Extracted (18 page)

I know who I am. I’m Alexei Romanov.

I come to when a sweaty fist hits me square in the jaw, right on my tattooed scar. It might as well have been a target. The Tesla vault is full of my memories and my legs go weak, dropping me to the floor. Someone crashes into my assailant, knocking him into the wall. From my knees, I look up at the girl.

My sister.

“Anya?”

I blink once, twice.

My head swims as a flood of memories crashes over me. I can hear my heart pounding in my chest. Alexei kneels in front of me, looking as paralyzed as I am. His eyes are wide, and his mouth is closed in a tight grimace. He opens it and calls out. Not my name, another name. I can’t hear the sound escape his lips, but I can read the familiar shape of it as he speaks it. Something inside me snaps into place. He reaches out, offering me his hand. I reach to take it, but before our fingers connect the crack of a lash stings past my face, catching him in the arm.

The smell of burning flesh sets me into motion. I jump to my feet, putting the boy behind me, and scream for Ethan. My eyes find him, but he and Flynn are busy grappling with the tall boy. Catherine has the smaller girl pinned into a corner and is slashing away at her. The lash moves through the air like red lightning. The look on Catherine’s face is pure rage. She will kill the girl, I’m sure of it.

I don’t make the decision to step in—my body just moves of its own accord now. I run at Catherine, shoving her into the wall. She hits her head hard and slides down, leaving a streak of blood on the copper wall. Ethan sees me and freezes. Flynn presses forward and slams the boy into the shelves, knocking a pile of scrap parts to the floor with a clatter. I turn and the recognition is like a punch in the gut, sudden and painful. I know who he is. He’s mine. My little brother. Only he’s not so little anymore.

“Alexei?” My voice is a whisper. I’m not sure where the name comes from, but it is smooth and familiar on my tongue. With his back to me, Flynn freezes.

“Anya?” Alexei asks back. I nod, even though it’s not my name anymore.

With a quick shove, he knocks Flynn out of the way, rushes forward, and wraps his arms around me. Tears well up until they are spilling down my face as I squeeze him back. He was dead, I was sure of it. The fire. I left him behind. I left my brother behind to die.

“I thought you were dead,” I say, my heart heavy with guilt.

He pulls back, and I can see the scars on his neck are masked by a beautiful tattoo. He’s older too, closer to my age probably. He’s a man, and an enemy, and a warrior. And he looks so much like our father. There are no traces of the disease that ravaged his body as a child. The once waxy, ashen tint of his skin is now a warm glow, his once hollow cheeks plump.

“I thought you were dead, too.”

A boy in a grimy surgeon’s mask clears his throat. “I hate to interrupt, but we need to go, Lex. Now.”

I open my mouth to protest, but as I do a swarm of Peacekeepers falls from the air vent Ethan and I came through earlier.

Alexei curses. “Gear Heads. Quick, rift out now.” He grabs my hand. “Come on, Anya.”

I pull my hand away. “You can’t rift. You don’t have a Tether.”

“A what?” he asks, confused. “Look, all you need is this.”

He reaches over to where his friend is cradling the little redhead in his arms and pulls a green pill from her pocket. As soon as he hands it to me, one of the Peacekeepers leaps into the air and claws it out of my fingers, splitting the pill in half. The green liquid inside drips onto my leg.

The tiny creatures are quickly
fillin
g the room. I kick at one as it saws at my boot. I scream, and before I know it they are crawling up my legs. For a minute I’m stunned. Peacekeepers aren’t supposed to hurt us—they’re programmed to only attack Hollows. I glance up and see the Hollows under siege by the deadly robots. It’s like being inside a beehive, only instead of stinging us, the Peacekeepers are sawing at us with tiny chainsaw legs. Ethan is trying to get to me. I can see him out the corner of my eye with his arms outstretched, but the swarm is between us, cutting him off from me.

Crying out, I try to shake them off. The others aren’t faring any better. As a matter of fact, the Peacekeepers are attacking them even more ferociously. That’s when I notice Alexei’s leg. It’s a prosthetic steam machine. I’m too distracted fighting off the Peacekeepers to ask any questions, but just seeing him like this hurts. And now I remember why.

I was supposed to protect him. Papa told me to find Alexei and take care of him. The realization hits me like a brick. I stumble back, barely keeping myself from falling.

I’ve failed.

Whatever this is, whatever he’s become, it’s my fault. And if he doesn’t get out of here soon, the Peacekeepers will kill him.

The emotions override me, like being in the middle of a typhoon. I am being pulled this way and that. The brand on my arm burns as I remember the last order Tesla gave me. His voice floats through my head: “Let the boy die.” Inside me, the fighting ends in a snap and the decision is made.

There is no way I am going to let my brother die.

Not again.

“Alexei, do you have what you came here for?” I scream over the chaos.

He holds up what looks like a large, oval lightbulb.

“Then you have to go, now!”

He shakes his head. “Not without you.”

I rush at him, throwing my arms around his neck. He smells like sweat and grease and something underneath that I can’t put my finger on.

“I can’t go with you,” I whisper, pushing myself away. His face hardens.

Another wave of Peacekeepers charges us, pulling him away from me. They slice at his arms and face.

“Make sure it’s turned off,” I yell and he nods, tucking the lightbulb under his arm.

I’m bleeding from where the machines are sawing at my legs, but the pain is nothing, absolutely nothing compared to what I feel inside right now. Alexei screams something and they all pull out their pills, ready to swallow them.

Pulling the EMP grenade out of my pocket, I look at my little brother as he fights off the metal monsters before putting his own pill on his tongue.

And it’s my fault.

If guilt could kill, I’d already be dead on the floor. Pain rolls in my stomach, threatening to force the contents up my throat and out my mouth. Tears roll down my cheeks and into my mouth. They’re like bitter saltwater on my tongue. I blink, searching for my brother’s face like a lifeline in a storm.

I look at him, catching his eye one last time, and mouth, “I love you.”

Flipping the EMP over in my palm, I close my eyes and press the button. A bright light flashes, and then everything goes black.

“Claymore would like to debrief you, Lex,” Gloves says, glaring at me so hard it’s like he’s trying to read my mind. Not possible when I’m so tired and confused I can barely see straight.

“Didn’t he talk to you already?” I ask, my head tucked into the crook of my arm.

The tattered purple lounge chair is really comfortable. I don’t want to deal with Claymore at the moment. I don’t want to deal with anyone. It feels like all my old scars have been ripped open again and I am slowly bleeding to death. The feeling is part cold, part numbness, like tiny crystals of ice swimming through my veins.

I can’t get her face out of my mind. I keep trying to match it up—the face of the girl from the vault and the face of my sister. She looks different. Harder, somehow. Her hair is the same, long and brown like our mother’s, and her eyes are the color of hot chocolate on a winter’s morning. Only the narrow bridge of her nose that slopes into her mouth looks like Father’s—like mine.

“I did,” Gloves answers, folding his arms across his chest. “He wants to talk to the leader of the mission, and that would be you.”

I scratch the scar on my neck and jaw. It’s as real and painful as the image of my sister that’s now burned into my brain. For the first time, I wish my leg would seize up so that I would have an excuse to stay in the common room staring at the empty half-pipe. The others have given me a wide berth since we got back. That might have something to do with the monumental disaster I made when we got back. I practically ripped the place apart with my bare hands. I wish I could tap into that fire now, anything to warm myself.

Painfully I stand and hobble up to Claymore’s office, trying not to look at the random faces I pass by. I know they’re staring, waiting for me to say something about what happened, waiting to see if I’ll fly off the handle again. Honestly, I haven’t ruled out the possibility. I kick an abandoned skateboard that has been staring at me from the center of the room. It crashes into the wall and chunks of plaster fall to the floor. Taking a deep breath, I wait to feel something. But nothing comes.

“Oh, and by the way, I took the liberty of telling Claymore about your sister,” Gloves calls after me. It’s like he threw a ball at me without bothering to give me a “think fast.” That dude is a sieve. He can’t hold information if his life depends on it.

Still, it’s probably for the best. If I’d had to see Claymore when we first got back, I probably would’ve ripped that diver’s helmet right off his shoulders. As it is, the first stirrings of returning anger rolls in my gut. My sister, my сестра. My family. Their faces float in and out of my mind like balloons. In the back of my brain, a vague plan is forming. It looks a lot like me going back for Stein, and then going back for my family. Only the how is fuzzy.

My geared leg begins to hurt, so I use the cane Nobel gave me to take away some of the pressure. It’s tempting to turn around and beat Gloves with it, but I don’t want to damage the cane. Nobel tells me that my upgrade is almost ready. The pain should go away with the addition of the new prosthetic.

Walking down the dim hallway, I can almost feel Anya next to me. The link between us is deeper than just being brother and sister. She was my best friend when I was young. We played and talked, and more often than not, she read me stories and tucked me in at night. My lips begin to turn up at the corners as I remember the nursery rhymes she used to recite in her singsong voice. I can remember perfectly every time she held my hand while Grigori poked and prodded me, searching for a cure to the illness that plagued me as a child. Hemophilia, Nobel tells me. Something he was able to take care of with a series of genetic therapy injections. Then another memory invades—the look of shock on her face in the vault. I stop, closing my eyes, and reach forward. As if I think, somehow, I can reach through time and space and touch her. Rifting runs in our blood now. The time stream created us in its womb. We are bound to it and to each other. The air around me feels thin, so very fragile. If I can just reach out…

Breathing in, I can taste the smoke of the vault from the night before. I can hear her heart beating slowly, like a clock ticking backward. Just a little further and—

I’m thrown from the vision so hard I almost fall forward. Only my cane stops me from spilling face-first onto the floor. Shaking my head, I open my eyes and blink. She felt so close for a second. But whatever it was has passed, and I can’t put this off any longer.

Even though the sun is shining outside, the hallway to Claymore’s office seems darker than ever. I wonder absently what the Tower looked like back in its heyday. Back when Tesla and his assistants lived and worked here. Back when everything was new and shiny. We have placed it in a time loop created years after the facility was abandoned. Now it’s barely standing. Even the radio tower itself is nothing more than a tall, rusty jungle gym.

I hear the ticking before I even enter the room. Not only is Claymore already waiting for me, he has put something on the arrivals and departures board.

I hobble in to the room without even a courtesy knock. The room remains the same time after time—a butcher-block desk with our mysterious leader sitting behind it.

YOU WERE ATTACKED BY GEAR HEADS? His message reads.

“Yes, sir,” I reply through gritted teeth. I have so many unanswered questions and he wants to talk about Gear Heads! What about my sister? What about my age? Did Anya slow down or did I speed up? There is no way she could be more than a year or two older than the day we were taken. And why us? Why were we taken in the first place?

Tick, tick, tick…WERE THEY THE SAME AS…tick, tick, tick…THE GEAR HEADS THAT TOOK YOUR LEG?

“I have questions,” I say flatly. The message board flips furiously.

I AM SURE YOU DO BUT…tick, tick, tick…ANSWER MY QUESTIONS FIRST.

“Yes, sir,” I answer. “But the Gear Heads didn’t attack the Tesla Rifters. Well, except for Anya. I—” I swallow, wondering just how much Gloves has shared and decide to go all in. “I gave her a Contra. The stupid things went after it like flies on crap.”

Tick, tick, tick…THAT IS VERY INTERESTING… tick, tick, tick…MY SUSPICIONS WERE CORRECT… tick, tick, tick…THEY TRACK THE CONTRA…tick, tick, tick…THAT IS HOW THEY…tick, tick, tick…KEEP FINDING US.

Reaching the end of my patience, I rip off my jester’s hat and throw it on Claymore’s desk.

“Tell me about my sister!”

Claymore doesn’t respond at first. Black bubbles form dirty foam around the front view port of the helmet. Claymore sits still, his hands unmoving on the gouged desk.

Tick, tick, tick…WE TRIED…tick, tick, tick…TO SAVE HER.

I pound my cane on the floor. “No, you didn’t! We are time travelers. Yet you couldn’t manage to save both of us? Or what about the rest of my family? You couldn’t save them either?”

Slowly, with his ticking words he tells me about the events surrounding the death of my parents—how when Gloves got to the house in Yekaterinburg, the flames were already going, and my family was dead, save Anya and me. A man named Flynn had already taken her. Gloves was barely able to save me. As it was, I was so badly injured and traumatized they had to put me in stasis for a while to recover. I was only thirteen when he took me. I’ve changed so much since then.