Unchanged (36 page)

If Jase cuts, I die.

“Look,” Kaelen tries. “Dr. Alixter will pay you whatever you want. Just let her go.”

“The glitch with
Dr. Alixter
,” Jase spits. “Where is he anyway? Hiding in his mansion? Too much of a coward to come out here and fight his own battles? Instead he sends his warped army to do his dirty work. Well, joke's on him. Because they're dead, too. None of them could have survived that blast.”

All those agents in the bunker.

Gone. Killed in the wake of my stupidity. I thought I was helping. I thought I was
saving
lives, not annihilating them.

“What do you want?” Kaelen asks diplomatically. But I can see his composure slipping. His temper flaring. If that monster comes out now, we might both die.

“I want her to apologize. For all of their deaths. For existing. And then I want
you
to watch her die.”

“Do it,” I tell Jase, leaning into his blade. “Cut me. Slice me to pieces. You're right, I deserve it. I'm not meant to be here. I never should have been created.”

“Sera, no!” Kaelen cries, trying once again to inch forward. But one flicker of movement from Jase's knife causes him to retreat.

“It's okay,” I tell Kaelen. “This is how it has to happen. You don't know how many people have died because of me. How many lives have shattered just because I exist. I've done enough damage. I don't need to live to do any more.”

He shakes his head quietly, moisture pooling in his eyes. His shoulders start to shake.

I've never seen Kaelen cry. I didn't know he was capable of it.

The sight sends another deep splinter through my already shattered heart.

A commotion behind us snags my attention. Without releasing the knife, Jase turns us both until we're facing the giant chasm. I hear Lyzender's voice bark, “Move! Come on! Let's go.” Then I see two people shuffling toward us. One hidden behind the other.

I gasp when I finally make out the man in front.

A bound and battered Dr. A. His face is covered with gray ash. A purple bruise is forming above his left eye.

He stumbles toward us and I can see Lyzender trudging behind him, shoving a gun barrel into his back.

“I found him clutching some dead guy's body,” Lyzender says.

Dane,
I think with dread.

Lyzender lurches to a halt when he sees the situation in front of him: Jase's arm around my neck, the edge of his knife piercing my skin.

“Jase!” he yells, momentarily losing focus on Dr. A. “What are you doing?”

Dr. A uses the distraction to run. He doesn't get very far, though. Lyzender yanks him back and points the gun at his temple. “You stay,” he commands.

“I'm doing what should have been done from the beginning,” Jase replies. “She warned the bastards and led us right into an ambush.”

“Jase, don't do this. She's not your enemy. Diotech is your enemy.”

“She
is
Diotech!” Jase bellows. “You're the only one too stupid to see that.”

“I'm afraid he's right.” Dr. A speaks for the first time. It's not in his usual charming, cocky voice. He sounds defeated. He sounds broken. “She is very much a part of this corporation. Just like God, I created my children in my own image.”

“For glitch's sake, shoot him already!” Jase screams at Lyzender. “That's what you wanted, isn't it? Why you're here. Paddok promised you'd get to kill him when the time came. So do it.”

Paddok promised …

Is that it? That's what Lyzender got in return for helping her? A chance to kill Dr. A?

This whole time, it had nothing to do with me, but everything to do with revenge. He's not here to rescue me. He's here to murder the founder of Diotech.

Lyzender's gaze flashes to me and I glare back at him.

“Wow, Lyzender. I'm flattered, really,” Dr. A says. He tries for sarcasm but it comes out tired and too heavy. “You've spent so much time and energy thinking of me and I haven't given a second thought about you.”

“That's flux.” Lyzender slaps the gun hard against Dr. A's temple. Dr. A sinks to his knees. “You've spent years of your life trying to make me disappear. You've erased me, you've warped me, you've banished me into the past, you've even tried to replace me.” He juts his chin toward Kaelen. “But I keep coming back, and you despise me for it. Just as much as I despise you. Because no matter how many little experiments you whip up, no matter how hard you try to produce love in a glitching test tube, nothing compares to the real thing. Admit it, you hate me because I can give her the one thing that you can't manufacture in a lab. You hate me because you can't duplicate me.”

In the distance, I hear sirens. Lyzender must hear them, too, because he looks to the sky. Emergency hovers are inbound.

“Your time is up, little girl,” Jase growls at me, angling his knife so the blade is perfectly poised against my vein.

I glance from Lyzender to Kaelen. The two people I have loved with everything I have. As different as wrong and right. Land and sea. Mountain and sky.

At this very moment, however, they are identical. Twins in their fury. Companions in their hatred of the man threatening to slice open my throat.

But I'm surprised to see that neither one of them is looking at me. Or at Jase. They are looking at each other.

Kaelen gives Lyzender the subtlest of nods. I don't know what is exchanged in that minuscule movement but whatever it is, Lyzender understands.

Kaelen leaps backward, fast enough to make the air spin. Jase startles, turning his head away from mine in an attempt to follow Kaelen's blur.

This movement is all Lyzender needs. He releases Alixter, shoving him to the ground. He takes aim at Jase's exposed head and fires.

 

59

EQUALITY

Dr. A crawls hastily away, pulling himself to his feet and darting in the direction of the Intelligence Command Center. Lyzender aims the gun at his vanishing form but he's knocked off balance when Kaelen charges him, slamming into him from the side. The gun plummets to the ground but neither one goes after it. Instead, they lunge for each other.

I watch in horror as the two people who each hold half of my fractured heart punch wildly and sloppily in the air, each hoping to land a strike. I'm surprised by how inept they are. Especially when I've seen both of them fight so elegantly before.

There's something about this ruined place and the emotional stakes of what they're fighting for. It slows Kaelen down and trips Lyzender up.

Kaelen swings fast and hard but Lyzender miraculously manages to duck the blow and charges headfirst into Kaelen's stomach. Growling and snarling, he knocks Kaelen onto his back. But Kaelen is on his feet again in a blur, rushing toward his opponent. This time they both go down. Lyzender twists his body so he can wrap his legs around Kaelen's neck. He squeezes, but it's no match for Kaelen's superior strength. He breaks from the hold in a flash and positions himself atop Lyzender, pinning him down with a knee to the chest.

He manages to deliver two firm blows to Lyzender's jaw before Lyzender wriggles away, jumping to his feet and landing a kick squarely between Kaelen's shoulder blades.

Kaelen groans but doesn't fall. He whirls around, striking Lyzender's knees until they're both on the ground again and Kaelen is once again taking his aggression out on Lyzender's defenseless, Normate face.

“Stop it!” I scream. Because it's not fair. It will never be fair. No matter how quick Lyzender is. No matter how much he
wants
to win, he's no match for Kaelen's unparalleled power. The capability programmed right into his DNA.

Nature can put up a good fight. It can scrap like the scrappiest of fallen warriors. It can kick and bite and punch, but science will always be one step ahead. In technique. In force. In adaptability.

Because it can move faster. Evolve faster.

“Stop!” I cry again. But no one is listening to me. They're still grappling on the ground, jockeying for control. Lyzender is tiring. He's throwing everything he has at Kaelen and it's not enough.

So he fights with words. Because it's all he has left.

“She will never love you the way she loved me!” he yells in between Kaelen's blows. “You are a poor replacement. A stand-in. A
fake
.”

I hear a frightening growl come from the entanglement of bodies and my stomach contracts.

I know that sound.

It's the same sound Kaelen made when he attacked that farmer outside the Feed station and the paparazzi on the hyperloop platform. The same sound that escaped him when he protected me in the subway back in 2032.

It's the other Kaelen. The terrifying version of him that I can't control.

I don't know where that monster lives. He seems to come out only when he's threatened, challenged, or, in this case, insulted.

I saw what became of that farmer in Miami. I remember the way he looked when they finally tore Kaelen away from him. His eyes had rolled back in his head. His mouth was slightly agape. He looked broken. And not just because his skull had certainly been cracked. But something else in him had been cracked, too. Some part of his humanity.

I fling myself toward the boys still wrestling on the ground. I know my strength is no match for Kaelen's. Not even when I'm at my full capacity. But he won't hurt me. He won't risk it.

“Stop! You'll kill him!” I manage to wedge myself between them, lying protectively over Lyzender who now has only his bruised and bloody hands to protect himself from Kaelen's wrath.

Kaelen is so lost in himself, so lost in this fiend that pilots him, he doesn't even notice that I'm there. His fist strikes down hard. I turn my head. It lands squarely on my ear.

I scream. The pain rockets through me, vibrating my brain. The whole world seems to hum and flicker. Like a broken screen that's trying to hold on to a signal.

When I look up, Kaelen's face reflects the horror that I know he feels.

“Sera,” he breathes. It's all he can say. He's too shocked for words. Even though my head is throbbing and my ear is ringing like it's the only sound I'll ever hear for the rest of my life, I know I've accomplished what I set out to accomplish.

I've ruptured his crazed, monstrous state.

I've pushed him back over the edge. Back to the sweet, caring, protective Kaelen I love.

He thrusts himself backward, landing on his butt, and holds his head in his hands, rocking slightly.

“Kaelen.” I reach toward him. “It's okay.”

“Like hell it is!” Lyzender struggles to sit up, but he's weak and battered. “He could have killed you. He could have killed us both! He's a glitching maniac.”

I place a hand on Lyzender's chest. “Please. Just go.” I glance at the sky and we're both reminded of the incoming hovers full of people who will be none too happy to find him here. Especially after Dr. A explains the part Lyzender had in today's devastation. “Get out of here. Find Klo. Take the hovercopter back to the camp.”

“Seraphina,” he argues. His fury has not subsided. Not one bit. “I will not leave you here with that monster.”

“I'll be fine. I promise. Now GO.” I give him a shove. He winces against it and it pains me to watch. But it will pain me even more to see him captured by whoever Dr. A has called in to deal with him. Dr. A won't be kind. It's not in his nature.

“No,” Lyzender resolves. “Not without you. Not again. We belong together, Sera.”

“I belong
here
.”

He starts to shake his head.

“Zen,”
I say forcefully. My voice is breaking. I catch his chin in my hand and hold it. I won't look away until he understands. “You have to leave. If you don't, Dr. A will kill you, or worse.”

“Then come with me.” The pleading in his tone—the aching, the desperation, the history—it's almost too much. I feel myself crumbling.

I close my eyes. “I can't.”

“Why not? Sera, you can't stay here either. You will never be free if you do—”

“BECAUSE I CAN'T LOVE YOU!”

The words echo deep within the chasm that was formed in the earth today. And the one that's been forming in my heart since the day I was brought into this world. I fear neither one can be completely refilled. The new dirt that they'll pile in, the new foundation that they'll lay will only serve to hide the raw, pulsing wound that will forever remain underneath.

The injury on Zen's face is unmistakable. It cracks me wide open. It steals everything I have left.

But if it saves his life, then I have no other choice.

“I can't love you the way you want me to,” I whisper. I pray he can't hear the uncertainty in my voice. If he does, he'll never leave. “It's like Paddok said. I'm too far gone. I'm too broken. I can't go with you when I'm meant to be here. This is where I was made. This is where I must stay.” I shut my eyes tight, gritting my teeth. “Please, just go.”

I wish I could have fallen in love with you in a different world.

I start counting. It's all I can do to keep the tears at bay.

When I reach 41, I hear him rise to his feet. When I reach 50, I hear his quiet, uncertain footsteps. But they don't recede. They come closer. I keep my eyes firmly closed.

57: his breath on my face as he bends down to me.

60: his hand on mine, prying my fists open with his fingers.

68: something cold and hard placed in my open palm, my fingers closing around it.

“I will wait for you.” His whispered words are cracked and wounded.

83: the sound of hovercopters descending, sirens blaring, his lips brushing against my forehead.

89: his warmth disappears.

95: the sound of running, running, running …