Max is staring at me like I’m an alien.
He hasn’t moved since Anderson left; he just stands there, stiff and strange, rooted to the floor. I remember the look he gave me the first time we met—the unguarded hostility in his eyes—and I blink at him from my bed, wondering why he hates me so much.
After an uncomfortable stretch of silence, I clear my throat. It’s obvious that Anderson respects Max—likes him, even—so I decide I should address him with a similar level of respect.
“Sir,” I say. “I’d really like to get dressed.”
Max startles at the sound of my voice. His body language is entirely different now that Anderson isn’t here, and I’m still struggling to figure him out. He seems skittish. I wonder if I should feel threatened by him. His affection for Anderson is no indication that he might treat me as anything but a nameless soldier.
A subordinate.
Max sighs. It’s a loud, rough sound that seems to shake him from his stupor. He shoots me a last look before he disappears into the adjoining room, from where I hear indiscernible, shuffling sounds. When he reappears, his arms are empty.
He stares blankly at me, looking more rattled than he did a moment ago.
He shoves a hand through his hair. It sticks up in places. “Anderson doesn’t have anything that would fit you,” he says.
“No, sir,” I say carefully. Still confused. “I was hoping I might be given a replacement uniform.”
Max turns away, stares at nothing. “A replacement uniform,” he says to himself. “Right.” But when he takes in a long, shuddering breath, it becomes clear to me that he’s trying to stay calm.
Trying to stay calm.
I realize, suddenly, that Max might be afraid of me. Maybe he saw what I did to Darius. Maybe he’s the doctor who patched him up.
Still—
I don’t see what reason he’d have to think I’d hurt him. After all, my orders come from Anderson, and as far as I’m aware, Max is an ally. I watch him closely as he lifts his wrist to his mouth, quietly requesting that someone deliver a fresh set of clothes for me.
And then he backs away from me until he’s flush with the wall. There’s a single, sharp thud as the heels of his boots hit the baseboards, and then, silence.
Silence.
It erupts, settling completely into the room, the quiet reaching even the farthest corners. I feel physically trapped by it. The lack of sound feels oppressive.
Paralyzing.
I pass the time by counting the bruises on my body. I don’t think I’ve spent this much time looking at myself in the last few days; I hadn’t realized how many wounds I had. There seem to be several fresh cuts on my arms and legs, and I feel a vague stinging along my lower abdomen. I pull back the collar of the hospital gown, peering through the overly large neck hole at my naked body underneath.
Pale. Bruised.
There’s a small, fresh scar running vertically down the side of my torso, and I don’t know what I did to acquire it. In fact, my body seems to have amassed an entire constellation of fresh incisions and faded bruises. For some reason, I can’t remember where they came from.
I glance up, suddenly, when I feel the heat of Max’s gaze.
He’s staring at me as I study myself, and the sharp look in his eyes makes me wary. I sit up. Sit back.
I don’t feel comfortable asking him any of the questions piling in my mouth.
So I look at my hands.
I’ve already removed the rest of my bandages; my left hand is mostly healed. There’s no visible scar where my finger was detached, but my skin is mottled up to my forearm, mostly purple and dark blue, a few spots of yellow. I curl my fingers into a fist, let it go. It hurts only a little. The pain is fading by the hour.
The next words leave my lips before I can stop them: “Thank you, sir, for fixing my hand.”
Max stares at me, uncertain, when his wrist lights up. He glances down at the message, and then at the door, and as he darts to the entrance, he tosses strange, wild looks at me over his shoulder, as if he’s afraid to turn his back on me.
Max grows more bizarre by the moment.
When the door opens, the room is flooded with sound. Flashing lights pulse through the slice of open doorway, shouts and footsteps thundering down the hall. I hear metal crashing into metal, the distant blare of an alarm.
My heart picks up.
I’m on my feet before I can even stop myself, my sharpened senses oblivious to the fact that my hospital gown does little to cover my body. All I know is a sudden, urgent need to join the commotion, to do what I can to assist, and to find my commander and protect him. It’s what I was built to do.
I can’t just stand here.
But then I remember that my commander gave me explicit orders to remain here, and the fight leaves my body.
Max shuts the door, silencing the chaos with that single motion. I open my mouth to say something, but the look in his eyes warns me not to speak. He places a stack of clothes on the bed—refusing to even come near me— and steps out of the room.
I change into the clothes quickly, shedding the loose gown for the starched, stiff fabric of a freshly washed military uniform. Max brought me no undergarments, but I don’t bother pointing this out; I’m just relieved to have something to wear. I’m still buttoning the front placket, my fingers working as quickly as possible, when my gaze falls once more to the bureau directly opposite the bed. There’s a single drawer left slightly open, as if it was closed in a hurry.
I’d noticed it earlier.
I can’t stop staring at it now.
Something pulls me forward, some need I can’t explain. It’s becoming familiar now—almost normal—to feel the strange heat filling my head, so I don’t question my compulsion to move closer. Something somewhere inside of me is screaming at me to stand down, but I’m only dimly aware of it. I hear Max’s muffled, low voice in the other room; he’s speaking with someone in harried, aggressive tones. He seems fully distracted.
Encouraged, I step forward.
My hand curls around the drawer pull, and it takes only a little effort to tug it open. It’s a smooth, soft system. The wood makes almost no sound as it moves. And I’m just about to peer inside when—
“What are you doing?”
Max’s voice sends a sharp note of clarity through my brain, clearing the haze. I take a step back, blinking. Trying to understand what I was doing.
“The drawer was open, sir. I was going to close it.” The lie comes automatically. Easily.
I marvel at it.
Max slams the drawer closed and stares, suspiciously, at my face. I blink at him, blithely meeting his gaze.
I notice then that he’s holding my boots.
He shoves them at me; I take them. I want to ask him if he has a hair tie
—my hair is unusually long; I have a vague memory of it being much shorter—but I decide against it.
He watches me closely as I pull on my boots, and once I’m upright again, he barks at me to follow him.
I don’t move.
“Sir, my commander gave me direct orders to remain in this room. I will stay here until otherwise instructed.”
“You’re currently being instructed. I’m instructing you.”
“With all due respect, sir, you are not my commanding officer.”
Max sighs, irritation darkening his features, and he lifts his wrist to his mouth. “Did you hear that? I told you she wouldn’t listen to me.” A pause. “Yes. You’ll have to come get her yourself.”
Another pause.
Max is listening on an invisible earpiece not unlike the one I’ve seen Anderson use—an earpiece I’m now realizing must be implanted in their brains.
“Absolutely not,” Max says, his anger so sudden it startles me. He shakes his head. “I’m not touching her.”
Another beat of silence, and—
“I realize that,” he says sharply. “But it’s different when her eyes are open. There’s something about her face. I don’t like the way she looks at me.”
My heart slows.
Blackness fills my vision, flickers back to light. I hear my heart beating, hear myself breathe in, breathe out, hear my own voice, loud—so loud—
There was something about my face
The words slur, slow down
there wassomething about my facesssomething about my facessssomething about my eyes, the way I looked at her
My eyes fly open with a start. I’m breathing hard, confused, and I have hardly a moment to reflect on what just happened in my head before the door flies open again. A roar of noise fills my ears—more sirens, more shouts, more sounds of urgent, chaotic movement—
“Juliette Ferrars.”
There’s a man in front of me. Tall. Forbidding. Black hair, brown skin, green eyes. I can tell, just by looking at him, that he wields a great deal of power.
“I am Supreme Commander Ibrahim.” My eyes widen.
Musa Ibrahim is the supreme commander of Asia. By all accounts, the supreme commanders of The Reestablishment have equal levels of authority—but Supreme Commander Ibrahim is widely known to be one of the founders of the movement, and one of the only supreme commanders to have held the position from the beginning. He’s extremely well respected.
So when he says, “Come with me,” I say— “Yes, sir.”
I follow him out the door and into the chaos, but I don’t have long to take in the pandemonium before we make a sharp turn into a dark hallway. I follow Ibrahim down a slim, narrow path, the lights dimming as we go. I glance back a few times to see if Max is still with us, but he seems to have gone in another direction.
“This way,” Ibrahim says sharply.
We make one more turn and, suddenly, the narrow path opens onto a large, brightly lit landing area. There’s an industrial stairwell to the left and a large, gleaming steel elevator to the right. Ibrahim heads for the elevator, and places his hand flat against the seamless door. After a moment, the metal emits a quiet beep, hissing as it slides open.
Once we’re both inside, Ibrahim gives me a wide berth. I wait for him to direct the elevator—I scan the interior for buttons or a monitor of some kind
—but he does nothing. A second later, without prompting, the elevator moves.
The ride is so smooth it takes me a minute to realize we’re moving sideways, rather than up or down. I glance around, taking the opportunity to more closely examine the interior, and only then do I notice the rounded corners. I thought this unit was rectangular; it appears to be circular. I wonder, then, if we’re moving as a bullet would, boring through the earth.
Surreptitiously, I glance at Ibrahim.
He says nothing. Indicates nothing. He seems neither interested nor perturbed by my presence, which is new. He holds himself with a certainty that reminds me a great deal of Anderson, but there’s something else about Ibrahim— something more—that feels unique. Even from a passing glance it’s obvious that he feels absolutely sure about himself. I’m not sure even Anderson feels absolutely sure of himself. He’s always testing and prodding
—examining and questioning. Ibrahim, on the other hand, seems comfortable. Unbothered. Effortlessly confident.
I wonder what that must feel like.
And then I shock myself for wondering.
Once the elevator stops, it makes three brief, harsh, buzzing sounds. A moment later, the doors open. I wait for Ibrahim to exit first, and then I follow.
When I cross the threshold, I’m first stunned by the smell. The air quality is so poor that I can’t even open my eyes properly. There’s an acrid smell in the air, something reminiscent of sulfur, and I step through a cloud of
smoke so thick it immediately makes my eyes burn. It’s not long before I’m coughing, covering my face with my arm as I force my way through the room.
I don’t know how Ibrahim can stand this.
Only after I’ve pushed through the cloud does the stinging smell begin to dissipate, but by then, I’ve lost track of Ibrahim. I spin around, trying to take in my surroundings, but there are no visual cues to root me. This laboratory doesn’t seem much different from the others I’ve seen. A great deal of glass and steel. Dozens of long, metal tables stretched across the room, all of them covered in beakers and test tubes and what look like massive microscopes. The one big difference here is that there are huge glass domes drilled into the walls, the smooth, transparent semicircles appearing more like portholes than anything else. As I get closer I realize that they’re planters of some kind, each one containing unusual vegetation I’ve never seen. Lights flicker on as I move through the vast space, but much of it is still shrouded in darkness, and I gasp, suddenly, when I walk straight into a glass wall.
I take a step back, my eyes adjusting to the light. It’s not a wall.
It’s an aquarium.
An aquarium larger than I am. An aquarium the size of a wall. It’s not the first water tank I’ve seen in a laboratory here in Oceania, and I’m beginning to wonder why there are so many of them. I take another step back, still trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. Dissatisfied, I step closer again. There’s a dim blue light in the tank, but it doesn’t do much to illuminate the large dimensions. I crane my neck to see the top of it, but I lose my balance, catching myself against the glass at the last second. This is a futile effort.
I need to find Ibrahim.
Just as I’m about to step back, I notice a flash of movement in the tank.
The water trembles within, begins to thrash.
A hand slams hard against the glass. I gasp.
Slowly, the hand retreats.
I stand there, frozen in fear and fascination, when someone clamps down on my arm.
This time, I almost scream.
“Where have you been?” Ibrahim says angrily.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I say quickly. “I got lost. The smoke was so thick that I
—”
“What are you talking about? What smoke?”
The words die in my throat. I thought I saw smoke. Was there no smoke?
Is this another test?
Ibrahim sighs. “Come with me.” “Yes, sir.”
This time, I keep my eyes on Ibrahim at all times.
And this time, when we walk through the darkened laboratory into a blindingly bright, circular room, I know I’m in the right place. Because something is wrong.
Someone is dead.
