won’t succeed where we have failed and locate HS-Gen16-A, then you’re not just naïve. You’re a fool.
One of them is a threat. Together, and armed with the truth …
You have consistently underestimated this cluster, despite warnings from myself and Dr. Baudin. We will not be held responsible for the results of your negligence.
Dr. Keller, December 2082
* * *
TWENTY-FOUR
Nina ran.
The trees formed a canopy too thick for the moonlight to penetrate. She couldn’t see through the darkness. Thorns raked at her bare feet and arms, and branches whipped stinging lines of pain across her cheeks.
But she ran anyway, blindly following the sound of her sister hurtling through the forest somewhere ahead of her. She counted time by the heavy thrum of blood in her ears; she measured distance by the volume of the sound as Ava’s boots crashed through the underbrush.
Fifteen meters. Ten.
Five.
Nina burst into a clearing and spotted Ava. She pushed harder, faster, her legs and heart pumping like mad, closing the gap between them. Almost. Her lungs burned. Her muscles ached.
Two meters.
Nina dove at Ava, and they went down hard, tumbling through the grass and over sharp rocks. Before they slowed to a stop, Ava was already swinging. Nina avoided the first two punches, but Ava was fighting dirty. She drove her knee into Nina’s rib cage, sending a splinter of pain snapping through her. Ava pressed her advantage, throwing an elbow that narrowly missed Nina’s eye and catching her with the backhand that followed.
Nina tasted blood. Ava redoubled her efforts, her fingers digging into sensitive pressure points. Still, Nina held on, winding her hands into Ava’s clothes to secure her grip.
She rolled them and tried to pin Ava to the ground, but Ava countered by bashing her forehead into Nina’s nose. The world bloomed red with agony, and Nina struggled to focus on her breathing as Ava tried to wiggle away.
She almost made it. She might have, if Nina hadn’t spent the first twenty years of her life having to fight through pain. It had been drilled into her by trainer after trainer—suffering is no excuse. She had to keep going. Anything less was failure.
She clutched blindly at Ava, dragging her back. She moved out of instinct now—drop a series of quick jabs to stun. Avoid retaliatory blows.
Wear down your opponent until you can move in for the kill.
Before she realized it, she had her forearm pressed tight across Ava’s throat, cutting off her air, and Ava had stopped fighting back. Her face had gone dangerously red, and silent tears streamed out of her eyes.
Horrified, Nina scrambled back.
For one terrible moment, the darkness of training, of memory, warred with Ava’s desperate, rasping breathing. The sound won out, each breath accompanied by a sob that seemed to wrack Ava’s entire body.
Nina licked her dry lips. Relaxed her clenched fists. “Ava, I—”
The words cut off with an anguished jerk as Ava hit her with a stun-stick, and electrical current surged through Nina. Her jaws snapped together as every muscle contracted and pain expanded, and all she could do was ride the agony.
“I’m sorry, Nina. I do wish this had gone differently.”
Nina was trembling by the time the waves finally subsided and her muscles unlocked. She lifted her head just in time to glimpse Ava’s retreating form reach the edge of the clearing.
Instinct. Muscle memory. Nina drew the gun she’d stolen from one of the mercenaries and aimed as she rose. Her arm was still shaking, but not enough to affect her marksmanship.
Another thing she’d learned at the Franklin Center—how to hold a weapon at the ready as minutes bled into hours, unaffected by things like fatigue or distraction or agony.
Ava paused at the edge of the clearing and looked back.
Nina’s index finger tightened on the trigger.
A million memories flashed through her mind. Whispers and giggles after lights-out. Debates and laughter and screaming fights. Ava’s brows drawn together as she considered a complicated equation. Zoey, laboring over a pendant until every curve and twist of metal was exactly the way she wanted it. Impromptu dance parties and melancholy that didn’t seem so bad when someone was there to share it.
Family.
Nina lowered the gun.
By the broken moonlight spilling across her sister’s face, she thought she caught a hint of surprise—and disappointment.
Then Ava vanished, melting into the tree line like a shadow or a wisp of smoke.
Like a ghost.
Nina stared blankly at the darkness between the pines, too numb to cry as she sank to her knees in the grass.