The Rift Uprising (27 page)

“I'm going to go,” Seelye says almost kindly, as if I've actually asked him to stay and he can't. What a dick. I don't bother to respond. I also realize that he hasn't agreed to my terms, so I just go to the door and open it.

“Good-bye, Ryn,” he says with fake sincerity. He zips up his jacket and walks outside. “Don't do anything crazy, now.”

“What?” I ask with a grimace.

“You know, because your parents are out of town and everything. Don't do anything stupid.”

I don't bother to answer him. I cross my arms and watch as he gets into a black SUV that's been waiting for him. I watch it drive off, wait fifteen seconds, and race up the stairs. When I turn the corner of the landing I see Ezra leaning against the wall.

“What was that?” he asks, his words a mix of fear and anger.

“Trouble.”

“What do you think he knows?” Ezra peels his head off the plaster of the wall to look at me head-on.

“I don't know. Nothing. Everything. I mean, obviously he's
zeroed in on me for some reason, but I have no idea. Applebaum is a prick, but I don't think he'd willingly offer up any information to Seelye about me, or you, unless he absolutely had to. As far as he's concerned, he's the colonel, the boss. He doesn't like answering to ARC and I think there's a part of him that doesn't think he should have to. I think he walks a very fine line, like we all do.”

Ezra tucks a piece of my hair behind my ears. “This is getting more dangerous by the minute. You know that, right?”

I take his hand and gently press my lips into his palm. “I know. And I also know that I have to get those things out of my friends' heads as soon as possible. After that, I'll just have to be insanely careful. There's nothing else we can do. Not yet, anyway.”

“You're right. But it's also okay to be super freaked out that your James Bond villain of a boss was here to ‘check up on you' or play King of the Douche Bags or whatever.” Ezra says, trying to make me laugh, which is not at all the same as making light of the situation. Because he's right: I am a touch unnerved by this unprecedented visit. But if Seelye is King of the Douche Bags (which, all in all, sounds about right), then I'm the Queen of Lies.

“I'm fine. You should go back upstairs just in case he shows up again. Also, I don't think you want to be around when I have to tell the team about Seelye's visit. It could get ugly,” I joke. Well, I'm only half joking really, but Ezra's had enough excitement for one day. I walk down the stairs and sit on the steps. I glare at the door.

Five minutes later the boys walk in. “Hi,” I say solemnly. I never thought, as their team leader, I'd be so happy they were running late.

“What is it?” Henry asks, dropping his knapsack right
down in the middle of the hallway. Jesus. Maybe I'm slipping. Maybe I'm not the liar I thought I was.
Or
maybe, probably, the encounter with the president of ARC has left me more rattled than I thought. I care about Ezra, but it's different with my team. The trauma we've gone through together has bonded us in a way that Ezra and I will never be able to. Which is for the best, really—I don't want him knowing all the gory details of everything I've beaten and killed . . . or when I've been beaten and nearly killed. Henry can read things in my body language and my face that I hope Ezra will never have to.

“Just come in. I'll explain everything once Violet gets here,” I tell him, because it's a laborious story and I don't want to have to do it twice. I make myself busy by prepping the dining room table. I lay out clean sheets and position rolled-up towels so the team can be on their stomachs with their necks straight. Boone and Henry eye my preparations warily.

A little while later, Violet rushes in. She has her backpack clutched to her chest and she begins talking the moment she closes the door. “Oh my God, that was terrible. I had to sneak into the surgery room while my dad was in the exam office just down the hall. I'm so glad he makes me help sometimes in the office or else I wouldn't have known what the hell to get, but then I started feeling guilty because I'm always so annoyed that he makes me go in there with all his lectures about responsibility, when I would just rather be dancing when I'm not on duty. But then, you know, I thought about it and I was like, ‘Why am I even thinking about dancing? I'm never going to be a dancer! I'm a crazy soldier with a weird bomb in my brain that could go off any second,' and of all the things I imagined I would be doing, having my best friend cut into my head was not one of them.” Vi is frantic, rambling as she unloads the supplies in her bag onto the kitchen counter.
Boone gets up and puts his arm around her. It's such a small thing, but it's also huge. For one thing, it means that Ezra and I aren't a fluke. For another, it means that we can finally have the chance to be platonically intimate with someone we're sexually attracted to.

“I know you're feeling guilty, Vi, and afraid,” I tell her as I begin to examine the supplies that she has brought. “All I can say is that I know I can do this and we don't have a choice. These things have to come out. If your dad knew all the facts, I'm positive he would understand.”

“Oh, please,” Violet says as she takes off her jacket, “let's not even go there. I hate the What Would Our Parents Do game. It sucks.”

“Great. Violet has arrived, with her
mouth,
that won't stop
moving.
Are you going to tell us all what's going on now?” Henry asks impatiently as Violet gives him the finger in the form of scratching her eyebrow. Part of me really liked it better when it was just Ezra and me worrying about this shit. It's hard to give people answers when you don't really have any. It's hard to watch the team become paranoid, and feel increasingly unsafe outside of The Rift. But I know, if we're going to make it out of this, we're going to have to do it together. As a team.

“What? Did my dad call?” Vi asks in a panic. There it is, paranoia. Check.

“No,” I assure her. “Okay. Well . . .” I hold my arms up and scrunch my shoulders, as if I'm about to tell them a funny story. We can't afford a total freak-out right now. “Christopher Seelye came over right before you guys got here.” The three of them look at me stonily. A silence that is beyond awkward ensues.

“Way to bury the lede, Ryn,” Boone says finally.

“Tell us everything, and I mean
everything
,” Henry commands
in a voice as hard as the scalpel Violet just swiped. So, I begin with the doorbell. I give them every detail of the entire encounter. I include every word and every gesture, implied or otherwise. When I am done, I am rewarded with more silence.

“So basically what you're saying is that he knows,” Henry throws out.

“She's not saying that. She never said that,” Violet jumps in, trying to defuse the tension.

“Right now, in this moment, it doesn't matter.” I lean back on the dining room table. I want them to see what's behind me. I want them to realize where the real emergency is. “The most important thing is that we get these things out of your heads. Right now. Beyond that, I'm not sure. It could be that he knows a lot of Citadels and he knows how they usually act and I'm not acting ‘normal.' I think it was some sort of an assessment, a test.”

Henry rakes his long fingers through his short hair. “Well, if that's the case, then it's a test you failed. You were belligerent. You
threatened
him.”

I straighten my spine and dig my fingers into the underside of the wooden table. “He doesn't
know
me, but he knows that I'm not a kiss-ass. If I had started bowing and scraping, it would have been far more suspect. If anything—and I know it's weird to say—I think he kind of respects me more now.”

Henry snorts and looks away. Violet and Boone give each other a knowing glance. “What?” I blurt out, throwing my hands up in frustration. “What do you want me to do? I can't go back. It's done. I'm sorry. We have the chance to stop something potentially catastrophic, and maybe we take that chance next month or next year, but we're gonna take it because I don't think any one of us wants to be on the other side of this wishing we could have done something. Okay? Enough.”
I close my eyes for a moment and take a deep breath. “Now it's time for me to cut your heads open. Who's first?”

“Me. I'll go,” Henry volunteers. I know this is as much about his bravery as it is his having my back. I smile at him gratefully right before he lifts up his shirt and throws it at Boone. Good Lord, Henry has a body. His muscles are so toned and defined they almost don't look real. He lies facedown on the table. I position the towels so that one is under his forehead and the other is under his shoulders.

“Boone, I'm going to need your help making sure his head stays still. Vi, you're going pass me the things I need. Ready?” I pull the floor lamp closer to me so that I have enough light and a clear view.

“Don't fuck this up,” Henry mumbles.

“You'll be fine,” I assure him, even though really my heart is hammering a thousand times a minute. “Vi, fill up the syringe with the anesthetic.”

Violet takes a hypodermic needle from a plastic pouch, opens it, and then plunges it into one of the bottles—just another important skill learned as a Citadel: emergency triage. As she is doing that, I shave a small patch of hair just above Henry's neckline. I'm not sure how we are going to hide this. We do heal quickly, but a big bald patch of skin might be obvious. Well, there's a chance someone could notice and there's a chance someone could flip a switch and kill us. I like the removal odds better. I swab his entire neck with peroxide.

I begin to stick the needle in Henry's neck. I numb the entire area and wait for a few seconds. When he says he can't feel my finger, I ask for the scalpel. I make an incision about an inch below his occipital lobe. Violet gives me tiny clamps so that I can pull the skin apart. I can't directly access the skull without drilling into it, so I must go just under it, from
the bottom. I see the implant immediately, but this next part is trickier. I freeze the surrounding area inside the wound and grab some tweezers. Gently, I pick up the device and cut the almost invisible thread of an electrode on the right. I do the same on all the other three sides. I do this in the exact same order that Edo had done it in my head. When I am done I give a little tug. The implant is free. I take the tweezers and with a flashlight look for the residual threads that connected the implant. When I pull them out, each one is at least a foot long. Vi shudders and makes a gagging face. I put the implant in a cup and take the clamps out. Instead of stitches, I use medical adhesive, basically Krazy Glue, to close the incision. The scar won't remain for long, but if anyone does see it, at least they'll think it's a gash or a cut. Stitches would be far too obvious.

“Okay! You're done and you probably don't have brain damage. Who's next?”

Violet volunteers to go; Boone reluctantly hops on the table last. Everyone is a little sore—including me, because it's amazing how tense your muscles can get while performing brain surgery on your friends—but fine. About this, at least, I feel good. I have given my friends a fighting chance at a normal life. If they want to leave ARC, disappear, start new lives, they can do that now. If they want to stay and do what I fear needs to be done, they can do so without worrying that someone can simply kill them by pushing a button on a computer.

Before Henry walks out the door, he pulls me aside. Clearly, he's been thinking of the implications of removing this along with Seelye's visit. “You understand that eventually every Citadel all over the world will need to get this device removed.” He says this quietly while Boone and Vi are preoccupied, giggling at some private joke between them.

“I'm well aware, Henry,” I answer bluntly.

“And so you're also aware that will require a total change in the regime at ARC.”

I raise a single eyebrow at him. “I understand the implications. I also understand that even though we are young, we are patient. They trained us well. It could take years to infiltrate the entire system. We can't let Seelye's showing up here push us into a hasty decision based on fear.” I put a hand on Henry's arm and squeeze. “But eventually, it has to be done. We can't leave ARC in charge, not of The Rift and most especially not of us. If for some reason the time line needs to be moved up, we'll adapt, because we're good at that, too. I've already got some ideas, but you should start thinking of a plan as well. In the next couple of weeks, between the four of us, we should have at least a basic working strategy that we can start implementing.”

Henry sighs and looks down. His short, black hair isn't long enough to fall into his eyes, but his body language suggests that it should be. He doesn't look like a soldier in that moment. Instead, he looks like a kid caught up in something he knows he's not quite emotionally equipped to deal with. He needs my help. As his team leader and his friend, I know he hates feeling vulnerable, but he's going to have to accept it. “Remember that first day all of us were together in Beta Team?”

Henry looks up at me and nods ever so slightly.

“We were expecting the worst, Karekins or some other predator type of monster, but then it was just a bunch of people.”

“I remember that day vividly,” Henry responds.

“At first we were so relieved, because it was just people, and we could send them along to intake and we wouldn't have to fight anyone.” At this point, Boone and Vi have stopped gushing at one another and are listening to me. “They weren't normal people, though. They were from some fucked-up Mad
Max Earth without society. They were crazy and rabid with blood on their faces and scalps sewn onto their arms so they looked almost like wings when they stretched them out. You guys remember that, right?”