False Sight (17 page)

he Torch crackles, red electricity dancing over the car - pet. Nina slides down the wall, blood flowing out of her neck. She tries to say something, but she can only

cough blood onto her lips. I stow Beacon, then snatch up the Torch and hold it with both hands and close my eyes to feel something,
anything
, but it’s dead, just a shaft of metal. Dead like she’s about to be. I watch her eyes dim while I wait for the Torch to turn on, because it can’t be broken, not after every- thing we went through to get it.

I fall to my knees.
I failed; the eyeless have no master now. Nothing will stop them from roaming the world. And if Gane is right, they’ll never stop. Just keep eating and multiplying until our world is as barren as his.

The gunfire has dropped away to random and faraway drumrolls. I set my forehead against the cool curved wall of the office and close my eyes.

I don’t want to feel anymore; I don’t want to lose. “We should kill them,” Noah says.
I spin around awkwardly on my knees and almost slip in

“We should kill them all,”
he says. His face is pure rage. His hands curl into fists. “We should go to True Earth and kill the Originals and anyone who stands with them.”

“I don’t know what to do.”
“We never knew what to do.”
I rise, muscles groaning in my back and legs. “They’re free

An explosion rocks the night. Another jet screams over - head. All of it sounds farther away than before. Like Com- mander Gane said, the cancer is spreading.

“So we find a way to stop them.” He walks to me and uses his finger to lift my chin. “Do you know why I love you?” “No.”
“Because you’re strong. You never give up.”
“You don’t love me.” My voice cracks. How much longer

do I have to be strong? Not long. It’s over, so he should know the truth. He should know before we both die. He should be able to feel something else, something real.

“Why not?” he says.
“Because I’m not really Miranda.”
He looks into my eyes. His hands cup my face now, gently. Tears run down my cheeks all at once. This is where I stop

holding my secret. His thumbs wipe my tears, even though I know that’s impossible. “When you left her...” I swallow. “She died. And Mrs. North used me to replace her. The memory fragments I have belong to the girl before me.”

I’ve just killed him again. It’s plain on his face. “Miranda . . .” he says, shaking his head.
I kiss him.
It isn’t right, or even real, but somehow I do it. While the

world begins its slow death around us. His lips are soft at first, unsure, but then they react to mine. “I’m sorry,” he says with his lips against mine. “I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t know.”
“I always—” he begins.
Just outside, I hear the unmistakable rising whistle of a fired rocket, then a short, sharp explosion that shakes the walls and wakes us up. Noah takes my hand and squeezes it once.

“The director still has a Torch. Don’t you dare give up.” He disappears.
As the Torch begins to rumble behind me.

The bulb doesn’t glow; it can’t; it’s still broken.
But the metal shaft vibrates on the floor next to Nina. I stare at it for a moment, dumbstruck, watching it dance

on the carpet. I pick it up and the vibration tickles my palms. I wait. There’s nothing else to do. The vibration has to mean something. Maybe it’s a final death rattle, or whatever’s inside the shaft trying to turn back on.

Another rocket whistles nearby, followed by man-made thunder.
The Torch isn’t moving, but it
feels
like it wants to get away, like my hands and the Torch just became opposite magnets. A breeze cuts through the office, bringing the mixed scent of pine and hot metal. The room around me begins to darken, like it’s fading from existence, and suddenly I can’t feel my palms. The Black is spreading around my fingers, over the backs of my hands. A few seconds later it’s up my arms, down my legs, across my chest, erasing me bit by bit. The Black crawls up my neck, my chin. Over my face.
I hold on tight and close my eyes, and when I open them, I’m in a different place entirely.

t takes me a second to understand what happened as I fall to my hands and knees, gagging. The Black enveloped me, and now I’m not in the Oval Office, but outside—I feel a sweet breeze and the open sky above me, even though I haven’t looked around yet. The urge to vomit is strong and hot, but the feeling passes after a few seconds and a few swallows. I blink and breathe and look at the smooth metal floor under my gloved hands. The Torch begins to roll away from me, and I lunge for it, but it stops under someone’s toe.

The toe belongs to a foot covered in armor identical to mine, but with brilliant golden scales instead of black. I’ve seen those scales before on the director, in Mrs. North’s memory. The gold is the same color as the wall to my left; to my right is open air—we’re on a walkway attached to the side of a golden building.

I look up, fingers still on the Torch, completely exposed on all fours.
An Olivia stares down at me. She could be my Olive, but she’s not.
“Where did you get this?” she says.
I scan her body language in an instant—she’s relaxed. Her narrowed eyes study me; not surprised to see me, but more... impressed. I’m not a threat.
Her eyes flick down to the Torch. “You broke it.”
“No I didn’t,” I say before I can stop myself. Behind her the sky is golden, like that time near sunset before all the reds appear. Yet the
entire
sky glows gold, when it should be one end or the other. Which leads me to believe this isn’t my sky at all. I see tall buildings from the corner of my right eye, but I don’t dare take my eyes off her, no matter how much I want to look.
“Get up,” she says, reaching down as she says it. I swing at her purely out of reflex, and she bats my hand down lightning fast, no more effort than I would need to block a child. “Don’t do that again.”
I obey, wondering how the hell she did that. She grips my arm but it doesn’t hurt. She checks up and down the walkway to make sure we’re alone, then presses her armored hand to the smooth golden wall. An invisible seam opens with a moan, resembling a tear in thin fabric. She yanks me through, and the seam closes behind us until it’s just a wall again, which should surprise me more than it does. We’re in a small, circular, featureless room with no light source, and yet I can see. The soft light seems to come from the walls themselves.
She says, “We need to make this fast. What is the status of your world?”
I open my mouth, but no words come out, my mind rac- ing to catch up. I was in the Oval Office
seconds
ago, and now everything has a gold tint and an Olivia is holding me hostage.
“The status.”
She asked about
my
world. She must know who I am. “The eyeless are free,” is all I can say.
She closes her eyes. “I can’t help you. Not directly.” She holds up the broken length of metal that used to be the Torch. “Repairing this will take too long.”
Everything clicks, and I realize who stands before me—the Olivia who visited Noble, who told him the truth and posi- tioned him in Commander Gane’s world.
The Original Olivia.
She doesn’t wait for me to respond.
“Director Miranda has another Torch. Obtaining it is nearly suicide, but there’s no other way to save your world.”
A moment passes. I shrug and say, “I have nothing better to do.” But I don’t feel the words.
She doesn’t buy my bravery. “Do you know where you are?”
“True Earth.”
“Yes. The Torch is designed to return to me if it’s broken in the field. But acquiring the second one from the director isn’t the hardest part.”
She doesn’t have to tell me. “Destroying the eyeless.”
“Yes.”
“Commander Gane told me what to do. He told me how to destroy them in the Verge.”
“Good.”
“But I’ll die.”
Olivia nods. “That’s true. But you’ll save the world.”
I clench my hands into fists and tremble. I want to scream. I want to hit her calm, placid face. “There has to be another way.”
She shakes her head. “There isn’t. Killing all of them at once would require you to be close enough with the Torch. And once they feel threatened, even you won’t be able to control them. It has to happen all at once. You must lure them.”
“I don’t want to do it.”
I want my chance to live. From the day I opened my eyes, it’s been
this
. But I’m silly for saying I don’t want to, because I know I will.
She knows it too.
I always wondered if there was going to be more to my life, and now I know there isn’t. It’ll be over soon, and I won’t have to fight anymore.
“And when the eyeless are gone, what will True Earth do then?” I say. I need to know this won’t be for nothing. I need someone to say I existed and then died for a reason.
“They won’t stop, but it will buy us time.”
“What if I fail?”
“Then your universe belongs to them. So you won’t fail.”
Right then I let go of everything.
“I have to get back before I’m missed,” Olivia says, “but I need to reopen that scar on your cheek so it seems fresh. We don’t have scars in our world.”
Before I can protest, she lifts a knife to my face and drags it across the scar from Mrs. North. I feel no pain at first, just pressure. Hot blood rolls down my cheek.
“Good.” Then, rapid-fire, she says, “Now go. The Rose Tower is just around the bend—you’ll know it when you see it. Put your hand on the wall to get inside. Tell someone you were attacked. If anyone asks your number, it’s M-two-four-zero-seven. Remember that. Act like you belong there, because nobody can prove you don’t. Once you have the Torch, you can use it to return home just by thinking about it. Understand?”
“Yes,” I say, while still absorbing her words. My stinging cheek actually helps. The pain focuses me.
She puts her hand on the wall again and a seam splits open, showing me a world I couldn’t have dreamed.
“One more thing,” she says. “Take this.”
She takes my hand and turns it over, then presses a small black square the size of a stamp into my palm. It adheres to the armor, then dissolves into a liquid my suit somehow absorbs. A second later, I feel it push through the skin of my palm in a way that’s somehow pleasant.
“What was that?”
“If you find yourself against uneven odds, make a fist as hard as you can. Now go.”
I step through the seam, and it seals shut behind me.

he air smells like pine and hot metal, the same scent I experienced when the Torch first started buzzing on the floor of the Oval Office.
I spend twenty seconds taking stock of my surroundings

with a tactical eye, committing the area to memory. It’s nothing I could’ve imagined, not in a million years. I’m on a long, windingwalkway.Attherailing,thegroundisjustanideafar below. Up here are golden towers, impossibly wide, connected by covered bridges and open walkways. Each tower is rounded and smooth, no hard angles, like polished stalagmites made of gold, rising what feels like miles from the earth.

Everything
is gold, the sky included. An unnatural sky, yet rich and deep and beautiful. If there were clouds, they’d be made of honey.

I lean over the railing again, searching harder for the ground.
“What are you doing up here?”
I push away from the railing and try to hide how startled I am.
It’s Noah. But not my Noah. He wears the same armor as me, black, but pristine. Clearly he hasn’t seen combat. His eyes widen as he takes in my battered face and chewed-up armor.
“What the hell happened to you? What’s your number?”
“M-two-four-zero-seven,” I say automatically.
“Who attacked you?” he says, pulling a sword off his back. The sword hums and the blade is out of focus. It’s vibrating too fast to see clearly. I can only imagine what happens when the edge touches flesh. Behind him, one tower is the color of a rose. It’s the only non-gold one in sight.
He checks up and down the walkway. “I asked who attacked you. And why did you let them do that to your face?”
His tone isn’t familiar, and it’s really messing with me since I know the face so well. Blurry-vibro sword or not, I refuse to let my mission end seconds after it begins. I harden my eyes and straighten up to show he isn’t intimidating.
“There were three of them,” I say, figuring the peaceful way out is a lie.
“Who were they? Were they Peters?”
At first I think he means that in the possessive, as in
Did the attackers belong to Peter?
, but then I realize he means
Were they actual Peters?
, as in plural. And right then it becomes clear that my number 2407 might mean I’m one of at least 2407 Mirandas. If I had to bet, I have a good idea which tower they’re all in.
I assume he’s asking because the Peters have been known to do this. Or maybe the Noahs just don’t like the Peters....
“Yes,” I say. “They were Peters.”
“Of course they were. Do you remember their numbers?”
“No, I—”
Without warning, he shoves me up against the tower wall, and I have to stop myself from putting an elbow through his nose. He pulls a little laser pointer from a pouch on his hip and shines it into my eye. “Keep it open!” he growls when I squint. I force my eyes open and he goes, “Hmm.”
“Hmm what?”
He brings his wrist to his lips. “I have M2407 wandering around on the high decks outside the Rose Tower. Claims she was beaten by a trio of Peters. Her armor is damaged. Please advise.” He waits a few seconds. I slouch against the wall, feeling embarrassed despite myself. He seems disgusted I let a couple Peters get the best of me. “She tests positive for a memory swap, yes. Yes.” He focuses on me again. “What were you doing out here?”
“I don’t remember. They hit me in the head a few times.” I tenderly touch above my right ear and fake-wince. He’s so unlike my Noah. There’s no hint of playful mischief in his eyes, just intensity. It’s just Noah’s face, his body, but everything underneath is different.
He notices me studying him. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
His eyes unfocus when he listens to a voice I can’t hear. “Affirmative,” he says. Then, to me, “Head to the infirmary, the one on level ninety. They want to take a download from you to see the attackers.”
I don’t think so. That would end things really fast. “I didn’t see them at all. They jumped me and I couldn’t see well after they broke my nose.” My nose is swollen enough to
look
broken, complete with dried blood.
“Then how did you know they were Peters?”
“I just knew.”
He sighs. “Please go. Don’t make this difficult for me.”
At least I’m going inside the Tower. I start to walk down the path, metal ringing softly under my feet. I feel the Noah’s eyes on my spine. Behind the Rose Tower, a sleek helicopter rises above the building and banks away from me.
The walkway peels off from the golden building and becomes a long open bridge to the Rose Tower. My pulse rises the closer I get.
The circumference of the Rose Tower has to be longer than a half mile; this close, it fills my vision, too big to see all at once. The rose-colored metal is dull, not brilliant like the towers surrounding me. I approach the wall and look over my shoulder—the Noah is still watching me from the other end of the bridge.
“Open it!” he calls.
There’s nothing to open, so I do what Olivia did. I put my hand on the wall and think
Open
in my mind, in case I’m supposed to, and the wall parts beneath my hand. When I look again, the Noah is gone. I step through into a small room with an elevator door and nothing else. It’s like the room just appeared for me exactly where I needed it.
The door opens into a cylinder-shaped car. I step inside, and a smooth male voice says, “Level.”
“Ninety,” I reply.
Myfeetgluetothefloorwithtwometallicthrums,whichI appreciate, because one second later the car slips into free fall.

The infirmary is a large room two levels tall. It feels sterile and cold and uncomfortable, unnecessarily big. Beds line the walls, a few of them occupied with people I recognize but don’t know. Two Olives, a Miranda, four Rhyses,
six
Peters, one Noah. People like my friends, but probably totally unlike them at the same time. Most of them are in slender arm or leg casts that give off a pale glow, with wires trailing to what look like white plastic server towers. The towers project holographic images above each Rose, displaying vitals that are perfectly visible no matter where I stand.

A completely hairless man in a white lab coat approaches. He’s smiling at me warmly.
“What’s the matter, dear?”
He holds his arm up, presenting the back of his hand to me. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with it. When he gets close enough, I lightly touch the back of my hand to his, which he accepts.
“You’ve had a battle,” he says, leaning in and squinting. “Do you know who I am?”
I hesitate, which he probably mistakes for brain damage.
“I’m Dr. Delaney. You’re M-two-four-oh-seven?”
“I am.”
“Very good. The two thousands are a fine group. Can you tell me what happened?”
“Three Peters jumped me,” I say automatically.
He makes a noise of disapproval in his throat. “That rivalry needs to stop.” He takes my hand and leads me to an open bed, where I sit down and almost collapse. The bed is so soft it nearly swallows me.
“Now, I’d like to take a memory download from you for the next few days, just to see how things are tracking.”
My throat tightens. A download for the next few days sounds okay, but if he sees my memories leading up to this, even
looks
at them, my trip here will be over.
“I’ll take a full imprint too, if that’s all right.” He’s pressing buttons on the face of the white server tower next to my bed, but sees my face fall. “Don’t worry, I won’t look at them. Just a precaution. It’s good to have clean backups if damage is present.”
“Okay,” I say. Because how else can I respond? Even if I want to scream
NO YOU CAN’T HAVE MY IDENTITY!
The other Roses in the beds don’t seem to notice me, or care. If I had to fight Delaney on the full download, would they all attack?
Delaney shines a light into my eyes. “Now that is a broken nose,” he says.
Eyeless are killing people
right now
, I have no idea how I’m going to get the Torch and get home, and Dr. Delaney is treating me with kindness. I need hard and cold and evil right now if I’m going to stay sharp.
“Relax. This won’t hurt.” He shows me a strip of metal with a thick wire trailing off it. “Have you ever used this before?”
“No.” I remind myself he’s not here to hurt me, but to help. “What is it?”
“It’s better to show you,” he says, lifting the strip to my nose and pressing it to the skin. Something clicks in my nose—I guess it really was broken. The dried blood in my sinuses evaporates, and I can breathe again. The bruises and scrapes all over my body dwindle to nothing, leaving me in a warm glow. In a few seconds, I feel like a million bucks. Still bonetired, but without pain.
The strip of metal has turned rust-orange. “There, see? Not bad.” I still feel blood and sweat dried on my skin and hair, but that’s nothing a shower can’t fix. “You’ll find new armor in the showers. Toss that one.”
“Okay.” I slip off the bed, happy to be free. And actually grateful for his help.
“Wait one,” he says. He comes over with a small disc the size of a quarter, stamped with the letter M. He turns me around by the shoulders, pulls aside my hair, and sticks the disc against the base of my skull before I realize what it’s for. The disc feels cool for a second, then melts to warmth, spreading into my brain. “Return that next week and we’ll have a look. You don’t have to take your shots while it’s on. However, if you feel ill tonight, come back and see me. If you still have memory problems, come back and see me. Got it?”
“Thanks, Doctor.” So the disc will store my memories. All I have to do is not give it back and our secrets will stay safe.
“My pleasure, dear.” He turns away and moves to a differ- ent bed. I’m free.
The realization I have no idea where to go settles on me like a lead dress. I walk to the elevator, feeling a little dizzy with the task before me. Finding the director is one thing; getting the Torch away from her—and surviving—is another. For all I know, she sleeps with it.
The elevator doors open, and a Rhys stands there. A Rhys with battered armor and a familiar smile. His eyes hold recognition.
I keep staring at him. It can’t be....
“Yeah,” he says. “It’s me. Why has everyone been asking for my number? Like I’d want any of these assholes to call me.”
Despite the ongoing apocalypse, I almost burst into laugh- ter. I manage to contain myself and step into the elevator. Dr. Delaney gives me a friendly wave from the bed of an Olivia. The doors shut, and we throw our arms around each other and hug so tight, the wounds Delaney healed begin to tingle.
“A complete dick move, Miranda.”
I pull back to look into his face. He’s trying to be stern, but I can tell he’s happy to see me. Under all that is a heavy dread, mostly around his eyes.
“How did you get here?”
“You know how long it’s been since I’ve done an endurance sprint? A long time.”
“Where’s Peter?”
“Level,” the elevator says.
“Auditorium,” Rhys replies.
The elevator ascends at a normal speed this time. I’m still holding his arms, like I’m afraid he’ll disappear if I let go.
“Is he safe?” I say.
“I don’t know, to both.” He bites his lower lip. “We made it to the Verge and jumped through the Black, and...I ended up here. There’s a portal just outside. The pill you swallowed showed up on this.” He lifts the little tracking device and wiggles it.
Rhys doesn’t know.
“What is it?” he says. “Thought you’d be happy to see me.”
“The Torch is broken. It broke when I killed Nina. The eyeless are free in our world.”
He frowns. “I see.”
“So we need to find the director, like now. Maybe together we can overpower her and take her Torch.”
“We’re heading in the right direction,” he says, eyes on the rising numbers. “I passed a few Roses talking about the audi- torium. Something is going down. The director will be there. But it sounds like a lot of people will be there—you think a smash-and-grab is the right play?”
Before I can answer, the doors open, and I see exactly why we’re going to lose this war.