“I want a hot bath,” I hear Winston say.
And then he giggles.
He actually giggles.
“Two of my men are ill and injured,” Kenji says, immediately switching gears. His voice is clipped, sharp. Unfeeling. “They need medicine and medical attention. We don’t want to be monitored, we don’t want a curfew, and we want to be able to eat more than the Automat food. We want protein. Fruits. Vegetables. Real meals. We want regular access to showers. We’ll need new clothes. And we want to remain armed at all times.”
Warner is standing so still beside me I can hardly hear him breathing anymore. My head is pounding so hard and my heart is still racing in my chest, but I’ve calmed down enough that I’m able to breathe a little easier now.
Warner glances down at me.
He holds my gaze for just a moment before he closes his eyes. Exhales a sharp breath. Looks up.
“Fine,” he says.
Kenji is staring at him. “Wait—what?”
“I will be back tomorrow at fourteen hundred hours to guide you to your new quarters.”
“Holy shit.” Winston is bouncing on the couch. “Holy shit holy shit holy shit.”
“Do you have your things?” Warner asks me.
I nod.
“Good,” he says. “Let’s go.”
TWENTY-NINE
Warner is holding my hand.
I only have enough energy to focus on this single, strange fact as he leads me down the stairs and into the parking garage. He opens the door of the tank and helps me in before closing it behind me.
He climbs into the other side.
Turns on the engine.
We’re already on the road and I’ve blinked only six times since we left Adam’s house.
I still can’t believe what just happened. I can’t believe we’re all going to be working together. I can’t believe I told Warner what to do and he listened to me.
I turn to look at him. It’s strange: I’ve never felt so safe or so relieved to be beside him. I never thought I could feel this way with him.
“Thank you,” I whisper, grateful and guilty, somehow, about everything that’s happened. About leaving Adam behind. I realize now that I’ve made the kind of choice I can’t undo. My heart is still breaking. “Really,” I say again. “Thank you so much. For coming to get me. I appreciate—”
“Please,” he says. “I’m begging you to stop.”
I still.
“I can’t stomach your pain,” he says. “I can feel it so strongly and it’s making me crazy—please,” he says to me. “Don’t be sad. Or hurt. Or guilty. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be sorry, either,” he says. “God, the only reason I’m not going to kill Kent for this is because I know it would only upset you more.”
“You’re right,” I say after a moment. “But it’s not just him.”
“What?” he asks. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t want you to kill anyone at all,” I say. “Not just Adam.”
Warner laughs a sharp, strange laugh. He looks almost relieved. “Do you have any other stipulations?”
“Not really.”
“You don’t want to fix me, then? You don’t have a long list of things I need to work on?”
“No.” I stare out the window. The view is so bleak. So cold. Covered in ice and snow. “There’s nothing wrong with you that isn’t already wrong with me,” I say quietly. “And if I were smart I’d first figure out how to fix myself.”
We’re both silent awhile. The tension is so thick in this small space.
“Aaron?” I say, still watching the scenery fly by.
I hear the small hitch in his breath. The hesitation. It’s the first time I’ve used his first name so casually.
“Yes?” he says.
“I want you to know,” I tell him, “that I don’t think you’re crazy.”
“What?” He startles.
“I don’t think you’re crazy.” The world is blurring away as I watch it through the window. “And I don’t think you’re a psychopath. I also don’t think you’re a sick, twisted monster. I don’t think you’re a heartless murderer, and I don’t think you deserve to die, and I don’t think you’re pathetic. Or stupid. Or a coward. I don’t think you’re any of the things people have said about you.”
I turn to look at him.
Warner is staring out the windshield.
“You don’t?” His voice is so soft and so scared I can scarcely hear it.
“No,” I say. “I don’t. And I just thought you should know. I’m not trying to fix you; I don’t think you need to be fixed. I’m not trying to turn you into someone else. I only want you to be who you really are. Because I think I know the real you. I think I’ve seen him.”
Warner says nothing, his chest rising and falling.
“I don’t care what anyone else says about you,” I tell him. “I think you’re a good person.”
Warner is blinking fast now. I can hear him breathing.
In and out.
Unevenly.
He says nothing.
“Do you . . . believe me?” I ask after a moment. “Can you sense that I’m telling the truth? That I really mean it?”
Warner’s hands are clenched around the steering wheel. His knuckles are white.
He nods.
Just once.
THIRTY
Warner still hasn’t said a single word to me.
We’re in his room now, courtesy of Delalieu, who Warner was quick to dismiss. It feels strange and familiar to be back here, in this room that I’ve found both fear and comfort in.
Now it feels right to me.
This is Warner’s room. And Warner, to me, is no longer something to be afraid of.
These past few months have transformed him in my eyes, and these past two days have been full of revelations that I’m still recovering from. I can’t deny that he seems different to me now.
I feel like I understand him in a way I never did before.
He’s like a terrified, tortured animal. A creature who spent his whole life being beaten, abused, and caged away. He was forced into a life he never asked for, and was never given an opportunity to choose anything else. And though he’s been given all the tools to kill a person, he’s too emotionally tortured to be able to use those skills against his own father—the very man who taught him to be a murderer. Because somehow, in some strange, inexplicable way, he still wants his father to love him.
And I understand that.
I really, really do.
“What happened?” Warner finally says to me.
I’m sitting on his bed; he’s standing by the door, staring at the wall.
“What do you mean?”
“With Kent,” he says. “Earlier. What did he say to you?”
“Oh.” I flush. Embarrassed. “He kicked me out of his house.”
“But why?”
“He was mad,” I explain. “That I was defending you. That I’d invited you to come back at all.”
“Oh.”
I can almost hear our hearts beat in the silence between us.
“You were defending me,” Warner finally says.
“Yes.”
He says nothing.
I say nothing.
“So he told you to leave,” Warner says, “because you were defending me.”
“Yes.”
“Is that all?”
My heart is racing. I’m suddenly nervous. “No.”
“There were other things?”
“Yes.”
Warner blinks at the wall. Unmoving. “Really.”
I nod.
He says nothing.
“He was upset,” I whisper, “because I didn’t agree that you were crazy. And he was accusing me”—I hesitate—“of being in love with you.”
Warner exhales sharply. Touches a hand to the doorframe.
My heart is pounding so hard.
> Warner’s eyes are glued to the wall. “And you told him he was an idiot.”
Breathe. “No.”
Warner turns, just halfway. I see his profile, the unsteady rise and fall of his chest. He’s staring directly at the door now, and it’s clear it’s costing him a great deal of effort to speak. “Then you told him he was crazy. You told him he had to be out of his mind to say something like that.”
“No.”
“No,” he echoes.
I try not to move.
Warner takes a hard, shaky breath. “Then what did you say to him?”
Seven seconds die between us.
“Nothing,” I whisper.
Warner stills.
I don’t breathe.
No one speaks for what feels like forever.
“Of course,” Warner finally says. He looks pale, unsteady. “You said nothing. Of course.”
“Aaron—” I get to my feet.
“There are a lot of things I have to do before tomorrow,” he says. “Especially if your friends will be joining us on base.” His hands tremble in the second it takes him to reach for the door. “Forgive me,” he says. “But I have to go.”
THIRTY-ONE
I decide to take a bath.
I’ve never taken a bath before.
I poke around the bathroom as the tub fills with hot water, and discover stacks and stacks of scented soaps. All different kinds. All different sizes. Each bar of soap has been wrapped in a thick piece of parchment, and tied with twine. There are small labels affixed to each package to distinguish one scent from another.
I pick up one of the bundles.
HONEYSUCKLE
I clutch the soap and can’t help but think how different it was to take a shower at Omega Point. We had nothing so fancy as this. Our soaps were harsh and smelled strange and were fairly ineffective. Kenji used to bring them into our training sessions and break off pieces to pelt at me when I wasn’t focusing.
The memory makes me inexplicably emotional.
My heart swells as I remember that my friends will be here tomorrow. This is really going to happen, I think. We’ll be unstoppable, all of us together. I can’t wait.
I look more closely at the label.
Top notes of jasmine and nuances of grape. Mild notes of lilac, honeysuckle, rose, and cinnamon. Orange-flower and powder base notes complete the fragrance.
Sounds amazing.
I steal one of Warner’s soaps.
I’m freshly scrubbed and wearing a clean set of clothes.
I keep sniffing my skin, pleasantly surprised by how nice it is to smell like a flower. I’ve never smelled like anything before. I keep running my fingers down my arms, wondering at how much of a difference a good bar of soap can make. I’ve never felt so clean in my life. I didn’t realize soap could lather like that or react so well to my body. The only soap I’ve ever used before always dried up my skin and left me feeling uncomfortable for a few hours. But this is weird. Wonderful. I feel soft and smooth and so refreshed.
I also have absolutely nothing to do.
I sit down on Warner’s bed, pull my feet up underneath me. Stare at his office door.
I’m so tempted to see if the door is unlocked.
My conscience, however, overrules me.
I sink into the pillows with a sigh. Kick up the blankets and snuggle beneath them.
Close my eyes.
My mind is instantly flooded with images of Adam’s angry face, his shaking fists, his hurtful words. I try to push the memories away and I can’t.
My eyes fly open.
I wonder if I’ll ever see him and James again.
Maybe this is what Adam wanted. He can go back to his life with his little brother now. He won’t have to worry about sharing his rations with eight other people and he’ll be able to survive much longer this way.
But then what? I can’t help but think.
He’ll be all alone. With no food. No friends. No income.
It breaks my heart to imagine it. To think of him struggling to find a way to live, to provide for his brother. Because even though Adam seems to hate me now, I don’t think I could ever reciprocate those feelings.
I don’t even know that I understand what just happened between us.
It seems impossible that Adam and I could fissure and break apart so abruptly. I care so deeply for him. He was there for me when no one else was; he gave me hope when I needed it most; he loved me when no one else would. He’s not anyone I want to erase from my life.
I want him around. I want my friend back.
But I’m realizing now that Kenji was right.
Adam was the first and only person who’d ever shown me compassion. The first, and, at the time, only person who was able to touch me. I was caught up in the impossibility of it, so convinced fate had brought us together. His tattoo was a perfect snapshot of my dreams.
I thought it was about us. About my escape. About our happily-ever-after.
And it was.
And it wasn’t.
I want to laugh at my own blindness.
It linked us, I realize. That tattoo. It did bring me and Adam together, but not because we were destined for one another. Not because he was my flight to freedom. But because we have one major connection between the two of us. One kind of hope neither one of us was able to see.
Warner.
A white bird with streaks of gold like a crown atop its head.
A fair-skinned boy with gold hair, the leader of Sector 45.
It was always him. All along.
The link.
Warner, Adam’s brother, my captor and now comrade. He inadvertently brought me and Adam together. And being with Adam gave me a new kind of strength. I was still scared and still very broken and Adam cared for me, giving me a reason to stand up for myself when I was too weak to realize I had always been reason enough. It was affection and a desperate desire for physical connection. Two things I’d been so deprived of, and so wholly unfamiliar with. I had nothing to compare these new experiences to.
Of course I thought I was in love.
But while I don’t know much, I do know that if Adam really loved me, he wouldn’t have treated me the way he did today. He wouldn’t prefer that I was dead.
I know this, because I’ve seen proof of his opposite.
Because I was dying.
And Warner could’ve let me die. He was angry and hurt and had every reason to be bitter. I’d just ripped his heart out; I’d let him believe something would come of our relationship. I let him confess the depth of his feelings to me; I let him touch me in ways even Adam hadn’t. I didn’t ask him to stop.
Every inch of me was saying yes.
And then I took it all back. Because I was scared, and confused, and conflicted. Because of Adam.
Warner told me he loved me, and in return I insulted him and lied to him and yelled at him and pushed him away. And when he had the chance to stand back and watch me die, he didn’t.
He found a way to save my life.
With no demands. No expectations. Believing full well that I was in love with someone else, and that saving my life meant making me whole again only to give me back to another guy.
And right now, I can’t say I know what Adam would do if I were dying in front of him. I’m not sure if he would save my life. And that uncertainty alone makes me certain that something wasn’t right between us. Something wasn’t real.
Maybe we both fell in love with the illusion of something more.
THIRTY-TWO
My eyes fly open.
It’s pitch-black. Quiet. I sit up too fast.
I must’ve fallen asleep. I have no idea what time it is, but a quick glance around the room tells me Warner isn’t here.
I slip out of bed. I’m still wearing socks and I’m suddenly grateful; I have to wrap my arms around myself, shivering as the cold winter air creeps through the thin material of my T-shirt. My hair is still slightly damp from the bath.
&n
bsp; Warner’s office door is cracked open.
There’s a sliver of light peeking through the opening, and it makes me wonder if he really forgot to close it, or if maybe he’s only just walked in. Maybe he’s not in there at all. But my curiosity beats out my conscience this time.
I want to know where he works and what his desk looks like; I want to know if he’s messy or organized or if he keeps personal items around. I wonder if he has any pictures of himself as a kid.
Or of his mother.
I tiptoe forward, butterflies stirring awake in my stomach. I shouldn’t be nervous, I tell myself. I’m not doing anything illegal. I’m just going to see if he’s in there, and if he’s not, I’ll leave. I’m only going to walk in for a second. I’m not going to search through any of his things.
I’m not.
I hesitate outside his door. It’s so quiet that I’m almost certain my heart is beating loud and hard enough for him to hear. I don’t know why I’m so scared.
I knock twice against the door as I nudge it open.
“Aaron, are you—”
Something crashes to the floor.
I push the door open and rush inside, jerking to a stop just as I cross the threshold. Stunned.
His office is enormous.
It’s the size of his entire bedroom and closet combined. Bigger. There’s so much space in here—room enough to house the huge boardroom table and the six chairs stationed on either side of it. There’s a couch and a few side tables set off in the corner, and one wall is made up of nothing but bookshelves. Loaded with books. Bursting with books. Old books and new books and books with spines falling off.
Everything in here is made of dark wood.
Wood so brown it looks black. Clean, straight lines, simple cuts. Nothing is ornate or bulky. No leather. No high-backed chairs or overly detailed woodwork. Minimal.
The boardroom table is stacked with file folders and papers and binders and notebooks. The floor is covered in a thick, plush Oriental rug, similar to the one in his closet. And at the far end of the room is his desk.
Warner is staring at me in shock.