Into the Abyss (19 page)

And there is one more person I need to focus on convincing, anyway.

At the edge of the
woods, sitting in the shadow of an oak tree with my back against its trunk, I am waiting.

And in my peripheral vision, I see him arrive within an hour of my being out here: a lone figure in the almost-twilight, walking toward the house. A dense fog rolled in earlier, following a late afternoon thunderstorm. It lingers now and obscures his features, but I don't need to see his face to recognize him. My brain has memorized the way Seth moves, the same way it has memorized every other detail about him.

He left sometime in the night, before I had a chance to talk to him about everything I discussed with Angie, and he told nobody where he was going—so I have been waiting all day for him to come back, mind racing, body teeming with anxious energy.

Twenty minutes after he disappears into the house, it's started to drizzle. My eyes are closed—helping me focus more completely on the calming sensation of the fine mist stinging my skin—so I hear Seth before I see him, in slow footsteps sucking in and out of the mud until they finally come to a stop a few feet away from me.

“Leah said you were waiting to talk to me?” He sounds more tired than I expected. For a moment I consider waiting until later to attempt to test my blackouts, and letting him be for now. But then I look up. I see him staring down at me through eyes wide awake, and wearing his usual half grin. “Also, I don't know if you noticed,” he says, “but it's raining. You probably could have waited inside.”

I stand and stretch. “Not enough room inside.”

His head tilts sideways, questioning.

I answer by launching myself at him, my fist drawing back and punching. He catches it just centimeters from his face, but the force of it is still strong enough to send him sliding and stumbling backward in the mud.

“What in the actual hell do you think you're doing?” he demands, shoving my fist from his face and then twisting just in time to avoid my follow-up swing.

“I want to test something.”

“Are you testing to see if you're insane? Because if so, congratulations”—he grabs both my arms, clenches them in a bracing, stopping grip—“you are. You pass with flying colors.”

I jerk out of his grip with some difficulty, back off, and narrow my eyes at him. It looks as if this might be harder than I thought. He glances toward the house. I step around him and block his line of sight to it. And then, because I know he's no better at turning down a challenge than I am, I say, “Afraid to fight me, Seth?”

His smile is as relaxed as ever, but the muscles in his arms and chest—more visible thanks to the rain soaking
his shirt against them—tense, just slightly. “I don't hit girls,” he says.

“I suppose I'll just have to kill you, then.”

“Are you flirting with me?” He cocks an eyebrow. “Casual death threats . . . it's a bold strategy, but I think I like it.”

My fist connects this time. It just grazes his jaw as he attempts to roll out of my path, not a hard hit, but he's still holding the side of his face when I dive after him again, and maybe he's still stunned, too, because this hit also lands: a solid punch straight into his stomach.

His smile looks a lot more strained all of a sudden, and a dark, dangerous irritation flashes in his eyes.

Perfect.

Because if this is going to work, I need to convince my mind that he poses some sort of threat.

When I dive at him this time, he's more prepared. He catches me by the arms as before, only this time, he holds tighter when I try to break free. We push against each other, a deadlocked struggle of inhuman strength, feet scrambling for traction and kicking up flecks of mud.

We're evenly matched enough that this pushing could go on indefinitely.

It doesn't, though.

Because he flinches.

Just a split second—but it's long enough.

I throw him off, hurling him toward a nearby boulder. He hits it and bounces back, quick and smooth, as though the stone were made of rubber. Too quick. I can't dodge, and next thing I know, he's hit me hard enough that I
can't keep my footing in the slick soil. I land on my back. I taste blood on my lips, feel it warming a path down my chin. The ground I sink into is cold, and I expect burning in my mind—that searing, deadening buzz of noise—to counter it. But it doesn't come. Not yet.

Seth looms over me a moment later, looking entirely too much like he thinks he's won.

I hook a foot around his ankle, and jerk. He drops like a cat landing on its feet, his hands catching him lightly against the ground. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

He springs up and back in the same instant I spring forward. He's fast enough to deflect my next attack, but I'm the one with the momentum now, and so he doesn't manage more than deflecting; over and over again my fists meet his hands as they catch my strikes just in time to spare his face. I don't let up. I keep him moving backward, and the two of us are a violently graceful blur as we press deeper into the woods, navigating through trees and over roots without missing a step.

A crash of thunder distracts me for a moment, and he finally manages to escape my driving attack. He ducks, and then lunges behind me, and by the time I spin around, he's somehow already disappeared into the fog.

The rain is pounding down now. Even under the canopy of trees, enough of it pours into my face to near blind me. I start to reach up to block it, but decide I'd rather keep both my hands free, and so I close my eyes and focus my other senses instead.

And I can focus them, I realize in an exhilarating rush. Even with the taste of blood on my lips, and with the fog pressing in and making me feel trapped, vulnerable, as anxious as if that gray and rolling mist were a solid wall. Even as my muscles throb, and violent twitches clench and unclench my fists, anticipating. Ready for a fight, as they always are.

But it's different this time.

This time, I am not afraid of myself, or of what I might accidentally do if my mind were to slip into that black and empty place.

Because my mind isn't slipping, no matter how hard I try to push it.

And the feeling that I am completely in control for once causes a surge of something incredible; some beautiful combination of relief and happiness and . . . power. And it makes me even more sure of the plans I discussed with Angie, just as I hoped it would.

I focus my senses even closer, just because I can. Just because there is nothing in my way now. Soon I hear quiet breathing. A too-fast heartbeat, a foot lifting quietly, cautiously from the mud.

There.

To my left.

I turn just as Seth explodes through the fog.

I don't bother to evade this time; I just let him hit and push me against the trunk of the nearest tree. He's drawn a tranquilizer gun from somewhere, and he presses the tip of it against the hollow of my throat, while his free hand
braces against the trunk and he leans in closer. The added threat of the gun doesn't trigger even the slightest tingling in my brain, and even his closeness doesn't seem to be bothering me as much as it normally does. “Enough,” he says. “I don't know what sort of frustrations you're trying to work out here, but we both know how violent confrontations tend to end for you, and I don't particularly want any part of my body broken today.”

But he's so perfectly wrong this time that I can't help but laugh.

A genuine laugh too—one that, for once, isn't laced with contempt, which makes it feel foreign and strange in my throat. Seth must find it equally strange, because the pressure of his gun slips a little. “Oh my god,” he says.

“What?”

“I was kidding before, but it's true, isn't it? You really have gone insane. Completely out of your mind.”

My smile turns to a scowl as I grab his wrist and twist the gun away from my neck.

“That's better,” he says, wincing a bit as he tries to pull his wrist free. “That kid-in-a-candy-store grin you had going on was really freaking me out.”

“Don't you understand?” I say, exasperated. I slide out from beneath him and step away, pacing several feet before turning to see him still giving me a confused look.

“Clearly I do not.”

“It wasn't going to end the way it normally does.” I rush back, grab his gun too quickly for him to protest, and press it against my throat again.

“Insane,” he repeats.

“This? This didn't even faze me. And it could have been something much more deadly than a tranquilizer, and I don't think I would have lost control over it, either.” He's still just staring at me, so I spell it out as clearly as possible: “Leah fixed whatever was causing those blackouts. So if I break any part of you now, it's because I want to.”

“. . . But you don't want to, right?”

“Not at the moment. Though it could change.”

“Right. So, maybe give me my gun back? Just in case.” I roll my eyes but throw the gun at him—hard enough that he has to draw back to catch it. He holsters it at his hip and pulls his shirt back down over it. “There was probably an easier way to test this, you know. A more normal way.”

“Well,” I say, smirking, “so much of my life is already easy and normal, I thought I needed a change.”

My sarcasm brings his easy smile partway back. “Understandable,” he says, tilting his face back and letting the rain wash over it. He sweeps away a streak of mud across his cheek, revealing a dark purple bruise underneath. I cringe a little at the sight of my handiwork, even knowing that he likely barely feels it and that it will be healed within hours.

“That looks terrible,” I say.

“My face never looks terrible,” he replies, and then turns and starts back toward the house.

I follow without really thinking about it, in a silence that feels simple, more comfortable than anything I'm used to with him. It's so strange that I almost have to
stop, to try to process and understand it. The second I slow down, though, he glances back and says, “Angie said the two of you had an interesting conversation last night. Told me I should ask you for the details. Is this what it was about?”

“It's related.”

“Well?” He glances over at me. “The suspense is killing me.”

I feel suddenly . . . hesitant. Nervous? Something about the way he is watching me makes me worry that I haven't thought this plan through enough, that I won't be able to convince him. And as much as I hate to admit it, I don't want to do this without him.

So I have to try.

“You said we were the same last night,” I tell him, “and we aren't completely, maybe, but there is something that sets us apart from Huxley's clones, isn't there? You managed to spend the past twelve years at the CCA because Angie had disabled the mind-control program in your brain, and so you could control your actions, make yourself human enough to fit in. And that's the difference.”

“The difference?”

“Between humans and monsters. It all comes down to control. Free will.”

Everyone has monstrous thoughts, but it's what you act on that makes the difference.

“Have you been reading Angie's philosophy books or something?”

“That's what makes Huxley's clones so terrifying,”
I say, ignoring his attempt to turn this into yet another joke. “They aren't choosing their actions for themselves. Some of them fight the mind control, but most can't break it at all, and so their constant existence is just like me in one of those blind rages.”

Seth gives me another sidelong look, but doesn't seem to think I've said anything particularly revolutionary. My mind is racing again, though, all the parts of my ideas and plans popping up almost faster than I can compute them. It's a long, confusing moment before I manage to slow my brain enough to continue our conversation.

“But what if that wasn't the case?” I ask.

He stops walking then, his interest looking a little more piqued—though still tentative.

“Imagine if they were completely in control,” I say. “Like you. Like . . . like me now.” The end of my sentence trails off, my voice turning almost anxious in a way that makes it sound like it isn't my own; I think I've somehow managed to frighten even myself with this ambition I am feeling, with the thought that maybe this is who this Violet Benson is supposed to be.

Because I am already picturing it now: a world where people actually can't tell the difference between someone like me and the other, normal members of that family I was supposed to help put back together. I could exist in that world. Freely. Unafraid. And without violent clones urging it on, maybe the fighting between the CCA and Huxley could stop—at least enough that I could avoid getting caught up in it.

“I can imagine it, I guess,” Seth says slowly, “but what are the chances of that ever actually happening?”

I cut in front of him and force him to stop. “This is what I talked to Angie about. She can do this—write some sort of program that could disable the mind control in the clones, same as she did you all those years ago, minus the memory wipe.” The look he gives me is wary, uneasy. But I'm used to making people uneasy, so I don't back down. “So those clones will be what Huxley actually promised their families: stronger, healthier humans. Not remotely controlled machines.”

We reach the edge of the yard in silence, and then the porch in silence, and then the front door still in silence, before I finally lose my patience. I grab the sleeve of his shirt and pull him around to face me. I expect him to fight, but he doesn't. He just looks at me.

The porch creaks. Through the old wood planks with their barely intact joists, I can feel his weight shifting from foot to foot.

“There are a lot of ways it could go really badly,” he finally says. “You realize that, right?”