Imagine Me (Shatter Me #6)(29)

Nazeera is okay.

We all wait in silence for the scene to change, hoping for something we don’t even know how to name.

It doesn’t come.

“I wish it were that simple,” Anderson says finally. “I really do. But I’m afraid we need the girl. She is not so easily replaced.”

“You said that Emmaline’s body was deteriorating.” Warner’s voice is low, but clear. Miraculously steady. “You said that without a strong enough body to contain her, she’d become volatile.”

Anderson visibly stiffens.

“You need a replacement,” Warner says. “A new body. Someone to help you complete Operation Synthesis.”

“No,” Castle cries. “No— Don’t do this—”

“Take me,” Warner says. “I will be your surrogate.”

Anderson’s eyes go cold.

He sounds almost convincingly calm when he says, “You would be willing to sacrifice yourself—your youth and your health and your entire life—to let that damaged, deranged girl continue to walk the earth?” Anderson’s voice begins to rise in pitch. He seems suddenly on the verge of another breakdown.

“Do you even understand what you’re saying? You have every opportunity—all the potential—and you’d be willing to throw it all away? In exchange for what?” he cries. “Do you even know the kind of life to which you’d be sentencing yourself??”

A dark look passes over Warner’s face. “I think I would know better than most.”

Anderson pales. “Why would you do this?”

It becomes clear to me then that even now, despite everything, Anderson doesn’t actually want to lose Warner. Not like this.

But Warner is unmoved.

He says nothing. Betrays nothing. He only blinks as someone else’s blood drips down his face.

“Give me your word,” Warner finally says. “Your word that you will leave her alone forever. I want you to let her disappear. I want you to stop tracking her every move. I want you to forget she ever existed.” He pauses. “In exchange, you can have what’s left of my life.”

Nazeera gasps.

Haider takes a sudden, angry step forward and Stephan grabs his arm, somehow still strong enough to restrain Haider even as his own body bleeds out. “This is his choice,” Stephan gasps, wrapping his free arm around a tree for support. “Leave him.”

“This is a stupid choice,” Haider cries. “You can’t do this, habibi. Don’t be an idiot.”

But Warner doesn’t seem to hear anyone anymore. He stares only at Anderson, who seems genuinely distraught.

“I will stop fighting you,” Warner says. “I will do exactly as you ask. Whatever you want. Just let her live.”

Anderson is silent for so long it sends a chill through me. Then:

“No.”

Without warning, Anderson raises his arm and fires two shots. The first, at Nazeera, hitting her square in the chest. The second—

At me.

Several people scream. I stumble, then sway, before collapsing.

Shit.

“Find her,” Anderson says, his voice booming. “Burn the whole place to the ground if you have to.”

The pain is blinding.

It moves through me in waves, electric and searing. Someone is touching me, moving my body. I’m okay, I try to say. I’m okay. I’m okay. But the words don’t come. He’s hit me in my shoulder, I think. Just shy of my chest. I’m not sure. But Nazeera— Someone needs to get to Nazeera.

“I had a feeling you’d do something like this,” I hear Anderson say. “And I know you used one of these two”—I imagine him pointing to my prone body, to Nazeera’s—“in order to make it happen.”

Silence.

“Oh, I see,” Anderson says. “You thought you were clever. You thought I didn’t know you had any powers at all.” Anderson’s voice seems suddenly loud, too loud. He laughs. “You thought I didn’t know? As if you could hide something like that from me. I knew it the day I found you in her holding cell. You were sixteen. You think I didn’t have you tested after that? You think I haven’t known, all these years, what you yourself didn’t realize until six months ago?”

A fresh wave of fear washes over me.

Anderson seems too pleased and Warner’s gone quiet again, and I don’t know what any of that means for us. But just as I’m beginning to experience full-blown panic, I hear a familiar cry.

It’s a sound of such horrific agony I can’t help but try to see what’s happening, even as flashes of white blur my vision.

I catch a mottled glimpse:

Warner standing over Anderson’s body, his right hand clenched around the handle of the machete he’s buried in his father’s chest. He plants his right foot on his father’s gut, and, roughly, pulls out the blade.

Anderson’s moan is so animal, so pathetic I almost feel sorry for him. Warner wipes the blade on the grass, and tosses it back to Haider, who catches it easily by the hilt even as he stands there, stunned, staring at—me, I realize. Me and Nazeera. I’ve never seen him so unmasked. He seems paralyzed by fear.

“Watch him,” Warner shouts to someone. He examines a gun he stole from his father, and, satisfied, he’s off, running after the Supreme Guard. Shots ring out in the distance.