It took them over an hour to get to Damon’s, a trip that should’ve taken them probably half as long. Matthew grew more and more agitated the longer it took, the more traffic and things beyond his ability to control interfered. She’d seen it before, but this time it somehow felt different. As they got off the highway and down onto the surface streets, Ky cleared her throat and studied him from the passenger seat of his car.
“What about this is getting you knotted up like this, Matthew? This—the way you’re being is a little extreme for you.”
“I’ve just got a feeling,” he murmured. “That’s all. Something about this feels too familiar and I don’t like it.”
“Familiar like a past case?”
“Familiar like the only case.”
The one that mattered the most. The one that was seemingly dead. Her heart seized for a moment in her chest and she had to swallow hard before she managed to speak. “But they’re gone. There hasn’t been anything, right? Not since—”
“No,” he said. “No, there hasn’t been anything. Not a whisper, not a peep, not even a damn shadow that I could point to and say ‘Yes, that has to be them.’ There’s been nothing—every damn sign has pointed to them being gone since that installation went up and nearly killed you. No sign of them looking. No sign of them acting.”
“But something about this…”
“I wish it didn’t,” he whispered as he eased the car around a corner into the alleyway alongside Damon’s building and back into the tiny parking lot behind it. “It would mean that I’ve missed something and that you’ve been in danger this whole damn time and I didn’t see it.”
Ever since she’d come to him and confessed everything, told him about what had happened to his brother, Matthew had been fierce in his protection of her, in his efforts to keep him safe, as if all of the love and protectiveness he felt for T.S. had been transferred to the girl who’d escaped where he fell in the attempt—trading a brother for a sister.
“That’s why you wanted me to come along,” Ky said, watching his expression as he parked the car. “To check your gut.”
“No one would know better than you.”
A shiver wracked her but she nodded. “You’re not wrong. I hope your gut is, though. I—I’ve finally started healing.”
“I know,” he said as he turned off the engine. “Me too. But the way Damon described it, it just—the wound’s bleeding again.”
Ky chewed hard on the inside of her lower lip. I hope he’s wrong. “I guess we’ll see.”
“Yeah.”
Matthew only hesitated a moment more before he got out of the car and she followed with only a slight hesitation of her own, heart heavy in her chest yet somehow beating too fast and too hard at the same time. They took the back stair, bypassing the clinic set up in the old furniture storefront that occupied the building’s street level. Damon lived two floors above, with another tenant living between him and the clinic. He was still renovating—five years later—the other two apartments on the fourth and fifth floor of the old building he’d managed to buy at a tax auction years ago, or so the story went. Ky wasn’t sure if it was the truth or not, but it was the way Matthew told it. He and Damon had been friends since their shared childhood growing up north of Detroit—that much she knew.
It only took a few seconds after Matthew knocked for Damon to crack the door open and wave them inside. Two people occupied the living room, a girl in her twenties wrapped in a blanket in an easy chair and a boy of maybe the same age stretched out on the couch, his back to the door.
Something tugged at the back of Ky’s brain, though she couldn’t sort out why. The girl was vaguely familiar, but there was more thing about the figure on the couch that stirred a memory she couldn’t quite grasp. There was something, though. Damon gestured toward the girl.
“This is my cousin Julia,” he said, more to Matthew than to Ky. “Not sure if you remember her, Matthew.”
“Vaguely.” He looked at Julia, offering a faint, brief smile. “It’s nice to see you again Julia.”
Julia nodded slightly, her gaze sliding slowly toward Ky with a furrowed brow. The scrutiny felt heavy, but innocent enough. After all, she wasn’t someone that she recognized from before the Institute or even while she’d been there—it had to be someone she’d met after, if at all. If Julia hadn’t been looking at her like that, Ky might have guessed that maybe she just had one of those faces.
But no. There was something there, she just couldn’t place it. Then Julia did for both of them.
“I know you,” Julia said, her voice quiet.
Ky chewed her lip, nodding slowly. “I know you, too, but I can’t quite remember where from.”
“We worked together.”
It hit, then. Oh. No wonder. She’d only worked at that summer camp for a few weeks before it had just been too much. The job had started in May and Ky had left by June, completely spent and nearly a wreck. It had taken the rest of the summer to recover. It had been in the wake of losing everyone she’d left behind at the Institute and while the distraction should have helped, all it had done was make the old pain worse. “That’s right. I—I’m sorry. That was a bad time for me.”
Julia smiled as she stood from the chair, dropping the blanket onto the seat. “We all have our moments.” She crossed to the couch and sank down onto the edge, leaning over the sleeping figure there. He startled slightly, starting to roll over, a bandage-swathed arm briefly visible. Bile rose in Ky’s throat as she threw a look toward Matthew and Damon.
Matthew was frowning—he must have seen the bandages, too. His gaze turned to Damon, a brow arching.
Damon just shook his head, a flash of worry and pain crossing through his expression. “They really need to talk to you, man.”
“Hopefully, you can help us,” Julia said. “Damon said you might be able to.”
By the time Ky turned toward the sound of her voice, Julia had started to help the young man on the couch start to sit up. His unruly dark red hair stuck up in a dozen different directions, a mop of soft spikes over a narrow but not unhandsome face that framed haunted, sunken green eyes. Ky’s heart crawled up into her throat and seized up as her gaze met his.
Ridley.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” they said in the same breath.
Ky shook herself, swallowed hard against the sudden pressure in her throat, sank down into the chair Julia had abandoned. Was she shaking? She wasn’t sure.
If Ridley’s alive, what does that mean? Are—are they all still alive? Were they still out there, still skating under the radar, hiding from us even as we were hiding my survival from them just in case? The explosion at the facility in Illinois was designed to kill her and she and Matthew had leaned into that—just in case they were wrong, just in case the Institute was still out there. But there had never been any sign of any of that.
Until now.
“I thought you all died,” Ky said. “All been killed.” Sacrificed like it might appease an angry god. Like it would stop us. But it did, didn’t it? They just—they fooled us. They bought themselves time. But to do what? Now what awfulness is coming? The same? Something different?
Why did I ever let myself begin to believe that it was over?
“No.” Ridley’s voice came as a hoarse whisper. He leaned into Julia, one of his hands splaying over her thigh even as she wrapped her arm around him. He was shaking as he stared back at Ky, as shocked to see her alive in front of him as she was to see him. “But I wish I was, now. Jesus pancake flipping zombie Christ on a pogo stick.” His chest convulsed and he squeezed his eyes shut, burying his face in his hands. “Hadrian. Forgive me. Oh god, Hadrian, forgive me.”
He’s talking like he’s—like he’s— She wanted to scream. She wanted to hurt something. She wanted to fly into a thousand pieces that would never be mended. “Ridley?”
Matthew put his hands on her shoulders. The shaking was bad—her shaking was bad—and she felt sick to her stomach, bile slicking her throat and souring the back of her tongue. Please. He can’t be dead. He can’t be dead. Please don’t tell me he’s dead, Ridley. Please tell me I haven’t lost him. The note of desperation, of desperate, needful hope was in her voice as she leaned forward toward Ridley. “Ridley, is he alive?”
Ridley nodded, finally looking at her again even as Julia’s arm tightened around his shoulders. “Four months ago, at least, when they cut me loose.”
There were so many questions, each flooding in louder than the other. One came out. “They let you go?” They don’t just let people go. No one leaves unless they’re being sent somewhere else, to another facility. Something.
“Not really,” he winced, then rushed on. “Kind of. I graduated. They sent me to someone to watch me. To wait. They were finished with me until the end, until they were ready to use me.”
Her stomach convulsed and for a second, she squeezed her eyes shut. The end. Then nothing’s changed. Then that’s still—
Her hands curled into fists on her knees, nails digging into her palms. The pain was enough to bring her back to herself, to the moment, and the feel of Matthew’s hands tightening again around her shoulders was enough to ground her, at least for now.
Ridley was still talking. “That’s how I got out of there. Then Julia got me away.” He paused, voice getting quiet for a few seconds. “They told us you were dead.”
“They didn’t want any of you to have hope,” Ky said. “Damn it all.” They needed to find a way to stop me from coming after them again—as long as I could feel them, as long as I believed they were out there, I’d never stop trying to find them. The Institute must’ve known. But how—if he’s alive, how—
They told them you were dead. They didn’t believe the first time, but the second? How could anyone have believed you’d live through that?
She sure as hell hadn’t believed any of them had survived it, especially after not being able to feel him anymore. When she hadn’t been able to feel the connection between her and Hadrian anymore and that went on for months, she’d had to accept that they were gone. There had been no evidence to the contrary.
Until now.
“I’m sorry, Ky,” Ridley said. His trembling had begun to ease and he leaned into Julia’s embrace as if she was a grounding force—probably was, truth be known. The pain in his eyes mirrored the pain Ky knew was in hers. “I’m so sorry.”
Their stories were so similar, hers and his. He’d been taken by the Institute the same way she had, only a few months after losing his parents. Their stories were the same as dozens of others in the hands of the Institute. It was a pattern one that no one ever seemed to identify, to unravel. For a long time, she’d wondered how and why. It wasn’t until she’d escaped that she’d really started to understand how it could be possible, how awful things could happen every day and people just looked away. Sometimes, it was just too much, too big, too hard to try to tackle. She didn’t agree, but she’d started to understand how it could happen.
Some horrors were just too much to fully comprehend.
The pain in his voice unknotted something inside of her. “Oh, Ridley,” she sighed. “No. Don’t be sorry. Please, don’t be sorry.” There wasn’t anything you could do. Nothing any of us could have done other than—other than things they made sure we couldn’t do. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, bit down. “What happened to your arm?”
Rage flashed through his eyes. “They microchipped me, Ky.” Anger crept into his voice and in a second, it was like hearing him as he’d been when they were young teenagers, full of rage and resentment for the people that were routinely abusing them, trying to mold them to their own ends. His burning outrage had been something that they’d been in a constant war with, trying to keep it from bubbling over so he wouldn’t get hurt and so their collective planning wouldn’t end up under a microscope. “Like a fucking animal. They microchipped me so they could find me if I ran. I dug it out, threw it out the car window.”
They tracked him. Ky’s hands curled into fists against her knees again. Like an animal—like a lost dog. Someone they couldn’t trust but definitely had use for. They needed to find him in case they needed him—when they decided they needed him. Their goal hasn’t changed. They still mean for it to happen—they’re going to make it happen and use people like us to protect themselves from what comes next.
Whatever they believe comes next.
They can’t be far. Where are they? They have to be close, right? Ky’s voice came as a breath. “Where?”
Julia started to answer, but Ridley cut her off, answering before she could. “The only installation I know about is outside of Andover Commonwealth. He might still be there. I don’t know.”
Of course Ridley had understood that she wasn’t asking where he’d thrown the microchip out the window—he was probably the only person in the room that did. No, she’d wanted to know where they could find the Institute, wherever they’d set up shop, wherever he’d been held before they handed him off to someone else. It would never be far, not if they’d microchipped him. Moving him too far away, sending him too far away would have been too big of a risk.
“I need a map,” Ky said.
Matthew startled, finding his voice. “You can’t be serious.” His eyes were wide as he stared down at her, a storm of emotions flashing through them like lightning spreading through a summer sky.
“I thought he was dead Matthew! Get me a damn map. You want to take them down as much as I do.”
We’ve wasted so much time. We have to find them. We have to stop them.
And if any of our friends are still alive, we have to get them out of there. I can’t just stand back anymore. I have to do something.
Come hell or high water, they would.
Matthew stared at her for a few seconds more.
Then he went and got the map.
