Fallen Firsts Read online

  “Very good. Make sure you are exhaustive, Dr. Doe. I don’t need to remind you how crucial it is that we clean up our messes thoroughly.”

  “I know.”

  Cameron’s body had been grey and ghastly, and he was covered in blood and black scorch marks. After he shot Michael, he had walked through the electrical force field that surrounded the headquarters, but he somehow still managed to murder a handful of Doctors before shooting himself in the head. The memory of his mangled faced loomed before my eyes as the room fully filled with sunshine, and I shuddered, clutching my hands to my temples.

  Meghan coughed again.

  Sitting with my hand on Michael’s lifeless arm, I watched Victor prepare Cameron’s body for disposal. No voice broke the silence as he and Meghan worked, and then Gideon helped Victor haul the bodies into their bags.

  As Meghan zipped up the cloth coffin, Michael’s features slowly disappeared. Forever.

  I would never, ever see him again.

  “Jade?” Gideon asked. “Are you okay?”

  I didn’t respond. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t blink. Couldn’t look away from that wretched body bag.

  “I’ll take you to the retreat cabin,” Victor said, taking Meghan by the hand. “I reserved a suite, and we can all try and get some sleep. It should be safe there.”

  But I didn’t care. Let the Doctors find me. What did it matter?

  The truth was nothing mattered. Michael was dead, and nothing else would ever matter again.

  Chapter Three

  I sat at the small, ornate kitchen table, staring into a mug of cooling tea. Gideon was still asleep, and Meghan and Victor had disappeared sometime during the hour or so that I had managed to drift into a fitful doze.

  I still couldn’t believe how beautiful the Doctors’ Headquarters was. No wonder the Ten Colony Council—or the Doctors, as we all now understood them to be—wanted so badly to stay in power. It was the only thing keeping them from living in squalor, like the rest of us.

  If the Firsts knew about this, there would be hell to pay, that was for damned sure. Unable to focus on the brief distraction, my mind drifted toward Michael again. Too bad he hadn’t survived to see the inside of this sanctuary. He had already been unconscious by the time his body crossed the threshold, and he had never woken up.

  Never woken up.

  The rock in my chest dropped deeper into my lungs, creating a physical ache that I couldn’t shake. Sinking deeper into my chair, I stared harder into the mug and tried not to think. My brain was fuzzy enough that thinking was difficult anyway, but then I jumped about fifty feet in the air when the front door opened.

  It was only Meghan and Victor.

  “We have to think about what we are going to do next,” Meghan said softly, as if I wasn’t even there. “Galilea—”

  Victor cleared his throat and they both looked at me, Meghan shutting up abruptly.

  “What?” I snapped, clasping my mug harder. “Don’t mind me. Don’t bother to explain what the hell you’re doing here, or why you—”

  “Come on, Victor, let’s talk about this somewhere else. I’m not in the mood for one of Jade’s tantrums right now.”

  My eyebrows flew up my forehead and I could feel a volcano erupt in my chest. “Excuse me?”

  “Meghan—”

  “Come on,” she said once more, grabbing his hand and turning again toward the outside world.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” I screamed after her, jumping to my feet.

  She turned around as though she had been expecting my words, and there was fire in her eyes. “Keep your mouth shut,” she hissed. “Someone will hear you.”

  I had never felt so furious. Completely losing my head, I lunged at her, the anger in my muscles straining against what was left of my self-control.

  “Your brother is dead,” I shrieked. “Michael is dead, and you don’t even care!”

  “Jade!” Victor grabbed my fist before I buried it in Meghan’s glutty face.

  “Let go of me!” I turned on him as he grabbed my wrists. “How dare you! Get your hands off me!”

  “Hey, what’s going on out here?”

  For a split second, I wanted to turn around, but Victor was distracted by Gideon’s sudden appearance, and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity; I punched him in the cheek before he could stop me.

  “Get off him!” Meghan shouted, grabbing my braid and yanking my head back with surprising strength.

  “Hey!” Gideon yelled as he lunged into the kitchen.

  But I didn’t care about anything else; Meghan would pay for that. I spun around and grabbed her braid, yanking her head toward the tile.

  “Stop it, both of you!” Victor said, his hand holding his face. “Have you gone insane?”

  “Jade, stop. Stop!”

  My fury was temporarily frozen by shock as Gideon literally picked me up off the floor and pulled me away.

  “What the hell has gotten into you?” he asked angrily.

  “Let me go,” I snarled, and he dropped me on the couch as he lost his grip.

  “Close the door, quickly.” Victor grabbed Meghan’s arm and pulled her out of the doorway, dragging her inside the suite. “What were you thinking?”

  “I told you she would throw a tantrum,” Meghan said. “I told you—”

  “Shut up,” I growled at her, jumping off the couch again. “Shut up, or I swear—”

  “Quiet, both of you!” Victor’s chest heaved as he stared furiously from one of us to the other. “Do you know what will happen if the Doctors find out you’re here? They’ll kill all of us!”

  I took a step forward, but Gideon held out his arm to stop me.

  The air inside the apartment hummed with electricity: the refrigerator, the computer, the lights—I needed to blink, but I didn’t want to be the first to look away. Meghan glared at me, her arms waiting stiffly by her sides, her eyes dark, but something had broken between us. She didn’t stand a chance. If we fought again, I would kill her.

  “Fine,” I finally snapped. “Fine. But you keep her away from me.” Spinning on my heel, I sunk onto the couch, crossed my arms tightly over my chest, and glowered at the opposite wall.

  “Whatever,” Meghan spat, and I heard her pull a chair away from the table and sit down.

  “For Adam’s sake.” Victor sounded exasperated. “It’s like you want to get caught.”

  “Why are you doing this, anyway?” I demanded.

  “Doing what?”

  “Keeping us secret?”

  He sighed in frustration. “Could you not villainize me, for once?”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Just ignore her, Victor. Apparently one apology wasn’t good enough for—”

  “Do you want me to hit you again? Keep talking.”

  “Jade, relax,” Gideon interjected. “There’s no need—”

  “To what?” I snapped back. “To question them? To demand answers? To panic? They haven’t told us anything, and I’m beginning to think their phony ‘apologies’ were just a ploy to—”

  “How can you always assume the worst in me?” Victor talked loudly to cover my voice.

  Scoffing, I said, “Do you not remember what happened the last time we were alone together?”

  “I—”

  “Okay, that’s enough.” Gideon stood in between the three of us, throwing his hands up in the air, his face red. “Everyone needs to calm down.”

  Three pairs of eyes glared at him.

  “We’ve all had a rough night, and I don’t think anyone got enough sleep. Maybe now isn’t the time to talk about this.”

  “I want to know why they haven’t turned us in.”

  Victor sighed again. “I told you—”

  “Why are you here?” I interrupted. I didn’t want to hear his bullroke story about having a change of heart. If he had really changed, then—

  “I don’t think we can trust you with that information.”

  His
words felt like a slap in the face, and I jumped to my feet once more. “What? You don’t think you can trust me—?”

  “Come on, Victor.” Meghan stood up, too. “Let’s grab what we came for and get back to looking.”

  “W-what—” I spluttered, the anger building again inside my chest, but she ignored me and disappeared into the bedroom.

  Irately, I turned instead to Victor but was surprised to see that he now looked tired and almost defeated.

  “I’m sorry,” he sighed, rubbing the spot where I had punched him. “We have a job to do, but we can talk later if you want.”

  “You better—”

  Meghan reappeared, her hand dropping something small into her pocket before I could see what she was hiding.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  Victor just nodded.

  “We’ll be back later this afternoon.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but she stomped through the door without looking at me.

  “Don’t leave the suite,” Victor instructed before he followed her. “But you can make yourself at home.” And then he shut the door firmly behind them.

  “Jade—”

  Gideon extended a hand toward me, but I jerked out of reach. “Don’t talk to me,” I snapped, crossing my arms and huffing onto the couch again.

  “Come on, Jade.” He turned so that he was looking at me from above. “They’re your friends. You have to remember that if you’re going to get through this.”

  “And by ‘this’ you mean Michael’s death.”

  “Well, yes.”

  I growled. “You don’t know anything about it. About Michael.”

  “Then why don’t you tell me more about him? It might help . . .”

  Clenching my teeth, I slowly turned my chin up to glower at him. My eyes were so narrow that he was barely more than a dark shadow.

  “I just want to help,” he continued gently.

  I rolled my eyes as he slowly lowered himself onto the cushion next to me.

  “Ruby—”

  “Just leave me alone.” Shooting to me feet, I stormed to the bedroom and slammed the door recklessly, never wanting to be touched by another human being ever again.

  “Jade!” he called after me.

  But rather than respond, I shoved my face into a pillow and screamed.

  ---

  Waking up from a coma would have been easier; complete darkness had taken over my brain, and apparently I had been asleep for hours. When I finally managed to open my eyes, the light inside the bedroom was fading and my head was full of cotton.

  All of the emotions I had felt earlier had dulled to a sort of numb throb, and I groaned as I groggily rubbed my face. Was it better to feel too much? Or too little? Both options made me feel sub-human, and I only wanted to fall back into the nothingness of sleep.

  I could hear the sound of soft footsteps beyond the door, and guilt started to seep into my brain. If that was Gideon, I probably owed him an apology. If it was Meghan or Victor . . . well, I wasn’t ready to forgive either of them yet, but maybe I could get something out of them this time.

  Growling, I dropped my feet to the floor and tried to muster enough remorse to offer up a sincere apology, just in case it was Gideon. As it turned out, it was, and he was sitting at a small desk in the corner of the living room as I opened the door.

  “How did you sleep?” He turned around when he heard me come in.

  The screen of a computer glowed behind him, and curiosity distracted me. “What are you doing?”

  Turning back around, he motioned for me to join him. “I’m looking through some old files, and there are some things you should probably know about.”

  I was instantly suspicious. “Like what?”

  He pointed at the screen. “Did you know that Liminis is in lockdown?”

  The couch was close enough for me to sit on its arm and still be able to read the old memo. “No. Wait . . . this is from a few weeks ago.”

  “It looks like it was sent right after Salvador helped us escape.”

  His words settled in my chest like a heavy raincloud, and his green eyes were serious as he turned to stare at me.

  “What exactly does it say?” I asked as my heart started to pound.

  “Highly sensitive and confidential,” he read slowly. “Due to a public complaint by a First Class Citizen, extra security is needed in the colony of Liminis. Unusually high levels of public unrest require that the entire colony be closed off completely until further notice. Only Doctors may come and go, and only after thorough screening.”

  “Public unrest? What do you think that means?” Obviously, I knew a few citizens who hadn’t been satisfied with the status quo, but I had never heard of even an ounce of public outcry before.

  “I don’t know. Do you think this is because we escaped?”

  “A First Class Citizen,” I repeated slowly. “I mean, usually they keep details about prisoners quiet, and I can’t imagine they would want to publicize the fact that two of them escaped, but what if this is Walter’s doing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, he wanted nothing more than to see me executed. If he somehow found out that I wasn’t, he’d call for blood.”

  Gideon’s eyebrows knit together as he turned back to the computer.

  “Did you find anything else?” I slid off the couch and moved in closer, leaning over his shoulder.

  “Not yet. You know I don’t read quickly.”

  His nose almost touched mine as he looked at me again. I blinked, pulling away slightly at his proximity.

  “Do you mind if I look?” I asked quietly, swallowing as my mouth seemed to go dry.

  The left side of his lips snaked up in a smile as he pushed away from the desk. “Be my guest, Ruby.”

  My arm brushed against his body, and we switched places. Goose bumps crawled over my skin, but I sat down, trying to ignore the warmth in my stomach. This wasn’t the time for that.

  “If there is unrest because of our disappearance, don’t you think that would give Victor quite the incentive to turn us over?” The electricity that had momentarily connected us vanished.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, my voice suddenly harsh.

  “I mean this.” He pointed at the screen behind me, where two pictures had just appeared: mine and his. “We’re wanted.”

  I blinked. “But . . . they think we’re dead, right? Because of what they did to the Factory?”

  “They’ll never know for sure that we were there.”

  I bit my lip as I studied Gideon’s picture. “No, Jade,” he had said, outside the Doctors’ headquarters. “Victor was your friend. More than that, when we first met, and he betrayed you. We were thrown in jail and tortured because of him. And her. They wanted us dead, and I’m never going to let that go.”

  My mistrust of Victor and Meghan seemed to multiply as I realized that Gideon still had the same misgivings I did.

  He let out a heavy sigh and ran his fingers through his hair. “But I guess he would have turned us over already, if that was his plan.”

  Huffing, I sunk back into the chair. “I don’t know, Gideon. I don’t trust him. Maybe they told Walter that we’re dead, but what if they didn’t?”

  Getting to his feet, Gideon went over to the refrigerator, sighed indecisively, and then turned again, dropping his elbows on the island and putting his face in his hands. “But what are we supposed to do? Where are we—?”

  I jumped as the door to the suite opened and Gideon fell silent.

  “What are you doing?” Victor snapped. Meghan was right behind him, and I quickly shut down the computer.

  “Nothing,” I replied.

  “Nothing on that computer concerns you,” he growled, but the machine was already off by the time he reached me.

  “I couldn’t even get it to turn on.”

  Victor knew I was lying, and he glared down at me with his awful grey eyes.

  “What?” I asked in an innocent
voice that fooled no one.

  “You can’t just go poking around. This is a top secret facility, and it’s not your place—”

  “Victor,” Meghan warned, and my earlier fury surged back into my veins.

  “We’ll figure it out, you know,” I growled at her.

  She didn’t look at me when she responded. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Her look of guiltlessness was almost as bad as mine.

  “Where the hell have you been, anyway?” I demanded. “Off planning another blitz on a Factory full of guiltless people?”

  I had hit a nerve. Victor’s dark face paled as the blood left his cheeks, and he spoke through his teeth. “I had nothing to do with that.”

  “You’re a Doctor. It was the Doctors who bombed them. All of those people are dead, because of you.”

  His eyes narrowed. “That’s not true.”

  “Refusing to act in the face of travesty is complicity.”

  Before Victor could open his mouth to respond, Meghan sighed loudly and grabbed his arm. “Let’s get dinner started, okay?” she said in a would-be-casual voice. “I don’t want to get in another argument, especially when I’m already hangry.”

  A memory washed over me like a wave:

  “What in the hell does hangry mean?” I looked skeptically at Michael and he grinned.

  “It’s the anger Meghan feels whenever she doesn’t get enough to eat.”

  “Hey, that’s not true!” She looked as though she had swallowed a lemon.

  “Come on, Megs, you never get angry. Only when you’re hungry. Haaaangry.” He embellished this last word with ridiculous air quotes.

  Tears stung my eyes unexpectedly, and I had to blink to keep them from spilling onto my cheeks. For the tiniest of moments, I thought that Meghan had smiled sadly at me. But then she turned around quickly and the moment was gone.

  ---

  “We can’t stay here,” I whispered, sitting curled up on the couch next to Gideon.

  Meghan and Victor were asleep in the other room, but Gideon and I had never gone to bed. Meghan didn’t like that, but there was nothing she could do about it.

  For someone who “only wanted to make things right” between us, she was being a total bit—