Shadowlark (21 page)

Because the truth was that I liked Olivia. No matter how much I wished I could hate her for how close she’d grown to Oren, she hadn’t done anything wrong. She was helping him, giving him training—and friendship—he desperately needed.

I found myself saying, “Tell me about your brother.”

Her head snapped up, and I hurried to add, “I’m sorry— you don’t have to answer. Oren mentioned him, and I thought—it’s fine.”

“No,” she said slowly. “No, I don’t mind. You’ve lost a brother too. Maybe talking about it would help.”

She sucked in a long breath through her nose, letting it out in an audible sigh. “We were . . . close. That seems like such an inadequate way to say it. We were twins. Two halves of a whole. From childhood we were like opposites—he had black hair, I had blonde. He was quiet and thoughtful and I was anything but. He was born a Renewable, and I definitely wasn’t. But we worked that way.

“Things weren’t great for Renewables even before Prometheus. People fear them, hate them, because of what they did all those years ago, causing the cataclysm. Causing all of this. Bran—that was his name, Bran—he’d get teased a lot, bullied by the other kids. I’d beg him to use his magic on them, but he always refused, said it’d just prove them right. That’s when I started to learn to fight. If he wouldn’t defend himself, then I would.”

The thought of Olivia as a child beating up the other kids made me smile. She already looked angelic, sweet, incapable of violence—she must’ve been an even more improbable warrior as a cherubic little girl.

“Once Prometheus took over, things got worse. Bran moved into the walls early on, while I stayed on the outside as long as I could. I’d do odd jobs for Parker and Wesley, the occasional jaunt inside CeePo. Until one day I was caught. And my brother, my stupid, stupid brother, came to rescue me. I made it out. He didn’t.”

I waited, but she didn’t speak again, her jaw tight as she looked down at the city below us, her eyes resting on the shadowy, semicircular building that housed Prometheus and his government.

“What does Prometheus do to Renewables when he catches them?” I asked softly. It clearly still hurt Olivia to talk about her brother, but whatever happened to Bran might’ve also happened to Basil.

“They die,” she said shortly. But then, before I could absorb it, she added, “Eventually.”

Unbidden, the image of the Institute’s Machine rose in my mind. I hadn’t thought of it in what felt like forever, but as soon as I saw the low, squat chair, I could almost feel the glass shards slicing into my skin and draining away my magic.

Olivia saw the horror on my face. “This is why we fight him, Lark,” she said in a low voice. “He’s done amazing things for this city, but it all comes at a price we’re not willing to pay anymore. Just remember this is why we’re doing it. This is why they’re carrying out your plan, even though—” She paused. “Even though everything.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

“Usually, the Renewables he does this to die not long after. Bran was in the middle—he lasted a few months before he finally gave up.” Olivia was dry-eyed, but the sadness in her voice was overwhelming.

“Olivia,” I said, my voice sounding strange, “what’s the longest any of Prometheus’s Renewables have survived being repeatedly harvested?”

Olivia tilted her head to the side. “I don’t know for sure, but I’ve heard that there are a few that predate Wesley. And he’s been there for two years now.”

Years. There were Renewables who’d been down there for
years.
And it’d only been four years since the resistance fighters moved in and found my brother’s journal. There was a chance, however slim, that if Basil was like me, he could’ve leeched power from the other captives and survived Prometheus’s harvest each time.

I’d assumed Basil was dead. But maybe I was wrong.

We sat in silence for a time, each lost in our own separate thoughts. I could feel Olivia’s tension—her easy manner was gone, despite her willingness to talk to me. She had a part to play in tomorrow’s mission, too, just as important as mine. She was going to be the distraction, drawing away Prometheus’s Eagles to give Oren and me a chance to get close to him. Though she was usually so open, it was impossible to read Olivia now. There was still grief and anger there, and part of me wondered, if Oren weren’t going to be there, if she’d let me run in blind, without the distraction, and get caught.

“Make sure you have no regrets,” she murmured, interrupting my increasingly dark thoughts.

“What?”

Her feet had stopped swinging, and she sat motionless, gazing into the middle distance ahead of her. “That’s how you go on these missions time after time. You make sure you have no regrets. Just in case.”

Something in her voice chilled my heart, and I shivered.

She went on. “You talk to the people you care about, and you make sure there’s nothing you wished you’d said.”

For a moment, I thought she was talking about me, about the ruins of our seedling friendship. Then I recognized the quiet desperation in her voice, and I realized.

“Have you spoken to Oren yet?” I whispered.

Olivia hesitated, but then I saw her nod out of the corner of my eye. “We spoke a little after we finished training this afternoon. I told him what I’m telling you now.”

No regrets. I couldn’t argue with Olivia on it, because it made sense. Make sure that you leave things as well as you can, so that you can face what’s coming with a clear head.

“I’m glad he found you,” I said quietly, quickly, as though my mind might interfere and stop me once it realized what I was saying. “He’s had a very lonely life. A terrible one, sometimes. But here, with you—he seems happy. I think my one regret would be leaving him alone, but he won’t be alone. And that’s a good thing.”

Olivia didn’t answer, and when I turned to look at her, she was staring at me, her face unreadable. “You think I love him, don’t you?”

My heart seized for half a beat, and I fought to catch my breath. “No—I mean, maybe. I know he cares for you. You spend so much time together.”

She laughed, but it wasn’t a comforting sound. “I promise you, Lark, I don’t have the slightest interest in Oren. Not the way you’re imagining.”

“But—”

“I have somebody,” she said simply, dropping her chin onto her knees. “And I haven’t given up on her yet.”

My thoughts ground to a halt.
Her?

Then it all clicked.
She and Nina are close,
Oren had told me. Nina took care of her when she lost her brother. Suddenly my heart froze altogether. I’d nearly killed the woman she loved. I might well have killed her yet, if she never woke up.

And this was the woman we were trusting to keep the Eagles off our backs—where one wrong move on her part would leave us with Prometheus’s entire army closing in around us.

“What I regret,” she went on, softly, “was not getting to see her before the mission. She’s undercover most of the time, and comes through so rarely. I wish I’d been able to speak to her one more time.”

I looked down to see Olivia gripping the edge of the roof, white-knuckled and tense. I could feel the fury and helplessness in her as if it were magic, visible to my other senses. She didn’t look at me, all the intensity of her gaze dissipating into the mist-filled air over the city.

I began to retreat, knowing there was nothing I could say. But as I got to my feet she spoke again, her voice emerging in a mumble.

“Oren told me once that he hurt you.”

I swallowed, thinking of my torn earlobe, and of Oren’s refusal to believe that he hadn’t done it in his shadow state. “No,” I said. “No, he never has.”

“Then he’s certainly afraid he might. That’s why I’ve been trying to help him. There’s a darkness in him that I don’t understand, but he’s terrified of it. He’s afraid it’ll make him hurt you, the way you hurt Nina.”

Sick with regret, I wished I could reach out to Olivia—but my touch was the last thing she’d want. I had no idea Oren was so afraid of the shadow inside himself down here, when there was more than enough magic to keep him human. But then, wasn’t I terrified of the darkness in me?

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“I was never doing it for you,” Olivia said, her voice as dry as ice. “But he is.”

“What?”

“That’s why he works so hard. So he won’t hurt you.”

• • •

I walked back to my room with my thoughts buzzing. About Olivia and her unreadable face. About Nina, the girl she loved, out of touch and in such danger for so long. About Wesley, and how readily he’d agreed to our plan despite the huge personal danger to himself. About Basil, and the tiniest possibility that he could be alive somewhere in Prometheus’s cells, suffering the way I had in the Institute. My thoughts circled around and around, meshing together like delicate, intricate cogs in a machine, always spinning back to one thing.

I told him what I told you,
Olivia had said, as we parted.
That he should talk to the people he cares about before tomorrow.

I was so lost in my head that I forgot to check for the guard in the hallway and put up an illusion to let myself back in. It was dark, but not so dark that I couldn’t see the figure leaning against the wall opposite my door. I skidded to a halt, heart pounding.

It was as if I’d summoned him with my thoughts, as though reality had somehow replaced my guard with the one person I actually wanted to see. Oren lifted his head, raising an eyebrow at me. “So much for not wandering around by yourself like I told you.”

“I don’t take orders so well anymore.” I pressed a hand to my ribcage, where it felt like my lungs were seizing with the sudden jolt of adrenaline. “What’re you doing out here?”

“You weren’t very good at taking orders to begin with,” he pointed out. “I told the guard I’d take over for him for a while. You think I can’t sense you in there? And more importantly, when you’re not in there?”

I gaped at him. I knew I could feel him with my magic, could sense the dark pit of the shadow inside him. But I had no idea that the connection went both ways.

“Did you find whatever you were looking for?” he asked, straightening.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe. I have no idea.”

He didn’t ask what I meant, and I didn’t offer an explanation. After a long pause, he broke the silence. “It’s a good plan.” He was repeating himself, his voice low to avoid echoing down the long corridor. “Despite everything that’s happened, they believe in you.”

I took a breath, a knot of tension uncoiling under the pressure and making me blurt, “That’s what scares me.”

He shifted, straightening and stepping away from the wall half a pace. “What do you mean?”

My eyes met his, and then it was like the rift between us had never been there. I could almost imagine us back in the forest together, under the stars, where my biggest fear was the vastness of the sky.

“Making these decisions for people,” I whispered. “Asking them to give their lives. I’m not supposed to be this person— I was never supposed to be this person. I barely ever made decisions for
myself
.” I could feel the fear and doubt rising up, prickling behind my eyes, choking my voice. “The first real decision I ever made was to run away.”

I half-expected Oren to reach for me and attempt to comfort me in some way, but he stayed where he was, listening, watching me through the gloom.

“Nina almost died because of me.” I wrapped my own arms around myself, a barrier between me and the world. “Tomorrow more people might die, because of
me.
”

“Yes.” The word was quiet, calm. It brought me up short, made my gaze swing back to Oren’s. I could see his pale blue eyes in the dark, startling, fixed on mine. “But they’ve chosen it, this fight. You haven’t forced them to do anything. If we die tomorrow, we die having chosen for ourselves.”

We stood on opposite sides of the corridor, staring at each other across the empty space between us. There was so much I wished I could say—that I was glad he’d chosen what he did, that I was glad he was fighting for me, that if we survived tomorrow I wanted us to stay, or to go, or to do anything, as long as it was both of us together.

But the words stuck in my throat. All I could think of was what Olivia had said to me, her words buzzing in my thoughts.
No regrets.

“Oren, I wanted to tell you—”

“I should get back to bed.” Oren spoke almost at the same time I did, drowning out my words. He stopped, blinking. “What?”

My throat felt scratchy, dry as chalk. “Nothing. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Oren took a few steps back, so that when I reached my door there was still more space between us than either of us could reach across. He stopped then to nod at me, the pale eyes serious. “In the morning,” he echoed. And then he was gone.

A hand shook me awake, scattering my incoherent dreams. I didn’t remember falling asleep, but as my eyes focused sluggishly on Marco’s face, I knew I must have done so at some point.

“Time to get ready,” he said, his voice flat. There was no sign of the emotion I’d glimpsed in him the night before. Now he was all hard angles, giving me nothing. “Get to the War Room when you’re done here.”

He left me to get dressed. There was no silent gift of new clothes this time, no thoughtful touches. So I pulled on the same clothes I’d worn during the mission with Nina, ignoring the smell of sweat and battle that still clung to them. The hole in the shoulder of the jacket lined up perfectly with the bandage over my healing wound. The rest of it was littered with scratches that hadn’t made it through the thick leather, and I realized how close I’d come many times over to being torn to ribbons.

I slid both paper birds into my pocket next to the blackout device, then slipped Oren’s knife into a sheath secured to the inside of my boot. The boots were slightly too large for me, but they were better than the ratty shoes that had brought me here from the Institute. I laced them up and headed out.

The others were waiting in the War Room when I got there, with bowls of porridge for breakfast. Parker, Marco, Wesley, Olivia, Dorian and a couple of Iron Wood Renewables were scattered around the table, and all looked up when I walked in. Oren was seated at the far end of the table and glanced at me before looking back down at his bowl as if surprised to find it there.

“Our leading lady arrives,” said Wesley, folding his arms across his peacock-feather coat.

I shifted my weight uncomfortably. “Oren’s the one they want,” I reminded them. “They don’t know about me.”

“Of course.” He gave me a faint smile, the only hint of warmth in the room for me.

I found a seat in front of an untouched bowl, and the others started running through the plan one last time.

Wesley, undercover, would bring Oren and me to Central Processing, claiming to have caught the fugitive—Oren—and his companion. We’d undergo the questioning and screening processes while Wesley met with Prometheus to tell him we were captured and ensure that he asked to see us personally. Meanwhile Olivia would lead the rest of the rebels, Renewable and non-Renewable alike, to cause a commotion in the courtyard and draw as many of Prometheus’s Eagles out of CeePo as they could.

Originally, before Nina, only Wesley had known that I was the one who’d be attacking once we got to Prometheus. The others all thought that Oren, the fighter, was their best bet, and I was just backup. Now everyone fell silent, their eyes shifting toward my end of the table. I picked at my breakfast, feeling their gazes like heavy iron bars.

I glanced at Oren, who would be walking straight into the enemy forces with me. He looked up from his breakfast long enough to meet my gaze, his ice-blue eyes grave. He seemed calm, almost serene, whereas I felt like my stomach was trying to leap out of my throat. Most of my breakfast went untouched.

In terms of supplies, we took very little. We couldn’t very well go armed to the teeth when we were supposed to be captured prisoners. Oren had brought no weapons at all, and I had only the knife he’d given me in the Iron Wood, concealed inside my boot. There was also the blackout device that the others all carried as insurance against me—and none of them knew I had one too. It was still only theoretical, anyway, that it even worked. They wouldn’t have been able to test it here without risking all their machinery. And me, their best weapon.

“How long until we go?” My voice cut through the chatter. I sounded strained, impatient, and I forced myself to take a breath.

Wesley unfolded his arms and straightened. “If you’re ready? We can go right now.”

• • •

Every eye in the square was on us as Wesley marched us toward CeePo. We’d taken a long, roundabout route to another point in the city, far from the secret door into the walls we’d entered that first day. Wesley held one of Oren’s arms roughly, jangling the chains around his wrists now and then. I was chained as well, but allowed to walk freely. After all, Oren was the murderer.

We’d toyed with the idea of making the chains out of some metal other than iron, but we couldn’t get the weight right. “It has to be absolutely real,” Wesley had said as he locked the manacles around our wrists. “Otherwise they’ll figure out the instant I bring you in that something’s not right, and we’ll never get to Prometheus.”

And so my senses were muffled, the iron chafing at my wrists, a constant reminder of how powerless I was right then. For a brief, wild moment I wondered if all of this was so they could get rid of me—turn me over to Prometheus, remove the threat once and for all. I glanced at Wesley, seeking some kind of reassurance, but all I could see was his profile, stern and cold.

The faces of the crowd blurred as Wesley hauled us by. I tried to look out for the woman who’d turned us in that first day, but I couldn’t even remember completely what she looked like, much less focus enough to pick her out of the throng. Now and then we’d pass an Eagle, visible despite the crowd with their grey-and-fire uniforms, but they didn’t stop us. Wesley was in his plain clothes— though plain was a stretch, considering the expense of the peacock feathers—but it was clear they recognized him without any difficulty.

The crowd fell back when we reached the steps of Central Processing, leaving us out of earshot for a few precious seconds.

“If you want to change your mind,” Wesley whispered, not looking at Oren and me as we climbed the steps, “this is your last chance.”

I took a deep breath. They weren’t betraying me. This was real. I glanced at Oren, who looked back and shook his head. “No,” I said. “We’re ready.”

We were met at the doors by a pair of officials recognizable in any city as bureaucratic lackeys. One reeled back when Wesley announced he’d found Sampson’s killer—with a jolt, I realized that it was the first time I’d even heard the name of the man I’d killed. Of course, Wesley jerked Oren forward then and not me. Oren snarled, playing the part of the dangerous, vicious savage beautifully.

Watching his face as he glared at Wesley, I wasn’t entirely sure he was playing a part at all.

“And the girl?” one of the officials asked.

Wesley shrugged. “She was with him when I found him. She’s probably guilty of something, if only by association.”

The officials chuckled and waved us on through, saying something about prisoner processing. Wesley had explained that all prisoners go through a questioning process. I shuddered to think what they might do to Oren if they guessed he wasn’t being entirely truthful, but Wesley assured me they’d stick to the protocol laid out for them by Prometheus. Oren just had to stick to his story.

Prisoner processing was two floors down, below the “ground” level of the city. Wesley himself didn’t know how far the tunnels and caverns of Central Processing stretched below Lethe. Prometheus kept his lackeys separate, allowing certain jobs access to particular parts of the complex and not others, so that no one person knew the entire layout of the place.

The iron on my wrists was weighing heavily on me, making my head spin and my eyes blur. We traveled corridor after corridor, the faces of the people working in CeePo blurring as we passed. There was an elevator much like the one Oren and I rode when we first arrived at the city, although it moved much more smoothly and efficiently. I was determined to make a mental map, keep track of all the twists and turns so that I could find my way out again when it came time. I forced myself to focus despite my blurring vision.

And then, abruptly, we stopped.

I blinked, looking up from my study of the corridor floor to find a tall, slim man standing in front of us. Wesley was staring at him blankly, but I could see his cheek twitching. He knew this man, and running into him wasn’t part of the plan.

“On Prometheus’s orders,” the slim man said. His voice was soft, resonant, trained as if he were a singer. Not a hair was out of place, his charcoal-and-ember suit fitted perfectly across his chest. “The prisoners are to come with me.”

“What do you mean, on his orders?” Wesley was saying, bristling. This man held some kind of authority—he outranked Wesley in Prometheus’s organization. I held my breath.

“New evidence has come to light in the case of Sampson’s death,” said the slim man.

“New evidence?” Wesley scoffed. “Please. The man was beaten to death in front of an entire courtyard full of witnesses. Trust me, I was there. This is the boy.”

The slim man smiled a little. “We know, Commander. That has not escaped our notice.”

Wesley’s hand tightened around the chain holding Oren. The links clicked together like bones, muffled by the flesh of his palm. “This is my arrest. I will see him to prisoner processing myself.”

“Be our guest, Commander.” The slim man was still smiling, a calm, cool smile. It wasn’t a pleasant expression, but I felt certain it wasn’t meant to be. “Our interests aren’t with him anyway.”

Wesley twitched, but managed not to glance at me. A little snaking spark of ice began threading its way down my spine. “What’re you talking about?”

“Examination of the body revealed that Sampson did not, in fact, die of the wounds sustained to his face and torso. Therefore it was not this boy who killed him.”

“Then who did?”

I held my breath.

Wesley’s grip on the chain was white-knuckled. He didn’t have to look at me to pass along the message that everything was going wrong, that our carefully laid plan had fallen apart only minutes past the door.

“We’re not certain. But as there were only a few people within range of Sampson during the attack, we have only a few suspects. You will report to prisoner processing along with the boy you have in your custody.”

Wesley didn’t answer, standing stock still in the middle of the corridor, face draining of color.

“And as for our other suspect,” said the slim man, turning a few degrees to his right until he faced me, “I will be taking her with me.”

That unfroze Wesley, who stammered, “I arrested her— she’s still my capture, I still want to be the one to—”

The slim man lifted a hand, cutting Wesley off with one gesture. “You have your orders. Carry them out.”

Oren met my eyes, staring over his shoulder as Wesley slowly took him down the hallway away from us. I wanted to scream out for them, run after them, anything. This wasn’t how the plan was meant to go.

The slim man turned to me, hands folded politely behind his back. “And now, miss, if you will come with me?”

I swallowed, my throat dry as sand. “Who are you?”

“That doesn’t matter right now. If you please?” He held out a hand, gesturing down the corridor in the direction opposite the one Wesley and Oren had taken.

“I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me your name.” I knew I was stalling, and for what purpose? Wesley and Oren were gone. Even if I could overpower this man, there was no assurance I could find them and certainly no way to return to the plan. They didn’t know anything—they just knew it wasn’t Oren who killed the man. They didn’t know who I was. What I was. This could still work.

The man smiled, amusement written clearly on his features. He knew as well as I did that I was the one chained and not in a position to deliver ultimatums. Still, he indulged me. “Very well. I am Adjutant. If you like, you may think of me as Prometheus’s right hand.” He inclined his upper body very slightly in something like a bow.

My heartbeat roared in my ears.

“If that answers your question, miss,” said Adjutant, “then we shouldn’t keep the examination rooms waiting.”

My body went cold. The Institute in my city had held me for weeks, poking and prodding me, experimenting on me, strapping me to their harvest chair and noting the results. I would not go back to that again.

Never.

It was time. Reveal I was a Renewable—or something like it—and get taken wherever they keep the noncompliant Renewables. Wherever they might have my brother.

I pulled every last scrap of power I had. I didn’t have much—we’d agreed that stocking up with too much power would potentially attract attention from Renewables working with Prometheus. I’d stolen the power from a few unneeded machines, ignoring my inner shadow’s protests—machine magic was not as satisfying as live magic. But what I had taken was enough. I gathered it and narrowed it and lashed out with all my strength.

The iron manacles around my wrist vaporized into dust in an instant.

Thank you, Wesley, for your endless drills and training.

I leaped back from Adjutant, ready to strike out at him. Sensing nothing, neither darkness nor the light of the Renewable magic in him, I expected rage, surprise, even fear— because until me, no one could magic iron. Instead, all that marked his features was a mild curiosity. I paused, staring.

“How fascinating,” he murmured.

And then he drew a small machine out of his pocket, stretched out his hand and aimed it at me, and pulled the trigger.

Pain erupted through my entire body, and I hit the ground with a crash. My arms and legs stopped responding to my brain, every muscle cramping tighter and tighter. I felt as though fire consumed me from the inside out. My skin itched, my body burned—it was somehow familiar, though no less agonizing.

I had only a blurry vision of Adjutant standing over me, looking down, before I blacked out.