Fire sizzles along my arm as Hollis’s sword skims across it. I match it with a thrust of my own, and finally the tip of my blade pierces the side of his hip. With another slash along his upper leg, I feel silver kiss and burn my shoulder. The glancing blow of his sword off my elbow, the long draw of mine off his other leg. Blood blooms over us and still we can’t stop.
When my next thrust goes wider than it should and Hollis’s recovery after a swing takes a second too long, I know—that it’s time to end it somehow, someway. Thin daylight all around us, another sign that time is very, very short.
Soon … now … do it.
The sound of our breathing is louder now, raw and chaotic. The smell of blood is a cloud around us, cloying. I force my sword up, lifting his with the motion and throwing him off balance. He adjusts. Again and again I maneuver him with my swings. They’re close to wild now, the muscles of my arm trembling in protest and pain and the heat of adrenaline making them burn from the inside out. He shuffles over, inch by agonizing inch until he’s finally standing with his back to the elevator—
And facing the huge windows on the opposite side of the lobby.
The sun pops out over the roofline, sharp and laser bright.
It hits Hollis right in the eyes. He squints, just for a second, but it’s enough.
I don’t hesitate.
I lift my sword again, and it’s so incredibly heavy, like lifting the world. I aim high, and the shadow of my arm makes Hollis—still adjusting, caught off guard—instinctively lift his own sword to protect his head.
But I pull short. Abruptly draw my blade back while he’s vulnerable down below. I curl my arm over, let it drop, and slash open the side of his lower leg. Where the damage to the tendons will be enough to cripple and not kill.
Hollis falls to his knees with an agonized yell, his leg splintering beneath his weight. The tip of his sword scrapes across the ceramic. I stand over him, my sword still held out and ready, not quite able to believe it might actually be done. It feels like I’ve been fighting forever, and it’s hard to turn back now. My body hurts all over, from my arm that shakes from exertion to my bad hand that pounds with each rush of my heart. My skin feels raw, torn open in countless places, my price for not dying.
Hollis’s eyes are wide and stunned as he looks up at me.
“So is this it, then?” I say to him, my voice a rasp. I let my sword drop to my side. Too heavy to lift again. “Is this good enough for you?”
But defeat does not come easy. It has to work its way through rage and denial, and it’s these two that darken his face as he gathers his sword again. Swings. Upward. Toward my neck.
Only the most basic of instincts has me ducking, hitting the cold floor in a tumble as the sword drops from my hand. So fast it’s not even a full thought, just a flash of understanding, of self-preservation. What all people of Kersh are taught and never quite forget.
FDFO. Fall Down and Fade Out.
Chord’s suddenly in the lobby and next to me. One hand holding me low to the ground while the other is pointing a gun at Hollis. His voice is frightening in its controlled softness as he says to Hollis,
“Put it down.”
The same words, said in that exact same tone, came from his lips when he fought his Alt and Luc died. An ache ripples through my chest at hearing them, and I shudder. Because Chord had gone on to kill his Alt, hadn’t he? But Hollis dead will undo everything.
“Chord.” My good hand is frantic on his, trying to pull the gun down. “I’m okay. It’s fine,” I say to him. It’s hard to force the words past the lump in my throat. “Don’t.”
Seconds of distrust and hatred stretch out between Chord and Hollis. Only when Hollis flings the sword far to the side does Chord finally lower the gun—just enough.
He looks down at me. Takes in all the damage and swears loudly. His arm is both gentle and hurried as he pulls me closer to him. “West, where are you hurt? How bad?”
I shake my head, struggling to sit up with his help. “I’m fine. They’re just—” I glance down at my bad hand, the one that isn’t fine. It’s cradled in my lap. I look away. “They’re just cuts.”
His gaze falls to my hand. “That’s not just a cut,” he says, his voice hoarse.
I hunch over it, not sure why I’m trying to hide it from him. Maybe because it’s a sign of how close it all was, of what I was willing to risk losing. I reach over without thought and pick up my gun from the floor, now within reach again from when Hollis kicked it over. “It’s not my right hand,” I say dully. “It’ll be okay.”
“Do you know how hard it was to stay away?” he asks, both a plea and a curse in his voice.
I nod, then shake my head. Unsure of what I mean, only that I’m so happy that he’s here. My good hand against his jaw, sliding into his hair so I can bring him even closer. “I’m sorry.”
“Good.” The word fills my mouth as he kisses me. “You’ll be okay.”
The whirr of the elevator doors as they open and Baer and Sabian step out. Baer’s gun is pointed at Sabian, whose expression is as set as stone. No sign of warmth now. His hazel eyes are careful even as they take in the scene: his son’s defeat at the hands of the person who also saved him.
Where is Dess?
Fresh fury has me lifting my gun. I point it straight at Sabian, my muscles made steady and willed on by hate. “Dess. Where is he?”
The briefest flicker of bland disdain and his smile is like ice. “Well, where is Auden?”
I swing my gun until it’s pointed at Hollis. Only vaguely aware of Chord’s hand on my back, steadying me. He understands, as always, and his own gun moves toward Sabian. Covering for me.
“It’s over,” I say to Sabian, my voice choked and thick. “You’re not getting Auden. And if you don’t want me shooting your son, then I want Dess back.”
“Tell her, Sabian,” Baer says coldly. “It’s not too late to set things right.”
A half-truth, we all know. Sabian will have the Board to answer to, but it’s Hollis and Bryn who are going to be the hardest to deal with.
“The old conference room,” Sabian finally says.
“I’ll get him.” Baer disappears down one of the wings, his footsteps breaking through my haze of red, and I wonder what he feels being back here. This place where he grew up, thinking it was going to be his future.
Sabian laughs softly, and in the vast space of the lobby, it fills the silence. Worms into my ear and leaves me chilled. “One last Alt, Grayer, and you could have had everything,” he says to me.
I keep my gun on Hollis. Neither he nor Sabian need to know I have no intention of shooting. “I know Auden isn’t a Level One idle. Why the lie? Why did you want me to kill him?”
“He isn’t quite worthy of being a Level Alt. Too soft, just like his father. I should have taken care of Meyer long ago. Auden finding those old notes simply reminded me of that.”
Freya’s notes.
“That’s not it, I know it. What else is the Board hiding with those notes? How did you even know Auden found them?”
“From his father. Meyer always did talk too much. And he never learned that all information has value, no matter how innocent it seems.”
“But Auden was already a complete,” Hollis says from where he’s still lying on the ground, sounding dazed as he looks up at his father. “It shouldn’t matter that he didn’t care about his position in the Board.”
“By a PK.”
Sabian’s words are bullets. “He was a Peripheral Kill, and a complete through unnatural means does not measure up to a complete from skill.”
I can feel Chord go still next to me. He’s a complete by PK, too, and under the ugliest of circumstances.
“How are your kids any different from Auden now?” I ask Sabian. “By having me assassinate their Alts, you made your kids unnatural completes, too.”
Seething resentment at my revealing his weakness—that he hired me as a parent worried about his children—slides across his face. And it’s this rage he now turns on me. I’m the source of everything that went wrong for him, after all. The one who screwed it all up.
“It was a simple trade, Grayer, despite all your doubts and your questions,” he says. “It should have been enough for you.”
“I let your kids live,” I say evenly. “Shouldn’t getting your son and daughter back alive, and completes, be enough for
you
?”
Sabian’s control finally snaps. I see his hazel eyes glisten with tears, his face crumble and go lax. He falls to his knees over Hollis and the sight of such a powerful man broken and defeated leaves me stunned.
“I’m sorry, Hollis,” he says quietly. “It’s too late to change anything now. But it really is all for the best.” And Sabian yanks the Ronin from Hollis’s pocket and aims it right at me.
I’m frozen. And only dimly aware of Chord shouting, his hand starting to shove me down low as his body moves to cover mine. But too late, I know. A Ronin in the hand of an Operator does not miss.
A shot rings through the air … but it’s not from Sabian … and it’s not for me.
A small puff of black opens up on Sabian’s chest. Immediately runs red. And he falls.
I hear Hollis’s anguished
“Dad!”
but it sounds like it’s coming from somewhere far away. Over Chord’s shoulders I see someone stepping into the lobby. I blink away the image of Luc, helping me with my aim and stance when we were kids, to see Auden, Ronin in hand. There is no remorse on his face as he looks over at Sabian on the ground. Only thoughts of his dead father, and maybe that in saving me, he was saving the person who let him live … and the sister of a dead Alt who made him a complete.
The low gurgle of a breath from Sabian’s form, the frantic flap of one hand trying to go to his wound. He’s not dead … yet. There’s too much blood pooling around him, though; it’s just a matter of time. I’ve seen others die this way before.
Coming from behind Auden, Bryn races over to her father, falling to her knees beside a gray-faced Hollis. Only then does Auden’s expression falter, become softer. He moves to her side, and Bryn leans into him. Whether it’s her accepting him or him accepting her, I can’t say. But they’re folded up into each other, and I know they’ll have their own hurts to work through.
Chord lifts me from the floor and crushes me against his chest. Too hard—he’s forgotten about my broken hand, my shredded skin—but I hold on to him just as tightly.
“Sabian.” Innes’s voice cuts through the room as she enters from the training wing. In her hand is a cell—Auden’s, with all its access codes to this main building and to the bio lab in one of the satellite buildings outside. She approaches us, and her expression is a curious blend of vague sympathy and stunned disbelief as she peers down at Sabian.
His skin is pale where it’s not splattered with blood, and no one misses the shock that crosses his face as Innes stands over him. “You … ,” he whispers. “What …”
“Freya and her notes … that miscoded file. It wasn’t all miscoded like you said—some of it really
was
a lab project.” Innes is pale herself, and a chill rolls through me. I realize now that Sabian never answered my earlier question:
What else is the Board hiding with those notes?
“No, shut … up,” Sabian says, and it’s not just pain but also sudden panic that’s making his eyes flicker bright. Innes has discovered something else about Kersh. Something that goes beyond it once being a prison, what it still is today, in many ways. The room is electric with expectation.
“Don’t.”
“The Board making Alts,” she continues. “You could have stopped a long time ago.”
“For the barrier,” he chokes out, and his eyes start to dull. Blood, everywhere. I’m watching Sabian die. “To keep it
safe.
”
Innes slowly shakes her head. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it. What I mean is that the Board could have stopped making Alts a long time ago. Fifty-five years ago, to be exact. Because that’s when the Board discovered the cure for our sterility. And buried it.”
It’s the same meeting room as before, but I’m not scared this time. Not left alone to wait—and Sabian’s gone.
Dire thumps his knuckles against the window. Turns to Baer and me. “This glass—I’d forgotten how much better it is than the kind we get in Jethro. You can see clear across the whole ward out there.”
“One of the easier things to forget,” Baer says as he continues to look at the view, seeing something that’s probably not outside that window. He’s sitting in the chair next to me, and the expression on his face says it all. He doesn’t want to be here any more than I do. Like waiting to be handed our punishment for misbehaving. Board Operators getting shot by one of their own and left to die in the middle of their grounds means questions will need to be answered.
But Dess didn’t need to be any more involved than he already was, and only after I begged him to let Innes take him home did he give in. It was guilt that made him want to stay, I know—for seeing me hurt the way I was, for endangering so many people with one misstep. Dess didn’t say, but I think Sabian made no secret of his eventual plans for me, even if I did end up killing Auden for him. I simply knew too much.
“Can you text Dire for me, please?” Baer had asked Innes as she headed for the lobby door.
“And tell him?”
“Just tell him the Board will want to talk with West.”
“All right. It shouldn’t take him long to get here.”
Clearing came quickly for Sabian’s body after Auden notified them, as though it were no more than another incomplete. Level 1 Operators arrived just as swiftly, dressed in gray and speaking in low, clipped tones. Auden and Bryn were led to a room for questioning, Baer and Chord to another, and it was the med unit and oxygen pods for Hollis and me.
And the whole time that was happening—while the med techs were busy cleaning and gluing my slashed skin, while they helped me slide into an oxygen pod for a quick hour blast to help everything heal—I couldn’t stop thinking about what Innes said.
The Board could have stopped making Alts a long time ago. Fifty-five years ago, to be exact. Because that’s when the Board discovered the cure for our sterility. And buried it.
Before calling Clearing, Baer and Dire decided that the safest thing to do was for us to keep quiet about Freya’s notes and the file. That included Hollis and Bryn not talking, too. But both of them were still in shock from Sabian’s death, and I couldn’t be sure they even knew what they were being warned about. The shared look between Baer and Dire and Auden said it all—that Hollis and Bryn might not be any safer than any non-Board Alt would be with such information.
We had to pretend to know nothing … for now.
How different things would have been if the Board’s most powerful hadn’t decided to cover up that lab side project and hide away the cure for sterility that came from it. If they hadn’t argued that without Alts to test each other, we’d have to rely on weak and inferior soldiers to protect everyone.
But what if the Surround wasn’t as they said it was?
Who would I have been, without an altered gene code, without an Alt? Would my family have been my family, Chord my Chord?
And one more thought, maybe the biggest one of all: No one would have to kill to live.
I fell asleep in my oxygen pod thinking about it all. After everything that had happened, I assumed I would dream like mad. I could almost hear Julis’s voice in my head:
Write it down, West, write it down. It’ll make more sense.
But my sleep was thick and dreamless. And when the med techs came to get me, my body nearly completely healed—except my hand, which would never be quite the same again—I woke up lost, disoriented, not sure where I was.
Well, things
are
different now, I tell myself as I sit and wait in the meeting room with Baer and Dire. I can never think of Kersh in the same way. Even my body feels different—more vulnerable, softer, even with the fast healing. We’re made for more than just war.
And my mind goes to Chord.
He’s no longer at headquarters. While I was healing, Dire arrived and told Chord he should go. The Board had no questions for him that couldn’t be answered by Dire, Baer, or me.
“I doubt that excuse worked,” I mutter to Dire when I find out Chord is gone.
“It didn’t. So I told him you’d be too busy worrying about him instead of focusing on the Ops when they talk to us.”
I nod. “Thank you. For thinking about him. I know you know what he thinks about strikers.”
“Doesn’t matter what he thinks of me, West. Seems like a good kid.”
I nod again. It’s strange talking about Chord with Dire. I’d kept them separate for so long, two different lives.
“Did you really want him here, getting questioned by the bots in gray?” Dire asks, and the frown on his face reveals fresh doubt about his stepping in.
I shake my head. “No, I just …” I feel my face flush. “I wanted to make sure he was okay,” I finish lamely.
“I told him to go home and wait for you there. Means he’s probably just outside the main entrance, nose pressed to the glass.”
At this, Baer coughs, the sound suspiciously close to a laugh, before returning to staring out the window, not saying much.
The door to the meeting room slides open, and a woman steps in, a tablet in her hand. Hair as black as ink, worn iron straight and hanging down to her waist, eyes the same color. She’s dressed in a suit the same shade of gray all Board Operators wear, and the cold silver handkerchief in her chest pocket leaves no doubt she’s a Level 1. So she worked directly with Sabian. Every day, for however many years. But there are no signs of grief on her face—whether this is because she’s been trained to show nothing or because she’s not mourning him, I can’t tell.
I wonder if she’s one of the very few who knows about Kersh’s beginnings. Or if she knows about us being forced to have Alts when we didn’t even know it was a choice.
Her eyes fall on each of us in turn—Baer, me, then Dire—before she pulls out a chair on the opposite side of the table. She puts the tablet on the table and sits down, her motions measured and precise.
“This is a meeting with West Grayer,” she begins, “and only with West Grayer.” She looks at Baer and then at Dire. “You’ve both made it clear that you intend to stay while we question her, but let me take this opportunity to encourage you to wait in anoth—”
“Do you know who we are?” Baer asks abruptly.
The Operator doesn’t flinch, as though she was expecting the interruption. She keeps her eyes on Baer as she speaks. “Baer Tellyson, former Level Three Operator, desertion of post fourteen years ago. Currently a weaponry teacher within the Alt Skills program, Torth High School, Jethro Ward.” She turns to Dire. “Dire Latimer, former Level Three Operator, desertion of post fourteen years ago. Currently the recruiter of strikers of active Alternates at your place of business, licensed under the name of Dire Nation, Jethro Ward.” Her eyes scan both of them. “Tell me, did I miss anything?”
Dire utters a short laugh. “No. You guys covered all the bases.”
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to stay,” Baer says, his voice just as calm as hers. “Considering what we know about Sabian and other … aspects of the Board, I think it’s in your best interest to not fight us on this.”
“You chose to leave the Board on your own accord. That does not mean you are given the same freedom to return.”
“We don’t want to come back,” Dire says flatly. “As soon as you’re done with Grayer, we’re gone.”
The tiniest flicker of annoyance crosses her features. “Have you ever asked yourself why the Board has tolerated what you do for so long?” she asks him.
“Don’t need to. Though I’m sure Innes wouldn’t mind coming in to hear you out.”
“Our tolerance is not a given.”
“I’m not worried.” Dire shrugs, but his blue eyes are cold and hard and impossible to read, and for a second I see how he would look if he were an Operator today. “The dirt we have on you guys
is
a given. So say what you need to say to Grayer and then we’ll leave. Simple.”
The Operator smoothly turns away from Dire and faces me. She taps the tablet awake and slides it over so it’s between us on the table. Sets it to record.
“Please start from the beginning,” she says.
“I … you mean just start talking?” I ask, feeling incredibly self-conscious. To have to say everything out loud …
“Yes. Start now.”
“Sabian hired me to kill three Alts of three Board kids. In exchange for that, he was going to erase my striker marks.” My urge to hide my exposed marks is ridiculous. The med techs already saw them, and this Operator must already know. “He also said that when I … have children, he’d guarantee they’d be born without an Alt.” The tips of my ears are hot—how awkward to be talking about something so private and have it officially recorded. Talking to Julis is almost fun compared to this.
“Did he say how he planned to do that?” The Board Operator’s voice is brisk.
“He said that he was going to sneak into the lab and doctor the gene maps so it would look like an Alt was already made. Later, I would get a notice that that Alt was a PK.”
“All right. Continue.”
“But the last Alt I was contracted for turned out to be Auden, my brother’s Alt, and already a complete. I couldn’t kill him—”
“Did you fulfill the two contracts prior to Auden?”
Yes and no. “Sabian’s kids are now completes, yes.”
“Continue.”
How to pick and choose what to say? I can feel the weight of Baer and Dire’s caution, and their support helps me slow down, be more careful in speaking.
“I was trying to figure out why Sabian would want a complete dead when he released that news file that I’d assassinated Auden and Meyer. So I had to go into hiding, and that was when Bryn and Hollis challenged me to fight them. They felt cheated that I made them completes. And so I did, and now we’re here.”
The Operator looks at me. “A Level One Board Operator is now dead.”
“Auden shot Sabian to stop him from shooting me.”
“And for revenge, since he believed Sabian killed his father? You are still on record for killing Meyer Parrish.”
“We all know who really killed Meyer,” Dire grunts. “Let’s not kid ourselves here.”
The Operator flicks her gaze over to Dire. “The info entered into our system—”
“Was done by Sabian. Bet you can’t tell me I’m wrong.”
She remains silent.
Dire nods, cold. “Which then led to a black contract being issued for Grayer. Not as splashy as setting up a gas leak or anything, but he was probably short on time.”
Baer sighs.
“Sabian was angry you didn’t finish the final contract?” the Operator asks me.
“Yes.”
“Why would he want a Board Alt, one who was already a complete, dead?”
“He told me it was because Auden wasn’t worthy and that the Board didn’t want to chance him advancing through the Levels.” Not the full truth, but I can’t risk bringing up Freya’s notes. “Same as how he always felt Auden’s dad being a Level Operator wasn’t right.”
“You understand that Sabian was acting on his own?” the Operator asks me. “None of his actions were condoned by the rest of the Board.”
Do you know about Kersh once being a prison, though? Or about us being forced to be sterile?
“Yes, when I found out Bryn and Hollis were his kids, and no other parents of the Board were involved,” I say. “Also, Auden already being a complete kind of made it obvious Sabian had something else going on.”
“He made promises to you that the Board cannot keep. The Alt system has never been open—or will ever be open—to exceptions. Each child born in Kersh is born with an Alt, and this will be so as long as the city stands.”
Not true. And it’s impossible to tell if this Operator simply doesn’t know or if she really is that good of a liar. For a second I want to confront her with Innes’s discovery, the words forming on my lips against my will—
“West.” Baer’s low, mild warning makes me to look at him. And Dire’s more obvious glare from his seat:
Grayer, shut up!
“I understand,” I say to the Operator.
“We have also chosen to not remove your striker marks. The fact that you have voluntarily worked as a striker is a fact that cannot be changed.”
I nod. The truth of it is, I think even if the Board was willing to erase my marks, I would have said no. Not being able to see them anymore wouldn’t change what I’ve done.
“However, we will immediately release a news file clearing you of Meyer’s and Auden’s deaths.”
“Make it clear that Grayer’s death is no longer worth anything,” Dire says. “And admit it was Sabian who killed Meyer.”
The Operator’s eyes narrow a fraction, but she sounds calm when she says, “Of course.” She pulls the tablet on the table toward her, taps something on the screen, and then slides it over to me again. “Please sign off on your report with a fingerprint.”
I look at the screen, see how the audio recording of my voice was transcribed into words. I read through the pages once and then press my thumb on the pad.
“We’re done here, then?” Dire says as soon as I’m done signing. His eagerness to leave is obvious. Memories are haunting these walls.
“There is one more thing,” the Operator says, taking the tablet and sliding it to sleep.
The words are more ominous than they should be. But I’m here, deep in headquarters, and for a second it’s just me and Sabian and an idea about to go wrong.
“And that is?” Baer asks, filling in for the silence of my nonresponse.
“The Board acknowledges the wrongness of Sabian’s actions, as well as the magnitude of your skills to have survived them,” she says to me. “As we understand it, you became a striker to learn the skills to complete your assignment. Is this true?”
Beside me, both Baer and Dire go very still. All three of us, wondering just how far the Board’s reach must go to have picked up on that.
I can only nod. Wait for the rest. Hoping that not all parts of me have been examined, sifted through, judged. No Operator needs to know that my becoming a striker was also a means of escape—that focusing on a kill helped numb the memory of those I already lost.