At the mention of the fifth member of our group, my attention jerks to the driver’s seat. Zian’s fingers are clutched around the steering wheel, his knuckles pale with tension. Through the windshield, the wide stretch of shadowy road ahead suggests he found his way onto a highway, at least.
But just minutes ago in the fight, he wasn’t himself any more than Jake or Drey were just now.
“Are you all right, Zian?” I ask quickly. “You didn’t get hurt in the fight or—or anything?”
I don’t know how else to ask about lingering effects of his transformation, but his grimace suggests he can guess what I’m getting at.
“The monster’s back inside,” he says with a trace of a growl. “Nothing to be afraid of right now.”
Even though “monster” is exactly the word I’d normally have used to describe how he looked in his beastly state, my mind balks at accepting it—or the bitterness in his tone.
“You’re not a monster,” I say automatically.
All Zian responds with is a dismissive snort.
Jacob slumps in his seat, looking exhausted, but he still manages to aim one more glare my way along with a caustic mutter. “Still not convinced I shouldn’t have killed you when we first caught you.”
I wish those words didn’t sting as much as they do.
Andreas scowls at him and tugs me back to our original seats. He tucks his arm around me, but I’m too twisted up inside to let myself relax into his offer of comfort.
Jacob isn’t totally wrong to be angry. I might not have called the guardians down on us, but if we’d gone with his approach and headed straight to Kansas, we’d never have been back at the townhouse to begin with.
I was the one who argued that we should stick around the campus for another day or two. If I’d given in, we wouldn’t have faced that attack.
And neither would Brooke. She’d still be alive, smiling and hanging out with her friends, studying for her double major and going out dancing…
The memory of her bloody body rises up in the back of my mind, and queasiness that has nothing to do with any poison bubbles in my stomach.
One more death of someone I should have protected that’s now on my shoulders. One more stupid mistake.
There’s a stretch of uncomfortable silence, and then Dominic speaks up, his voice low. “I suppose we should drive toward Kansas now, since we’re already on the road.”
Jacob lets out a huff. “As long as the traitor didn’t tell the guardians all about that too.”
I resist the impulse to kick the back of his seat. It’s not that hard when I’m weighed down by guilt.
My other impulse is to argue against the plan, to point out all the reasons we’d be safer staying away from anything to do with Ursula Engel. But after the battle I was just part of, can I really say that’s even true?
Somehow, the guardians tracked us down to that townhouse on a university campus where we hadn’t gotten into trouble with anyone. We’d only been living there for a week.
Who’s to say there’s anywhere they couldn’t trace us to?
Even that rich prick with his off-the-grid, waterfall-top cottage wasn’t impervious to intruders, so how the hell could anyplace we hole up ever be totally safe?
But it’s not just that. I think I understand now why getting answers is more important to the guys than staying out of danger.
I already knew they’d changed since I last saw them, but I hadn’t realized how much. Their powers have expanded and shifted… and so have the consequences of those powers.
How much more are they struggling beyond what I’ve even seen so far? What have they done or think they might do that they want so desperately to find a solution to?
Because that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Find Engel, get her to explain what she and the other experimenters did to make us what we are… and hope that somewhere in that explanation, there’ll be a way to fix us too.
To make us something better. Less erratic. Less monstrous.
Is it possible she’d know how to turn off the thing inside me too? The brutality that wants to claw its way out and…
All those bodies around the arena. The sickening angles they were broken and contorted into. Like someone had takenjoyin mutilating them…