Deviation (23 page)
He lapses into silence. I chew my lip for almost ten seconds before I can’t take it anymore. “Well? Say something.”
“Like what?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Something not creepy. Something about what all of it means and what we should do.”
“We?” he echoes, his brows rising.
I exhale, ignoring the sound effects coming from Linc, and lean across the table. “I know you want to take him down just like we do. Tell me how.”
“Why?”
It isn’t the answer I expected. I blink. “Why what?”
“Why do you want to take him down?”
“I would think it’s obvious.”
“Pretend it isn’t.”
I sit forward, intent on my answer. Conviction heats my face. “Because he never once took into consideration the very real and basic needs of his creations. I might not be human but I have an emotional range that includes enough love for Linc and enough hatred for the Creator. Because he takes it for granted that we exist for him. And because he abuses people in the most exploitive ways possible.”
Daniel grunts. I don’t know whether that means he agrees or not, but I’m heated enough that I no longer care. “I want to take away the one thing he never gave us,” I continue. “Freedom to choose.”
“How do you mean?”
“If the rest of the world knows Imitations exist, he won’t be able to control us, to choose whether we live or die or who gets created and who doesn’t. We’ll be free. You’ll be free,” I say pointedly. Daniel stares at me across the table. A moment passes as my last words hang in the air. We both know I’m talking about more than just the confines of this cell.
“They might reject you,” he says finally.
“They might,” I say with way more bravery than I feel.
“What will you do then?” he presses.
I don’t have an answer for that but I don’t need one. Linc squeezes my shoulder. “We’ll do whatever we have to, to survive.”
Daniel’s hands are still clasped and his eyes are unblinking as he regards Linc. “You would have to trust me.”
Linc doesn’t answer.
“And stop trying to kill me,” Daniel adds.
Linc scowls.
“And we have to get Raven out of Twig City.”
“Deal,” I say.
Daniel quirks a brow at Linc. “Can we tell her now?” he asks as if he’s asked this question a thousand times before.
“I said—” Linc begins.
“Tell me what?” Something about the way he said it makes me shiver.
Daniel ignores Linc and pins me to my chair with a look. “The deal was made before you agreed. In fact, so much of this was set in place long before now. I’ve been pretty impatient waiting on you to get your shit together and be ready.”
“Ready? Ready for what?”
Daniel and Linc exchange a look. Whatever Daniel sees there isn’t enough to stop him. “Melanie, for one. You leading Morton and the others. This.” He waves his hand at the dirty room.
“Melanie?” My pulse races.
“Your soldier man over there came through. She’s fine.”
“Fine?” My voice rises and all I can seem to do is echo him. My head spins. The room tilts. “Are you telling me she’s alive?” I look at Linc, eyes wide.
“Yes,” he says quietly.
“No, I saw her hit her head. I saw her …” The memory of that day is crystal clear. The small pool of blood seeping from her skull, the men bent over her searching for a pulse. Finding none. Her chest, the absence of breath. “How?”
“The drugs in this world can do a hell of a lot more than a good night’s sleep, kitten. Sofia slipped her a pill in her food that masked her heartbeat for long enough to get her out.”
“Where is she now?”
“She’s in a safe house. Don’t worry, she’s fine.”
I look at Linc. I don’t know whether to be utterly relieved or insanely furious. “You lied.”
He sighs. “I’m sorry. But you can’t lie well enough to cover something like that. I didn’t want to put you in more danger simply by knowing.”
I swallow a lump. He’s right. And I have no idea how to feel about it.
“And you think I’m ready now?”
“I can see the deviation in your eyes,” Daniel says. “The anger’s stronger now, isn’t it? The violent thoughts. The urge to stand up for yourself. The absence of fear in the face of danger.”
“Yes.”
“You’re ready.”
There are more questions but I save them. Not because I don’t need to know the answers but because I’m not sure I can handle them yet. “He’s talking about identifying the different classes of people with some sort of mark,” I tell him.
“Segregating the city. I’ve heard the rumors. Crawford told me the rest and your little media plan isn’t bad. But it isn’t good enough to beat him. We need to get the Ravens. All of them. The Ravens are the key.”
I ask the question that’s kept me awake at night more than once since Morton’s confession of love for a Raven that is not Daniel’s. “How many are there?”
Daniel leans back and folds his arms over his chest. “That’s an impossible question with no real answer. Despite what you may think, Ven, no two Ravens are alike. In that respect, there is only one.” I scowl at his cryptic reply and he continues, “And by your standards, there are also seven.”
His answer matches Morton’s. I’m not sure what else I expected but the confirmation of a truth I’d already accepted still deflates me. “And attacking me?” I ask quietly. Linc’s hand lands on my shoulder. I know it’s meant to be a comfort, but my skin is impenetrable, steeled for Daniel’s answer, no matter what. “That was all part of your plan as well? You wanted to be taken prisoner so, what? So I’d free you and finally show I was strong enough?”
Daniel levels his gaze on mine. “What do you need to believe?”
“I need the truth.”
“No. You need something to fan the flames.”
It’s not an answer, not really. I take it anyway, because he’s right.
A spark ignites. I’m done turning away. I’m done hiding. Maybe it’s my DNA structure deviating at last. Maybe it’s my own sense of self-preservation finally winning out.
“How do we do it?”
“We have to move fast. Get in and get out. Even if we can’t find them all. It’s possible not all of them are left at this point anyway.” He frowns, but it’s fleeting as he moves on to the next part of his plan. It’s obvious he’s thought this through. I’m not sure whether to be relieved we’ve finally found a way in or wary of this new, calculated and very sane version of Daniel before me.
To compromise, I’m wary. “Do you still have access?” I ask.
“We need a key card. Or the override. Your boyfriend tells me he’s been stripped of both. Not surprising. Guess we’ll have to lift it off your new rent-a-cop in charge.”
“That’s easier said than done. He’s loyal to Titus,” Linc says.
Daniel shrugs. “I have faith in your abilities, Crawford. Make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
“Why are you doing all of this?” I ask.
“Love is a very strange motivator,” Daniel says.
“Are you talking about Raven or your mother?” I ask.
His head tilts and some of the old Daniel flashes in his eyes. “Does it matter if, in the end, you’re free?”
I don’t know how to answer. It reminds me of something Morton said the first time we met. About the means to protecting loved ones sometimes seeming “gray” in the eyes of others. He’d been referring to Daniel’s attack on me and I’d bristled at the suggestion Daniel’s actions might be justified by a “big picture” mentality. But now, with Daniel suggesting the same idea again, I found myself almost agreeing. Almost.
“We need to figure out a way to get you through the building,” Linc says, interrupting my wandering thoughts.
“Get me out of this cell and I’ll get us out of the building,” Daniel says.
“Now?” I ask, alarmed at the idea of it all happening so fast.
“No.” Linc sighs like he’s disappointed with his own answer. “Not yet. I need to figure out your GPS removal before we leave the premises. And we need to be prepared to hit Twig City as soon as we leave here so we have the element of surprise. But it needs to be soon. We can’t afford to wait much longer. Time’s running out. I can feel it.”
“If anyone can feel the pain of waiting, I think it’s me,” Daniel says.
Linc scowls. “I’m doing the best I can.”
“You’re doing it all. Give her some of the risk, man. She can handle it. She’s a big girl,” Daniel shoots back.
I stare at Linc, for once agreeing with Daniel. “What can I do?” I ask.
Linc’s phone buzzes before he can answer. He frowns at the screen, a wrinkle appearing between his brows.
“What is it?” I ask.
When he looks up, it’s to lock eyes with Daniel. They share a look that conveys everything. Daniel swears and Linc says, “Titus is on his way. And he knows we’re down here.”
I’ve been inside my room only minutes when Titus comes for me. Somehow, I knew he would. It feels strangely overdue, like it’s been weeks coming instead of hours or minutes. He asks me to follow him and leads me into his private study. The study that’s off-limits. The study I robbed.
The minute I’m inside the dark-paneled walls, the scrambler hidden in my pocket becomes like heated coals. It slow roasts a hole through my pocket. I imagine a neon sign lit overhead pointing straight toward the stolen contraband and my pulse races. I take a breath, forcing myself to relax.
He can’t know. He can’t.
The lamp is already burning when I enter. There is a mess of papers spread over the desk that weren’t there the other day. I force my eyes straight ahead, terrified to even glance at the cabinet against the wall. Titus motions to one of the leather chairs.
“Sit,” he says.
I sit.
He sinks into the remaining chair and leans back against it, arms resting lightly on the brown leather armrests. He looks like a king, completely at ease with his subjects. Completely confident in his ability to crush them if desired. My own chair is uncomfortably sunken, making me feel dwarfed in comparison. I try to sit up straighter. I’m not sure it makes a difference. This room, the expression Titus wears as he watches me shift in my chair, are both reminders that I’m completely out of my domain.
Titus watches me over his steepled hands. “You’ve had quite a day,” he says.
I wait for him to get to the point.
“Your boyfriend has gone too far this time,” he says in a voice that’s eerily calm.
“What are you talking about?” If I was ever uncertain about my complete deviation, my newfound ability to lie, my even tone is the final proof. Especially while the inside of me begins to crack under the weight of his gaze. Titus has always been better at this than me.
“Swiping a key card, tampering with listening devices, seducing you in darkened parlors … All of these are things I’ve let go for the greater purpose. For an agreement you made. I’ve been patient and more than generous with all of your weak attempts at covert betrayal, but I’ve had enough. Tonight you’ve gone too far with your little trip downstairs.”
“I don’t know—”
“What I’m talking about, yes, I’m completely sure you’ll pretend that you don’t.” He drops his hands and his eyes narrow with a twitch on one side. “Do not think for one moment that any of your progress has been your own doing. I’ve let you have your fun because it served the end goal. Tell me, daughter, have you learned anything useful from your little trysts with the Whitcomb boy?”
I stay silent. His admission is too broad for me to understand. Does he mean everything? Every time we’ve thought we were alone, we weren’t? Every time we thought we’d snuck away, we—
“Answer me!” he snaps.
“No, not yet, but Obadiah’s—”
“Nothing. That boy is nothing. To me, to you, to anyone. His father should’ve gone with the female gene chromosomes displayed at birth and been done with it. That boy will never be a man. And this illusion is done. You’ve had your fun running around playing at spy or callgirl or whatever suits your fancy. Your time’s up. I want the device back. Now, give it to me.”
I don’t move.
He leans forward in his chair. His eyes flick to something over my shoulder. The cabinet. His voice drops to a whisper and he smiles in a way that wrenches my gut. “You can give it to me now. Or, I will take it from your person. The choice is entirely yours.”
My shoulders sag in defeat, and I retrieve the remote. I set it on the small table between us.
The anger I held onto so easily earlier is quickly leaking away. My skin hums in fear that I desperately try to ignore. Does he know where they are? Has he found our hiding place? How much has he seen?
How well did my pretenses with Obadiah—or even Linc, outside near the warehouse that day—work if Titus knew I had the device this entire time?
“There’s a party tomorrow,” he continues. “It’s important. Things will change after that. You may or may not be needed to continue your current assignment, but you most certainly will have no way of stopping me. I’m tired of indulging your fantasies of escape or freedom. You haven’t kept up your end of our agreement. I see no reason to keep up mine.”
That forces my attention back. I sit up in my chair. “What do you mean?”
“You agreed to help me find them. I agreed to let them live. Your friends in the City. Your boyfriend here. They are of no use to me any longer. Not when you aren’t giving me anything in return.”
“But … Lonnie and Ida were made for someone. You can’t just terminate them. What if their Authentic needs them?”
“Their Authentics cancelled the order months ago. Crawford is more a thorn in my side every day I allow him to live. Even Whitcomb is edging toward the wrong side of my attention. Although, he became his father’s problem the day that imbecile chose a male over a female. At any rate, our deal is null and void as I see it.”
Months? What is he talking about, Obadiah’s father chose …? I blink it all away and focus on the bottom line of the threats Titus has made. “You won’t do it,” I say. But it’s an empty accusation. We both know he will.
“I already have.”
My head snaps to attention. “What?”
Titus hands me a screen resting between us on the small table. I take it, hands shaking, and look at the screen. My insides scream to look away, to smash it to the floor before whatever horrors are played out. But I know better. If Titus is showing me something like this, it means damage, somewhere, has already been done.
The screen shows nothing at first. A sterile room, medical and bare, with a white-tiled floor. The lighting is yellowed under the glow of the fluorescents. Nothing moves. No sound comes through the speakers. I blink and wait.
A door creaks. Wheels, a gurney rolls into view. A woman in a white shift pushes it to a stop in the center of the room. I recognize her as the wing nurse for our floor. She never said much and I never had reason to see her directly but I know it’s her. She pulls the gurney to a stop and turns toward the camera. A tiny emblem of a tree is emblazoned on the fabric of her dress. Her brows raise questioningly. The hair on my arms stands on end.
She turns back to the gurney, to a bulge covered by a sheet. With a delicate hand, she grips the corner of the sheet and peels it back.
I gasp.
“Ida!” The woman flinches as if she can hear me and retreats from the camera’s view. I am left with a clear shot of Ida’s lifeless body, her face pointed upward, her skin pale-ish blue under the lights.
“What did you do to her?” I demand.
“What you provoked,” he says, and his words are laced with all the evil it takes to end a life.
“No,” I choke out before my sobs cut off any more words.
Titus doesn’t respond. I can feel him watching me as I grip the edges of the screen and bawl at the sight of my dead friend. “No, no, no,” I chant when my voice surfaces. Soon, her soft face is blurred by a pool of tears I’ve shed on the screen. Still, I cry and mumble and hate how this ended for her.
I don’t know how long he sits there, watching me crumble. It’s long enough that my tears dry up and my insides grow cold, then numb.
Eventually, he takes the screen back from my limp hands. “You have a role to play at this party. I expect you to play it. One last time. After that, you and I are going to have a serious chat about your future, bleak as it seems right now.” The implication hangs in the air, a switch just waiting to be flipped. I get one more night as Raven Rogen. The GPS in my arm pulses.
Unwilling to meet his eyes, I stare at a framed photo on the wall of Titus accepting some award or another. The man handing it over looks very studious in glasses and a beige tie. It’s like every other photograph in this house, polished and appropriate. It’s what Titus has allowed others to see. But I remember a different photograph. Depicting a woman Titus obviously prefers not seen by his men or the countless Ravens he has paraded through his home.
And then there’s me. He’s made it more than clear he’s willing to hurt me. His threats carry weight and I cannot even pretend a lie that says I’m not afraid of this man. Not after what he’s just proven capable of. And yet—
“You could’ve killed me,
should’ve
killed me, more than once already. But I’m still here. And while I have no doubt you’d lock me away in a second, I can’t help but realize your hesitance to terminate. Why is that, Titus? What’s so different about me that you would keep me after throwing away all those Ravens before me?” My voice rises with desperation and renewed tears.
His piercing stare stabs into my chest and out the other side.
“You are …” He doesn’t finish and even those two words are hoarse. There is something uncertain in his eyes. Like he can’t quite figure out whether to answer me truthfully or punch me in the gut. I desperately want the first but I brace for the second. “You are not like them,” he agrees quietly. “I haven’t killed you because you are … you.” He blinks and the uncertainty clears. His head tilts, a curious predator studying its meal.
“You really don’t know yet, do you? I am more impressed with Daniel than I expected. It will be a shame to kill him.”
“Does Daniel know I’m different?” I ask. It’s a silly question. One I already know the answer to, but it’s the only thing I have.
“Daniel knows everything. And that’s the problem with knowledge. There’s no real way to unknow something, daughter.”
His words are cryptic, but more than that, they are clearly about more than just Daniel. I have no idea what to say. No idea the right question to ask. “The woman in the photo in the cabinet,” I say instead. “Who is she?”
I half-expect him not to answer, or worse, to explode. But he surprises me, his voice silky, when he says, “That is May. She was my wife. You were made in her image.”
“Where is she now?” I ask.
“She is untouchable. Gone. Like so many others. And no amount of copying can bring her back.”
My shoulders sag. For the most fleeting moment, I’d half-hoped she was out there somewhere. Waiting. Capable of caring for or better, saving, another of Titus’s castoffs. I can only imagine how she must’ve met her end, married to someone like Titus.
“You are not far behind her,” he adds, the steel finally returning to his voice. He pushes to his feet and stands over me. “Remember that tomorrow.”