The Almost Girl – ebook edition (17 page)

“Are you sure? What about the big one? Did you get it?”

Shae’s eyes darken with frustration. “Just before you got here, it everted. I almost had it. One minute my blade was at its neck, and the next it was gone. It talked, too. About you.”

I stare at her sharply. “What did it say?”

“That you were a fugitive, that you would betray Caden, and me, that you weren’t to be trusted.” I keep my eyes fixed on hers, and her voice continues softly. “But I knew that already. Then it said that it was sorry… sorry that it hadn’t killed me when it had the chance.” She pauses, and I know what she’s going to say even before she finishes her story. “That’s what got me, the knowing in its voice, like it somehow
knew
me. I hesitated with the kill strike and then it was gone.”

“It’s father’s latest creation,” I say flatly. “
Thinking
Vectors, as if they aren’t terrible enough already. It’s some new prototype, one with its own memories. Did you hear its voice? It’s the same as his.” Softly to myself, I say, “A tribute to his vanity.” My eyes connect with Shae’s, and for a second, it’s like we’re trainees again, but the moment is gone in a breath, suffocated by everything since between us. “We need to get out of here.” I know that she isn’t going to tell me where Caden is, but I can track him easily enough on my own once we get outside. “Which way is out?”

Shae nods back in the direction from where I’d come. “That way. Look, Riv, I’m sorry… for back there.”

I don’t look at her, and instead pocket the dead Vector’s special terrain glasses, which are way more advanced than the night-vision ones I have. “Forget it. You did what you had to. I would have done the same. Or probably worse.” I shrug. It’s no secret between us what I am or what I’m capable of. “You’re OK to walk at least until we get outside?”

Shae nods and falls into step with me. “It doesn’t mean I’m not sorry. I just can’t let anything happen to him.”

“Well, you did a good job of that, didn’t you?” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I regret them. She did the only thing she could have, short of killing Caden herself. “I just mean he has no training and he’s on his own.”

“He has training,” Shae says softly. “Haven’t you seen him fence?”

“No.” I’d missed his meet the one time I’d promised to go, helping to save Charisma from those predators. “Why?”

“I taught him. All the techniques I know. It’s why he’s so good; he’s ranked number one in the state.” Before Shae defected, she’d been a master swordswoman. Though her personal preference was the crossbow, she’d been chosen to instruct others, myself included, in the intricacies of sword martial arts. She’d been the best of the best, until she’d trained me.

“What did you fight against? Dummies filled with straw?” I snicker.

“He fought me. He’s good, Riv.”

“Good enough to fight a Vector?” I shoot back.

“Good enough to fight you.” I remain silent, feeling the threat still thick in the air. I pick up the pace a bit, knowing that it won’t be easy for Shae, but she doesn’t complain, despite her slightly labored breathing. We’ve both been trained to withstand near-fatal injuries, and I don’t feel any sympathy despite her being my sister. She’d simply refuse any offer of my help, anyway. “The Vector also said there’s a bounty on your head. They want you alive.”

“I know.
He
wants me back.”

“Why?” Shae asks.

I shrug. “To punish me, I suppose. I did torch their biggest genetic research lab before I left.”

“You didn’t!” I can hear the smile in Shae’s voice, and I stifle the brief whisper of pride that flutters inside of me.

“That was years ago,” I say flatly. “Who knows what he’s planning now?”

We make our way out of the underground after a few more miles, and we end up in a deserted warehouse on the far outskirts of a neighboring town. I pull a couple bales of hay over the trapdoor that we just exited. It won’t stop anything from getting out, but we’ll at least have some notice if the hay starts moving.

Shae fumbles in her pack and jams one of my injectors into her leg before collapsing to the ground and closing her eyes. Two in the space of a few hours is not exactly what they’re designed for, but I can see that our pace has cost her. Despite my reticence, I move to her side. I owe her my life, not that I would ever tell her that. She doesn’t protest when I unbuckle her vest, only to see a gaping hole on her left side with singed, blackened edges. A shard of something shiny glimmers on the inside of the wound.

“Part of the electro-rod,” she rasps, wincing as my fingers gently touch the sides of it.

“Why didn’t you say something before?” I grit out. My voice is angry, but it’s directed at myself, not her. I can’t think about how painful it would have been, and I feel even guiltier for not checking in the tunnel or at least offering some help.

“No time before. Just need to… get it out now.”

I nod and spray my hands with an alcohol solution from my med-kit. I can only imagine what had happened before I got there, when I’d first heard her scream. The Vectors are known for operating their electro-rods in open wounds. Even on the stun setting, the agony is brutal, like a laser on skinless tissue. It’s one of their well-used torture techniques. The Vector must have wedged it so hard into her that the silver tip of it had shattered.

My body cringes with a phantom pain that isn’t mine. The agony would have been excruciating. I shiver and assess the damage carefully. The good thing is that the electric shock somewhat cauterized the gash, which means that at least Shae won’t bleed to death. Waiting for the adrenaline from the injector to kick in, as gently as I can, I pull out the sliver of silver and check carefully for any other stray pieces. By the time I’m certain there aren’t any left, I’ve removed twelve shards.

I glance at Shae. Her eyes are closed and her breathing is shallow but even. I use the rest of my father’s numbing repair liquid to patch up the gaping wound, deftly taping a square of thick padded gauze from the med-kit over it. Tearing a strip from around the base of my shirt, I wrap the material as tightly as I can around her waist. I’m not entirely sure that the liquid and the bandage will do the trick, but it’s all I can do.

“Thank you,” Shae whispers, staring at me as I buckle her vest closed. “Why are you even helping me? You should just leave me. You want me dead, remember?”

“I don’t want you dead,” I say dully. Despite my anger at what she’s done, I don’t want her to be hurt at my hands. She is my sister, after all. Me wanting to kill her and someone else doing it are two totally different things. “Shae, I don’t want you dead,” I repeat firmly, as if to convince her and myself at the same time, and slide down the wall to sit by her side. “Look, I can’t promise you anything, but trust me, I don’t want to hurt Caden. The Vectors do – they want to kill him. For all I know, Cale could already be dead and Caden is going to be the last hope in his line. Either way, I need him. We need him. Don’t you get it?”

“He’s a person, too. He’s real. Surely you can see that?” she says, countering my question with one of her own, and for a second, I’m afraid to answer. Because the truth is, for some reason when I think about him, my chest tightens in jerky response. And I know that Caden isn’t just a target anymore. I don’t answer Shae, but she sees the reaction in my eyes. “I see you do,” she says softly.

“What I feel doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does,” she pauses, her voice quiet. “Because it means I can trust you with him. And trust that you’ll do the right thing. I thought I saw it before, but you were so cold, I just didn’t know. You’ve always been so good at keeping your feelings hidden. But now, I see it. You do care about him. Don’t you, Riv?”

I hate the way her words are making my feelings about Caden even more real than they already are. And I’m not ready to deal with them yet. I’m not ready to open myself up to anyone, especially not Shae. I don’t look at her.

“They’re not going to stop until he’s dead,” I say softly. “Until we’re all dead or taken.”

“He’s back at Horrow,” Shae says after a while. She digs into her pack and takes out the circular case of stabilization pills. She pops a couple into her mouth. “That’s where he went.”

“Horrow?” I reply, ignoring the stab of immediate worry that twists through me at the sight of her taking more pills on top of the injector. The meds can turn toxic in the body with overuse. She must be more desperate than I thought, to risk dying. “But that’s the first place they’ll look.”

Shae shakes her head and smiles. “That’s the beauty of it. They won’t. Vectors don’t understand high school, or the concept of school in this world, because their programmers don’t understand it.”

“What?” I say, confused.

“The idea of high school for kids this age doesn’t exist in Neospes. It’s a foreign concept to us. So, unless the Vectors were ordered specifically to look there, they won’t. Make sense?”

“Not really,” I say. “Won’t they still track him there?”

“Eventually, but we have a day or two at least. Caden won’t lead them directly back there.”

But the more I think about it, what she’s saying makes an uncanny sort of sense. The Vectors follow orders – they don’t have the intuitive sense to think for themselves. They
tracked
Shae back to their house. I think back to when I came here on my own years ago, and the concept of school was been so utterly alien to me that it’d been a huge adjustment to even try to pretend to be a high-school student. In fact, I still am not good at it, which is why more often than not I usually get the “most likely to be a sociopath” label.

“I don’t get it. Why do we even have to go back there? Caden should meet us. We should stick to the plan and get to the eversion point. That’s what we’re–”

Shae’s expression freezes the rest of my words on my lips. “That’s not an option anymore. I got a text before. It’s crawling with Vectors. The minute they knew where we were heading, they swarmed it. They’re waiting for us. It’s a trap, Riven.”

“So what are you saying? We can’t get out?”

“Not there, not anymore. We need to regroup and rethink.” I stare at her, my eyes narrowed. Her last betrayal is still an open wound, and despite her earlier words about trusting me, I can’t trust her for a second where Caden is concerned. “What do you mean, you got a text? From who?”

“A Guardian.” Shae doesn’t offer any more explanation other than those two words, but I continue to press. It’s not enough for me. I need to know what her plans are and who her friends are… and whether they, too, will toss me over to the Vectors the first chance they get. I have no doubt they would know exactly who I am. Plus, Guardians are solitary in nature and spread out in this world. More than one in any one area is an anomaly.

“
Another
Guardian? At Horrow?”

A glare in response to my doggedness. “Yes. Let’s go.”

Shae stands wearily. If she’s in pain, she certainly doesn’t show it, but I know that she’s operating on pure will right now. The stabilization pills on top of the injector would have helped slow her heartbeat and numb most of the pain. People always used to say I was the tough one, “the ice queen,” they’d called me. But Shae’s got a core of solid steel – she could probably outlast me ten times over on sheer will alone. Only, I remember now that Shae isn’t operating just on will; she’s got a body packed full of an explosive cocktail of meds.

“Shae, the pills–”

“I know what I’m doing,” she growls.

“Do you?” I say gently, and follow as she moves to the back of the warehouse to throw open a door to a small wooden shed that I had noticed upon my first look around. She pulls out a grungy half-rusted dirt bike and then another. Then she stops to look at me.

“I’m dying, Riven. My body is dying. I can feel it. It’s been through too much.” Her words are no surprise, but I’m shaken all the same. They echo in the sudden dead silence between us.

“We can go to a clinic, the one where June worked. They’ll help you.”

A strained laugh. “Are you kidding? And what will they do when they find strange fluids and medicine from the injector inside of me that don’t even exist here? That’s only going to draw more attention to us… to Caden. As far as I see, I’ve got about one more solid fight in me, and I’m not going to go down without it.” Her eyes meet mine. “Actually, I don’t intend to go down at all if I can help it, and if by some miracle, I make it back to Neospes, maybe… he… Father or someone else can help…”

Perhaps it’s the blunt admission that she’s dying, but I have no idea what comes over me as I grab Shae so tightly that we both almost fall over. She stinks of blood and gore and Vector fluid, but all I can smell is the scent of lilacs and sunshine and horse-riding leather – the scent of our childhood – and it’s nearly my undoing. Shoving her away roughly without daring to meet her eyes, I hoist myself onto one of the bikes and grunt over my shoulder, “You OK to ride?”

“Yes,” she says. I keep my eyes downcast. My thoughts are heavy and spinning. Wanting to kill an enemy, even if the enemy is my sister, is far different from knowing that I will lose her regardless… knowing that she’s going to die and there’s nothing I can do about it, even if I wanted to. Which I don’t.

A dull ache takes hold of my forehead and nose, and then my eyes are stinging with an unfamiliar soreness. I thought I had purged all emotion after the betrayal of my father, but the hot sadness snaking through my veins right now screams otherwise. I gun the engine, letting the roar of it dull my thoughts and the vibrations beneath me soothe my knife-edged anguish.

Emotion is weakness, my inner voice says. She’s just a person, nothing more.

She’s my sister
.

One who betrayed you.

I would have done the same
.

She’ll betray you again.