Shadow Me (Shatter Me, #4.5)(14)

“Yeah?” I smile, too. “How’s his training going? Everything okay?”

They nod. “We’re about to go pick him up, actually,” Sara says. “For his afternoon session. He’s a fast study. He’s growing into his powers nicely.”

Almost without realizing it, I stand up a bit taller, puff my chest like a peacock. I don’t know what right I have to feel proprietary about that kid, but I’m so proud of him.

I know he’s got a big future ahead of him.

“All right, well”—I hold up the bottle—“thank you for this. I’m going to take it with me, because”—I shake the bottle—“this is amazing. But don’t worry. Seriously. I’m not going to have a heart attack.”

“Good,” they both say.

I grin. “So you want me to tell Castle you’re looking for him?”

They nod.

“And you’re not going to tell me what the urgency is all about?”

Sara and Sonya exchange glances.

I raise an eyebrow.

Finally, Sara says—

“Do you remember when Juliette was shot?”

“She was shot three days ago, Sara.” I offer her an incredulous look. “I’m not likely to forget.”

Sonya jumps in and says, “Yes, but, the thing you don’t know—the thing that no one but Warner and Castle know—is that something happened to Juliette when she was shot. Something we weren’t able to heal.”

“What?” I say sharply. “What do you mean?”

“There was some kind of poison in the bullets,” Sara explains. “Something that was giving her hallucinations.”

I stare, horrified.

“We’ve been studying the properties of the poison for days, trying to come up with an antidote,” she says. “Instead, we discovered something . . . unexpected. Something even more important.”

After a beat of silence, I can’t take it anymore.

“And?” I say, gesturing with my hand that they should continue.

“We really want to tell you everything,” Sonya says, “but we have to speak to Castle first. He needs to be the first to know.” She hesitates. “I can only tell you that we think we’ve discovered something that directly corresponds with the tattoos on the dead body of Juliette’s assailant.”

“That guy Nazeera killed,” I say, remembering. “She saved Juliette’s life.”

They nod.

Another spike of fear spears through me.

“All right,” I say, trying to keep my voice light, steady. I don’t want to freak them out with my own worries. “Okay. I’ll tell Castle to come find you right away. Will you be in the medical wing?”

They nod again.

And then, as I walk away, Sara calls after me.

I turn around.

“Tell him—” She hesitates again, and then seems to make a decision. “Tell him it’s about Sector 241. Tell him we think it’s a message. From Nouria.”

“What?” I freeze in place, disbelieving. “That’s impossible.”

“Yes,” Sara says. “We know.”

I take the stairs.

I don’t have time to wait for the elevator, and besides, my body is too full of nervous energy right now to stand still. I take the stairs two, three at a time, flying even as I keep a hand on the handrail to steady myself.

I didn’t think this day could get crazier.

Nouria.

Shit.

I don’t know how Castle will react to hearing her name. He hasn’t heard a word from Nouria in years. Not since—well, not since the boys were murdered. Castle told me he gave Nouria space because he thought she needed time. He figured they’d find their way back to each other again after she recovered. But after the sectors were erected, it became near impossible to contact loved ones. The internet was one of the first things The Reestablishment took away, and without it the world became—in an instant—a bigger, scarier place. Everything was harder. Everyone felt helpless. I don’t think anyone realized just how much we relied on the internet for literally everything until the lights went off. Computers and phones were taken away. Destroyed. Hackers were found and publicly hanged.

Borders were closed without clearance.

And then The Reestablishment tore families apart. On purpose. In the beginning they pretended they were doing it for the good of humanity. They called it a new form of integration. They said race relations were at their worst because we were all so isolated from one another, and that part of the problem was that people had built these extensive family units—The Reestablishment referred to big families as dynasties—and that these dynasties only reinforced homogeneity within homogenous communities. They said that the only way to fix this was to rip those dynasties apart. They ran algorithms that helped them manufacture diversity by rebuilding communities with specific ratios.

But it wasn’t long before they stopped pretending to give a shit about diverse communities. Soon, small infractions alone would be enough to have you taken from your family. Show up late to work one day and sometimes they’d send you—or worse, someone you loved—across the planet. So far away you’d never be able to find your way back.

That’s what happened to Brendan. He was torn from his family and sent here, to Sector 45, when he was fifteen. Castle found him and took him in. Lily, too. She’s from what used to be Haiti. They took her from her parents when she was only twelve. They put her in a group home with a ton of other displaced children. They were glorified orphanages.