Unleashed (6 page)

There's no fight left in her eyes. She has surrendered to this fate.

She is secured to a wooden post in the center of the pyre. Once the fire is lit, it spreads quickly. The brush and wood below her catch and her clothes soon follow.

Then I hear her scream. It's the most atrocious sound ever to pierce my sensitive ears. Just listening to her, I feel like my own skin is alight, burning, blazing, charring. And she doesn't stop. The screams echo across the countryside, traveling through the city like a hawk soaring across the sky. It reverberates in my bones. I fear my ears are bleeding.

My legs itch with the temptation to run. To go to her. To stop the screaming.

Wait,
I remind myself.
Remember Raze's orders.

They must believe she's dead. It has to be recorded in the historical records. They can't think she escaped. That means I can't move until the flames and smoke have fully concealed her.

Then I will go to her. Then I will have to touch her once more. I will have to feel the heat of her skin. The fire that will pass between us. The bewilderment that will surely follow.

Dr. Alixter is counting on me. I was built to be stronger than her. Surely, I can resist whatever spell she manages to put on everyone she touches.

I must.

My mission is simple: return to the year 1609, save the girl, and follow her memories straight to Dr. Maxxer.

“Time Delayed Recalls,” Director Raze explained as he briefed me on the assignment yesterday. “We found them in the brain scan you acquired. We have reason to believe Dr. Maxxer put them there.”

“What are they?” I asked.

“Essentially they're encoded memory files implanted in the brain and triggered to activate when a certain criteria or stimulus is introduced. Sera has three, the first of which has already been triggered. Together, we believe, they'll create a map that will lead her straight to Dr. Maxxer and the Repressor that will save Dr. Alixter's life.”

I gaze across the river. I can still see her anguished face peering out above the roaring blaze.

Not yet.

I hear a sudden commotion. A man in a gold-and-green-trimmed doublet and velvet cloak stands next to her burning body and shouts, “This is what happens when you welcome the devil into your soul!”

I see the smoke billowing, and determination on her face. She is fighting now. Finally fighting.

Hold on,
I speak silently to her.
I will not let you die.

“And this!” the man bellows. He draws a long silver chain from his pocket. “The symbol of her pact with Satan!” I recognize the object immediately. It's the girl's locket. The details of my mission come back to me in an instant.

She cannot transesse without the locket.

I was so distracted by her screams and the commotion of the fire, I nearly forgot. I would have leaped into that fire to save her and she wouldn't have moved an inch.

Narrowing my eyes, I watch the man swing the locket chain on his finger.

I have to get that necklace before he destroys it. But transessing in front of the crowd could have monstrous consequences.

The girl lets out another ferocious cry of agony.

It's a risk I must take.

I close my eyes and concentrate once again. This time, I focus on the small platform just in front of the pyre, where the cloaked man is standing. If I move fast enough, he won't even know what happened. I'll be in and out with the locket before he can register the theft.

“This will accompany the witch back to hell!” he says, and my eyes snap open just in time to see the necklace flung into the fire. I feel my fists clench at my sides. That man! I want to fly across this river and strangle him.

What if the locket is damaged in the fire? What if she can no longer transesse? Every memory in her brain will be destroyed right along with her, Dr. Maxxer will never be found, and Dr. Alixter will die.

As the man continues to address the raucous crowd, I notice a shift in Sera's expression. There is still determination written on her face but she is no longer fighting the pain. She is fighting for something else. There's a purpose in her expression.

I zero in on the fire, trying to peer through the dense smoke.

There
.

The wind shifts in my favor and I manage to see her leg move, pushing against the ropes that bind her to the pyre.

She's trying to reach the locket.

“Yes,” I say quietly. “You can do it.”

Her body starts to wilt and I realize she's losing consciousness. I panic, silently willing her to stay alert.
Stay awake. Keep fighting.

But she's losing the battle. The smoke is too strong. Her mind is shutting down. Giving up.

Did she get the locket? Did she open it?

I can wait no longer. I have to move. I can't come back here to try again—it's not possible to transesse to the same moment in time twice—this is my one and only chance to save her life … and Dr. Alixter's.

As I watch her body give way, sagging against the rope restraints, falling into darkness, I close my eyes and will myself across the river. Into the heart of the blazing pyre. Into the depth of the suffocating smoke. Reaching for her. Finding her.

Touching her at last.

12: Caretaker

Two days.

That's how long I keep her unconscious. Deactivated by the Modifier while her body heals. Her wounds are considerable. Her legs nearly burned away. Only bone and charred shreds of flesh and muscle remain.

I spend the hours tending to her burns. I apply salve and ointment and wrap her legs in bandages. Her natural healing abilities do the rest.

When I'm not treating her, I keep as much distance between us as possible. When I'm changing her bandages, I do so with a delicate hand to minimize our skin to skin contact.

The jolt I felt when I pulled her from the fire and brought her here was so powerful it nearly knocked me unconscious right alongside her. I don't know if it was the heat from the pyre that magnified the sensation, the adrenaline running through me, or something else entirely, but it was a hundred times worse than the feeling I remember from the prison cell. Almost as though every nerve ending in my body remembered how to respond to her and immediately exploded at the feel of her burning skin.

Of all the ways I feared failing Dr. Alixter, coming undone by a simple touch from a broken girl was not one of them.

When I wake on the third day and check under her bandages, I am satisfied to see her legs have completely healed. The muscles have grown back and the fresh skin is pink and smooth.

Today is February 11, 2032. The first Time Delayed Recall implanted in her brain directed us here. To New York City.

I managed to find an abandoned apartment on the Upper East Side with sparse furnishings left behind by the previous owners.

I check her IV. Even though she still has Diotech's nanosensors floating in her blood, there is no technology available in 2032 to read their signal so I have to rely on outdated equipment, which I easily pilfered by transessing in and out of a nearby medical supplies warehouse. I used this same method for acquiring period-appropriate clothing for myself.

Director Raze thought it best that I bring as little futuristic technology with me as possible. The only items I have from Diotech are the Modifier (to keep her unconscious and in case she tries to fight me), the nanoscanners still attached to my fingertips, and the cube drive in my pocket so that I can continue to scan and store her memories.

Director Raze wants continual reports of my progress. And he wants to be able to analyze the remaining two Time Delayed Recalls once they've been triggered.

Her IV bag is almost empty. There'll be no need to refill it this time. Today I will allow her to wake up.

Today my true challenge starts.

It's one thing to deal with an unconscious enemy. It's quite another to deal with a conscious one.

I touch the locket that hangs around my neck.
Her
locket. I remind myself that as long as
I
am wearing it,
I
hold the power.

When I first brought her here, she had it clutched between her gnarled, charred toes. Somehow in the fire, she'd managed to grasp it and open the clasp to activate her DZ227 gene. The chain was broken beyond repair, but I was able to steal a nearly identical one from a nearby jewelry shop after the store had closed.

I sit by her bed and wait for her to stir. It shouldn't be long before her last Modifier dose wears off and she's awake.

Up until this moment, I've tried not to look at her for too long. Just as I've tried not to touch her. But now, I force myself to stare at her face. If I'm going to succeed in this mission, I must confront my fears head-on. I must desensitize myself to whatever it is that seems to take control of me in her presence. I must approach this as any scientist on the Diotech compound would: analyze the situation, test the boundaries, and develop a strategy.

My gaze sweeps across her soft, exquisite features, taking in her high, sculpted cheekbones, the smoothness of her bronzed skin, the curve of her golden lashes, the shape of her delicate pink lips. Then it starts. I feel it in my toes first. A tingling of sorts. It travels swiftly up my legs, as though it's flowing through my veins. The longer I stare at her, the faster it moves.

I reach for her, fingers outstretched toward her cheeks. My hand is trembling, repelled by her and pulled in to her at the same time. When my fingertips finally graze her soft skin, my whole hand explodes. Like I've dipped it into the mouth of a volcano.

I recoil in a blur of movement, stopping the fire from spreading up my arm.

What is that?

Why am I reacting this way
?

Is she really so powerful that she can affect me even when she's unconscious?

I've watched every memory they've taken from her. I've seen the world of the Diotech compound—and the boy she left it with—through her eyes, and I still don't understand it. I can't comprehend her motivations. Nor her uncanny ability to affect me.

Where does that power come from? Is it a rare by-product of her defect? Or is it something else? Something I can't even fathom?

Unfortunately, I'm running out of time to answer such questions because a flicker of movement catches the corner of my eye. I pull my gaze away from her face and stare at her hand, resting palm-up by her side. Her pinkie finger flinches ever so slightly.

The Modifier is wearing off. She is waking up.

I rise to my feet and start for the kitchen. The solution in her IV was only enough to keep her nourished while she was deactivated. She'll be hungry when she wakes.

As I leave, I take one more look at her sleeping form. Her genetic implant—the thin black line that runs across the inside of her left wrist—is visible on her arm. It's identical to mine, but just like the microscopic nanosensors swimming in her blood, the implant won't work here. The satellites Diotech uses to track the implants won't be launched into space until the next century. It's the reason it took them so long to find her in the first place.

But now, I am here.

I am her guardian.

I am her tracker.

I am her keeper.

But just until Dr. Maxxer can be found, the Repressor can be obtained, and I can return Sera safely to the Diotech compound.

Then they will be able to fix her. Then they will do whatever is necessary to make her whole again. To make her more like me.

The only problem is, I'm not sure what that means anymore.

They told me I was perfect. They told me I was superior. They promised whatever defects they found in her were fixed in me.

But as I glance back at her face one last time, as I feel the mysterious effect she has on me, I know I have to start accepting the truth.

I might be broken, too.

Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers