A jolt of pain runs through me. Now I’m ten. I’m back in the Los Angeles Central Hospital’s lab, locked away with who knows how many others, all strapped to separate gurneys, blinded by fluorescent lights. Doctors with face masks hover over me. I squint up at them. Why are they keeping me awake? The lights are so bright—I feel . . . slow, my mind dragging through a sea of haze.
I see the scalpels in their hands. A mess of mumbled words passes between them. Then I feel something cold and metallic against my knee, and the next thing I know, I arch my back and try to shriek. No sound comes out. I want to tell them to stop cutting my knee, but then something pierces the back of my head and pain explodes my thoughts away. My vision tunnels into blinding white.
Then I’m opening my eyes and I’m lying in a dim basement that feels uncomfortably warm. I’m alive by some crazy accident. The pain in my knee makes me want to cry, but I know I have to stay silent. I can see dark shapes around me, most of them laid out on the ground and unmoving, while adults in lab coats walk around, inspecting the bundles on the floor. I wait quietly, lying there with my eyes closed into tiny slits, until those walking leave the chamber. Then I push myself up onto my feet and tear off a pant leg to tie around my bleeding knee. I stumble through the darkness and feel along the walls until I find a door that leads outside, then drag myself into a back alley. I walk out into the light, and this time June is there, composed and unafraid, holding her cool hand out to help me.
“Come on,” she whispers, putting her arm around my waist. I hold her close. “We’re in this together, right? You and me?” We walk to the road and leave the hospital lab behind.
But the people on the street all have Eden’s white-blond curls, each with a scarlet streak of blood cutting through the strands. Every door we pass has a large, spray-painted red X with a line drawn through its center. That means everybody here has the plague. A mutant plague. We wander down the streets for what seems like days, through air thick as molasses. I’m searching for my mother’s house. Far in the distance, I can see the glistening cities of the Colonies beckoning to me, the promise of a better world and a better life. I’m going to take John and Mom and Eden there, and we’ll be free from the clutches of the Republic at last.
Finally, we reach my mother’s door, but when I push it open, the living room is empty. My mother isn’t there. John is gone. The soldiers shot him, I remember abruptly. I glance to my side, but June has vanished, and I’m alone in the doorway. Only Eden’s left . . . he’s lying in bed. When I get close enough for him to hear me coming, he opens his eyes and holds his hands out to me.
But his eyes aren’t blue. They’re black, because his irises are bleeding.
* * *
I come to slowly, very slowly, out of the darkness. The base of my neck pulses the way it does when I’m recovering from one of my headaches. I know I’ve been dreaming, but all I remember is a lingering feeling of dread, of something horrible lurking right behind a locked door. A pillow is wedged under my head. A tube pokes out of my arm and runs along the floor. Everything’s out of focus. I struggle to sharpen my vision, but all I can see is the edge of a bed and a carpet on the floor and a girl sitting there with her head resting on the bed. At least, I think it’s a girl. For an instant I think it might be Eden, that somehow the Patriots rescued him and brought him here.
The figure stirs. Now I see that it’s Tess.
“Hey,” I murmur. The word slurs out of my mouth. “What’s up? Where’s June?”
Tess grabs my hand and stands up, stumbling over her reply in her rush. “You’re awake,” she says. “You’re—how are you feeling?”
“Slow.” I try to touch her face. I’m still not entirely convinced that she’s real.
Tess checks behind her at the bedroom door to make sure no one else is there. She holds up a finger to her lips. “Don’t worry,” she says quietly. “You won’t feel slow for long. The Medic seemed pretty happy. Soon you’ll be better than new and we can head for the warfront to kill the Elector.”
It’s jarring to hear the word kill come so smoothly out of Tess’s mouth. Then, an instant later, I realize that my leg doesn’t hurt—not even the smallest bit. I try to prop myself up to see, and Tess pushes the pillows up behind my back so I can sit. I glance down at my leg, almost afraid to look.
Tess sits beside me and unwraps the white bandages that cover the area where the wound was. Under the gauze are smooth plates of steel, a mechanical knee where my bad one used to be, and metal sheets that cover half my upper thigh. I gape at it. The parts where metal meets flesh on my thigh and calf feel molded tightly together, but only small bits of redness and swelling line the edges. My vision swims.
Tess’s fingers drum expectantly against my blankets, and she bites her round upper lip. “Well? How does it feel?”
“It feels like . . . nothing. It’s not painful at all.” I run a tentative finger over the cool metal, trying to get used to the foreign parts embedded in my leg. “She did all this? When can I walk again? Has it really healed this quickly?”
Tess puffs up a little with pride. “I helped the Medic. You’re not supposed to move around much over the next twelve hours. To let the healing salves settle and do their work.” Tess grins and the smile crinkles up her eyes in a familiar way. “It’s a standard operation for injured warfront soldiers. Pretty awesome, yeah? You should be able to use it like a regular leg after that, maybe even better. The doctor I helped is really famous from the warfront hospitals, but she also does black-market work on the side, which is lucky. While she was here, she showed me how to reset Kaede’s broken arm too, so it’d heal faster.”