The Last Uprising (Defectors Trilogy) (2 page)

My back tightened as the quick footsteps echoed off the high walls of the atrium. They weren’t nurses’ shoes. Those made a squeaky noise on the shiny white tile. These steps were loud and angry.

“Haven!”

I jerked my head up at the familiar hiss. There, poking his head around the corner of the doorway, was a young man about my age with clean-cut dark hair and bright, sharp gray eyes.

“Amory,” I whispered. Without thinking, the name had slipped out of my mouth. Somehow I knew him — at least I knew his name.

“You’re alive!” He wore a look so beautiful and happy it took my breath away.

“How do I —”

“Come on! There isn’t much time.”

My mind was working furiously, but I couldn’t remember how I knew him. It was the same odd sense of déjà vu I got during the simulations.
 

“How do I . . . know you?”

The relief drained from his face to be replaced by hurt and confusion.

“Haven. It’s me. We have to go! Now!”

Something tugged at the edges of my memory, but it was like feeling my way through a dark room. “I don’t understand.”

“What?”

His eyes crinkled in distress, and he crossed the room to me and put his hands on my arms. I jumped at his touch, and a look of fear flashed through his eyes.

“You don’t remember me?”

“No. Not really . . .”

“What did they do to you, Haven?”

“Stop saying my name!” I was starting to panic. He knew who I was, and I knew his name, but I didn’t
know
him.

“What did they
do
to you?” he asked louder.

“Who?”

“Aryus Edric. World Corp International.”

“What do you mean?”

“We have to get out of here.”

“I can’t leave.”

“I know. It’s going to be hard, but I’ve done it. You helped me. Remember?”

Something stirred in the back of my mind. I pictured Amory in my white scrubs, and a memory flickered in the back of my mind.
 

“Yes,” I stammered in surprise. “I-I did. Why did I do that?”

“Because you don’t want to be here. These are bad people.”

“What? Where do you want me to go?”

Amory was shaking his head now, thinking hard.

“Just come on. I’ll explain when we get out of here.”

In the back of my mind, I knew I shouldn’t, but something about the way he talked ignited a feeling of excitement in my chest.
So what if it would end in an adjustment?
It might be worth it just to see what he was talking about.
 

I’d been trying to get through the door that led out beyond the atrium for weeks, but every time, it had ended in a very painful, humiliating shock to the back of the head.

“All right,” I said, hesitating slightly.

He grabbed my hand, pulling me out of the dining room. I wanted to protest, but his warm hand felt nice holding mine. Something about it was familiar. In fact, everything about him screamed familiarity, but I couldn’t quite access the part of my brain that knew him. It was all very strange.

My white, no-slip soles squeaked against the tile as we crossed the atrium. Watching Amory pull me along, I took in the black jacket that stretched across his broad shoulders and olive-colored pants tucked over dirty black boots. He didn’t look as if he belonged, and I liked it. Everyone here wore white scrubs and lab coats.

Under the cleanly shaven line of hair on the back of his neck, I could just make out a square scar that looked the way mine felt, but it was cut across the middle in a shaky line. By the looks of it, we had the same CID. Or we
had
. Somehow, I remembered he didn’t have his anymore.

He pushed open the white door that the nurses used to enter the atrium and pulled me across the threshold.
 

Instantly, a sharp, familiar pain cracked across the back of my skull. It pulsated through my head, splitting me in two between the eyes and down the bridge of my nose. I tried to get back into the safe boundaries, but my legs wouldn’t move.

“Haven!” Amory’s voice sounded oddly fuzzy.
 

Blinking through the mist, I forced myself to focus on his face. His eyes were filled with apprehension. He remembered how it felt when it had happened to him. He pulled on my hand, dragging my feet incrementally over the floor. The pain intensified, and black spots erupted in my vision.

A sharp shriek echoed down the corridor, and I covered my ears. The sound reverberated, and I thought for a moment that I could see the waves of sound disturbing the air and rocking back toward me. The scream sounded again, stronger this time. Then I realized it belonged to me.

Someone was yanking me away from the safety of the atrium into the blinding white corridor. I didn’t want to go. Every step I took intensified the pain in the back of my head.

“Haven! Haven!” I squinted through the black fog unfurling around my eyes.
 

Amory.
 

“Haven! Come on. It’s all an illusion. It isn’t real.”

His face was fuzzy, but I could still make out the resolve in those gray eyes. They shone through the mist like two beacons of light.
 

As I concentrated, the mist lifted enough for me to discern the crinkles around Amory’s eyes and his distressed grimace as he watched me scream.

Why was he putting me through this?
Every step I took just caused me pain.

I backed away, pulling out of Amory’s grip to return to the atrium. He grabbed both of my wrists, pulling me in the other direction. But it hurt too much.
 

I felt the hard shock to my knees as they hit the cold tile, and the pain reverberated up to my thighs. I couldn’t let him take me any farther. I screamed again, and a pair of strong arms wrapped around me and lifted me up against my will.

He was carrying me — strangling me — and every step he took caused me more pain. My whole body felt as though it were being stabbed all over by a thousand knives, but the wounds did not bleed. They merely punctured the skin enough to leave tracks of angry skids and burns, occasionally hitting with such force that they bruised me down to the bone.

Why did he not understand that he was hurting me?
Why hadn’t I passed out?
 

The pain was too much — worse than I’d ever experienced. It was nothing the HALLO tags could have prepared me for. The hallucinations the HALLO tags produced were tangible: flames that charred you, chemical ice that froze and blistered the skin, or water that filled your lungs and drowned you. This was just pain in its rawest, most basic form. There was no way out — no way to fight it — because it had no source. It was everywhere at once, breaking me down with every step Amory took.

I became aware of soreness in my hands and wrists. Beating my fists against his back, kicking and screaming and crying, I tried to tell him to stop.
 

The light pulsating sensation in my head had escalated to a constant throttling, as though I were experiencing repeated whiplash in the middle seat of a car.
 

I thought I might be sick. I retched, but my stomach was empty. I continued to dry heave, and the spasms escalated.

Shaking uncontrollably, I tried to yell out.
 

He was killing me. Amory was killing me.
Something deep in the recesses of my brain shut off, and I felt myself losing the fight.

Why was he taking me from the atrium in the first place?
 

I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand why he would take me away from my bed and the food and the routine of it all. Twelve times a day, I experienced the joyful moment of déjà vu — a whispered clue to something I used to know. That was all I needed.

I didn’t care. I didn’t want to go back, and I didn’t want to leave with him. I just wanted it to stop.

And then it did.

The voices started as no more than a faraway rumble of activity I couldn’t discern — a theater of excited people waiting for the show to start. Then, little by little, the voices pulled apart like drips of honey. The spatters of conversation began to take shape.

“It was terrible. I’ve never seen her like that. I’ve never seen anybody like that.”

“Yours was pretty bad.”

“I don’t remember it being that terrible. She was almost . . . a different person.”

“She’s been there a lot longer.”

“Only two months.”

“That’s all the time they need, I guess.”

One of the voices belonged to Amory. I recognized the other voice, too, but recalling its owner required a deep dig into the dusty corners of my brain. I squinted against the bright light fanning around the edges of my eyelids. My head hurt. I didn’t want to open my eyes just yet. I didn’t want to face where I was or what had happened.

Lying there, I could feel the hum of motion beneath me and the muffled rush of wind. I was in a car, and I could sense there were other people around me: Amory and the other boy who had spoken. Not opening my eyes, I allowed myself to be lulled into a dreamlike state by the gentle movement of the car.

Two cool fingers touched the side of my neck, ghosting over my skin like a raindrop and feeling my pulse. The person next to me sighed loudly.

“I don’t know why she hasn’t woken up yet.”
It was Amory.

“That’s fine. We’d probably have to knock her out again when we get there. If she’s as messed up as you say —”

I grimaced. I didn’t like the sound of that.

“I don’t want to sedate her.”

“We have to.”

“You don’t know that,”
he said angrily.
“She might wake up and be fine.”

“I was there when she woke up from getting her tonsils out. Trust me. She’s
not
going to be fine.”

Tonsils.
When had I had my tonsils out?

A memory resurfaced, slowly at first, and then faster and more vivid. I was twelve when I got my tonsils removed, and Greyson had been there when I woke up.
 

Greyson.
That was the other speaker.
Why was he here?
I didn’t understand.

After a while, the car stopped, and I felt Amory’s arms lift me bodily from the car. The cold air stung my face, but my bare arms in the thin white scrubs had been covered by something warm and heavy — his jacket.
Why did I have his jacket?

As soon as the cold stopped, I knew we were inside. I heard the floor groan under the combined weight of Amory and me as he carried me to a room and laid me on a soft bed that smelled ancient.

“She doesn’t need that.”

“It’s for her own good,”
said a much deeper, unsympathetic voice.

“You know I don’t agree with this,”
said Amory.

“That’s fine.”

The third person took another step toward me, and a moment later, I felt the hard stab of a needle in my arm.

Something was missing.

There were no voices, but I could feel the presence of several other people in the room — their eyes watching me.

Unsteady light flickered behind my eyelids, and I forced myself to open them.
 

What looked like a rundown old motel room came slowly into focus: the fake wood paneling, the ugly brown bedspread that smelled like pine-scented cleaner, cheap perfume, and stale cigarette smoke. The concerned faces of Greyson, Amory, and Logan hovered above me.

Logan.
I was surprised I recognized her at once, but here she was. She didn’t look right, though. She was too pale, rail thin, and wrapped up in a blanket on the chair next to the bed, though the room wasn’t cold.

They were all watching me expectantly.

“Haven,” Amory breathed. He looked relieved but did not reach out to touch me. Up close, I could see the dark shadows under his eyes and the way his mouth strained to pull up around the edges into a smile.

Realizing what had happened, I sat up with a start, jerking my head around like a caged animal. I pulled myself awkwardly into a seated position. One of my hands was tied above my head, bound to the headboard with a piece of cloth.

“Hey, hey. It’s all right.” Amory’s hand jerked on the bedspread, as though he wanted to reach out to squeeze my arm but thought better of it.

“Where am I?”

“Somewhere safe,” said Greyson.

Something about seeing Greyson put me at ease. His caramel-colored skin and warm brown eyes were as familiar as my own, but I didn’t understand why. I knew him, but I didn’t.
 

“We removed your CID,” Greyson continued.

Amory shot him a deadly look.
 

Shoulder aching, I reached up with my free hand and lifted my hair to feel the tender skin on the back of my neck. There was a new bandage and, underneath, the bumps of a fresh incision sutured together. It hurt a little. Something inside me seemed to break, and my eyes filled with tears.

“That wasn’t your decision to make,” I said. My voice shook.

I felt broken and violated. Most of all, I felt confused.

“Haven, we got you out of that PMC brainwashing facility.” Logan’s voice was strained with worry. “You’re safe now. Amory risked his life . . .”

“That wasn’t your decision, either!” I yelled.

“What do you —”

“I was fine!”

“They were torturing you,” she said.

“They were
teaching
me.”

“Teaching you what?”

“Logan,” Amory said in a warning voice. “Stop. She’s been drugged.”

“No, I haven’t!”
 

I
had
been drugged, but I was in control.

Logan was undeterred. “Teaching you
what
?”

“I was finally making progress!”
 

Why was I screaming?
 

Now that I was out of there, I knew that these people had been my friends. So why did everything feel so wrong?

Burning hot resentment filled my veins, and the small room suddenly felt too crowded. I hated this room. It made me feel dirty and trapped and estranged.