Suddenly the memory of what had happened in Knox’s suite hit me, forcing all the air from my lungs. Pain sliced straight through me, and if my heart could have broken in half, I was sure it would have.
Benjy couldn’t be gone. He’d been alive hours ago, laughing and teasing and drawing our future on a napkin. It couldn’t just end like this. Maybe I was wrong—maybe I’d misunderstood what I’d seen.
But deep inside, I knew I’d understood just fine.
Benjy was dead.
I would never see him again. I would never touch him, never hug him, never kiss him—our future, the future we’d both dreamed of for so long, would never happen. We would never sit in the grass by a pond and have a picnic in the sunshine. I would never again be able to tell him how much I loved him. And he would never know how sorry I was for not giving up that file when I had the chance.
He was gone.
Grief overtook me like quicksand, so solid that it felt as if I were drowning in it. I sank back onto the cot as the tears began, hot and bitter as they carved out their paths running down my face. He would still be alive if I had just done what Daxton had told me to do. If I hadn’t trusted Knox—if I had run away with Benjy while I still could—
Infinite what ifs buzzed around me, smothering me until I couldn’t think. I should have made Daxton kill me. I should have killed myself instead. I should have never valued the Blackcoats’ useless revolution over Benjy’s life—they stood no chance, and I’d known it all along. I should have listened to my gut. I should have never let Knox convince me to stay as Lila in the first place. I should have done anything else, and Benjy would still be alive.
My fault. This was all my fault.
Agonizing sobs tore through me, ripped from depths I couldn’t imagine. Every single one felt like a knife to the heart, and in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to die right then and there. I’d read stories about prisoners who had done it—who had somehow willed themselves into death through the sheer power of their mind. But no matter how badly I wanted it to end, it couldn’t. Not yet. Daxton would never let me die that easily, not when he still had the opportunity to inflict as much pain as he could.
“It’s about time you woke up,” said a voice on the other side of the metal door. “Much longer, and you’d be eligible for a coma.”
I swallowed my sobs, causing a hard knot to form in my throat. “Who’s there?” Even to my own ears, I didn’t sound right, and for a second I wondered if they’d turned me back into my old self. The last time I’d been knocked out and brought to a strange place, I’d woken up looking exactly like Lila Hart—would they do the same in reverse?
No. I would never be that lucky. The only time I would ever be me again would be in death.
The screech of metal against metal filled my tiny cell, and the door swung open, revealing a woman with blue eyes and a long blond braid hanging over her shoulder. She wore a white uniform with silver trim, and she held a medical kit loosely in one hand. In the other, she balanced a tray of eggs, bacon, and toast, along with a porcelain bowl full of colorful fruit and a tall glass of orange juice.
“Breakfast was hours ago, but I thought you’d appreciate this more than a stale sandwich,” she said, setting the tray on the nightstand with impeccable balance. Despite the wry smile tugging at her lips, her tone wasn’t cheerful. If anything, it was strained, as if someone had told her to be nice even though she had no intention of doing so. “How do you feel?”
I blinked. “Where am I?”
“Answer me first.” There—now I could hear the edge in her voice she’d been trying to hide. “How do you feel? Is your mouth dry? Do you have a headache? Are you in pain?”
“What do you think?” I said dully. “Best day of my life, right here.”
“If you’re not careful, it’ll be the last,” she warned.
My gaze flickered to the gun holstered to her hip. One bullet. That was all it would take, and this would be over. “Why don’t I give you a free shot this time?” I said. “I won’t even fight you. You’ll get to tell all your friends you killed Lila Hart.”
“Tempting.” She offered me a strip of bacon. “Eat.”
Reluctantly I took it from her and nibbled. In another life, I would have fought a dozen Shields for a chance to taste something this good. Today, it might as well have been made of chalk.
Still, it seemed to placate her, and she pulled a thermometer out of her medical kit and ran it across my forehead. It beeped, and she set it aside, seemingly satisfied. “Now, are you going to tell me how you feel, or am I going to have to resort to drastic measures?” she said. I shrugged.
“Headache. Sore throat. Dry mouth.” Empty hole where my heart used to be. “Who are you?”
The corners of her mouth twitched with annoyance, as if she expected me to know exactly who she was. “Hannah Mercer. Head of Section X.”
“Section X of what?”
Her thin eyebrow rose, and she looked at me as if I’d asked what one plus one was. “Section X of Elsewhere.”
Elsewhere.
Elsewhere.
For a fraction of a second, the grief inside me gave way to a new emotion: pure, unadulterated panic. Daxton was going to hunt me down, just like he’d hunted Nina. I would die screaming and terrified in the woods like a wild animal, without dignity or any hope of escape.
But I would be with Benjy again. That single fact alone made the tightness in my chest ease, and I managed a strangled exhale. There was no dignity in death, only in life. Benjy had lived with dignity. I would, too.
Before I could ask how long it would be before I was dumped in the woods, the metal door opened again, this time revealing a tall man who looked eerily familiar. I blinked, my mind racing to place him. He was dressed in a white uniform nearly identical to Hannah’s, though he wore a hat with his, the military style similar to the one that was part of the Shields’ uniform. His dark hair was cropped short, and his face was long, with a strong jaw that reminded me of the IIs who sat on their stoops in the hot D.C. summers, chewing jerky and grumbling about their work on the docks.
One look at this man, though, and it was obvious he’d never done a day of hard labor in his life. I was sure I’d seen him before, but my mind was too muddled with shock to place him. Until—
Our eyes met, and a chill shot down my spine.
The picture in Daxton’s file. He was the man on the left, the one who’d looked familiar then, too.