Divided (22 page)

I pause again and watch my reflections swivel with me as I turn to peek over my shoulder. This time my Alt doesn’t slow, and that’s how I know it has to happen now.

With my thumb I hit
send
on my phone. A single text to Auden with a simple demand:
Call Bryn now.

Seconds later, I hear the soft buzz of a ring—not from my cell but hers, a long
trill,
and then a “Damn it!” that is full of rage—and I spin on my feet and start running again so fast my head swims. For a second I wonder if I’m going to do something stupid like pass out from fear, but my ears never lose the sound of that ring from her cell, homing in on it like the drowning to a light on the shore.

She’s on my left, behind the mirrored panels that make up the maze’s paths, and only feet ahead of me now that I’ve changed direction. Maybe thirty at the most, and headed my way. We are separated by space that could be measured by hand spans, by material measuring a fraction of that, and she is only here for one thing.

I keep going, the slap of my bare feet on concrete nearly as loud as the ring of Bryn’s cell had been. Both of them are only handfuls of decibels, I know that, but I also know they are somehow as loud as thunder.

My Alt chases. She is no more than twenty feet behind me.

In less than fifteen seconds the three of us will pass each other.

Still running, suddenly feeling as though my hand is moving through quicksand and that time no longer has rules, I lift my gun and shoot out the bottoms of the glass panels just ahead of me. The ones on my left—the ones that no longer keep me safe from Bryn or her safe from me as they shatter into thousands of tiny little shards and the path breaks open.

I dive to the ground, sliding along, and I shut my eyes tight as glass bits rain down on me. They land in my hair and on my clothes, silver and sparkling.

When I open my eyes again, Bryn is just up ahead, her run finally coming to a shaky stop. Her eyes are wide and startled. Her face is pale and her gun is drawn.

But not on me.

My Alt rushing from behind doesn’t stir the air at all as she blows past me—every strand of my hair remains unmoving, undisturbed, like she wasn’t even there. But I see hers move as though it
were
real, her eyes and feet still keeping hard to the same path as before I’d dropped from view, and all of that is just as real to Bryn who in this split second sees my Alt as me.

Bryn shoots at my Alt. The bullet whistles through her chest and lodges itself somewhere in a mirror behind me, shattering more glass.

And then I’m struggling to my feet and running, tiny bits of the broken mirror digging into the soles of my feet and setting them on fire. I jump through my Alt as she dissolves into nothingness and when I fall on top of Bryn, my desperation and her shock are enough to topple her over.

She’s taller than me, and bigger—in sheer muscle, she has the advantage. Her clothes against my skin have an odd feel, and I know she’s wearing protective clothing to help withstand the slash of a blade, the stab of a knife.

The impact of my falling on her smashes her wrist into the concrete floor, loosening both our grips. Her gun—a Ronin, the kind Level 2 Alts and Operators use—goes spinning; my cell skids along the ground alongside it. My gun is still in my other hand and I swing it over now to point it at her face. I can’t shoot, but she doesn’t know that. Doesn’t know that she still has the advantage here. My finger catches clumsily against the finger guard as it feels for the trigger.

Bryn’s left arm slices through the air. So fast. The glint of silver in her hand is thin and sharp.

I lift my empty hand to deflect the blade. Too late.

Her blade cuts through my left palm.

Another slash, catching dangerously close to my wrist this time, and pain on top of pain.
She’s cut my marks.

My finger finally finds the trigger and I pretend to still be able to kill.

“Drop the knife.” My words come between pants.

Bryn’s eyes go narrow as she glares at me, her expression a battle of emotions. I see hate for me, disbelief at her situation … and deep shock and confusion that speaks of something else.

“My cell,” she says dazedly. “That call …”

Auden’s name would have showed on her screen.

“What about it?” I say to her, still out of breath. I need to hear her say it first. I need to be sure that none of this comes from me.

“Auden … it was him,” Bryn says. “He’s alive?”

I say nothing, then finally, “Yes. He is. Now drop the knife.”

Her eyes flash fire at me, new suspicions there. “Where is he? Are you holding him somewhere?
I will kill you!
”

“Drop the knife!”

She lets the knife drop to the ground. Too close to her, still—Bryn is no typical Alt, and Auden being alive but not here means I’m still a threat. I lean forward and send the knife scattering with my wrist, because my hand is strangely limp. Useless. Even if I could chance a look at anywhere but Bryn, I wouldn’t look at my hand. I don’t need to look to know the damage is very, very bad.

The knife spins hard down the open path in front of us and stops.

Abruptly.

It’s the space of a heartbeat, or a breath, but the air in the room grows heavy with another presence, and I think even Bryn knows as I tilt my head up to see. I’m hollow with dread, slow with terror.

Like Bryn, Hollis is also wearing combat gear. His gun is in his left hand—left-handed just like his Alt. I stare into the black eye of its muzzle.

He bends to pick up the blade that hit his shoe. The motion is relaxed, and I can almost believe he’s simply picking up something he’s dropped onto the ground. But it’s his sister’s blade, with my blood on it—and a hint of my tracking chips.

With his gun still aimed at me, he snaps the knife shut with his other hand and stuffs it into his pocket. Whatever time I might have bought with his surprise—at finding me here, at seeing his sister defeated—is gone.

“Hello, Grayer,” Hollis says, dead calm. “You didn’t have to rush. We would have come to you.”

Shoot!
I clench my hand tighter around my gun and am still swinging it from Bryn’s face to Hollis’s when there’s the sound of feet out in the hall, moving fast and growing louder as they head for us. A flicker of alarmed surprise crosses Hollis’s face, his mouth going hard at how things are not going the way they’re supposed to, though his gun barely wavers.

Mine manages to hold still. Deliberately, I shoot him in the hand.

Hollis drops his gun with a clatter and a muffled yell, and the Ronin bounces and skates to a stop against a mirrored panel. He staggers over, picks it up with his good hand, and takes off.

When Auden bursts into sight seconds later, I don’t even feel surprised. As he looks at Bryn, emotions flood his face—hope, worry, pain. Too much to not give away what he feels for the Alt who would have killed me if given the chance.

Auden starts to help me up, but I wave him away.

Rolling off Bryn, I’m careful to cradle my bad hand. Doesn’t matter—each jostle feels like a punch. Not my dominant hand. There’s that, at least. And I’m sweating by the time I get to my feet, which stings with what must be dozens of little cuts on their soles.

“Auden.” Bryn’s staring at him, stunned. Her voice is a whisper and so choked with feeling that I have no doubts now. She was doing this just as much to avenge Auden’s death as to prove her worth. She shakes her head, unable to look away from him. “I don’t understand.”

“Are you okay, Bryn?” Auden pulls her to her feet, and I don’t miss how his hands linger on hers. “West wasn’t going to hurt you.”

Her tears come fast, making her eyes go bright, and it doesn’t surprise me when I hear fury break through the shock. At him now, not me. “They told us you were—”

He brushes her tears away, murmuring, and I glance away.

I inspect my hand and grimace at the gaping mouth that’s open wide across my palm. A shorter, shallower line cuts across my wrist’s marks before falling away. The blood seeping from the wound looks … metallic. I rub a finger across it. There’s a hint of graininess there, like sand.

My tracking chips.

I wipe my finger on my leg, thinking fast.

Such a waste of valuable time, but I need my shoes. I don’t know what’s next, and I can’t risk letting my feet getting even more hurt. And if tracking wet footprints can give me away, then tracking blood must be much worse.

“My shoes,” I call out to Auden as I move away, already trying to locate them, peering down one mirrored aisle after the other. “Help me find them, please! This damn maze!”

It’s probably less than a minute later that he’s pushing them into my hands, but it feels like much longer than that. Hurriedly, I wipe off the bottoms with my socks, and then I’m cramming the shoes onto my feet. I leave the socks. No time.

I shove my gun underneath my arm so I can use my good hand to dig my cell free. My left hand can’t do much for me anymore. Not right now, at least. The pain has ebbed into a slow, low throb—a sign of shock. I tap my cell awake as I start walking, following the same path Hollis took toward the training room. His trail of blood has already petered out, which means he’s lucid enough to think of wrapping it up. Not good.

Dire, I need you to track my chips now.
I send the text with a fast flurry of fingers. Turn off the buzzer.

“West,” Auden calls out to me, trying to stop me from leaving. “Wait, what are you—”

“You know what I have to do.” My voice is grim. But not cold, or shaky, just hard. Settling in for this last completion that I have to make sure falls short. “Did Dire let you just walk out?”

“I came here with Innes. She wanted access to the lab.”

Freya’s notes. “She’s in there right now? Auden, are you crazy? They’ll—”

“Innes knows how to protect herself, West. Now let me talk to Hollis.”

“You can’t, Auden,” Bryn says, her words fading as I move farther away. “Who do you think came up with this idea? Let this finish here.”

Their voices fade; I’m no longer listening. Auden and Bryn don’t matter now. Only Hollis matters. The very last.

The door to the training room is already half open, but I slide it over the rest of the way, staying well off to the side until I’m as sure as I can be that Hollis isn’t waiting on the other side for me. I make myself count slowly to twenty, listening for breathing not my own, the scent of blood not my own. Finally I step inside.

It’s the same room Sabian showed me just days ago, and even though the stations are cloaked in half dark, the only light coming in from the maze room and the open door to the outer hall on the other side, I recognize everything. Slowly, I make my way through the shadows, the wall against my back cold through my clothes as I slide along. My gun is in my hand, held out and ready to fire, but I dread using it. Hard enough to aim for vitals in this dim light.

The door to the hall is open. No way to tell if Hollis simply left it open on his way out—or if he’s still waiting somewhere in here. A trap.

The vibration of an incoming text. I can hear Dire’s brusque voice in my head as I read his words.
Getting two signals, both in the building. One’s weak. Which one?

Weak,
I send back.

Unease uncoils inside my gut, spreading out as I keep moving along. I walk past the oxygen pods, the shooting targets ready to be destroyed, a stand of swords that’s been knocked askew.

Buzz.
Less than a hundred feet away from you, toward your right.

The lobby.

My first thought is
Why?
It’s such an open space; there’s nowhere he can hide. So why go there? I remember how exposed I felt, walking in there, already at a disadvantage … and then I realize he knows it has that effect, too. And wants me to feel it now.

I turn my cell off all the way and shove it back into my pocket. I can’t risk another text coming through and distracting me at the worst possible moment. I shift my gun back into my good hand, but as careful as I am, I still jostle my bad hand. The injury burns, is furious again.

Out in the hall, I turn right. The lobby is up ahead, and its windowed walls lift the darkness. It’s going to be clear today, cloudless and sunny.

The fresh sweat on my brow drips down my neck. Even to me it smells of fear. At least I’ve taken away his shooting hand. Hollis at top strength is terrifying, and I cling to that single weakness now.

I keep making my way down the hall toward the lobby, staying as close to the wall as I can. It’s stupid, really, this pitiful countermeasure. He’s already expecting me to show. One way or another, I have to face him. It’s an ugly and undeniable fact that for this last contract, one in which more than my own life is at stake, I have absolutely no strategy.

When I finally reach the edge of the lobby, I peer into its vast space.

A sniper’s field.

The room is bathed by a cool flat gray that’s taken on just the slightest tinge of plum. Dawn is less than an hour away. I can see the shapes of the buildings across the street through the windows, windows that are uncovered and already ushering in the day. I think of that first meeting with Sabian, of that bug lying dead on the windowsill, trapped.

I can’t remember the last time I wished for more shadow, less light. Because there’s no place to hide out there. With my back still against the wall and gun in hand, I slowly round the corner and take my first step out of the hallway and into the lobby.

My pulse races, a crazy staccato beat. I feel a sharp flare of surprise when nothing happens.

There is still no sign of him.

Where are you? I know you are waiting for me!

I take another step to the side and my foot touches something on the ground.

One look down and I see it’s Bryn’s knife, the one with my blood and tracking chips on it. Whether Hollis dropped it by mistake, I can’t tell. Though one thing is for sure: he is no longer trackable. He could be anywhere. I could be wrong about him leading me out here intentionally.

Except I don’t think so. He needs this challenge just as much as I do.

My eyes dart up to the stairways, the ones that cross the lobby overhead, connecting wing to wing. It’s darker up there, much easier to hide.

That’s where I would go and wait, if I were aiming to kill someone down here. But the elevator didn’t sound; I would have heard it. And the knife is
here
—it’s not possible that Hollis turned and headed the other way, toward the fire stairs at the end of the wing, the only other way to go up from this position in the building.

Which leaves the ground floor.

He
must
be here.

I look across the floor of the lobby. It opens up to the other wings of the building, dark gaps between teeth. Five of them, not including the one from which I just stepped. Each entryway is shadowed, not yet lit from the thin light starting to stream into the lobby.

He can probably see me right this very second, from whichever one he’s waiting in. Maybe he’s already aiming his gun at me while I stand here, still and unsure—

Frantic and panicked now, I sweep the whole place again with my eyes. He needs me to cross the lobby—and if I go back the way I came, the only other way out of here, then where would that leave Dess?

Again! Look again!
Floor to ceiling, elevator to entrance—

The light on the lock plate of the main door is green, not red.

My heart pounds.

It should be red. At this time of day, the door should be locked.

And how silent it was, revolving on its well-greased axle as I walked through the entrance two days ago. No sound to give it away at all.

Hollis’s injury. Was it too much pain, even for a Board Alt?
Especially
for a Board Alt, someone who isn’t used to having a weakness?

But if he runs—

Then Dess—

I lurch from the wall, flung into action with fear in my mouth, sharp and tinny. My shoes hit the ceramic with a vicious smack and I’m sprinting hard across the lobby.

The impact of my left shoulder as it hits the glass door, getting ready to push it open, should hurt. It should ring along the bones of my arm and make my hand scream, and it probably does, even. But I feel nothing. Only the need to hurry and catch him before he’s—

Wait.

A trap. Hollis must be just outside the doors, and whatever weapon he’ll be using, injury or not, he won’t miss as soon as I’m through.

But it’s too late to slow down. My momentum is already starting to push the door open, my gun only starting to lift up from my side even as my eyes are looking for him, squinting against the sudden brightness that hints of morning.

“Stop.”

His voice comes from behind me. I wilt against the door. One low sob breaks from my throat. A lone puff of condensation blooms against the glass.

Trapped.

“Now it’s your turn to drop the gun,” Hollis says. “Then turn around.”

I lower my gun slowly, but I don’t drop it. To have only a blade left on me …

Footsteps come closer, and a sharp point presses against the back of my neck.
“Now.”
Hollis’s voice, right in my ear, and it’s harder to not cringe from his tone than from the blade that’s digging into my skin.

I drop the gun. It falls to the ground with a sad clatter. He kicks it and it spins away, coming to rest close to the elevator, far from my reach. When I feel the knife ease away from my neck, I turn around and face him.

Five inches from my face is the point of a steel sword. I stare down its long silver span. It must be one of the ones from the training room. When I lift my eyes to meet Hollis’s, they are narrowed as he watches me. There’s no sign of pain in his eyes from having just been shot in the hand. A half-formed thought that I should have remembered to ask Auden about pain-management training for Board Alts.

“I can kill you right now, but I won’t,” he says. “I want to give you a fighting chance.”

I don’t drop my gaze. “I made you a complete.”

“You had no right to do that.”

“So talk to your father.”

The tip of the sword drops to the side of my neck and digs in just the slightest. My skin stings with blood and sweat as dawn glints off the blade, winks off the sharp edge.

He gestures with his head toward the entryway of the wing off to the side, the one just behind him. Less than thirty feet away. It’s an awkward movement, and then I see how his damaged hand is cradled against his side. It’s starting to bleed again now that he’s no longer staunching it tightly against himself.

“On the ground over there, just inside the entrance of that wing,” he says. “There’s another sword.”

I hear it in my head—my own voice judging Baer and the time spent on swordplay in class. It sends fresh dread rolling in my gut. When was the last time a sword was used for a completion? I can’t recall.

“I thought you wanted to re-create a natural assignment,” I say to him, my voice bland. Careful to hide any sign of my dismay that he has somehow selected the one weapon I wouldn’t. “Swords aren’t typical.”

“I don’t care about typical. We’re far from typical Alts. And I like swords—I’m good with them.”

“You don’t have your hand.”

“Neither do you.”

Weakness for weakness, then. As though we truly are each other’s Alts. “Back off so I can get it, then,” I finally manage.

He follows me the whole way. I don’t have to turn to know that his sword is pointed at my back, only inches away.

As he said, the second sword is lying on the ground just inside the entrance. I pick it up. The hilt is neither a perfect fit nor uncomfortable. At slightly less than three feet long, the sword’s blade is brushed silver. The edges are honed to a liquid gleam.

It’s heavier than I expected.

“Move back into the lobby,” he says, and the prod of steel in my back leaves no room for argument. “The center.”

Be the one, be worthy.

The letters engraved into the brass plate at our feet glow dully in the low light. I know that saying so well—everyone in Kersh does, like knowing the alphabet or our own names. But it seems hollow now, knowing what I know about the beginnings of this city and its barrier.

It still means the world to Hollis, though.

I look up and face him.

And barely have time to adjust my grip before he’s swinging his sword at me.

My breath leaves me in an audible rush as I rear back. My blade swings out, a hand span away from his stomach in an ungainly arc that’s not quite ready. I can’t have another one of those. Not if I want to get out of this alive.

Hollis says nothing, his sword carefully held so it spans the bottom of his torso to the top of his head, protecting where he’s most vulnerable. Whether he’s taken aback by my clumsiness, I can’t tell. His dark eyes are measuring me, looking for where I’m most weak.

I hiss in a breath and center myself. Pull up my sword and angle it across my front, my own shield. I’m all too aware of my damaged hand, how it’s hanging awkwardly at my side. It’s worse than useless, the dead weight throwing me off balance. But at least Hollis is dealing with the same problem.

I swing at him, this time the arc of my sword much more true, coming within an inch of his chest.

Hollis dances back. His recovery time is fast, and as I sidestep his next swing, despair floods through me. To have gotten this far only to meet another Alt who might not only be my match, but also better.

Oh, Chord, I’m sorry.

The clang of steel against steel echoes throughout the lobby. It’s high-pitched and sharp, mellowed out by the softer shuffle of our feet along the ceramic tiles, the low, ragged breaths torn from us with each swing of our swords.

I’m getting tired. My muscles are screaming, my arm trembling. My hair is damp with sweat. The soles of my feet hurt.

Sweeping his blade away, I feel it vibrate through my entire arm. No time to counter it with a move of my own before I’m dodging his next swing, coming so close to my shoulder that the wind of it cools my skin.

“You’re slowing,” Hollis says, his breathing not nearly ragged enough for me. “Can’t you tell?”

I shake my head as I push away his blade yet again. I bring mine across as I aim for his arm. Not quite. “No,” I gasp. “I can’t tell. Because I’m perfectly fine.”