False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(69)

He falls right on top of me, driving the splinter of wood deeper into himself. His blood seeps onto me. I push him away. He’s so heavy. I crawl away and throw up, retching until there’s nothing left. When I’m done I sit back on my heels, wrapping my arms around my knees and shaking. I’m surrounded by three dead bodies, splatters of blood and sick marring the perfect white of the room.

Now, even if Tila hadn’t killed Vuk, I’ve killed someone. I’m no longer the woman I was a week ago. I’m no longer an engineer and someone who follows the rules. I’m a murderer. I say it out loud. “I’m a murderer.” I almost choke on the words, but I force myself to say it again. “I’m a murderer.” My throat is raw from vomiting and screaming. I want to curl up and disappear.

I close my eyes tight. My heart is still beating far too calmly. I tear the glasses from my face and throw them across the room, ripping the electrodes from my body by touch.

“Open your eyes,” a man’s voice says.

I obey. The room is now completely empty but for the cooling pile of my own vomit beside me. There’s no red woman, blond man or green man. It’s as if they never existed. They never did.

Instead, in front of me is Ensi.

The leader of the Ratel.

He’s tall, leanly muscled, with skin a little darker than mine and close-cropped, curly hair. It had been longer in Tila’s sketch. He wears a collarless blue silk shirt and black trousers, and looks almost like a priest.

He holds out his hand. “Up you come. Time to talk.”

I take his hand.





EIGHTEEN

TILA

I didn’t know how to approach Mom and Dad about escaping the Hearth. Neither did Taema.

Hey, Mom. Hey, Dad. Can you ignore all your beliefs and help us abandon you?

They hadn’t been born in the Hearth, though. They knew the world outside—or at least they had known it, thirty or so years ago. They were the only ones who could get us out.

We were going to die soon if we didn’t do something. We felt tired all the time, and our ankles had swollen so much we had to wear old shoes of Mom’s, and her shoes were ugly. We never wanted to eat. I’d wake up in the night and Taema’s breath would be all hitchy. Sometimes she’d even stop breathing and I’d hold my own breath until she started up again.

I could feel our heart thumping beneath our skin all the time, like it was a fish trying to jump from the surface of the lake. Every day, it was getting harder to do basic things. Mom had to help dress us. Dad, embarrassingly, had to help bathe us because Mom wasn’t strong enough to haul us up. Now we had even less privacy.

So after dinner one night, we confronted them. They were doing the dishes, Dad washing and Mom drying them and putting them away, humming to themselves. They were still very much in love with each other. Still are, I hope, though I haven’t seen them in a decade. Seemed a shame to ruin the nice moment.

We’d agreed that I’d do the talking. We knew some hard things would have to be said, and Taema wasn’t up to it. Her fingers were digging into my ribcage and she was shaking. I was nervous too, but in this I was the stronger twin. I wasn’t afraid of saying things to our parents that might make them cry, if it meant we’d get what we wanted. Needed. A lifeline.

“We don’t want to die,” I started, cutting right to the chase.

Our parents stopped humming.

Dad turned off the water carefully. “What, Tila?” Even though he’d been facing the other way, he knew it was me. He and Mom came through and sat on the couch across from us. My mom pushed her curly hair back over her shoulder. My dad worried his lower lip with his teeth the way he did when he was nervous. Their faces were tight, trying to keep any emotion from sneaking out.

“We don’t want to die,” I repeated. “And we don’t have to, if we can leave the Hearth and get to the city. Can you help us do that?” I kept the emotion out of my own voice.

Mom’s face crumpled, and Dad put his arm around her. “My girls,” he said, his voice breaking. “I wish we could. But no one leaves the Hearth.”

“Mia did. We remember.”

It’d been hushed up, but even as children we heard the rumors. I’d forgotten about them until we started thinking of leaving. She’d left. On purpose. No one ever found out how she’d escaped.

Our parents looked away.

“Please. You have to help us … we’re dead if we stay.”

“If you escape…” our mother whispered, “you’d be apostate. You’d be damned. Surrounded by all that technology … all the Impure…”

Next to me, Taema flinched. “That’s true,” I said. It wasn’t worth telling them we—I, at least—didn’t believe in the tenets of the faith anymore. Damn, they’d been so brainwashed in the last sixteen years, with Mana-ma battering away at their brains like the rest of us. Could I even break through? I pushed on ahead.

“We’d rather be alive and damned than dead and saved. Please. We don’t want to die.”

Though for me, it was more that I didn’t want Taema to die. I knew more than her. I knew if we did get out and found a doctor to fix our heart, there was a chance we wouldn’t both survive. Of course there was. Medicine out there was really advanced, but it wasn’t infallible. I just had to hope that if death took one of us, it took me and not her.