.

I spent part of my time in the shower trying to sketch out escape options; I knew they’d eventually move me into a proper, high-security prison cell, but I was hoping for time to scan the premises, make a map in my mind. “Transferred where?”

“To a rehabilitation facility.”

I’m reaching for the stack of clothing when she says this, and I freeze. I turn slowly to look at the nurse, my instincts sharpening in warning. Rehabilitation facility is always code for something worse: asylum; laboratory; a place for experiments and dissections.

“I see,” I say, unfreezing as I gather the clothes into my arms. The material is soft against my skin, and I can’t help but run my hand along the fabric, my eyes unfocusing as the gears shift in my head.

My incident with James must’ve been worse than I feared. Escaping a laboratory—or an asylum—will require an entirely different plan. Especially if they intend to drug me.

Still, in some ways, this is a relief.

Torture is not ideal, but at least it’s familiar. I can deal with pain. Besides, the rebels are weak-willed; they don’t even believe in certain methods of punishment. My mind is working quickly now, running scenarios as I dress myself. I hardly notice that the garments are well-made until they’re pressed against my body: a soft blue sweater and a pair of jeans that almost fit.

These aren’t prisoner’s clothes.

I glance at the nurse, who offers no explanation. She only crosses her arms as I walk over to the vanity. I brush my teeth with the supplies provided, then brush my hair, tying it back, wet, in an unflattering knot. I study my reflection in the small mirror over the sink. I don’t like to look at myself. When I look at myself, I see my mother. Death. My sister. Suffering. My father. Betrayal.

My face has cooled from red to pink. My hair almost has color when it’s wet. My eyes, I realize, are bright and frightening, feverish.

James called me beautiful.

The memory triggers a dormant feeling inside of me, something elemental I’ve never encouraged. I watch as a slow blush flares along my skin, melting into the heat receding in my body. I used to be beautiful, I think. Sebastian used to say things like that to me.

My skin goes cold at the reminder.

I did not take his wedding ring with me. I threw it at his face when he came for Clara, the consequences of which I will no doubt face upon returning home.

I kill the thought as I reach for the unmarked box.

Inside I find a small messenger bag; a pair of sturdy tennis shoes; socks; a small bag of mixed nuts; a bottle of water; and a bar of chocolate. The chocolate bar surprises me.

I haven’t had chocolate since I was a child.

I decide right then to save it for Clara. When I make it home I will have proven my worth and my loyalty to The Reestablishment, and Clara will have chocolate for the first time. Klaus promised us freedom in exchange for my efforts—and Klaus is not human enough to lie.

Neutralizing my expression, I take an even breath. A plan is forming in my mind, a surge of hope giving me focus.

I gather up the sundry items and place them inside the messenger bag. I sit down on a small bench to put on the socks and shoes, but I struggle a little with the left shoe. The sizing is fine, but there’s something like a pebble caught inside the sneaker, just under the insole. I reach inside, pull up the removable sole, and my finger nicks a small, flat disc. It’s about the size and weight of a coin.

I stiffen at once.

I sneak a look at the nurse, who’s still watching me. An uncanny feeling courses down my spine.

“Hurry up,” she says. “I have to escort you out.”

I turn back to the shoes, my hands mercifully steady. I peel the metal disc away from the sole. It’s smooth and unmarked, polished silver. The nurse is still watching me.

All that time in the shower I thought I was far from the watchful eye of The Reestablishment.

Mistake.

“I wonder what time it is,” I say, repeating the words I was instructed to speak.

She shifts, considering me, then holds out her hand, where a flare of blue light pulses just inside her forearm. “It’s late,” she says. “You nearly missed the window.”

This fills me with alarm.

I quickly pinch the bit between my thumb and forefinger and it offers immediate haptic feedback, responding to my fingerprints.

With a final buzz, it unlocks.

The disc spirals open, producing a hologram. It’s a perfectly rendered image of a glass vial. The object is about the size of my hand, the liquid inside of it pitch-black. I commit the image to memory just before it disintegrates, the coin vaporizing without warning—so hot it scalds my skin.

Finally, I look up at the agent.

She’s studying her arm. The blue light is flashing faster now, counting down. It occurs to me that she was just as anxious as I was to complete this task. If she hadn’t delivered the holo-coin within forty-eight hours of my arrival, she’d likely be punished, too.

When the light finally crescendos and dies, she visibly exhales. “Phase two,” she says, “is now complete.”

I sit with this reveal for a moment, and then, slowly, I begin lacing my sneakers, mentally filing and sorting new information. If phase one was to escape the island with James, and phase two involved receiving the holo-coin, I’ve just been launched into phase three: acquire the vial.

When she meets my eyes, I shake my head.

“Where do I find it?” I ask.

“I don’t answer questions,” she says. “The next one will. You have two weeks.”

“Two weeks?” I say, stunned. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Pay attention. If you’re smart enough, you’ll see it coming.”

“But—”

“I don’t answer questions,” she says again, eyes flashing. “The next one will.”

She holds the door open for me, and I get to my feet with a cold twist in my gut. This is going to be much harder than I thought, and I never thought it would be easy.

Pay attention , she’d said.

I should be worried I won’t be able to figure this out in time—that I’ll mess things up and ruin my chances of saving Clara—but despite the vagaries, I feel strangely calm. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s paying attention.

Instead, as I sling the messenger bag over my shoulder, I can’t help but think of James, who was willing to sacrifice his life to save my sister. Foolish enough to give me a chance to prove him wrong. Naive enough to concern himself with my hunger. I’m relieved to think that I’ll probably never see him again. But I wonder whether the rebels have any idea how easily they’ve been infiltrated.

This fantasy world they’ve built won’t last much longer.