Divided (24 page)

“Was this a decision made because you weren’t able to afford training outside of the Alt Skills program?”

“Yes.”

“What we can offer is this: for any children you choose to have in the future, they will be given elite training here at headquarters until their dates of activation.”

That training room with its stacked odds, the maze room that lets Alts meet again and again. It’s nothing like the kind of training I knew as a kid, slick and polished rather than desperate and gritty.

But it’s the Board. Who knows what other secrets are here? This is an offer that takes as much as it gives.

“Is it an offer, or an order?” I ask her.
You’re asking me to tie myself to the Board again.

“An offer, of course. Though why you would turn this down—”

“I’m not turning it down, but it’s not a decision for me to make alone, either.”

“Do you mean the potential father of these children?”

“I mean our kids themselves.”

She’s watching me closely, and there’s a hint of curiosity on her face. “Leaving such a decision up to mere idles would be risking their lives, no?”

“I just don’t know if there’s any one right way anymore,” I say slowly.

“The offer will continue to stand, then.”

“Thank you.”

Everything’s changed, knowing that we might not have to be sterile anymore and are capable of more than just killing. It’s no longer so crazy, this idea that the world doesn’t have to end at the barrier, this idea of sons and daughters who might not die incompletes.

Sitting in Julis’s office the next week, it feels weird to be talking about my nightmare again. Like another lifetime, or talking about someone else. In this life, there are much more frightening things to be chased by than the ghost of a dead Alt.

I can’t tell Julis anything about what happened. Not about Sabian or Auden or the idles I left alive, mistakenly or not. And especially not about Kersh’s origins or the Board keeping everyone sterile. There’s that confidentiality clause between us, but I’m assuming it only goes so far—discovering that our whole reason for being is a lie probably isn’t covered. And it also feels disloyal, talking about it so quickly afterward to anyone who wasn’t there—as though everything Baer and Dire and Innes did to save me was no big deal.

“West?”

I startle in my seat at the sound of my name. The tablet is in my hand, and the screen is still blank.

“The nightmare that bad or that boring?” Julis asks. She has her own tablet on her lap, synced with mine so my words will show up on both. Her light tone doesn’t hide the concern I see in her eyes, watchful behind the scrutiny.

“Sorry, it’s neither, really,” I tell her. “I’m just distracted today.”

“
Have
you had the nightmare again since we last talked?”

I shake my head. “No.” That’s not a lie, at least—bits of bad dreams that first night after talking to Sabian, then a fitful night spent in that motel room in Calden. And for the nights since, I haven’t slept alone.

“Julis, I should probably tell you that Chord’s staying at my place now.” I say the words carefully, enjoying how they sound put together like that. I suppose I should feel bad that we’re basically ignoring Julis’s advice. But I don’t. And I know Chord doesn’t, either.

She snaps her gum, lifts an eyebrow. “A new development since our last session, or have you been keeping things quiet just in case I decide to lecture you again?”

“It’s new. I … well, I guess it just felt right. The timing and everything. We were always over at each other’s place, anyway.”

“Can I ask if something happened to lead to this decision?”

I became a striker again, for what I thought were the right reasons, but they weren’t, not really. I almost lost Chord because of that, and it would have been my fault. I couldn’t
not
be with him anymore.

“I did some pretty stupid things over the last few days” is what I say to Julis. “And Chord didn’t leave, even though I wouldn’t have blamed him.”

“Was he threatening to leave if you
didn’t
move in together?” she asks mildly.

“Julis, no. Give us some credit here, will you?”

“Had to be asked. Anyway, go on.”

“So you said we should wait because we each needed to establish our own spaces first, right? That a shared space is only as good as the personal spaces it’s built on, and because of my nightmares, I still had some stuff to work through.”

“Sounds familiar.”

I rub at my jeans with my good hand, feeling a bit awkward, but more importantly, secure. “I decided that being with Chord doesn’t mean I’m using him to feel strong or that I need him to get better. It just means he’s going to be around to know those parts of me that I might not want him to know otherwise.”

“Such as?”

“Like with my nightmares. I never wanted him to see me whenever I woke up from them because I felt dumb for being so afraid. So even though I did want us to live together, a part of me was also happy that you said we should wait.”

“Hmm. And?”

“I mean, us living together means I’m okay with Chord being around for all the bad times, too. That’s a good sign, that I’m not afraid of him seeing me like that.” I look at Julis. “Don’t you think?”

“I think all of this is a good sign, West,” she says, smiling.

“So you’re not mad?”

“It was never about me being mad; it was always about what was right for you.”

I smile back. “Chord’s right for me.”

My left hand is the last lingering injury from that terrible night in Leyton. It hasn’t healed nearly as well as my other slashes—too deep. Even coming out of the oxygen pod, still half groggy from having fallen sleep, I could feel the stubborn soreness of it, the continuous burn of damaged tissue.

It’s this burn that wakes me up the next morning.

I crack my eyes open, and by the way the light falls into my bedroom, I know it’s too early to be awake.

But it’s probably time to check how my left hand is doing.

I’m sitting up in bed, slowly working off the bandages, when Chord stirs beside me. His eyes are dark as ink in the early light, his wavy hair thick and messy.

Still lying down, he slides his arm around my waist. “West, you okay?” he asks quietly. “A nightmare?”

“No, not that,” I say. “My hand is hurting, so I’m just going to fix it up and then go back to sleep. Sorry for waking you.”

Chord looks over at my work, the messy roll of bandages pooled in my lap, and sits up all the way. It’s warm in the room. His wide shoulders are bare. “Here, let me help. It’s hard to do it with just one hand.”

He leans his back against the headboard and adjusts me until I’m sitting in front of him, both of us facing the room. With his arms coming from behind to circle me, he unwinds the rest of the bandage from my hand. I watch his fingers move. They are careful and efficient, not clumsy the way mine are with gauze and tape.

“Chord?”

“Yeah?” He’s holding out my hand, taking a closer look at the wound. His jaw is tight as he reaches over to my bedside table for the tube of binder agent Innes gave me. It’s meant to speed along the healing, but we both know it’s unlikely I’ll ever make a proper fist again.

“What if I can’t do it anymore?” I ask him.

“Do what?”

“Weaponry.”

“Why couldn’t you?”

My throat is tight. “Only one hand now, right?”

Chord presses his lips to my temple, dissolving my worries with his kiss. “You beat Hollis with one hand, didn’t you?”

I lean back against him. His fingers are warm on my skin as he starts to wrap my hand. “How’s your place looking, by the way?” I ask, seeing his clothes on my floor now. How the sun peeping in through the blinds touches on our things strewn next to each other on my desk—my art supplies, his half-finished tech projects. “Do you have a lot of stuff left to bring over?”

“My room is pretty much cleared. I just threw things in boxes and carried them over. Don’t look in Aave’s bedroom.”

“Does it look the same way your room used to?”

“Yes. Probably worse.”

“Not possible.”

“Just remember I warned you.” I can feel his smile in my hair.

“Chord?”

“Yeah?”

“The other day, when you told me about what you found during your tour. The key-code disrupter and the temporary break in the barrier …”

“What about it?”

I bring my free hand around so it’s touching the side of his face. “I was wondering why you decided to tell me what you did, when you never talked about your tour before. Not anything so specific, anyway.”

His hands go still on mine for a fraction of a second before slowly continuing to wrap my injury. “You had this look on your face, West,” he says quietly. “I’ve seen you scared before, but something about that fear was different. It caught me off guard.”

I
was
scared, I know. The fear I felt at headquarters followed me all the way home, a persistent finger of ice that wouldn’t lift from my chest.

“I had just gotten back from talking to Sabian,” I tell Chord. “I was thinking about what he said. About how even if I didn’t agree to the contracts, if he ever found out that I leaked info about it, he’d find me. I mean, all strikers are terrified when they hear that long buzz for a news file. So when we got that one about the Alt who got caught digging beneath the barrier, I was picturing myself back in that room, listening to Sabian lay out a trap for me and call it an offer.”

Chord finishes tying the bandage, but his hands stay on mine, slowly playing with my fingers as he speaks. “To be honest, West, I don’t know how much I meant to tell you. I just started talking because it scared
me
to see you so scared. But once I started, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be. It
wasn’t
like reliving all those hours spent walking alongside the barrier, constantly waiting for someone to attack and being terrified I’d fail to stop them. Or imagining all the different ways I
would
kill an attacker, if I had to do it.”

My hand curls around the back of his neck, into his hair, and I press my face against his skin.

“I was worried I’d feel myself accidentally stumble over the bodies again, the ones I never noticed until it was too late to avoid because it was dark. Clearing’s always slowest to get the ones that far out, you know?” Chord clears his throat. “And those times there was movement in the Belt, just outside the barrier … I told myself it was simply wild animals. The bot scouts I sent out always came back with negative readings. But I couldn’t stop thinking that it was someone from the Surround out on
their
tour, watching
me.
”

“But knowing what we know now, about us being here against our will,” I say, “maybe that person watching you was actually someone from Kersh.”

Chord’s arms tighten around my waist. “Sent by the Board to make sure I wouldn’t get any ideas about trying to leave?”

“I know Dire said my not killing those idles was worse than just making them incompletes outright, but that was before he found out about the Board forcing us to be Alts. So what he believes the Surround to be like … maybe that’s not true anymore, either.”

“I can’t imagine it being
good,
though, West. Otherwise the Board would have to admit that the Alt system simply isn’t the better of two bad choices.”

“Or maybe they just like being in power.”

“Well, yeah. There’s that, too.”

“And something else, Chord.”

“Hmm?” He’s kissing more than just my temple now, and his hands …

“What if the Surround’s already figured out their own cure for sterility and they are actually using it?”

“Maybe they have … maybe not … I don’t know …”

“Auden told me he and Innes are going to secretly work on piecing together the rest of that coded file. To try to re-create the cure the Board hid away all those years ago so they can fix everyone—fix
us,
if we wanted …”

“Okay. But, West, just … stop talking. …”

He nudges me until we’re both lying down again, our limbs all wound up together. Aware of my injuries as always, he gently holds my wrist down with one of his hands. His other goes for the rest of me. His mouth all over, making me forget the deep ache in my palm, ignore it entirely so that touching him is as easy as it ever was.

Later, it takes us a few minutes to untangle ourselves from my bandages that came loose.

Chord’s voice is husky as he murmurs an apology, retying the gauze around my hand. I don’t miss the quiet laugh there, even though I’m sleepy again and watching him with eyes that are already half shut.

He sits up, leans over, and takes something from one of the desk drawers. And it’s only when he places it in front of me on the bed that I’m suddenly wide awake, my heart thumping wildly again.

It’s nearly identical to mine, the one he once made for me, but not quite. This one serves another purpose, so Chord had to use different pieces.

But I have no doubt what it is.

A key-code disrupter.

And a choice.

My agent, Steven Chudney, for his continuous guidance, encouragement, and hard work. Thank you so much for making all the things happen. None of this would be possible without you.

My editor, Chelsea Eberly, because she never fails to amaze me with her wisdom, generosity, and insightfulness. Thank you, always, for making everything I write better. You are truly wonderful.

The fantastic people at Random House Children’s Books for helping bring
Divided
to life: Mallory Loehr; Alison Kolani and her copyediting team; Lauren Donovan, my publicist; graphic artist Michael Heath, designer Nicole de las Heras, and Barbara Cho in production for creating
Divided
’s beautiful cover; John Adamo and the marketing department; and Joan Demayo and her sales team. Thank you all so very much.

Ellen Oh, thank you for being such a brilliant and incredible friend while we continue to navigate this publishing thing together. We need to meet up and eat donuts. Please keep writing fabulous books.

Andrew Fukuda, Elana Johnson, Mindy McGinnis, and Kasie West: You guys absolutely rock. Thank you so much for all the support. All of your books look awesome on my bookshelves, by the way. I need more of them.

Emma Pass, my lovely and talented author friend, for you: SMOTE. In caps, of course.

The Lucky 13s and Friday the Thirteeners, because where would I be without all of you?

Ash Guevarra and Elizabeth Salas, thank you both so much for being there on a daily basis, for keeping me laughing while I work, for all the enthusiasm and kindness.

Thank you, ONE OK ROCK, for making the music that you do. I wrote and edited much of
Divided
while listening to all of your albums. You make each and every one of my writing days awesome.

My tumblr and OORer buds. There are way too many of you to write here, but you guys are the best. You really, truly are.

Wendy Wong, my sis. Because we are both ridiculous together and know it. Let’s keep going to concerts all over the world.

And much love, always, to Bak and Hing, Ray and Peggy, Heather and Terry, Ashley, and Dallas. THANK YOU.