The Aftermath Read online

  “Do you really think you can hurt me? Do you really think th—”

  I swing my head up with all my might and bash my forehead into his nose. Blood spurts in my face, and he grabs his, howling. Survival instincts from three years of getting chased and beaten kick in. Bucking my hips wildly, I pull down on one of his shoulders and push up on the other, thrashing my forehead at his face all the while.

  He falls off me, bloody and shouting obscenities. I clamber to my feet. He tries to do the same, but I knee him in the nose, knocking him unconscious. I grab my knife from the ground and a handful of zip ties from the dead mod’s pocket. I quickly restrain the man’s wrists and ankles. I’m tightening the last plastic tie just as he comes to.

  “We’ll just keep tracking you down!” he slurs as I stand up and back away from him. Narrowing my eyes, I shove the remaining zip ties in my back pocket and take off in the direction of Mia’s screams. “We’ll just keep tracking your chip, Virtue!”

  He continues to yell at me, but I don’t look back. I don’t need to because I already have a sinking feeling I’ll see his face again at my execution. My face has started to swell. It feels as if I’m traveling through a dark tunnel as I race toward the others, bumping into stacks of stones every few steps. Finally I emerge from the maze and see the rusted metal building.

  Mia is pinned to the side of it by a female moderator who dwarfs her tiny body. Two large men are cuffing Declan and Wesley. Declan’s dark gray eyes settle on me and his shoulders sag a little, like he’s relieved. He casts a quick glance a few feet away from me, where his bag lies on the ground, the contents spilling out on the asphalt. I rush to it and pick up the electroshock gun. I’ve yet to use it, but I remember his instructions.

  Release safety.

  Wait for the light.

  Pull the trigger.

  And never touch the amp setting.

  I crank the amps to as high as it will go, point it at the girl who’s choking Mia and wait for the target light to blink. Then I pull the trigger. She lands facedown in a pile of gravel. I hold my breath as the breeze knocks the odor of burned skin into my face.

  Mia staggers toward me, sobbing, but I whirl around and aim the gun at the other two moderators. “Step back with your hands up,” I growl. “Or I’ll send enough electricity through you to kill five people.”

  My heart is the only sound I hear as I wait for someone—anyone—to speak. The moderator holding Wesley down glances at me and says something. Then he reaches into his pocket. I pull the trigger once, twice, before he has a chance to remove his hand. He falls. The other man backs away from Declan, his hands stretched high above his head in surrender.

  “Shoot him.” Declan’s voice thunders over the sound of my heartbeat. Slowly, other noises come back to me—my own breathing, Mia’s quiet sobs, the blond mod shouting horrible threats from where I left him tied up in the stone labyrinth.

  I stare between Declan and the moderator. They’re both bloodied and ragged, breathing heavily.

  “Claudia...”

  I shake my head. “No. We’re leaving. Right now.” Keeping the electroshock gun focused on the moderator, I pull the rest of the zip ties from my pocket and drop them into Mia’s hand. I jerk my head at Wesley. “Hurry up and cuff him.” I want to get out of this place before LanCorp sends another group after us. I’m not sure how many others are here, or how they arrived in the first place, but I don’t want to stick around to find out.

  Declan gathers his belongings, then comes to examine my face. When he reaches out to touch my forehead, I flinch. I leave him to make sure the cuffs are secure. As I tighten the moderator’s restraints, I catch Declan’s eyes. He looks confused. Hurt.

  I can’t let him touch me, because I know now that no matter what I want, it might be impossible for me to stay with him.

  * * *

  We travel through the woods, putting a mile of distance between the moderators and ourselves before we stop to rest. Wesley says it will take LanCorp longer to find us this way because they won’t expect us to stop so soon. I don’t have the heart to tell him that, if the blond mod is to be believed, there’s a chance LanCorp already knows exactly where we are because of my chip. So I stay silent, and I hope that the moderator was lying. As my group huddles beneath a towering pine to talk about our next move, I find myself moving away to protect them. From the mods. From Olivia.

  And most of all from myself.

  There’s a vicious rattling deep within my head. I imagine it’s like someone shaking a single screw around in a thin glass bottle. Still, I grit my teeth and carry on until I no longer hear Declan and Wesley yelling at each other and I can see a creek bed in the distance. I struggle to ignore the pain and the fuzzy thoughts that race through my brain, but finally I can’t help but give in.

  And the clarity of this particular thought—the images and voices—is strong enough to bring me to my knees.

  “I hate this, Livvie. When’s it my turn to play?” I ask. My voice is a whispery lisp. Sweet and childlike because that’s what I am. A child.

  Hopeful.

  Olivia’s turned away from me, with her head bent. Bright red ribbons pull half her dark hair from her face. She drags a small digital tablet from her blue dress and places it beside her. “Beat me at chess first.”

  “You’ll win. You always do.”

  “Then you’ll never play the game, will you?”

  Leaning against a tree, I vomit. Is this a memory? Or are the moderators simply screwing with my head—forcing thoughts into my brain just to slow me down? I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and stand upright. As I wobble down to the creek, I pray it won’t happen again.

  Then someone touches my shoulder and I spin around, lifting my fists.

  Declan stares down at me. “You saved our asses back there, Virtue.”

  But it was instinct. An ironic gift from my gamer. Even though Olivia has been controlling my movements, my brain retained every survival technique, every strategy.

  “It was nothing.” I try to relax, but it only makes the muscles in my shoulders tighten even more. Declan shouldn’t be around me. Nobody should. He raises his eyebrow when I take a step backward, drawing my attention to an open cut that runs across his eyelid. “God, you’re hurt,” I whisper.

  “It’s nothing.” But he winces. And I know that if we remain together, the next time he won’t be so lucky. “We’ll have to start moving again if—”

  “The moderators found us because of me, didn’t they?”

  Silence. And that tells me everything I want to know. His nostrils flare as he drops his gray eyes to the forest floor to stare at a pile of broken leaves. I stand perfectly still, wringing my hands together.

  It takes a lot of effort not to use them to attack him.

  “How long were you going to wait before telling me that LanCorp was going to use my chip to track us down?” I ask. “Were you going to wait until Wesley or Mia got hurt or even killed? Or were you going to tell me as the mods dragged me away?”

  “It doesn’t matter what they can do because I plan to take down anyone who tries to hurt you.”

  A heavy weight settles on my chest. All hope that the blond man was lying about the mods using me to track us down disappears along with the little I have left of making it out of this game without being captured.

  “You lied about not lying,” I say. “But then, what’s new?”

  “Guess that makes two of us with trust issues.”

  I draw in a breath so deep it burns my nose. Digging my fingernails into my palms, I walk closer to him until he has no other choice but to face me, eye to eye. “Declan, I need to know if all that talk about being unable to disconnect my link to Olivia was a bunch of bullshit, too.” I never thought I’d pray for something to be a lie, but I want to hear that I’m fixable. I
want to be able to stay with these people.

  “What do you—”

  Before I can stop myself, I shove my hands against his chest, sending him stumbling backward a few steps. “Answer me! No more lies. No deflecting the question. Just give it to me straight, Declan. You owe me that,” I shout.

  Grabbing his chest, he lets out a hoarse noise that almost sounds like a laugh. Almost. “The entitlement. I swear you’re just like—” But then he stops himself. Squeezes his eyes shut as he pulls in a harsh breath. “No, it wasn’t bullshit. I’ve known from the day I met you that your link wasn’t the same. That the connection between you and your gamer is something different.”

  I think of the way he rubbed the blue scanner across the crown of my head. The way he kept drawing his eyebrows together. My chest aches. “Then you must know why it’s different.”

  “I didn’t come up with the games, Claudia,” he growls. “So, no, I have no explanation for why you’re special, Virtue.”

  Something special that will get me captured—that will get everyone else killed. The moderators can easily track me because I’m still linked to Olivia. The longer I stay with Declan and Wesley and Mia, the more moderators and guards will come after us. My head will be the death of us all if I don’t go.

  “I’m going off on my own, Declan. And you’re not going to follow me.”

  He cups my face in his hands, his gray eyes burning into mine. “Don’t be stupid, Virtue. You need me with you if only to find your—”

  But the longer we stay here arguing, the more likely it is that we’ll be found. And I won’t risk letting him or the others get captured. “I don’t think you understand, Declan. I don’t need you. I never have.” Lowering my gaze so I no longer have to look him in the eyes, I clear my throat and then whisper, “In fact, I want nothing more to do with you now that I know the way out of here.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Declan doesn’t try to talk me out of leaving. It wouldn’t work even if he tried, but it physically hurts when he turns his back on me and stalks away, leaving me with nothing. No goodbye. No more words of anger. Absolutely nothing.

  It’s better this way, I tell myself.

  But if I’m so much better off, why does the knife in my chest twist deeper?

  I say goodbye to Mia first. She cries. I pinch my fingers into the flesh on my thighs so I won’t do the same. “I don’t want you to go,” she says.

  “I don’t want you to die.”

  She lunges at me, throwing her arms around my upper body and squeezing. God, I don’t want to let her go. She smells dusty, like gravel, but it’s the best scent I’ve ever inhaled. I want more time with her.

  I draw back from her and take her face between my hands. “Listen to me, I wasn’t honest with you. You’ve been in this game at least three years, and I’m so very sorry I kept that from you.” She tries to speak, but I shake my head. “If I can get out, I’ll find you. We’ll find Daniel together.” If there’s anything left to find, I add silently, and I know she’s thinking the same thing. The expression on her face leaves no doubt. She nods, and I hug her again.

  Wesley walks with me for a quarter mile in the opposite direction, trying his best to get me to reconsider. “What the hell do you plan on doing?” he demands. “If they find you...”

  “There’s no if. The question is when they’ll pick me up.”

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  I don’t want to go, either. But I smile up at him. His light gray eyes are narrowed. “Don’t look at me like that,” I say. “I’ll just bring you guys down. You have a better chance of reaching the border while the mods are playing hide-and-seek with me.”

  “Claudia...”

  “Which means you should go. Now. Before they show up. Why risk yourself?”

  Tentatively, Wesley touches my ear and frowns. “Because I feel like I owe it to you.”

  He doesn’t. His player owes me, but not him. I launch myself at him and squeeze my arms around him. “Go. Please?”

  He hugs me back, pressing his cheek hard against the top of my head. Right on top of my Cerebrum Chip. I open my mouth to give him a message for Declan, but then I bite my lip and shake my head. “You never told me what you plan on doing when you get out.”

  His eyes are suddenly hard. “I’m going after Thomas Lancaster.”

  I leave Wesley, the boy who attacked me three years ago and now is my friend, standing in the middle of the road, dragging his hands through his short hair. I don’t look back until I’ve walked a good ten minutes and the only thing behind me is a blurry empty road. Only then do I stop. I drink a bottle of water and shift through the contents of my bag. Three more bottles. Two CDS packets. And Declan’s Triple C.

  If I am going off on my own, I’m going to do things my way. I’m going to go back to that bar and save the people who I thought I cared about—since everyone else I care for is gone.

  * * *

  I am so thirsty I can no longer swallow.

  Five hours ago, I stopped keeping track of how many miles I’ve walked. All I know is there’s a lump in my throat, my muscles ache and every noise makes me twitch and look over my shoulder. I walk a little longer, humming a song that’s both familiar and strange. I’m going crazy. By the time I’m deleted, I won’t even feel a thing because I’ll be so out of it.

  The warehouse we stopped in right after deactivating Mia and Wesley comes into view. I hobble to it, hoping nobody has taken up shelter here since then.

  It’s empty.

  I return to the little room we holed up in for half an hour. I huddle in the corner and rest my head against the wall. Crumbled CDS wrappers litter the cracked concrete floor, and I close my eyes tightly so I don’t have to think of my friends. It doesn’t help. I remember how the four of us sat around eating, talking. Sharp pangs grip my chest. The first normal conversation I can remember, and most of it was probably a lie. Still, I miss Wesley and Mia.

  I take tiny sips of water through a split lip, struggling to stay awake, and hate myself for missing Declan, too. I leave the warehouse after fifteen minutes. I can’t afford to stay any longer than that. Olivia hasn’t tried to get into my head for hours. Another person might consider themselves lucky, but not me. I’m waiting for everything to come falling down around me. And I’m too afraid to risk going into her head to try to find out when that will happen. LanCorp might be trying to put me in Rehabilitation again. If I open myself up to Olivia and they succeed, Declan’s not nearby to shake me out of my gamer’s tight grip.

  “This will all be over soon,” I whisper as I break through the forest. I stare out at the asphalt in front of me, stretching miles to the west.

  I walk. Farther away from the border. Away from Wesley and Mia. Away from Declan. Back into the poisonous cage.

  * * *

  The lights are on inside the bar. I didn’t even realize the place had working electricity; it makes me pause. I crouch down in the alley across the street. There’s a pile of clothes to my left that smells like urine, and I pull the neck of my shirt over the lower portion of my face.

  What if my clan is no longer here? Olivia and The Aftermath’s staff has known about my ability for a couple of days now, so that means my old friends—the characters—might know, too. Maybe they moved to avoid a confrontation. But then I shake that thought from my head. Olivia is proud. She’d never tell anyone that I escaped, especially her gamer friends. She cares too much about her reputation.

  I sit unmoving, like a character whose gamer has signed off, as the sun sets. Then I see something move on the second floor. My heart catapults into my throat as Jeremy peeks out a section of unpainted window. They are still here.

  I wait, counting the seconds to make sure nobody is around.

  I’ll go into the bar and deactivate their chips
one by one. If I’m lucky, the majority of the other gamers will log off and I won’t have to put up with a struggle.

  And while I’m waiting for the characters to wake up, for their minds to leave Rehabilitation behind, I’ll get into Olivia’s head. Bait her. Maybe I’ll take control of her again. That’ll give my clan a fighting chance of escape while she sends the moderators or whoever after me. She may plan to delete me, but I already know it won’t be right away. If that was the case, my life would have ended more than a day ago, when the moderators came after us at the rock yard—they were told to capture, not kill. She must want something else from me first.

  I take out my gun and cock it. This has to be the dumbest plan I’ve ever come up with, more irresponsible than any raid I’ve ever been on. But I know that if I die after all this, I won’t feel as guilty. Freeing the others won’t make up for the people I killed while under Olivia’s control, but it’s better than escaping the game and leaving them behind to rot.

  I dash across the street and into the alley. One of the windows is unlocked. I shimmy through it, groaning when I drop to the floor and pain shoots through my legs and hips.

  It’s dark inside, and I creep across the hardwood floor, feeling around with my free hand for anything I might bump into. I reach the stairs. I climb them slowly. When I reach the top, I turn in the direction of The Save. My body is shaking as I pull the door open and step inside.

  I slip on something wet and sticky. The air whooshes out of me as I hit the floor, and it takes me a minute to gather my bearings enough to climb up on my hands and knees to see what I stepped on.

  Blood.

  My heart jumps into my throat—falls out of my chest—and I strangle a scream. It’s still warm. When I cover my mouth quickly to hold back vomit, I can smell it and something else.

  Charred flesh.

  I scramble backward—away from the puddle. Away from death. My back bangs into the bed. A soft arm dangles into my face, smacking me in the forehead. A dead body.

  No. No. No.

  I stumble to my feet and look down at the person lying on the bed. Short dark hair, a singed forehead and terrified brown eyes. Jeremy. I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment to stop the tears burning the corners. Then I open them, scanning the room to see if April and Ethan are here—if their bodies are here.