Falling (11 page)

Teri shakes her head. “I don’t know any Sebastian Cook.”

“Don’t lie,” Jack warns. His voice is cold enough to be terrifying. But then, I guess that’s the point.

“I’m not lying,” Teri says. She starts to look around, but thinks better of it. “I’m not. I swear.”

“Where would they take important prisoners, Teri?” I ask.

She swallows. “The top floor. The northern corner. There are… cells there. There’s one… the glass cell. If he’s important, he might be in there.”

“Thank you,” I say, looking at Jack. Thankfully, he understands what I want, which is for him not to go around shooting frightened young scientists. We leave Teri tied up, and head upstairs in search of Jack’s father. We’re moving quickly now, so when we run into a guard post with half a dozen armed men, there almost isn’t time to react.

Almost. Jack presses me flat against the wall, firing off a burst from his weapon one handed. Lionel fires almost as quickly, while Gray and the others follow suit. In less than a couple of seconds, the danger is gone. It’s only in the aftermath that I see the steel door beyond them, complete with another electronic lock, which Jack sets about breaking through as smoothly as we got through the first.

The room beyond is larger than I thought it would be. It’s a big, steel walled square, with a glass cube inside it. Sebastian sits inside that cube, on the floor. He doesn’t appear to have been harmed, but he’s clearly a prisoner there, and he doesn’t react when we approach.

“The cube will be one way glass,” Lionel says. “It’s an effective way of cutting someone off from the world.” He goes to the door. There’s a lock on the outside, and the retired major takes a more direct approach to it than Jack. He smashes it with the butt of his gun, before flinging the door open. We move through into the cube. From inside, the walls are opaque. They remind me of the glass back in the viewing room of Location Six.

“Hello, Sebastian,” Lionel says. “Welcome to the escape attempt.”

Sebastian stands, smiling weakly. “Just like Kuala Lumpur.”

“I hope not,” Lionel replies. “I got shot on that one, if you remember.”

A voice comes over hidden speakers. A voice I recognize all too well. A voice that means that things have just become a lot more dangerous than they were. “And you could still get shot on this one, Sir Lionel.”

The glass goes from cloudy to clear in a matter of seconds, revealing a group of the Others surrounding the cell. They’re as heavily armed as the Faders are, and at their head is Richard, Grayson’s father. He stands there casually, as if he hasn’t just set up a huge stand-off. It’s not him I’m looking at though. I’m looking at the three figures next to him, all standing with their hands handcuffed behind their backs, looking like they have no clue what’s going on.

“Mom, Dad? Bailey?”

My family looks at me without recognition. Of course they do. They’ve been Faded. I remember them, but they have no recollection of my ever existing.

“Put your weapons down,” Richard instructs. “Do it now, or I don’t need to tell you what will happen.”

I see Jack wince slightly. Grayson, however, does more than wince.

 “It isn’t enough you used your own son to get to Celes, Dad?” he snaps. “Now you’re using innocent civilians who don’t even know what this is all about? You disgust me.”

THIRTEEN

R
ichard actually looks a little sad as Grayson steps forward to berate him. Maybe he wasn’t expecting it. Maybe it’s just the betrayal of it, his own son siding with the Underground. The Others don’t open fire though. I guess that’s partly because of the walls of the glass cube, which, if they’re anything like those back at the Underground will be tougher than they look, but maybe it’s also because Richard doesn’t want his son hurt.

“You know,” Sebastian says, moving to back Grayson up and nodding towards my family through the glass walls of the room. “You’ve really crossed the line here, Richard, bringing in innocent civilians like this. These people don’t even know why they’re here.”

Richard shakes his head. Beside him, my family stand still, guarded closely by a trio of the Others, all with guns trained on them. “They know,” he says. “And they’re part of this. They’re with Celestra Caine.”

“Really?” Sebastian asks, without raising his voice. He looks over to where Bailey stands and points at me. “You, young man, do you know who this young woman is?”

Bailey looks nervous. He would. He’s surrounded by armed people, in a situation he knows nothing about. I’m almost proud of him when he manages to shake his head. Proud, and a little sad. I’ve known in theory that my family won’t remember me, but seeing the truth of it like this is something different. It hurts, even though I know that right now, it could be the thing that keeps Bailey safe. If there’s no connection to me, then there’s no leverage. There’s no reason to want to kill them, if that won’t have any effect on me.

“What about you two?” Sebastian asks, looking at my parents now. They seem as blank as Bailey was. “Do you remember her?”

“Of course they do,” Richard snaps, not giving them a chance to answer. “She’s their daughter. They raised her for seventeen years. They know everything about her.”

It’s my father who answers. “Sorry, I don’t know who you think we are, but…”

“You’re her parents. She is your daughter.”

“We don’t have a daughter,” my mother says, and it’s heartbreaking now, even as I know that she isn’t doing it to hurt me. She simply doesn’t remember, but that’s what hurts. “I don’t think we’ve even met this girl before.”

I want to cry, but I know I can’t. If I cry, it will show how much they mean to me. If I cry, it will show the Others that what they’re doing is working. Grayson moves to put an arm around my shoulders for comfort. Jack doesn’t move, but then, he probably gets how important it is to minimize the connection between me and my family right now. He’s also busily watching the Others, readying himself for the fight he knows must be coming.

I try not to think about that fight. The Underground’s Faders have plenty of guns, but so do the Others, and they have us surrounded out in the open, where they could potentially cut us down with a burst of bullets. There isn’t much cover for them, either. Any battle now is going to be a bloody one, and a lot of people are going to die on both sides. Maybe that’s why no one has given the order to fire yet.

Richard shrugs then. “It doesn’t matter if they remember her or not, just as long as she remembers them. You don’t want to see your family hurt, do you, Celestra?”

I know what I have to do. I have to protect my family in the only way that they can be protected right now. I have to play the part I was meant to play. I have to be the person the Underground tried to Fade me into being, before they realized that it wouldn’t work. “Celestra? My name is Celeste. Who are these people? Why have you brought them out here?”

Richard looks amused, and I know that my act hasn’t even begun to fool him. He’s too clever to be taken in. Or maybe he’s simply not willing to believe that the situation wouldn’t work out the way he wants it to. “You grew up with them, Celestra. Even Grayson remembers them, so there’s no point in you trying to lie your way out of this. They’re your family. The only family you’ve known. Now, persuade your friends to put their weapons down, or they die.”

“And then what, Richard?” Sebastian asks. He doesn’t seem very bothered by the prospect. “We have a gun battle?”

That’s what I’ve been worried will happen, but Sebastian says it like it isn’t any kind of threat at all.

“Do you want things to get that far?” Richard demands. “Do you want some kind of glorious last stand?”

Sebastian smiles. “I don’t think that will work. I take it you used the compound you came up with for these walls? You know, the bulletproof one?”

“Do you want to find out the hard way?” Richard asks. “Are you willing to bet your life that our weapons won’t get through it?”

Beside me, Sebastian’s smile just widens. “I’ve always had a lot of faith in your skills as a scientist, Richard, if not in your capabilities as a human being.”

“You’re trying to lecture me on morals?” Richard demands.

Sebastian shrugs. “Well, I’m not the one threatening to kill three civilians.”

“No,” Richard says, “you aren’t. Which is why you’ll put your weapons down and come out, before I decide to start killing them.”

That gets another burst of anger from Grayson. “Dad,” he says. “How can you? We went on family trips with the Caines, we had family parties, celebrated birthdays together. We’ve known them for years. Does it boil down to this? You threatening them? Why do you hate Celes so much that you’re doing this? What did she ever do to you?”

Richard shakes his head, looking momentarily angry. He starts to gesture towards the Others holding my family, but then stops. “Stay out of this, Grayson.”

“How can I?” Grayson looks around at me, then at the glass-walled room we’re in. “I’m in here just as much as anyone else, and it’s Celes you’re trying to hurt. I’m not going to let you do that.”

Richard glares at Sebastian. His voice, when it comes, is tight with anger. “This is your doing, isn’t it, old friend? Taking my son and twisting his mind. Turning him against me, so that he thinks I’m the one doing something wrong. That’s what you do, after all, isn’t it? That’s what you always did, even with your own family. You pretend that you’re helping people, but all you ever do is hurt them. You control their minds, change their lives, and play God, as though you have any
clue
about what’s best for them.”

“You were happy enough to help me at the start, Richard,” Sebastian says, still apparently unconcerned by what’s going on around us. “You worked with me on the original operations. You even helped me to set up many of the protocols I used.”

“And then I learned better,” Richard shoots back. It’s obvious that this is about more than just the Others and the Underground. Or maybe it’s at the
heart
of that rivalry. After all, the two men are very high up in their organizations. Maybe those organizations wouldn’t exist without whatever’s between the two of them.

Grayson asks what we’re all wondering. “Dad, what happened? Whatever it was, it can’t be enough to justify you hurting people like the Caines. Let them go. They don’t know anything. They shouldn’t be part of this.”

“
You
shouldn’t be part of it,” Richard says. “Yet they’ve taken you and twisted you, until you aren’t even my son anymore. Can they put you back to the way you were? Can they give you your old memories back?”

“Dad…”

“And what about my family?”

“Grayson’s your family,” I point out.

“Not my first family.” Richard sounds furious now. “Not the wife and daughter your Underground friends took from me, making it so that they didn’t remember me. So that I didn’t remember them. I married Grayson’s mother when he was just a toddler, not knowing any better.”

“You’re my stepdad?” Grey asks. “But I always thought-”

“You were a toddler when I married your mother, but I raised you as my own,” Richard says. “You were my son, until Sebastian twisted you.”

“I’m still your son,” Grayson says, “and I don’t think you’ll let your friends shoot me.” He steps out of the glass walled cell, raising his gun to point it at his father. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t shoot you. Mr. and Mrs. Caine, Bailey, go over to my friends now.”

My family look confused, but they start to move. A couple of the Others start to intercept them.

“Stay back or he dies,” Grayson promises.

Richard sighs. “Haven’t we been here before, Grayson?”