Falls the Shadow (25 page)

“And we should aim for the back of her head,” Violet says. “Because that's where her brain's CPU is.”

“CPU . . .” My eyes widen in realization. “She's a clone?”

“Ding ding ding,” Violet mutters, “let's tell her what she's won.”

And then Samantha bursts out of the shadows, a terrible blur of rage and fury with shaking hands and bloodshot eyes. She doesn't even bother with a gun anymore; she just runs straight toward me, grabs my arm, and jerks me away from Violet. She swings me against the nearest tree and presses in close, blocking off any chance of escape. Over her shoulder, I watch Violet stumble a few steps, lift her gun and aim it straight at the base of Samantha's skull.

She fires.

The gun lets out a high-pitched whine. But other than that, nothing happens.

“You've got to be kidd—”

Samantha grabs my throat and slams me harder against
the tree, pinning me more securely before glancing back at Violet. “That's what you get for trying to switch sides,” she says. “Serves you right, traitor.”

She turns her attention back to me. Her fingers push deeper into my neck, making breathing almost impossible; my vision starts to blur, and a strange prickling sensation starts at the tips of my fingers and travels up my arms. I have to glance down to make sure I still have a gun in my hand, because I can't feel it anymore. Samantha follows my gaze with her own. Her free hand shoots out and wraps around my wrist, and she gives it a vicious twist, trying to force me to loosen my grip on the gun; I'm so woozy from barely being able to breathe that I don't feel much pain. But I do hear a sickening popping noise—and I doubt that means anything good.

I grit my teeth and struggle, trying to squirm my way out from underneath her. When that doesn't work, I knock her hand away from my throat and try to hold it off long enough to get a decent breath of air. Then I focus every bit of strength I have left into driving my knee into Samantha's stomach. I hit her hard enough that she doubles over and falls back, leaving just enough room for me to slip away from her and the tree.

I switch the gun to my other hand, since I'm now painfully aware of my throbbing wrist. I make it about five steps before Samantha dives after me, tackling me at the knees. Without thinking, I throw out my empty hand to catch myself; my wrist gives out instantly on impact, snapping back so hard that if it wasn't broken before, it has to
be now. I fall the rest of the way forward, my momentum still going, and slam my head into a rock. It leaves me dazed, but not as dizzy as before; at least I can still breathe this time. Now if I can just keep it that way.

I kick as hard as I can, over and over until I've freed my legs from her grip enough that I can roll over onto my back. I slap her across the face with the barrel of my gun, then drop it and thrust my hand up, grab her by the hair on the left side of her head, and push her away. When she starts to fall back on top of me, I get a foot between us, pressed squarely against her stomach. With my adrenaline pumping uncontrollably, and the ground to brace myself against now, my next kick sends her flying.

I snatch the gun and stagger to my feet. So does Samantha. She's moving much more slowly now, though. Pain slices through my broken wrist. Blood drips down into my left eye, clings to my lashes so that the part of the world I see through them takes on a strange pinkish tint.

Samantha walks straight toward me, seemingly unfazed by the weapon I have lifted between us.

Violet is behind her, still messing with the faulty gun. If she gets it to work, Samantha's clone is as good as gone—but would Samantha even care? Can she even think of anything other than Huxley's orders? I don't think so. She seems different from Violet, somehow. There is no hesitation with her, no question in her eyes about what she's supposed to do, or who she's supposed to be. There's only a mad, wild determination. She's going to kill me, or I'm going to kill her. It doesn't seem as if something like this
should be so simple, but—at least in this moment—it is. And that scares me worse than anything.

Aim for the back of her head.
I remember Violet's words, but there's no way I'm fast enough to get behind Samantha. So when I manage to catch Violet's eye a second later, I make a decision that I really hope I don't end up regretting. I throw her my gun. She catches it one-handed, and in a single fluid motion she lifts it and fires before Samantha even has a chance to turn around.

I take the first decent breath I've had in what seems like forever.

Once Samantha hits the ground, Violet isn't far behind her; she drops to one knee and braces both hands against the ground, breathing heavily.

“You okay?” I call, moving cautiously forward, my gaze jumping between her and Samantha's still body. My mind is still working double time, trying to process everything that just happened. Trying to make sense of not just my sister now, but also of the fact that Samantha Voss had a clone running around. What does that mean? What about her father?

“I'll be fine,” Violet says as I reach her side. Then she looks up at me and asks, “What about you?” And maybe I'm delusional after having my head bashed against a rock, but I'd swear she looks genuinely concerned. More concerned than I've seen her in a long time. Nothing like stopping a homicidal clone together to strengthen that sisterly bond, I guess.

“I've been worse,” I say. I think about reminding her
of that one time she almost drowned me, but I decide not to bother. It feels like there are bigger things—more important things—to worry about now. “Although I don't remember the last time I was this confused,” I say, offering Violet a hand and pulling her to her feet. “Samantha's father is vice president of the CCA. Why would he have a cloned daughter?”

“He used to work for Huxley.”

“I know, but so did President Cross—they left together to form the CCA.”

“Except he never really left,” she says, wiping at some of the dried blood around her lips. “He's been working as a double agent for years now, and as close as he was to President Cross, he was the natural choice when Huxley decided to put their master plan into motion—starting by tearing the CCA apart from the inside. And their first target was the president herself. Or her son, more specifically, since he would have been easier to take out first.”

My stomach flip-flops.
Jaxon
.

Maybe it wasn't just me they were after at the hotel.

Where is he now?

“How do you know that?” I ask, starting to walk. I'd run if the world didn't insist on reeling from the pain in my head and my wrist.

“I know because Samantha's origin knew, and she told me. She found out about her father's plans for Jaxon.”

“But why him? Surely there were more important targets they could have focused on. Just because he's the CCA president's son doesn't mean—”

“I don't know why, all right? From what Samantha told me, all this drama between these two groups sounds a lot more personal than I would have guessed, so maybe someone was just out looking for revenge? I know Cross made a lot of people mad when she left Huxley. The important thing, though, is that Samantha knew about her father's plans not just for Jaxon, but for
her
—the eventual plan for all origins.”

I almost tell her to stop, because I'm starting to piece things together myself now. And I don't want to look at the ugly, nightmarish picture they're forming. I'm too focused on trying to block out the pain and keep my feet moving at the same time, though, so I don't manage to find my voice before Violet continues.

“Samantha was afraid of being replaced. So she got the foolish idea that she would prove herself more useful than any clone that could replace her.”

“By doing her father's job for him?” I guess.

“She wasn't supposed to die that night,” Violet says, quieter now. “Jaxon was.”

“And why didn't he, exactly?”

My gaze meets hers, and she traps me with that same stare as before, that wild fear and uncertainty dancing in her eyes. And I'm still so unused to seeing this Violet afraid—of anything—that I can't help but freeze midstep. I don't know what to say, though. Because there's no more denying it now. We both know the truth.

For whatever reason, she
is
the one who killed Samantha. My sister is a murderer. And I guess I am too
now—because I helped her kill all that was left of Samantha Voss, the clone I left lying back there in the woods, the same way Violet left Samantha's origin lying alone on those railroad tracks.

“Things got out of control,” Violet is saying as I stumble on, too dizzy to walk straight but determined to get away from this all the same. “I was only trying to stop her—I couldn't just stand back and let her become a murderer. She would have been caught, locked away for life. I went to reason with her but I . . . I was just a lot stronger than she was.”

“You killed her.” The words hum through my brain, numbing as they go. “You actually
killed
her.”

She grabs the sleeve of my shirt and jerks me back to a stop. “I didn't mean to do it.” I turn and find her watching me, eyes wide and desperate as the next words fall frantically from her mouth. She takes a deep breath. “Look. I know I'm all wrong. I know I started messing things up for you the second I got here, and I never really figured out how to stop doing that—never really figured out how to be what you wanted me to be. Because you didn't want anything to take your sister's place. I know you didn't. So I couldn't be her, but then what else was I supposed to be?”

“How about anything except for a murderer?” I deadpan, pulling away from her.

“It was an
accident
, Cate.” She folds her arms and hugs them to her chest, looking cold and alone and so much like the old, sick Violet that it makes my breath hitch into a quiet cough. “That night, I just . . . I thought I was doing
the right thing. For once.” Her eyes slide out of focus as she trails off and wraps her arms even more tightly around herself. And even with her so close, even with her telling me these deep, dark things, it still feels like it so often has with this Violet: like we're in two different places and I'm never going to find my way to where she is.

Though not for lack of trying. Because I'm searching desperately for the right words to say, for a way to understand all of this—a way to understand her—but I don't know how to get there from here.

All I keep thinking is that Samantha isn't coming back, and now I know why. I came out here looking for the truth, but in my heart I think I already knew what I wanted it to be—that Violet was framed, that those witnesses were lying, that she had
nothing
to do with Samantha's death. That she wasn't even there that night. But this? This is all wrong. This is not how the story was supposed to go.

I take a deep breath.

It was an accident, Cate
.

I can forgive an accident, can't I? I've forgiven her for everything else; why should this be any different? I've spent the past four years picking up the pieces of nearly every mess she's made; I should be a pro at it by now. I should be able to fix this—to fix us—just like I always have. And besides, I've told myself from the beginning that my sister would never
purposely
hurt Samantha. They were friends. I know that. I believe that.

So why does it still feel like so much of this doesn't make sense?

I'm still quietly trying to force some sort of meaning onto it all when we reach the edge of the forest. It's started to rain by this point; heavy, quick drops that don't help my pounding head as they smack against it. I rake the hand not attached to my aching wrist through my damp hair and leave my palm pressed against my temple. Blood pounds against the skin there, a dull, relentless thumping in my ears that makes it hard to concentrate. The signal jammer doesn't help either; now that we've stopped talking, I can hear it emitting a garbled, high-pitched static. Broken, it sounds like. I don't remember hitting it against anything, but I was a little distracted earlier—so who knows.

Even with all the pain and the noise, though, I eventually manage to single out a question, plucking it from the crowd of them swarming through my thoughts.

“If you went after Samantha to protect Jaxon,” I ask, my voice rising to compete with the trees creaking and groaning in the wind, “then why did you attack him at the hotel?”

“Because.” Violet shuffles uncomfortably, starts to move out of the woods only to double back around to face me. “What you said last night was partially right. Sometimes I'm not as alone in my head as I'd like to be—one of the many things Huxley leaves out of their lovely informational videos.”

“So they sent you?”

She moves away from the trees again, glancing up into their dark branches as if she's afraid of them overhearing, and this time she doesn't look back. I have to jog to catch up with her.

“They wanted me to go after you,” she says. “To see if I would actually do it, I think. Because I worried them, thanks to everything that happened with Samantha. When I stopped her from killing Jaxon, they decided they needed to figure out exactly
why
—they probably saw it as me protecting him at first, which, since he's CCA, went against the most basic programming of any clone. A quick glimpse into my memory uploads would have shown them that I only did it because I cared about Samantha—enough to override any brainwashing or command or they might have given me. Which is apparently
all wrong
for a clone like me, and which led to this experiment to see if I would be able to override it again, and exactly
how
and
why
I was doing it. With Samantha gone, though, they needed another dependent variable to factor in.” Her eyes lock with mine. “And, of course, there was really only one other person that I cared about nearly as much.”