Page 35

Rosabelle

Chapter 35

I fight back a scream.

I already know better than to kill him. I know, even as spots crowd my vision, that Leon is gone, that killing his host body will only delay the inevitable. Somehow, I’m being punished, and I need to pay attention.

I don’t know how this is happening.

I don’t know why his eyes flash black instead of blue. I don’t know how Klaus has managed to override Leon’s mind; I didn’t know it was possible for Klaus to have this kind of control from a great distance. I only know that I’m losing oxygen, struggling to see straight. He pushes me into my room, slamming my back against the interior wall. My eyes flutter as the butterknife falls, with a dull thud, from my hand.

“Phase three is now complete,” he says.

He lets go of me without warning, and I collapse to the floor, slamming my head against the edge of the dresser, pain exploding behind my eyes. I look up, the room surging around me. I watch Leon close my door, turn on the lights, then flip the lock. I gasp for breath, massaging my throat.

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

“Late,” he says, his voice low. “I heard you had questions, Rosabelle.”

I try to swallow. “What do I do with the vial?”

“You drink it,” he says.

“What will it do?”

Leon blinks, the inky film floating and retreating across his eyes. “Clear the way for the final three phases of the mission.”

This renders me still. Fear is now unfolding within me at a rate I can’t overcome.

“Look what they did to us,” Leon is saying, gesturing around the room. “Look at what they took from us. Look what they did when they were allowed to think for themselves. They, like you, think they can escape control. Leon, too, thought he could escape us. He was the first scientist to taste the earth—to experience the power of his own invention—but he decided, too late, that he didn’t like Klaus. He performed merciless experiments on himself, trying and failing to undo the gene edit. Don’t be like Leon,” he says. “Leon tried to fight the future, and look what happened. Nothing good can come of the masses ruling themselves. Only chaos. War. Anarchy. ”

“So you’re testing this vial on me,” I whisper, “to see if you can control me better than you controlled Leon.”

“Control you?” Leon frowns, his muddied eyes affecting confusion. He bends down to my level, then taps my head like I’m a toy he’s turning off. “Have you not figured out yet why you’re here?”

I stare at him as he stands, my heart hammering against my ribs.

“Rosabelle Wolff, you’ve been sent here to die. Klaus looked into your mind and saw weakness unworthy of our greater mission. Your father was weak. Your mother was weak. Your sister was weak. You are a disgrace. You entertain near-traitorous thoughts about your nation, you resent the only man willing to marry you, and your everyday actions are motivated by the welfare of a diseased child whose existence only drains our resources. Your mind has been found wanting—and your life, as a result, is no longer worth sustaining. Your only benefit to us will be in your final sacrifice, should you choose to accept it.”

This revelation batters me in waves, shattering the planes of my body like sheets of glass, leaving me in ribbons.

“You said— You promised me that if I completed my mission you would set me and my sister free—”

“Death is freedom. Should you choose to accept your final sacrifice, we will reward you by killing Clara swiftly. If you reject the final sacrifice, we will keep her alive for ten years, each day enduring greater tortures than the day before.”

The room is spinning around me. Suddenly I can’t breathe, can’t see straight—

“You will dig your own grave, Rosabelle. You will drink the vial and bury yourself alive. Your body will decompose within twenty-four hours, the results of which will ignite an undetectable explosion that will radiate the land at unprecedented levels, effectively cauterizing all within a hundred-mile radius. The rebels’ preternatural powers will disappear. Within six months, their bodies will succumb to the gene edit, allowing us control over them without further bloodshed or strife. This is the magnitude of our mercy.”

“Why do I need to bury myself alive?”

“Your decomposing body will require fusion with a classical element; of the four, earth with earth is the most powerful.”

I’m out of my mind, a collapsed star, a black hole, then nothing, nothing—

You’re not the only one , Leon had said to me. You’re not the only one here.

“You’re doing this everywhere, aren’t you?” I gasp. “All over The New Republic. I’m not the only one—”

“You have eight weeks to accomplish this task. Should you choose to reject this mission, you will be replaced, promptly assassinated, and your sister will suffer the consequences.”

“What are the last three phases of the mission?” I manage to ask.

“Death, destruction, and rebirth.”

“What does that mean?”

In response Leon unhinges without warning, his head hanging forward from his neck hanging forward from his body, his limbs locked in positions so unnatural I back away from him with a strangled sound. Leon is hyperventilating uncontrollably. He finally falls to his knees and claws at his head in a frenzied panic, and by the time he starts screaming I already know how it’s going to end.

I throw my arms up over my face, the vial still clenched in my fist, bracing myself as he screams and screams until the lights come on in the hall, the sounds of footsteps thundering toward us. The handles on the dresser drawers begin rattling, the ground shuddering beneath me, fists pounding relentlessly against my door. I hear muted voices and cries, the clatter and snick of a lock tumbling. By the time Agatha slams open my bedroom door in a crazed panic, Leon has self-immolated.

I draw my hands away from my face and it seems to take years. Blood has spattered across the scene, smearing everything. I am numb as I survey the aftermath: gone are his eyes, his nose, his mouth. Leon has been eviscerated from the inside, flesh and blood pushed out of open orifices. My stomach heaves.

I double over.

I hear Agatha scream, and then the room is swarmed— faces and limbs blurring together and I’m stumbling upright, realizing too late how this looks: Leon, brutally murdered inside my bedroom, entrails still exhaling from his body as blood stains the carpet beneath us. I stand over him, my face wiped of emotion—me, his murderer, the person who’s already tried to kill him once. Jaws are slack with horror, eyes wide and accusing. Even I can understand the ease with which they form their conclusions. Soon, hands are reaching, rushing at me. Crazed expressions, gasps of urgency, someone shouting get the manacles and I remember, with a start, Agatha’s promise to melt my mouth off my face.

I realize then that I have no choice.

I tuck the vial in my pocket and fumble for the butterknife on the floor and Agatha shouts She’s got a weapon! and I dive out of the way of an electric lasso, crashing into the mirror hanging behind the bathroom door. Glass shatters around me and I don’t hesitate: I whip a shard at the woman’s throat—Deepti, her name is Deepti—and listen for impact, then scramble to my feet as she releases a guttural, choking cry. Agatha launches herself at me in a rage and I make use of her momentum, flipping her over my head, dropping to one knee, and burying the knife in her chest.

I feel a buzz of awareness as I yank the dull blade free, the hum of an unexpected quiet falling over the room. I look up, slowly, at the stunned sea of familiar faces, then the blood on my hands, the look of frozen astonishment on Agatha’s face. Jing is crying. Elias has covered his mouth in horror. Aya has wet herself. Ian is sagging against the wall, looking like he might throw up. I’m miles and miles away from my mind when James finally bursts into the room, and the look on his face as he takes it all in—when he turns and stares at me with a wordless, shattering, breathtaking disappointment—

It actually kills me.

I feel it: my extremities go numb; my heart slows inside my body. My bones give out and I slump to the ground, my head hitting the wet carpet. I stare up at the recessed lights as they dim and flare, pushing everything out of focus. I turn my neck and the effort is exhausting; I blink and it lasts a century. Hands handle me roughly, strip the butterknife out of my fist. I don’t want to fight anymore. I don’t want to kill anymore. I don’t want to be this person anymore. I don’t want to live in this body anymore—

You’ve been dead inside for years, I remind myself.

Die, I tell myself.

Die.

My eyes roll back inside my head, my heart turns to stone in my chest. I feel my mind disconnecting. My chest stops moving. I’m aware, somehow, that I’m no longer breathing, no longer feeling. My skin is a rubber suit, sloshing with liquid.

Die, Rosabelle , I tell myself.

Die.

And this time, I do.