CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“ARE YOU FEELING OKAY, Joey? You look a little dizzy.” It was hard to tell whether he was being snide or genuine, but I really didn’t care.
“You’re making me sick,” I tried, but the truth was I felt a little dizzy. I was too warm, and my limbs were too heavy. I was tired, and reeling from the knowledge that Joaquim wasn’t one of us, he was all of us. All the Walkers who’ve ever been captured…
“You finally get it.” He was still smiling at me, the little blue lights—the souls—whirling around him and carrying him back through the shattered window. His feet touched the ground and the souls stopped whirling so fast, though there was still a spark in the air, a muted excitement. We’re free, they exulted. Use us! We can help! I wondered if they even knew what they were being used for, that they were made to be traitors just like him. I doubted there was enough of them left to know.
“Where did you get them?” I edged my feet a little further apart, trying to regain my center of gravity. The floor seemed to be rolling beneath me just a little, like I was on a ship amid a calm sea. HEX kept their Walkers captive in jars, after they’d boiled them down to their very essences…but we weren’t dealing with HEX now; this was Binary. Unmistakably so. Binary carbon-froze the Walkers they caught, plugged them into something like a giant battery, and used their energy that way. Could Joaquim have once been a Walker? I wasn’t sure that was possible….
“Everywhere.” Joaquim spread his arms to either side, his gaze se
eming to burn through mine. “Here and there, all of space and time. Anywhere a Walker’s died, with the technology of Binary and—”
“Enough, child.” Next to me, Acacia turned—and I felt her go rigid, though I couldn’t quite muster the energy to turn and look. In a moment I didn’t have to, for the figure came into my view.
I’d been face-to-face with Lord Dogknife, the leader of HEX. I’d stared right at him and somehow hadn’t flinched, even when I’d smelled dead things on his breath and seen maggots crawling across his teeth. I’d looked him in the eye and demanded he give me what I wanted, and what was more, I’d gotten out of it alive. I’m not bragging; I need you to understand what I mean when I say I shouldn’t have been afraid of this man.
He wasn’t very tall, and looked kind of like a cross between your dorky science teacher and the small kid who always gets picked last for the team. He wore clunky brown shoes and completely unwrinkled tan pants, a tweed jacket, and a bow tie. And Coke-bottle glasses. And behind those glasses, there was nothing but static.
I’m serious. You know how when your cable TV is disconnected and there’s nothing but static on the screen? You know how they use it for horror movies all the time, with people seeing things in it? His eyes were like that. No pupils, nothing. Just static.
I could still tell he was looking at me.
“Yes, Professor.” Joaquim’s voice cut smoothly through the hypnotic effect of those eyes, and I blinked rapidly. My eyes burned like I’d been staring at a computer screen for hours.
Professor. This was the Professor. 01101. Leader of the Binary.
Behind us, through the door the Professor had come in from, a dozen or so Binary clones took up position around the room. The Professor regarded us, the tweed and glasses and bow tie all striking me as absurdly unfunny.
“Have you finished draining him yet?”
“Not yet, Professor. I’ve made the connection.”
He nodded. Just…nodded. And looked at me. And waited.
It clicked. I knew why I felt weak, and why Joaquim had the Old Man’s memories, and what he’d done to me earlier, before I’d knocked him through the window. I knew what he’d been about to say before the Professor had interrupted him—and remembering the dry, rust-colored soil that had been cleaned of any trace of blood, I was desperately, fervently hoping I wasn’t right.
“You’re a clone,” I told Joaquim, and I had the small satisfaction of seeing him pause. He glanced at the Professor, then at me, uncertainty showing on his face. “You were grown by Binary, in a vat, just like the vegetables.” I nodded to the scouts.
“And infused with the souls of your kind,” the Professor agreed. Joaquim was just looking at me.
A thick, cold knot of dread was settling like a rock in my stomach, warring only with the white-hot anger I felt at knowing they’d used Jay’s blood. If I was right about that, there was only one explanation for how a Binary-grown clone had the powers and abilities of a Walker. It defied all reason, everything I’d been taught—and at the same time, made perfect, horrible sense. “And HEX’s magic.”
“What?” Acacia’s voice was barely a whisper.
“You’re working with HEX,” I nerved myself and looked at the Professor, though I couldn’t meet those static eyes for long. “You grew him, they powered him.”
“And gave me power,” Joaquim snapped, and I almost fell to my knees at the surge of weakness that washed over me. “They gave me the power to fix everything.”
Acacia’s hand found mine, though I wasn’t sure if she was scared or warning me about something. Neither, apparently—I saw a flash in my peripheral vision, and a jolt went up through my arm. There was the sound that was half static shock and half something snapping, and Joaquim reeled back slightly. I suddenly felt a ton better. Acacia had broken whatever link Joaquim had made with me.
I should have used that moment to do something, but I was too stunned, too unprepared, and too paralyzed with the knowledge I’d just discovered. Binary and HEX…the war for supremacy between them had been one of the only things giving InterWorld a much-needed edge. They were working together now. We’d just lost our only advantage.
Put succinctly, we were screwed.
The Professor looked at Acacia—just looked at her, nothing else—and she cried out like she’d been electrocuted, slumping to the ground.
I caught her halfway down, and I think I said her name. She didn’t respond; her eyes were open, but she didn’t seem to be conscious. I could feel her breathing, but she didn’t react to me at all.