She stopped in front of my chair and grabbed my chin, nails digging into sensitive skin. “Quiet now. Grown-ups are talking.” She cleared her throat and resumed her path. “Rebecca was going to tell everyone and that would have ruined our public image. The president would have pulled our permits and closed us down before we really even got started. Think of all the revenue we would have lost!”
She gave one final squeeze and let go, stepping away and folding her arms. I flexed my jaw and glared. “So, again. It was all about money.”
“Do you have any idea how much money we make per inmate skipped? Three hundred thousand dollars. Small change, though, when you think about it. For each individual Omega deal we broker, we will get seventeen million.”
My mouth fell open. What the hell could they be doing for seventeen million a pop? And who had that kind of green?
She studied me for a moment before folding her arms with a humpf. “Huh. Maybe you didn’t know.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you.”
“Really, I owe it all to Rebecca. The heart of what Omega is was born of her misery. She was devastated when she lost her child. A small girl of only six years old. Utterly useless—and I needed her mind. I had to act.”
A chill crept up my spine. “What did you do, Cora?”
“My first attempt was such a success that I was eager to try again to see if I could replicate the outcome. At first I tried using Skips. If someone was foolish to venture here from another dimension, they were fair game. Unfortunately it happened so rarely. Apparently most other realms aren’t as advanced as we are here. The best answer was to simply take what I needed from other earths.” She snickered. “It made sense, I suppose. It’s what I did in the first place.”
“In the first place?” I was sure I’d heard her wrong. Things were starting to take shape in my head and I didn’t like how they were forming. “Cora, tell me what you did. To help my mother. What was it?”
She snorted. “You went to see Markus Brewster. Didn’t you wonder what I wanted with someone who dealt in such crude chemical substances?”
“Obviously.”
“I needed a way to wipe someone’s mind. To present them to the world as a blank slate, a sponge ready to soak up life. Brewster was impressive in the beginning. The first couple of times he did it was a success with only minor issues—of course the subject was the same. But it got me thinking… The idea for Omega was born and I insisted he come work for me. Unfortunately, his later attempts failed multiple times with varying degrees of disaster. The subjects ranged from deep hysteria and madness to violence. Some had a partial wipe, but still retained unwanted memories. It’s been a long road, but I think we finally found the winning recipe.”
“Tell me what you did.” I still didn’t understand fully. She was saying a lot—yet nothing at all. It was just gibberish without specifics, with just enough bait sprinkled in to induce madness.
She bent down and narrowed her eyes. “I replaced Rebecca’s dead child.” She straightened, looking pleased with herself. “With you.”
“With—” I couldn’t breathe. My arms, my legs—my entire body—everything was numb. I had a feeling I was biting down hard on the inside of my cheek, but I didn’t feel it. The only thing I was aware of was the erratic beat of my heart as it hammered, thunderously loud, in my ears. The thumping banged against my chest and my vision swam in and out of focus. Acid rumbled in my stomach, burning bile singing its way up my throat.
“You’re not from here, Ashlyn. I stole you. Plucked you from another world. I stole you and gave you to Rebecca so she could focus again. I wiped your six-year-old memory, then wiped you again at eight when I got rid of Rebecca.” She laughed. “The most ironic part? I brought you here to live as a lowly Bottom Tier, when where you’re from, your family is actually richer and more powerful than mine.”
Her words snapped me back to the here and now. They brought rage and fury and focus. So much focus. “I’m going to kill you, Cora.”
“When we present the first official working trials of the project to the public, along with the case study I’ve been doing on you for years, people will be in awe. A multiple wipe and still functioning… The president will have no other choice than to allow us to proceed with the venture. He stands to make billions.” She laughed. A deep, dark sound that sent a ripple of fury through me. “Once the project launches, Infinity will not only be in the business of ridding our world of its unwanted criminal element, but thanks to you and Rebecca, we will also be reuniting people with their lost loved ones.” Her grin widened. “Well, versions of them, at least.”
...
After Cora dropped her bombshell, she had me escorted to a cell. I had no idea how long I’d been here. My head was spinning. They were stealing people. Kidnapping alternate versions of loved ones and bringing them here. They were stealing their lives away, wiping their memories, and selling them off to the highest bidders. A big wig politician lost his son in a tragic car wreck? No problem. For the right amount of money, he could have him back again. Some rich guy lost his trophy wife to an argument? Why get a new one? He could keep up appearances by having Infinity hijack the one he’d had.
Just like me.
I leaned back against the wall and pulled my feet onto the cot. I wasn’t born in this world. That idea alone was enough to send my mind into a crazy tailspin of what if. Add to it the fact that I’d lived as an orphan while my real family was out there somewhere and you treaded into the deep end of insanity. This whole time I’d been alone and feeling hopeless there was someplace better out there for me. A place I actually belonged. “This is seven different kinds of sick.”
“…hello?”
That voice. I knew that voice. “Kori?”
“Ash?”
“It’s me. You okay?” I didn’t know her well, but I found that I was overwhelmingly relieved to hear her voice. I slid off the cot and pushed myself up against the bars. A few cells over, across the hall, she was doing the same.
“I’m okay,” she replied. “You?”
“Same.”
She let her head fall forward against the bars. The small thud it made echoed down the hall. “Thank God.”
I snorted. “Yeah. For now.” We had to get out of here—I just had no idea how we were going to do it. There was little doubt in my mind the boys would try coming for Kori, but I couldn’t find it in my heart to believe they’d actually make it. “Anyone else here?”
A few moments ticked by. Finally someone coughed. “Me. I’m here.”
A girl’s voice. “What’s your name?” I called out.
There was a short pause before she let out an agonized growl. “I’m—I—I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“They did something to you.” God. Cora had stolen this poor girl’s life, too. Her family, her home, her friends… I couldn’t decide what was worse. Knowing or living in not-so-blissful ignorance. “Are you alone? Is there anyone else here?”
“I’m here,” a guy’s voice said.
“I think that’s it,” the girl called. “Until you two got here, it was just us. There have been others, but…”
“But these freaks took them and they never came back,” the guy shouted. Metal clanged and he let out a string of curses, ending in an echoing thud.
“Shh,” the girl urged. “We talked about this. Keep your voice down. If they come for you—”
“I know.” His tone was softer. “I know.”
“Did they take you together?” I pulled against the bars to test them. Solid.
“No,” she said. “We’ve just been here the longest. G and I—”
“Is that your name?” Kori called to the guy. “G?”
“No clue.” He grumbled something I couldn’t quite hear. “Had to call each other something. She calls me G, I call her Sera.”
“Okay then.” I pushed off the bars and spun in a slow circle. Three solid walls. No way out. “There’s four of us now. Let’s put ou
r heads together and get the hell out of here.”
“Guard schedule,” Kori said. “Do they come down to bring food? Random security checks? Surveillance? Surely they’re watching you somehow.”
“They bring food once a day,” Sera said. “G is on the very end, the first cell in the row. He can usually see the elevator light up just before they get here. As for random checks, no. They do come down once a day in the morning, though. No cameras that we know of.” She let out a snort. “Cora once said there was no need because a chance at escape was impossible.”
“Every few days they drag us from the cell and bring us up a few floors.” There was fury in G’s tone. “They run tests. It happened this morning, though.”
“Most of the time it’s just simple blood tests. Sometimes an EKG,” Sera whispered.
“Sometimes it’s not. They hurt Sera this morning. They’ve hurt her before.”
The rage in his voice made me think of Noah. Both of them. Mine had been so protective—or so I’d thought. But, thinking back, he’d really only been like that in recent years. Since Cora’s big reveal, I’d been picking apart every aspect of our relationship. Some things made me numb, while others reinforced the belief that yes, he had cared about me. Maybe it hadn’t started out that way. But Noah Anderson had loved me. Then of course there was this new Noah. He tried to hide it, but it was there. He felt something for me that he—and maybe I—was afraid to acknowledge. That unmistakable, protective tremor in G’s voice? He had it, too, and I hadn’t realized until that moment how comforting it was.
“I’m okay,” she insisted, though not in a very convincing way. “It wasn’t bad. It’s been worse. And it’s nothing compared to what they do to you…”
There was an angry sound from G and mumbling, followed by another metallic thud.
“Well, it’s over.” I moved to the bars again and pressed myself against them, craning to see down to the other end. I could make out Kori leaning against the bars of her cell, as well as a dark form a few cells down. Sera. “We—”
“Shut up!” G whispered, then let out a string of colorful curses. “The elevator. Someone’s coming down!”
A few moments of silence ticked by, but then I heard it. The faint squeal of the elevator doors, followed by an assortment of footsteps—one of which I knew all too well.
“How are you doing, Ash?” Cora stopped in front of my cell. “Comfy?”
“Snug as a bug in a rug.” I flashed her my sweetest smile. “So what’s the deal here? You keep us all locked away forever?”
She laughed. “Of course not. It wouldn’t be cost effective to simply house and feed you until you died of old age, would it?”
“So…?”
“So you’re going to fulfill your role in all this. You’re going to help us secure permission from the government to make Omega official. You’re living proof that our procedure can be done safely with no major side effects. I have a meeting and presentation set up for two weeks from tomorrow.”
“You’re insane.” If she thought for even one second that I’d do anything to help her in any way, she was hitting the happy juice.
“We’re still perfecting the formula we got from Markus Brewster. We’re also trying to figure out why there are some from other earths who seem resistant to the drug. Take your female roommate—I’m sure you’ve all met?” She winked. “The girl has been treated twelve times and we only had success after several implants—we’re trying something a little different with her. The boy is part of another exciting project. But you… You’re special. You’re proof that it can work.”
What she was saying sank in and I felt like I’d swallowed a rock. “Can—but doesn’t. You said so yourself. You present me as proof and it’s a lie.” No. This wasn’t going to happen. She wouldn’t get away with it. Not while I was still alive. “You might as well just kill me now, Cora. You try to present me to anyone as proof and I’ll tell them the truth! The serum doesn’t work. Not on everyone. If you push forward with this, how many people’s brains are you going to fry?”
“Science is messy. To advance we must be willing to sacrifice.” She narrowed her eyes, smile growing wide and wicked. “After we have this all buttoned up, though, perhaps I’ll start my own private house. You seem to like to play with boys above your stature. Maybe I’ll wipe you again and rent you out—”
I spat at her through the bars. She flinched, jumping away as she wiped her face with horrified vigor. When she recovered, she made a motion to the three men standing behind her. They came forward, and instead of opening my cell door, they went to Kori’s.
“I think today we’ll start with the unknown element. My daughter is from an entirely new earth. We’ve never come across her frequency. Maybe she’ll wipe easily—maybe she won’t.”
“If you touch me I’ll—” Commotion from Kori’s cell and the sounds of melee filled the hall. One of the men cursed. There was shuffling and the scrape of rubber against the tile floor.
Kori gave them one hell of a fight, and despite the situation, I found myself impressed. She was a tough one. Then again, she was Noah’s sister. I should have expected as much.
They dragged her from the cell and down the hall. She fought them the entire way.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Noah
“You ready? This is going to hurt.”
I glared at him. “Do it.” Pain wasn’t normally an issue for me, but I didn’t like the look of the needle-like thing he had dangling above my forearm. Instead of a point, it had a flat, razor edge about the width of a dime and flashing red and white lights. Like something out of some cheesy science fiction flick.
“Just get it over with,” Dylan snapped. He’d been in a bad—okay, worse—mood since Rabbit informed us that our cuffs were D.O.A.
There was nothing he could do to save the core because we’d waited too long. Luckily, this world’s Infinity was years ahead of ours and could simply tune their own chips to an individual. No fast prep method needed. No clunky, unwanted jewelry. Just a small, implanted chip. After some persuading from Dylan, he’d agreed to give us the small stash he’d stolen just yesterday from Cora’s office. My theory was that he didn’t want Dylan here any more than we wanted him on our earth.
In the beginning it was hard to look at him without seeing the guy who’d once been a friend. I’d never been as close to him as I was Cade, but we were tight. Still family. But that was gone now. The only thing I saw when I looked at him now was red. Betrayal and rage. For myself, for Kori—for Cade. Even for Ava. She never would have wanted this. She’d been a lot like him. Wild and short tempered—but she’d had a good heart. She would be disgusted if she could see the monster he’d turned into in her name.
Rabbit’s right eyebrow twitched and he pressed the needle against my forearm. “One, two, three.” There was a loud snap and an intense sting, accompanied by a volcanic burning sensation that leeched down to my fingers, making the tips numb for a moment before subsiding entirely.
Dylan and Cade had already been implanted, but Rabbit refused to activate them until we recovered Ash and Kori—which was smart. He’d stood up to Dylan like a pro, and my Rabbit would have been proud. There’d been a brief moment that he’d refused to put the chip in at all, but after Dylan not-so-gently reminded him that his lack of compliance would assure that his mother had a bad day, Rabbit gave in. That threat was the only thing keeping him safe. I think he knew that, which was why he didn’t push activation. This wasn’t like holding Kori over our heads.
He held out his forearm and splayed his fingers. “Watch closely because there’s not going to be time for me to explain this all again. After a few moments of inactivity, the chip will go to sleep. To wake it up…” He tapped the area below his wrist twice and his skin began to glow. A muted blue light grew darker with each passing second until a thin box appeared as an image on his skin.
“That is amazing,” Cade said with a whistle. He reached out to poke it but Rabbit sm
acked his hand away.
“Cora invented the tech. I improved on it,” Rabbit said proudly. He tapped the first blue button on the top row, the one that was labeled HOME. “When I activate the chip, the first thing you’re going to want to do is tune it to your own personal frequency. This button will link the chip to you, and when pressed, will skip you back to your home world.”
“So it’s like the emergency button on our cuffs?”
“Um, I guess? This isn’t a one-time use thing if that’s what you mean.”
I swallowed, positive I hadn’t heard him correctly. “You’re saying we can go home and leave again? That we wouldn’t be stuck?”
He was looking at me like I had a half dozen heads. “Of course. Why would it—oh. Yeah. Your cuffs were way primitive.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe you haven’t been home in almost a year.”
“Moving on,” Dylan snapped. “Make sure my chip isn’t part of their set. I don’t want them following me.” He glared at Cade. “Feel free to skip home and leave me the fuck alone.”
“Our chips aren’t manufactured in sets like your cuffs were,” Rabbit said. His gaze darted from Dylan to Cade, then back again. “Each one is their own individual entity with its own programmable memory.”
Dylan flashed me a smug smile.
Rabbit tapped the button next to HOME labeled PATH. “This one records all the frequencies a chip visits. There’s an option here to make notations so you can remember which was which.” He pressed a small button within the PATH section, marked by a small F. “By pressing the F-button you can manually add a frequency by touching your forearm to an object or person. The chip will record their frequency and store it. After that, you can skip to them directly no matter what world they’re on.”
“Before you get any ideas, don’t.” Dylan backed away from the small table. “My location is off limits.”
Rabbit rolled his eyes and refocused on the blue box illuminating his skin. “To follow a specific PATH—meaning, visit a certain frequency— be it a person or world, all you need to do is tap the line and boom. You skip instantly. You can leave and return to any place in your list, or hit this button…” His finger hovered over an even smaller button within the panel labeled with just an R. “—you will skip to a random frequency.”