Robin Wasserman - Shattered

“So we ready?” Riley slipped the detonator into his coat pocket. It was a small gray box with a keypad; the correct code would send a wireless signal to the explosives. Riley had programmed it, so Riley held on to it, which would leave Jude free to do most of the heavy lifting without fear of jostling the switch. Riley would focus on the more delicate wiring. And as for me—too clueless to help with the explosives, too untrustworthy to hold the detonator—I was the one to stay behind. I would be the lookout.

Jude nodded, looking grim. “Now we tear this place down.”

It was maddening, having nothing to do but watch: Jude adhering the packets of secondary explosives to the walls of the hangar, Riley following behind him with the highly sensitive primary explosives, carefully weaving them together to ensure a few sparks would bloom into a fiery chain reaction. The blurry figures inside the hangar played with their life-size toys, oblivious. And as I’d been instructed, I watched the perimeter. I leaned against the plane, wet snow pattering against my face, ice congealing at my feet, and watched the ground turn white and the buildings around me disappear into a white mist. I didn’t expect I’d have to use the gun.

I wasn’t sure it was him at first, when he appeared in the distance. Or at least, I didn’t want to be sure—the snow masked his face, so there was at least a possibility it could have been someone else. It could have been anyone. That’s what I told myself, as my grip tightened around the gun.

“Someone’s coming,”I VM’d Jude and Riley. They pressed themselves against the building, and I retreated farther into the shadow of the fuselage, and we waited. That was the plan: If anyone came alone, without reinforcements, it was most likely they were there for the lab, not for us, and we would let them pass. The snow was working to our advantage—the explosives Riley and Jude had laid were already covered by a thin layer of powder, and the whirling flakes made it difficult to see anything clearly.

But I recognized his limp.

“It’s Auden,”I VM’d.

“Stick to the plan,”Jude cautioned me. “Just let him go inside. You’re totally out of sight. If you keep quiet, he won’t see you.”

But I wasn’t worried about him catching me.

I told myself that it was safe for him, that no one was dying tonight, that Riley and I had a plan. But I couldn’t risk Auden, not again.

He could change his mind and turn back, I thought. Or he could be going somewhere else .

But according to Zo, the laboratory had been intentionally positioned at the edge of nowhere. He wasn’t going anywhere else; there wasn’t anywhere else for him to go.

Before I knew what I was doing, the gun was aimed, and someone’s voice, my voice, issued an order.

“Stop.”

He stopped.

“What’s going on over there?”Jude. I ignored him.

“Hands up.”

They went up.

This isn’t me, I thought, staring at hands that were holding a gun, hands that felt as alien as they had right after the download, when they’d sat dead and useless in my lap, inanimate objects belonging to someone else.

“ Lia? What the hell?” Auden’s voice broke the spell.

They were my hands; it was my gun. And at the other end of the barrel, that was Auden, the same Auden who’d stood up for me when Bliss Tanzen had called me a skinner in front of our Persuasive Speaking class, who’d carried me away from a jeering crowd the day I’d frozen in the quad, who’d confessed that he would never get his nearsighted eyes fixed because their weakness reminded him of his dead mother.

Jude and Riley were at my side. “Give me the gun,” Jude murmured.

I shook my head and held the weapon steady.

“You,” Auden spit out in disgust, glaring at Jude. “Of course.”

“Finish what you’re doing,” I told them. “I won’t let him call for help.”

And I wouldn’t let him go inside.

“You go with Jude,” Riley said. “I’ll babysit.”

“Jude needs you,” I said. “I don’t. Go.”

“She’ll deal with it,” Jude said, glaring at me, and I got his message: This is your screwup, and you damn well better fix it.

Riley shook his head no, but he listened to Jude, as he always listened to Jude, and followed his best friend, backing toward the hangar so he could keep his eyes on me, but the distance and the snow got in our way and soon he was just a hunched shadow and Auden and I were alone.

“What are they doing?” Auden asked. I didn’t answer. “What are you doing?” he said, more urgently. “What is this?”

The gun was heavy, but mech arms don’t get tired. I could point it at him forever.

“You knew ?” I said. “You knew what he was doing in here? You let him?”

He glanced involuntarily toward the hangar, his eyebrows quirking, and then his face went blank again. It was an easy expression to read, a mixture of confusion and surprise. But this wasn’t the same Auden, and as much as I wanted to believe he hadn’t sanctioned the experimentation, I couldn’t afford the luxury.

Not that it mattered. One way or another, I would keep him safe. Whatever he’d done.

“You going to shoot me, Lia?”

“You going to shoot me ?” I asked, nodding toward the weapon at his side, one of the electric pulseguns his guards had used to put Sloane, Ty, and Brahm to the ground. “Or is that in case your prisoners get out of control?”

“You want to give me a lecture?” Auden asked. “You’re trespassing, holding a gun on me, and you want to make it sound like I’m the one doing something wrong?”

He took a step toward me.

“Stop.”

“You’re not going to hurt me, Lia.” Another step. His voice was even, his gait less so.

“I’m a monster, remember?”

“I remember a lot of things.” He kept coming.

I released the safety, just as Riley had shown me. “Stop.”

Never aim a gun you’re not prepared to fire, Riley had warned me.

And I could fire: Down at the snow, over his head, into the plane. I could squeeze the trigger, I told myself. If I had to.

He wouldn’t stop coming at me. He wouldn’t stop talking. “This isn’t you, Lia,” he said. “You don’t want to be here. You don’t want to be doing this. You don’t—”

“Shut up and get back!”

But it was too late, he was within reach, his arm smashing down in a hatchet sweep to knock the gun out of my hands, but I was fast and he was clumsy and I dodged out of the way. He stumbled, throwing his weight against me, and we both toppled to the ground, rolling in the snow, his legs spasming beneath me, his arms flailing, hands grasping for the gun, and I pinned him beneath me, trying not to hurt him, aware, with every second, that his bones were brittle, his muscles weak, and he would not stop. For a moment, he lay still beneath me, panting with exhaustion, shivering, shuddering, his hair soaked, his face coated with melting snow, and I remembered the night before, lying in another field of snow with another body beneath mine, a body impervious to the elements, to the touch. I stared down at Auden, at this quivering, sopping, heaving, dripping mess ; I stared at him, barely seeing his face, and in that moment, he wasn’t Auden, he was any org, every org, weak and pathetic and alive.

Natural is hell, I’d preached to the mech recruits, believing every word, willing myself to believe, and here it was pinned beneath me, words made real. And here, beneath me, the corollary I’d willed myself to forget: Natural is hell. But hell is life.