False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(104)

Eventually, most of the other partiers left, going to the main bar, and I managed to catch him.

“Adam.”

He flinched. “Come again?”

“Adam, it’s me. Tila. From the Hearth. I know I look a little different, but it’s me.”

He shook his head, as though batting away flies. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I moved closer. “You do. Some part of you remembers. Taema and Tila. T-and-T. We came to visit you. We brought green grapes.”

His face twitched. His body shook. It was like he was having a war with himself. I stayed close, keeping my eyes on him.

He fell down on his knees, his hands rising to his temples. His mouth opened in a horrible, silent scream. I went to him and clasped my hands on his wrists.

“Adam,” I said again.

At that, his entire body went rigid and he started convulsing, like he was having some sort of fit. Then he went completely limp. I thought he was dead. I wondered what would happen if someone opened the door in Zenith right then and saw him dead—they’d blame me.

Funny I worried about that then. Considering.

I pressed my fingers to his throat and he was still alive. I sat with him, holding his hand. It was his metallic one, though it felt just like cooling human flesh. I kept looking down at his face, trying to find the skinny boy I’d had a crush on in that blocky body, those different features. It really drove home how completely someone can change.

After a while he started groaning. I waited for him to wake up, and when he did and saw my face, he started crying. “Tila,” he said. “I remember you.”

“Hi, Adam,” I said.

He really looked at me and his eyes popped. “Where’s your sister?”

“They separated us.”

I started to say something else, but his body devolved into spasms again. “Adam?” I asked, scared.

Spittle began flying from his mouth, and I really thought he was going to die.

When he could speak again, he clasped my hand. “I’m going to lose it, to go back to who I am now. I’ll want to kill you. I’ll think you’re a threat.” He clutched me closer. “When I go back, I’ll have to tell him everything. About you, about your sister. I won’t be able to stop it.” Another shudder. “It’s who he made me to be.”

His eyes rolled up in his head. His eyes focused on me. Sharpened. “You’re a threat.”

I scrambled back, knocking over a bunch of the glasses and breaking them. Adam-turned-Vuk stood up and started coming for me. He took out a knife from his inner jacket pocket. I picked up a broken shard of glass but I knew, I knew it wouldn’t do a damn thing.

Adam-turned-Vuk’s face was twisted with pain. “I don’t want to do this, Tila. I don’t want to. I’m tired. I don’t want to go back to the man who made me into this.” Every word was a struggle.

It took me a moment to realize what he was saying.

“Do it,” he said. Every muscle was straining. He held out the knife, and I thought he was going to kill me. But instead he dropped it, and it landed on the floor within reach.

“Don’t have … long,” he gasped. He juddered again, knocking over more of the furniture.

I hesitated. I didn’t want to. But then he said, “If he finds out about you, he’ll find out about your sister. He’ll—” another shudder—“hurt her to get to you.”

That decided it.

Of course that decided it.

It wasn’t as easy as that. He didn’t lie still and let me kill him. His programming took over. His hunter’s instincts. I took a swing and he blocked it, so I only cut his wrist. He grabbed me and I twisted back, stomping on his foot and then kicking up between his legs. He wheezed, dropped to his knees. I knew I couldn’t hesitate. If I did, I would die.

I had a lucky strike. It went right into the upper part of his stomach, and I thrust up, and I think I hit him in the heart.

He fell down almost immediately. But he wasn’t quite dead. He met my eyes and I didn’t look away until he was gone.

I remember the blood was warm and sticky. That everything smelled of red, rusty iron. I felt angry, like I’d been trapped. I slammed the knife into the coffee table and it stood there, quivering.

The puddle of blood got bigger.

The blood must have triggered an alarm or something. Sal came in, and it was the first time I ever saw him shocked by anything.

I knew I should say something to him, but I was really out of it. I ended up parroting Mia’s words: “He is the red one, the fair one, the handsome one. He came from the Earth and now he returns. The faces keep changing.”

That definitely freaked him out. He snapped his fingers in front of my face until I could look up at him. It was hard to focus.

“Why?” he asked me. I blinked like I was waking up from a nightmare.

I told him. Not everything, but a little. That Vuk was a hitman for the Ratel and he’d asked me to kill him to free him. Sal, bless him, believed me right away. Barely even blinked before he was thinking of a way to fix it. Mostly to help himself, but still, he wasn’t a totally selfish bastard, either.

“They’ll be sending the Ratel here. The only way you won’t die tonight is if you get out of here right now. Go home, get your things, and then go. I’m trusting you. Go straight there.”