Authors: Abigail Collins
Chapter twelve
“Stand still.”
Tesla twirls the syringe around in her fingers, watching me silently. I shift my weight to one foot, then the other, shaking my hands and smoothing out the waist of my dress. I fidget a lot when I’m nervous – I always have, ever since I was little. My mother used to tell me that it’s because my mind is restless, so my body is, too. But I think it’s just my body getting ready to move at a second’s notice. In a ‘fight-or-flight’ situation, I’ll always choose ‘flight’.
After I’ve stilled myself as much as I can – except for one hand, which seems to have a mind of its own and cannot stop tapping against my thigh – I hear the soles of Tesla’s shoes clicking on the hard floor as she walks towards me. I feel uncomfortable not being able to see her face. She could do anything to me right now, and I wouldn’t even know until it was too late.
I feel something cool and smooth run along the nape of my neck, and it takes me a moment to realize that it’s Tesla’s hand. I shiver, and she reminds me again not to move.
She pushes my hair aside, brushing it over my shoulders, and taps her fingers against my neck. She presses down, as though testing various pressure points, and moves her hand up and down until it settles on a patch of skin just under my hairline. She holds what feels like one finger on the spot, and I hear a click echo from the syringe to the ear it is directly behind.
I am tempted to move, to run away like I did on the day Tesla first interrogated me about my parents and burned the image of my brother’s death behind my eyes. But I’m even more tempted to stay. If I do, I have a chance – however slight – of finding out who murdered my parents and making them pay for what they did. But I’m curious, too. Even if I wasn’t afraid of what the Digits would do to me if I tried to flee, I still might let them continue with their plans if only to see what they’re leading up to. What I’ve been chosen for.
I want to know where I am. I want to know who the other children who arrived with me are, and what they’re here for. I have what feels like a thousand questions running through my mind, and only one way of getting the answers.
Without warning, a sharp, hot sensation pulses in the back of my neck. It pushes deeper, and I can feel it crawling under each layer of my skin. It feels like a smoldering coal has been shot into me, but instead of going straight through my throat, it embeds itself just under the skin. But the pain of it is just as bad as if it
had
gone out the other side of my body.
I jump back unconsciously, my hand automatically reaching for the base of my neck. I fall against Tesla, who staggers a bit but keeps us both upright. The syringe falls to the floor, and I can hear the barrel of it shatter.
I expect to see blood on my fingers as I pull them away from my wound, but they’re clean. My head is throbbing, but the burning has subsided somewhat. I push myself off of Tesla quickly and back away from her until my back hits the wall. My whole body feels like it’s pulsing with adrenaline.
“What the
hell
?” I sputter, grabbing at my neck again. When I push down on it, pain shoots through my spine and circles around my head.
Tesla smirks – actually
smirks
– and kneels down to pick up the pieces of broken glass from the floor.
“When all of this is over,” she says sharply, “you are going to run away. We’ve learned enough about you to know that is what you are planning to do. This is merely a precaution. If you try to hide, we will find you.”
No. No no no.
No
.
I don’t know what I expected when I realized that the object Tesla was assembling was a syringe. I might have thought she was vaccinating me for something – maybe a disease that’s common in whatever city she’s taken me to. Or perhaps she was planning to sedate me, or drug me into telling her my most precious secrets, or maybe even poison me. I expected a chemical to run through my body, painless and silent, and I would have accepted it no matter how it affected my body.
But this isn’t an injection – it’s a
tracking device
. She’s implanted a microchip into my neck, into the chord of my body that connects to the base of my
brain
, that she and the other Digits can control. I don’t know what else she can do with it, but it scares me enough knowing that she can use it to track my every move.
I wasn’t planning to run away – at least not immediately. First, I want to avenge my parents and learn more about their murderers. I want to know what my mother did to deserve her fate. I want to learn what happened to my father’s body, and why my brother and I were spared.
But after all of that happens, yes, I had planned to flee. Once I’ve accomplished my goals, the Digits will become my enemies; they will want nothing more than to see me dead. And they’ll come after Fray, too. I can’t let that happen; he’s all I have left.
“Why do you assume I’m going to do that?” I ask. I feel braver than I probably should, but I’m too upset to think of the consequences of my actions right now. “I thought we were supposed to be helping each other. How can I trust you if you’ve already proven that I have no reason to?”
Tesla’s expression remains the same, but her eyes look slightly darker. There is no hint of confusion on her face, however. It’s almost like she
expected
me to react this way.
“Last night you went home to bury your mother,” Tesla says; it isn’t a question, so I don’t respond. “You found a note on her body that told you not to trust us. After you read it, you intended to return to your friend’s house to gather your things and run away with your brother, is that correct?”
A wave of shock and panic surges through my body like electricity; I can feel it tingling in my fingertips and my toes.
“How… how did you – ”
I am stammering; the words I want to say keep getting stuck in my throat. Tesla interrupts me before I can continue, and for once I am thankful for it.
“I already told you that we sent out a group of our own to examine the scene of the crime. How would we have checked your mother’s body for marks without noticing the note she
so clearly
held in her hand? Use your brain, child. Your mother didn’t die with a letter in her hand. Someone had to have
put it there
.”
I can practically
hear
the gears turning in my head. I imagine that this must be how it feels when a Digit is thinking; if their brains are as mechanical as their bodies, then they must have metal pieces inside of them that bump into each other when they think too hard. This is how I like to imagine them, anyway. The more robotic they seem, the less human I find myself believing they are.
“You!
You
did it?”
“I’ve already told you that I wasn’t there personally, but technically, yes. The note was found in your mother’s room, but we knew that you would never find it on your own. And we thought it imperative that you
did
find it.”
I press my palms flat against the wall behind me, as if by pushing it hard enough I can somehow get it to move. My eyes catch on the only exit door, but it is between myself and Tesla, and I know without a doubt who is the fastest among us.
“That note…” I begin, weighing my words on my tongue carefully before I say them. “My mother wrote about
your
kind. She said that the Digits would come for me like they came for her. She told me to run away. If you don’t want me to do that, then why would you purposely let me read something that tells me to?”
Just when I think perhaps I’ve finally gotten the upper hand, Tesla cracks a smile that sends a chill down my spine and makes the back of my neck ache.
“You’re assuming that the Digits she was referring to are the ones from Division 6.”
It doesn’t even occur to me what exactly she’s saying, at first, but when it finally hits me it’s like a rush of wind in my face. I hold my breath and wait for it to pass, but it doesn’t.
The darkness in Tesla’s eyes lifts, and for a moment she almost looks human. She tosses the broken pieces of the syringe into a trash bin next to the desk and stands.
“We aren’t the bad guys here, Everly,” she says. “The Digits who killed your mother were from another Division. They are the ones she was warning you about – not us.”
“But – then,
why
?” My voice cracks the louder it gets. “If my parents were murdered by some nobodies in another city, then why does it matter so much to you? My parents meant nothing to you. They were just simple, unimportant humans, weren’t they?”
I feel anger building in my chest again, and I take deep, silent breaths to try to push it down. Even though my parents are gone, I feel a powerful urge to protect them. If I couldn’t have defended their lives, I feel like the least I can do is defend their memories.
“They were,” Tesla says simply, and I scrape my fingernails against the wall to distract myself. “To be honest, it isn’t their deaths that matter to me. But the
reason
they were targeted, yes –
that
is very much a concern of mine.”
I ignore the first part of her statement and choose instead to focus on the last thing she says. Later, it will bother me that she told me that my parents’ lives meant nothing to her, but I can’t afford to dwell on things like that right now.
“Please,” I say instead, trying to sound a lot more cooperative than I feel inside. “Please, tell me. I need to know
why
. I’ll do whatever you want after, I promise. But if you know what happened…”
“You’re going to do whatever I want anyway, remember?” She taps on the back of her own neck and points to me. “And we’ve already discussed this. If you keep your word and help us, then I will give you whatever information you want. I’d even drop you off on the doorstep of your mother’s killer with a loaded gun, if I thought that would ease your guilt even marginally.”
My face burns with heat and I dig my nails against the wall until they start to chip. Tesla walks to the door without looking at me and pulls it open. The creaking of its hinges startles me and I flinch.
“It will all be worth it in the end. Your patience will be rewarded.” She holds the door open for me and waits for me to exit first; I push myself off of the wall and walk across the room as slowly as I can. “But for now, you’re going to be assigned a cabin, where you’ll be staying during the duration of your time here. You’re going to want to get some sleep tonight; you’ve got a lot to think about.”
I brush my hair off of my shoulders and down my back, and an unpleasant prickling sensation runs through my neck. I
don’t
have a lot of thinking to do, it occurs to me. All of my thinking is being done for me, now.
Chapter thirteen
I wake up the next morning to a stranger standing over my bed, and I am so startled that I fall to the floor in a mess of sheets and limbs. The cabin I’ve been assigned to was empty and vacant when I settled in last night, but now there is a lanky, dark-haired boy looking down at me with his arms crossed and a broad smile on his face.
He bursts into laughter, and I quickly scramble to make sure my bedsheets are covering the necessary parts of my body; I am wearing a thin nightgown I threw in my suitcase in my haste yesterday; the only other pajamas I remembered to bring are too warm and itchy for the mild weather, but I feel a bit chilly and exposed without my pile of blankets and pillows covering me up.