Was Hal the Reaper?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
AFTER MY SHIFT ENDED, LO AND I SCANNED INTO THE LASTPod once the other Minors had cleared out. The Pod made its obnoxious announcement, and two different locations appeared on the screen. I would see the Starlings, and Lo would be tended to by someone else.
The Pod shot up, my stomach flipping at the quick ascent. Lo clutched her seat, her mouth clamped tightly shut like she might be sick.
“It’s going to be fine,” I said. “I told you everything I know, but regardless, he’s going to love you, Lo. He’d be a fool otherwise.”
She smiled tightly and didn’t respond, and a tense silence fell. I watched the setting sun. Even as it burned my eyes, I refused to look away. It was fleeting, I reminded myself.
As the sun kissed the horizon its final goodbye, we reached Lo’s destination. We hadn’t yet passed the clouds, and I wondered whether the proximity to the surface meant anything. I felt a slither of unease.
“Message me when it’s over?” I asked.
“Yeah, see you,” Lo muttered as the doors closed. The Pod continued upward, breaking through the clouds.
I should have tried harder to reassure her, but I didn’t know what to say anymore. We were powerless in this. Simply vessels. That was what Hal had said. Hal.
It was hard to believe it had only been a week since I had met him. Somehow, I needed to rearrange my life to what it was before Hal existed. But one week carried more weight than a decade. A foolish part of me fantasized that if I just got through the next forty-eight hours, I would arrive in my office to find Hal lounging in my chair. We would just go back and spend time together until . . . until I was active in the procreation phase, or until I carried an offspring of an Illum? Until Hal was caught and eliminated?
There was no scenario in which Hal and I could be together.
You were always going to be a goodbye.
It was good that it was done, I told myself. If one week caused this, what would have been the ramifications of three moons’ time? This way, no one got hurt.
My chest protested fiercely. I rested my forehead against the glass as the sparkling buildings blurred together. There was a gap between two buildings, and I saw it. The moon looked at me, but it was only a quarter of it. The full moon was still a week off.
His voice echoed in my head.I cut out that fucking chip. I’m whoever I want to be.
Alone in the Pod, the moon my only witness, I wondered what I would do if I had a choice, who I would be.
The Pod doors opened to the familiar antechamber beyond, and the wish was swallowed up by the unending darkness of night.
“Ms. Emeline.” Harold bowed his head before scanning my wrist.
“Harold,” I said as we walked down the hall.
“The Starlings will be with you shortly.”
“Both of them?”
He nodded gravely as the door snapped closed.
“Hello again, Fledgling,” Violet’s smooth voice called out. I turned and the air fled from my lungs, horror slamming into me. Violet had been hurt. Badly. Her left eye was puffy, tinged a deep purple, and a barely healed cut on her lip reopened as she smiled, blood beading.
“What happened to you?” I whispered as Rose grabbed my bag, disappearing without a hello.
“It looks worse than it feels,” Violet assured me.
“Who did this?” I demanded.
“The Illum,” Violet said as she opened the door that led to the bathing chamber. “Don’t worry. It would take more than this to keep me away.”
Gregory’s warning rang in my ears.You are the Mate of the Illum they send into the Elite to carry out their judgments and punishments. He is their Enforcer.
Had he enforced this? Who exactly was my Mate, and what did he have to do with what happened to the Starlings?
