Her gun falls, with a clatter, to the floor.
Unlike Paris, my mother isn’t stupid. She knows there’s no point trying to shoot me. Shecreatedme. She knows what I’m capable of. And she knows—I can see it in her eyes—she knows I’m about to kill her, and she knows there’s nothing she can do to stop it.
Still, she tries.
“Ella,” she says, her voice unsteady. “Everything we did—everything we’ve ever done—was to try to help you. We were trying to save the world. You have to understand.”
I take a step forward. “I do understand.”
“I just wanted to make the world a better place,” she says. “Don’t you want to make the world a better place?”
“Yes,” I say. “I do.”
She almost smiles. A small, broken breath escapes her body.
Relief.
I take two swift, running steps and punch her throughthe chest, ribs breaking under my knuckles. Her eyes widen and she chokes, staring at me in stunned, paralyzed silence. She coughs and blood spatters, hot and thick, across my face. I turn away, spitting her blood out of my mouth, and by the time I look back, she’s dead.
With one last tug, I rip her heart out of her body.
Evie falls to the floor with a heavy thud, her eyes cold and glassy. I’m still holding my mother’s heart, watching it die in my hands, when a familiar voice calls out to me.
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
Warner
I realize, upon quitting the crime scene, that I have no idea where I am. I stand in the middle of the hallway outside the room within which I just murdered my father, and try to figure out my next moves. I’m nearly naked. No socks. Completely barefoot. Far from ideal.
Still, I need to keep moving.
If only.
I don’t make it five feet before I feel the familiar pinch of a needle. I feel it—even as I try to fight it—I feel it as a foreign chemical enters my body. It’s only a matter of time before it pulls me under.
My vision blurs.
I try to beat it, try to remain standing, but my body is weak. After two weeks of near starvation, constant poisoning, and violent exhaustion, I’ve run out of reserves. The last dregs of my adrenaline have left me.
This is it.
I fall to the floor, and the memories consume me.
I gasp as I’m returned to consciousness, taking in great lungfuls of air as I sit up too fast, my head spinning.
There are wires taped to my temples, my limbs, theplastic ends pinching the soft hinges of my arms and legs, pulling at the skin on my bare chest. I rip them off, causing great distress to the monitors nearby. I yank the needle out of my arm and toss it to the floor, applying pressure to the wound for a few seconds before deciding to let it bleed. I get to my feet, spinning around to assess my surroundings, but still feel off-balance.
I can only guess at who must’ve shot me with a tranquilizer; even so, I feel no urgency to panic. Killing my father has instilled in me an extraordinary serenity. It’s a perverse, horrible thing to celebrate, but to murder my father was to vanquish my greatest fear. With him dead, anything seems possible.
I feel free.
Still, I need to focus on where I am, on what’s happening. I need to be forming a plan of attack, a plan of escape, a plan to rescue Ella. But my mind is being pulled in what feels like a hundred different directions.
The memories are growing more intense by the minute.
