rolled back in her head and she squealed like a pig being slaughtered. I’d heard that once, in Algrave, when I was walking past the butcher’s. I never enjoyed bacon quite as much after that.
She spasmed, arching her back so much I was afraid she’d snap her own spine. The machines were buzzing in the background, and even the lights flickered.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’ll be over soon.”
One way or another.
“What’s happening?” Luke yelled above the noise.
“I don’t know,” April said.
“Is it working?”
I held my breath as April stared at the monitor. It had a single, level line on it that seemed to be moving forward. Then, suddenly, there was a clear beep and the line spiked. After a moment, it beeped again.
Penelope took a long, gasping breath, then collapsed on the table, still as death.
We stood there for a minute, waiting for anything to happen. Ten more minutes passed before we gave up hope.
“Take her back to the cell,” Jacob said finally with a long sigh.
“I don’t understand,” April said quietly. “It should have worked. I followed all the directions. I did everything right.”
After they took Penelope away, I stayed in the lab, watching April pore over her notes. I couldn’t understand most of it, but I wanted to help somehow.
I flipped through John Patten’s journal. I hadn’t been able to look at it before, because Jacob had it locked in here with the other stuff in case April needed it.
“Knock yourself out,” she said. “I read through it earlier. There’s nothing specific about the formula or the cure in there. You’ve got to remember, the king synthesized the original elixir a hundred years ago at least. Way before John Patten’s time. He was a basement chemist at best. We don’t even know how he got the formula or if he was able to make it work himself.”
“I thought he stole it, from Damien.” The same way I did. Like grandfather, like granddaughter. I brushed off the guilt and licked my finger to turn the page, as I’d seen Damien do in the library, when he was furrowing his brow at some philosophical passage.
A wave of homesickness and longing rushed through me. Algrave was my home, and then the citadel. I wondered if I’d ever feel this way about this underground prison and the bitter burdock root tea.
I picked up the family photograph I’d seen earlier. The man must have been John Patten, posing with his family. A young woman stood at his side, with dark, familiar eyes. She was holding a toddler with dark curly hair. My mother, I realized with a start. My real mother. I didn’t even know her name. I turned the photograph over, hoping someone would have written in the names. Photographs were relatively rare in the compounds; taken during special occasions, the details of which were often preserved on the back.
But instead I only found a short inscription.
Family makes life complete.
April had powered on some kind of portable tablet with a glowing screen, and was jotting down notes on the surface with a white pen. It reminded me of something I’d seen Zane use in the citadel, or the digital panels on the chosen’s bracelets.
I rubbed my wrist with my fingers. April noticed, looking up.
“Miss it?” she asked.
“Miss what?” I asked.
“Being chosen.” I couldn’t tell whether there was disdain in her voice, or sympathy. She seemed generally curious.
“I was just thinking, the bracelet was useful. Too much elixir and humans die, or get sick, or go mad with thirst. Down here, without it, there’s no control.”
“That makes sense,” she nodded. She looked like she wanted to ask something else, but bit her tongue. Something about me, probably. I wondered if Jacob had told her who I really was, or how many people knew I was more than just an ordinary chosen; that I was a halfbreed, the only one of my kind.
“How’d you learn this stuff anyway?” I asked, turning the conversation back on her. “I mean, they have tech in the citadel, but not like this. You weren’t even raised in the compounds.”
“I wasn’t raised at all,” she smirked. “I grew up nearly feral, a street rat. Fighting for food. My parents were killed by scavengers from another district. At the time, there were bands of roving bandits in the wilderness, moving between the fallen cities, digging for scraps.”
“That’s awful,” I said.
She shrugged.
“One day I found a wide glass roof. I broke the window with a brick and used scraps of a