“Admit I’m with them?” Agatha’s mouth quirked. “They’re withme.”
Brick let out a low whistle and hauled Pixel onto her hip. “Stars. She’s the boss.”
“She’s mean,” Pixel spat.
Hysteria buzzed in Nate’s ears. He waved his arm at the stacks of chem and the giant still. The machine wasn’t made for healing people. It was made for creating chem that made people hunger so hard they’d do anything for it. Kill for it. Die for it. “You got away from Gathos City, andthisis what you’re doing with your freedom? Pushing chem?”
“And flesh,” Reed said with a snarl.
“I’m cultivating power. There’s no such thing as freedom without it.” Agatha’s gaze bore into Nate’s, and everything else in the room went away. He saw his fears reflected there. The icy grip of machines, doors that were always locked—hunger on every face. “They can’t hurt us anymore if we have power. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Nate’s voice stuck in his throat.
Yes.
Her lips curled into a satisfied smile. “That’s the world I’m building for us. I run eighty percent of the chem trade now. I expect that to be ninety-five percent by the time Gathos City opens the gates. When they come crawling in, desperate for a taste of the GEMs they can’t afford, we’ll own them. They’ll be fiending for my chem within days. They’ll never control us again.”
Nate shrank back, dizzy. He bumped into Reed and shivered. Her vision sounded perfect—safety, security. Freedom for GEMs. But not like this. Not if it meant hurting people.
“I take it you don’t approve of our methods.” Agatha sounded disappointed, as if Nate was the one being unreasonable.
Reed’s breath hissed. “Yourmethods? You’re blowing things up! You’re starting riots.”
“Wedidn’t start riots. People did,” Agatha said with a light shrug. “We were simply trying to import better tech. Honestly, it was a bit of an overreaction for Gathos City to stop food deliveries over one little train wreck. But they did, and here we are, far more poised to succeed than I could have hoped.”
“Succeed?” Reed asked, voice thick with disgust.
“The trauma of starvation will linger even when bellies are full, and the Withers will need me more than ever. Chem makes people forget the chaos and tragedy of our world,” she said, as cold as Alden when he calculated the need of his clients. “It’s a gift. The train wreck helped me give that gift to more people.”
“The train. . .” Nate’s hands went cold. The heavy door to the distillation room. That’s where he’d seen it before. He’d opened the same kind of door once—on the burning train car. He could still smell the sour ruin of burning hair and charred flesh. “You blew up the railway so you could scavenge tech from the trains!”
“Gathos City puts the very finest technology into their transit system.” Agatha gestured to the door. “Let’s talk in the other room. I don’t want to disturb sweet Juniper.”
“She isn’t moving,” Pixel said. She pointed with an angry wave and glared up at Agatha. “You hurt her.”
Brick made a soft, hushing sound and carried Pixel out of the distillation room, back to where they’d started—where Nate’s sweat still shone on the polished table. The muscles at her arms twitched like she was fighting the instinct to run.
Nate wanted to run too.
The phantom sound of the train whistle haunted him. He’d been inside the cars. He’d seen it himself. Radiant lights. Polished metal. The guts of the train would have been the same—smooth and new and powerful. How could he have been so stupid?
They’d fooled everyone.
The Breakers hadn’t blown up the train to make a statement. They’d only wanted the tech on board—to use it to make more chem.
“You killed all those people,” Reed was saying as he pulled Nate toward Brick and Pixel. “You’re killing people now!”
“That’s how times change. The way things changed for our kind, what they made us become, what they wanted from us.” Agatha advanced on them, as tall as Reed and sure-footed. She filled the doorway, terrible and perfect. “I’ll make them beg for our chem. They’ll crawl for it. It’sourtime now.”
The plants had been so lush and green that Nate hadn’t noticed all the narrow cabinets lining the opposite wall. Each was sealed with a padlock.
“It’s all chem,” Nate said, sick to his stomach. What he’d done for Alden—that had been his choice. They’d hurt each other willingly, their choices locked in Alden’s back room. This was so much worse. Chem wasn’t a miracle, and GEMs weren’t magic, and in that moment, Nate hated himself fiercely. Hated Agatha. Hated Pixel. Hated his mother for making him, and his father for not stopping her.
He stood as tall as he could so that Agatha could see that he was unafraid. He wasn’t going to get any closer to the stillness than he’d already been. “I won’t help you hurt people.”
“That’s a shame.” Agatha pressed her palms against the table that stood between them. “We’ve already helped you. Remedy comes with a price. You of all people know that.”
Nate’s breath caught in this throat. He’d be dead now if it weren’t for her.
