Rose Tinted (18 page)

She
glanced over at Jonah for a moment, wondering if the boy stood a chance now that they had been caught. Eris didn’t want him, and there was no doubt in Brynn’s mind that she’d dispose of him and Amber at any second. She just wasn’t sure if she’d make it quick, or draw it out in an attempt to get into Brynn’s head.

Amber groaned behind the group as she got slowly to her feet. Eris’s eyes twitched over to the girl for a moment before finding Brynn once more. Apparently the task at hand was more important than keeping Amber on her back.

“Whose blood is that?” Brynn finally managed to ask, her voice sounding small and frightened.

“That’s not what matters right now,” Eris said,
looking over at Jonah as if sizing him up. She smiled a terrifying smile at the boy before turning her attention back to her prize. “I think you and I need a little one-on-one time. We need to get rid of the excess.”

“Do
n’t you dare touch them,” Brynn shouted, remembering almost too late about the pinch Rusty had given her.

“Brynn
, don’t make things difficult. You know how well that ended for Rachel,” Eris said with a self-satisfied smile. “Now, why don’t you come with me while they take care of your friends?” Eris suggested as she grabbed Brynn by the wrist in her iron grip.

Acting purely on instinct
, Brynn kicked out at the woman in front of her, catching her in the stomach. Brynn knew she was absolutely no match for what Rift had referred to as a ‘human with upgrades’, but the element of surprise had worked in her favor as Eris released Brynn’s wrist and took a step back from the unexpected force of the blow.

“Get them,” Eris screamed out in rage as she lunged towards Brynn and her friends.

Panicking, Brynn shoved her hand frantically into her pocket to locate the small device and pulled it out just as Eris reached out for Brynn’s throat.

“What is that?” Eris asked, sounding genuinely shocked by the sight of the little metal ball
and stopping her hand only inches from Brynn’s neck.

Her Worker
s stopped as well as they took in the unknown object in Brynn’s outstretched palm nervously.

Jonah looked at the device in her hand too, his eyes widening as he recognized it from the first time they’d met Hadlock.

“Brynn?” he asked, puzzled as she pushed the button that she knew would save them.

It emitted a
short, high-pitched beep, and at first she thought it hadn’t worked.

“What is that thing?” Amber asked from behind
her, coming closer to her friend for the first time since seeing Eris.

Brynn was silent but looked straight ahead at the terrifying Angel in front of her
and the Workers who stood still. Eris wore a scowl with her purple eyes narrowed at Brynn and her arm still outstretched, but she didn’t move. Her chilling face was completely frozen as she stared blankly ahead.

“It worked,” Brynn said in amazement.

“Brynn get out of there!” Ty shouted in her ear. “Amber pull her out!”

“The pinch worked
, Hadlock!” Brynn yelled, looking at Eris and her Workers in amazement and wondering how the Angel could possibly be in such a vulnerable state at that moment.

“It only lasts for a minute, you need to run,”
Hadlock reminded her, trying to remain calm in the face of their plans falling apart around them.

“Come on,” Amber yelled at her, pulling Brynn by the wrist away from the woman who wanted to kill her.

“Right,” Brynn agreed, coming to her senses. “Jonah, we’ve got to leave
now
,” Brynn said over her shoulder, finally realizing the dire situation they were in.

Not hearing any response from her friend
, she turned around to pull him away as well, knowing full well that the shock of seeing Eris frozen was enough to keep anyone from wanting to leave.

“Jonah!” Brynn shouted again, looking at her friend.

Her friend, however, was not looking at her.

Instead, Jonah stared straight ahead at the spot where Brynn had been
only moments before.

His eyes unblinking and his body immobilized.

Just like Eris.

Chapter 22: Knowledge

“Stop it!” Brynn screamed as she forcefully fought against Amber who was dragging her backwards towards the train. “Let me go!”

“Ty, help me grab her,” Amber yelled back to the train car where half of their group sat waiting, complete shock and lack of comprehension on their faces.

They had no idea what had just happened.

“It’s not what you think,” Brynn shrieked in a complete state of terror, still using all of the strength she could muster to fight against the grips of Amber and Ty who had just joined them.

“What happened?” he asked Amber as he grabbed Brynn by the arm and began pulling her towards the train. “Where’s Jonah? Did Eris get him?”

“Jonah is an A.I.,” Amber said grimly as she continued to force her friend away from the facility.

“He’s not,” Brynn insisted, tears now
pooling in her eyes as she pulled against her friends. “There’s something wrong with him. We can’t just leave him in there with
her
!” she cried. “She’s going to kill him!”

“Stop screaming,” Amber said harshly, slapping a hand over Brynn’s mouth and looping her other arm around the girl’s stomach to drag her onto the train. “You’re going to bring the Workers down on
all of us.”

Brynn continued to struggle against her friend’s grasp but her fight was quickly leaving her as tears began pouring down her cheeks in full force.
She shook with the effort of holding her emotions in but was failing miserably, gasping for air that wouldn’t seem to fill her lungs.

Amber, who had suddenly become the unspoken leader
, shoved Brynn into a chair, looking over at Ty and saying, “Make sure she doesn’t try to leave, I’m going to go find Rusty so we can get out of here. The only reason we’re still alive is because Eris is frozen and can’t call the facility down on us.”

Ty sat silently next to Brynn, placing his arm over her shaking shoulders with a look of complete shock on his face.

“Rusty?” Hadlock called over the comms unit from his position at the front of the train.

They had already started it up and it had begun to slowly move forward.

“Rusty the train is moving you guys
have
to get here now or you’ll miss it.”

“They got her!” Rusty shouted once the static died down on her end.

They could hear a high pitched screaming coming from the entrance to A1 as Rusty appeared, carrying one of the twins over her shoulder.

Rusty and the girl were covered in blood, much like Eris
had been, and Rusty wore a look of grim determination on her face as she carried the screaming girl into the train.

The
two of them hopped in the car that was quickly picking up speed and shut the sliding door as they left A1, engulfing the group in an eerie half silence only broken up by the sobs of Brynn and the screams of the unknown twin. Rusty plopped down on a bench, letting the twin fall to the floor of the car in a heap; her small pale hands clawing at the ground and leaving little red lines wherever they touched.

“She killed Cambria,” Rusty whispered as her voice cracked
, though her eyes were surprisingly dry.

“He didn’t know what he was,” Brynn said between muffled cries that were barely audible over the blood curdling screams Devey was emitting.

Bennett ran over to the girl and pulled her into a hug, trying to comfort he
r and quiet her terror but Devey lashed out, pushing Bennett away from her and continuing her ear piercing screaming.

“She didn’t just kill her,” Rusty went on in a shocked monotone
over the noise Devey was making. She was apparently oblivious to the chaos going on around them as she stared off into the distance. “She completely ripped her apart. With her bare hands. In two seconds.”

“Stop it!” Devey screamed, her voice sounding like shattered glass as it broke over them.
“We have to go get her!”

“She’s dead,” Rusty
yelled. “You saw what Eris did to her.”

“Stop!” Devey shrieked again, clamping her hands over her ears and beginning to rock back and forth on the floor of the train car, her blood soaked clothes leaving red marks on the
ground.

Dash and Tate sat in the corner of the car silently, Dash’s eyes watering with tears that he silently wiped away as Amber and Hadlock held a whispered conference.
Rusty placed her hand against the window of the train car, leaving a bloody handprint on the glass.

“They have to know how we got in. They’re going to shut down the train tunnel and ki
ll all of us,” she said slowly. “They’ll collapse the tunnel before they let us get away.”

“Rusty, that’s not helping,” Ha
dlock shouted over at the shell-shocked girl.

“Ty
, he didn’t know what he was,” Brynn insisted, looking over at her friend and grabbing his face, forcing him to look into her eyes. “You have to believe me. He never knew what he was.”

“Brynn
, we’ll talk about it later,” Ty said in a hushed voice, glancing tentatively over at Devey who was now emitting a low, strangled sob.

The entire train compartment was in a state of pandemonium and after a while
, Brynn couldn’t tell who was crying, who was shouting, or what was real.

“Rift?” she heard Hadlock say from the train controls. “We had a leak in our group. You need to get everything out of the house, they know who we are and where our base is. We need to relocate on Halcyon and figure out what we’ll do from there.”

Hadlock paused for a moment and all that could be heard was Rusty’s heavy breathing, Devey’s whimpering as she rocked herself, and Brynn’s occasional sniffle as she tried to stop the tears that wouldn’t relent.

“I’m just hoping they don’t have a way to cave in the tunnel or we’ll all be dead pretty soon,” he went on, his one sided conversation echoing through the train car.
“Yeah, we got the files and the bug planted,” he said.

He paused again and looked over at Brynn for a moment before quickly bringing his eyes to the floor and lowering his voice, though Brynn could still hear his last statement as it rang through her head.

“It was Jonah”

The train ride from A1 to Eastern Metropolis was a long and tense one. With the constant possibility of the A.I.s caving the tunnel in and the emotional strain they were all under, the train car felt more like a time bomb ready to go off.

Devey had fallen asleep on the ground, refusing to let anyone touch her and still soaked in her sister’s blood. Rusty had stopped repeating, “Eris r
ipped her apart” and instead rested her head against the window of the train car, her eyes wide and unblinking as she stared at the tunnel walls flying past. Tate, Dash, and Bennett kept to themselves, trying not to get in anyone’s way and keeping quiet while Amber and Hadlock talked in low voices at the front of the compartment about what information had been compromised because of Jonah.

Brynn
lay on a bench with her head in Ty’s lap as his thumb made small circles over the back of her neck soothingly.

“He didn’t know,” Brynn said for the millionth time, her voice thick from her constant stream of tears.
“He didn’t know what he was and we just left him there to die with her.” She wiped at her puffy sore eyes with the back of her hand.

“Brynn
, if he’s really an A.I., Eris isn’t going to hurt him,” Ty reasoned softly, his gentle voice beginning to calm her nerves as it always did.

“But look what she did to him last time. She left that scar on his cheek.”

Ty stopped rubbing the small circles on the back of Brynn’s neck at this statement, his face reflecting the deep thought he had fallen into.

“A.I.s don’t get hurt. They don’t get scars,” Ty said in confusion.

“Exactly,” Brynn agreed. “So he can’t be an A.I., which means we left a human being from the opposition in the lair of a psychopath.”

“No Brynn
, that’s not what I mean,” Ty said, trying to get his point across. “The pinch stopped Jonah, which means he’s an A.I.,” he began, “But he got that scar from Eris supposedly.”

“What are you trying to say Ty?” Brynn asked, finally sitting up to look her friend in the eye.

“I think Jonah might have set the whole thing up. If A.I.s can’t get hurt like us, then they shouldn’t get scars. So the only way Jonah could get a scar is if they redesigned his face to have one… which would make sense if he was working with them.”

“He wasn’t working with them Ty,” Brynn
said in a dangerously low voice, her sadness now turning to anger. “He didn’t know what he was.”

“How do you
not
know you’re a robot?” Ty asked her incredulously.

“If they can suppress curiosity, why couldn’t they
suppress someone’s memory? Maybe they erased any knowledge he had of his past life and made him believe he was a human.”

“What makes you think they can suppress curiosity?
Why would they bother to do that, Brynn?” Ty asked in a pained tone, obviously thinking that now Brynn was just making things up to justify Jonah’s existence.

“They can suppress curiosity all right,” Rusty stated simply, her wide green eyes never blinking; still looking hauntingly out the window. “Why do you think you lot are so pliable?”

Brynn winced at the harsh way in which Rusty had decided to deliver this news. She supposed she couldn’t really blame her though, given the state of shock she was currently in.

“They suppressed our curiosity?” Ty repeated, his voice sounding distant as he looked over at Brynn, hurt in his eyes.

“Not Brynn’s, just everyone else’s,” Rusty added, very unhelpfully.

“How long have you known about this
, Brynn?” he asked her, looking slightly disgusted that his best friend could keep something so monumental from him.

“I was going to tell you
, I just had to figure out how,” Brynn pleaded.

“Let me guess,” he began, “Jonah doesn’t have
suppressed curiosity either, does he? And somehow Eris just
happened
to know we were coming.”

“He’s not an A.I., Ty,” Brynn insisted firmly.

“Then what is he Brynn?” Ty asked incredulously.

“Maybe they didn’t need him? Maybe they needed more test subjects? Maybe they wanted an A.I. out in Seaside to keep an eye on the citizens without his knowledge?” Brynn said, listing the many possible scenarios she’d come up with to explain Jonah’s little secret.

“Or maybe
the boy from the library had the answers to your questions all along.”