For a second, I thought about running back into that room full of reporters and telling them everything I knew. But where was my proof? And what would Hoyt, his private army, and the police do to my family once I did spill everything?
Might not have been thinking clearly. Might not have been thinking at all.
But I was kinda done saving the world. I figured I’d go save my sister Wren for once. Sharlotte and the folks in Alcove B could handle the battle.
Hundreds of civilians mobbed the exits, lots of women in gray New Morality dresses, scared out of their wits. War had come to American soil, and I’d brought it with me like seeds in my pocket.
Run, skanks, I thought. Run while you can.
I dashed to the elevators and struck the up button. It dinged open and a dozen frightened people fell out. They fled.
I clambered inside, sweating and breathing hard. I rammed the twenty-sixth-floor button until my thumb ached. My stomach dropped in the ascent. Was Wren still sane or had she gone coco? That was a term Alice used to describe the eventual psychotic breakdown caused by the Gulo Gamma. Once a Gamma went coco, you’d have to put them down before they slaughtered everyone around them.
What was my plan? I was generally a girl with a plan, but all I could think to do was get a gun and start shooting every ARK soldier I could find, and if some policewoman got in my way, I’d gun her down too.
We were at war, the Weller family against everyone, and I was done with “thou shall not kill” commandments and any other crapperjack that stood in the way of me protecting my own.
The elevator doors binged open. I stepped out just in time to see a Regio hurtling through the air, thrown from a hotel room. She slid down onto the carpet in a wet stain of red.
Her rifle fell from nerveless fingers. I picked it up. It was the first time I’d ever held a Zeus 2 electric carbine, though I’d studied them online and watched about a million YouTubes showing their power.
The Eterna battery was full-up, and I jacked the power wattage to max, which would leave a pillar of steel nothing but smoking dust.
A bellowing shriek echoed through the room, through the hall, prolly through the entire city. Sounded like a Godzilla monster come to life. That would be my sister. She’d been dosed with the Gulo Delta, and while Micaiah thought the serum might be stable, it wasn’t. Took her months to change but change she did.
Another soldier was flung out of the room. Then another. Wren was in there, cleaning house and none too gently. Another woman sped out, face shining with sweat and as pale as a toad.
She wasn’t ARK, this one, but a Kansas trooper. She saw me, and I pointed my gun at her. She held up her hands.
For a half-second, I thought about taking my hurt and rage out on her, smoke her like cigarette. Instead, I motioned to the exit. “You best be going. And don’t come back if you know what’s good for you.”
“She’s not human. She’s not...”
“Nope,” I said. “Because of Tibbs Hoyt and the ARK. You tell everyone you know that Tibbs is making monsters. And he has the cure for the Sterility Epidemic.”
So much for keeping my mouth shut. Not sure she heard me, but the trooper tripped away. I re-thought the settings on my Zeus 2—set it to above stun but below incinerate. Might have to use it on Wren if she’d made the trip from sane to crazy, which was a short trip for my sister even on the best of days.
The hallway fell silent for a minute. All the rooms were empty, or folks would’ve been peeking out, eyes wide and wondering what in the hell was going on. And what could be making the sounds bellowing out of room 2634?
I stepped over corpses to get to the doorway.
Wren was inside, but not the Wren I knew. That Wren was gone. I’d always thought Wren had been a monster growing up; she would laugh at me and tease me and punch me. But now, she seemed to have mutated into a real-life demon.
And I had to go in and talk to her.
(ii)
Mama taught us to do the worst chore first.
I never liked dusting, so when it was time to clean the house, I’d do it first and complain all the while. But you know what? When I was done, I was done, and I could go outside and hit chores I loved. I always liked picking eggs and slopping pigs, but only after the dusting inside was done.
Wren was the chore inside that hotel room. I forced myself to walk inside.
A cracked VSD monitor, blue screen flickering, lay on the floor. A soldier’s body was sprawled in a pool of dark blood, her body crumpled like aluminum foil. The two queen beds stood upended. One covered the window, leaving darkness. The other had been ripped apart, springs showing.
“Wren?” I whispered.
Nothing answered me. The blue of the flickering screen created more shadows than light. My sister had smashed another soldier into meat. Her blood stained the bedspreads and sheets. A recliner chair was busted into kindling.
“It’s me. Cavatica. I know you’re having trouble...”
Sirens screamed below. A blast of cold air hit me. Something moved near the mattress covering the window. I didn’t make a sound. Jumped. Didn’t yelp.
“Wren. Is that you?”
The something fluttered in a breeze—curtains, half-shredded and hanging from the bent curtain rods. Going over, I found the window busted out and glass on the floor.
I was alone in the room. Wren had left through the window. I wrenched the mattress back from the wall, and it fell with a loud clang onto its bed frame. She’d secured a sheet rope and had gone out into the cold.
Screams reached up to me from a
