Siege of Shadows (Effigies #2)(78)

“It’s not so bad, right? You get used to it.” As we trampled flowers underfoot, Jessie panted and giggled like the adrenaline had made her delirious. “Mine’s Grunewald’s very latest model.”

Grune . . . wald . . . The name echoed in the vacant chamber of my mind.

“They put it in all us ‘silent kids.’ Doesn’t need a trigger ’cause it’s always working. It even helps me mask my frequency as long as it doesn’t degrade. But yours is an earlier model, a one-shot activation. Doesn’t work that good. It’s definitely gonna crap out soon, so we gotta do this fast.”

“Stop!” Rhys’s voice, tense from the chase, called out to us in the night.

We were heading toward the river bordering the south end of the estate. A shot rang out. Jessie lost control of her body and crashed into mine, pushing us both down to the floor. She’d been hit. Her right leg was bleeding just above her knee.

Grabbing the gun from me, she rolled over onto her left hip and pointed the weapon at Rhys. I looked from one to the other, from Jessie to Rhys, both their guns trained on each other under the moonlight. But I felt nothing. My body was cold, hollow, my mind blissfully clean except for the lingering echo skidding across the surface of my consciousness: Listen to Jessie. Escape with her at all costs.

The command I’d been given.

“Maia, come with me.” Rhys reached to me with his free hand still wrapped in its sling. “Please.”

Despite the pain, Jessie laughed at him. “Nah, that ain’t happening.”

“Shut up,” Rhys said. “Or next time, I’ll take a kneecap.”

“Mm, sexy.” Jessy gave him a wry grin before turning to me. “We need to go. Vasily’s waiting for us.”

“Vasily?” Rhys spat. “What have you done? What the hell is going on?”

With her gun still aimed at him, Jessie pulled out her black phone. “I was waiting for a call and I got it. It’s confirmed.”

I barely twitched in response.

“He gave you a signal.” Rhys inched closer to us, his feet making no noise against the dewy grass.

“You didn’t think Vasily of all people would stay locked up for long, did you?”

“Who helped him?” Rhys crushed a posy underfoot.

“Who didn’t?” Jessie laughed. “There’s more of us than you realize. You really suck at picking sides.”

The two stared each other down in the night, and something inside me was screaming for me to get ahold of myself, but my knees stayed helplessly pinned to the grass.

“Life really isn’t fair, isn’t it?” Jessie said. “All those years ago . . . we all went through it in that fucked-up facility—those insane training sessions, those ‘psych evals’ that felt more like torture. You were the one who said we could be free. You made me think we’d all escape together. Escape the Sect.” Her voice, for the first time, swelled with a kind of childish hope, immature and fragile. It didn’t last. “But everything went wrong. We followed you, but only you got to live. And what did you do but go right back to the Sect?” Her long red hair swept the air like a pendulum as she shook her head violently. “Unlike me and Vasily, you had Mommy and Daddy to go back to. People to protect you. You escaped one cage and dragged your own sorry ass right back into another. Ever the dutiful son.” She smirked. “You’ll never be free.”

“And are you free, Jessie?”

Jessie rubbed the back of her neck with a trembling hand. I couldn’t tell if she’d even meant to or not. “Maia,” she said suddenly, and it was like my body shook awake. “Remember what the little voice in the phone told you. We gotta go.”

Yes. At all costs.

I stood.

“Maia?” Rhys lowered his gun, his eyes narrowing as a hint of fear crawled into his features.

At all costs.

Balls of flame exploded at Rhys’s feet like little bombs. Rhys jumped and dove to avoid them, rushing toward me every opportunity he got, but I didn’t stop hurling fire at him. Jessie’s unhinged laughter screeched over the chaos as she dragged herself up and balanced herself on her good leg.

“Kill him!” She goaded me, too excited at the mayhem of flames to bother shooting at him herself. “Kill him now!”

I was trying. The dull pain throbbed at the back of my neck, the steel band rubbing against my skin as if aching to crush my windpipe. Listen to Jessie. Escape with her at all costs. I was trying.

“Maia, wake up! Fight it!” Rhys cried before I sent a wall of flame crackling up at his feet. He jumped, but too late—he cried out in pain as the fire licked his leg.

A hard twinge in my chest, a sudden chill rushing through me. All these curious sensations my mind couldn’t grasp as Rhys hit the ground hard, rolling on the grass to put the flame out.

Maia . . .

Maia . . .

Are you listening . . . ?

She was humming a melody I’d heard too many times before on those terrifying nights.

Her voice . . . Natalya’s voice.

I told you. . . . You let them cage you. . . . You trust too easily. . . .

“What are you doing? Kill him! Hurry,” Jessie ordered because my hands had frozen in the air.

My arms wavered, caught between falling limp and staying firm. My attacks stopped. What was I doing?