Defy Me (Shatter Me #5)(33)

This is an international base.

This has to be one of the capitals. Whatever this is—whatever they do here—it makes Sector 45 look like a joke.

Here, where the hills are somehow still green and beautiful, where the air is fresh and cool and everything seems alive. My accounting is probably off, but I think we’re nearing the end of April—and the sights outside my window are unlike anything I’ve ever seen in Sector 45: vast, snowcapped mountain ranges; rolling hills thick with vegetation; trees heavy with bright, changing leaves; and a massive, glittering lake that looks close enough to run to. This land looks healthy. Vibrant.

I thought we’d lost a world like this a long time ago.

Evie’s begun to sedate me less these days, but some days my vision seems to fray at the edges, like a satellite image glitching, waiting for data to load.

I wonder, sometimes, if she’s poisoning me.

I’m wondering this now, remembering the bowl of soup she sent to my room for breakfast. I can still feel the gluey residue as it coated my tongue, the roof of my mouth.

Unease churns my stomach.

I haul myself up off the bathroom floor, my limbs slow and heavy. It takes me a moment to stabilize. The effects of this experiment have left me hollow.

Angry.

As if out of nowhere, my mind conjures an image of Evie’s face. I remember her eyes. Deep, dark brown. Bottomless. The same color as her hair. She has a short, sharp bob, a heavy curtain constantly whipping against her chin. She’s a beautiful woman, more beautiful at fifty than she was at twenty.

Coming.

The word occurs to me suddenly, and a bolt of panic shoots up my spine. Not a second later there’s a sharp knock at my bathroom door.

“Yes?”

“Ella, you’ve been in the bathroom for almost half an hour, and you know how I feel about wasting ti—”

“Evie.” I force myself to laugh. “I’m almost done,” I say. “I’ll be right out.”

A pause.

The silence stretches the seconds into a lifetime. My heart jumps up, into my throat. Beats in my mouth.

“All right,” she says slowly. “Five more minutes.”

I close my eyes as I exhale, pressing the towel to the racing pulse at my neck. I dry off quickly before wringing the remaining water from my hair and slipping back into my robe.

Finally, I open the bathroom door and welcome the cool morning temperature against my feverish skin. But I hardly have a chance to take a breath before she’s in my face again.

“Wear this,” she says, forcing a dress into my arms. She’s smiling but it doesn’t suit her. She looks deranged. “You love wearing yellow.”

I blink as I take the dress from her, feeling a sudden, disorienting wave of déjà vu. “Of course,” I say. “I love wearing yellow.”

Her smile grows thinner, threatens to turn her face inside out.

“Could I just—?” I make an abstract gesture toward my body.

“Oh,” she says, startled. “Right.” She shoots me another smile and says, “I’ll be outside.”

My own smile is brittle.

She watches me. She always watches me. Studies my reactions, the timing of my responses. She’s scanning me, constantly, for information. She wants confirmation that I’ve been properly hollowed out. Remade.

I smile wider.

Finally, she takes a step back. “Good girl,” she says softly.

I stand in the middle of my room and watch her leave, the yellow dress still pressed against my chest.

There was another time when I’d felt trapped, just like this. I was held against my will and given beautiful clothes and three square meals and demanded to be something I wasn’t and I fought it—fought it with everything I had.

It didn’t do me any good.

I swore that if I could do it again I’d do it differently. I said if I could do it over I’d wear the clothes and eat the food and play along until I could figure out where I was and how to break free.

So here’s my chance.

This time, I’ve decided to play along.





Kenji


I wake up, bound and gagged, a roaring sound in my ears. I blink to clear my vision. I’m bound so tightly I can’t move, so it takes me a second to realize I can’t see my legs.

No legs. No arms, either.

The revelation that I’m invisible hits me with full, horrifying force.

I’m not doing this.

I didn’t bring myself here, bind and gag myself, and make myself invisible.

There’s only one other person who would.

I look around desperately, trying to gauge where I am and what my chances might be for escape, but when I finally manage to heave my body to one side—just long enough to crane my neck—I realize, with a terrifying jolt, that I’m on a plane.

And then—voices.

It’s Anderson and Nazeera.

I hear them discussing something about how we’ll be landing soon, and then, minutes later, I feel it when we touch ground.

The plane taxis for a while and it seems to take forever before the engines finally turn off.

I hear Anderson leave. Nazeera hangs back, saying something about needing to clean up. She shuts down the plane and its cameras, doesn’t acknowledge me.

Finally, I hear her footsteps getting closer to my head. She uses one foot to roll me onto my back, and then, just like that, my invisibility is gone. She stares at me for a little while longer, says nothing.