Ella

Just as I’m about to open my eyes a flood of heat flushes through my body, burns through bone. It’s violent, pervasive. It presses hard against my throat, choking me.

Suddenly, I’m numb.

Ella, the voice says.

Ella

Listen

“Any minute now.”

Anderson’s familiar voice breaks through the haze of my mind. My fingers twitch against cotton sheets. I feel the insubstantial weight of a thin blanket covering the lower half of my body. The pinch and sting of needles. A roar of pain. I realize, then, that I cannot move my left hand.

Someone clears their throat.

“This is twice now that the sedative hasn’t worked the way it should,” someone says. The voice is unfamiliar. Angry. “With Evie gone this whole place is going to hell.”

“Evie made substantial changes to Ella’s body,” Anderson says, and I wonder who he’s talking about. “It’s possible that something in her new physical makeup prevents the sedative from clearing as quickly as it should.”

A humorless laugh. “Your friendship with Max has gotten you many things over the last couple of decades, but a medical degree is not one of them.”

“It’s only a theory. I think it might be po—”

“I don’t care to know your theories,” the man says, cutting him off. “What I want to know is why on earth you thought it would be a good idea to injure our key subject, when maintaining her physical and mental stability is crucial to—”

“Ibrahim, be reasonable,” Anderson interjects. “After what happened last time, I just wanted to be sure that everything was working as it should. I was only testing her lo—”

“We all know about your fetish for torture, Paris, but the novelty of your singularly sick mind has worn off. We’re out of time.”

“We are not out of time,” Anderson says, sounding remarkably calm. “This is only a minor setback; Max was able to fix it right away.”

“A minor setback?” Ibrahim thunders. “The girl lost consciousness. We’re still at high risk for regression. The subject is supposed to be in stasis. I allowed you free rein of the girl, once again, because I honestly didn’t think you would be this stupid. Because I don’t have time to babysit you. Because Tatiana, Santiago, and Azi and I all have our hands full trying to do both your job and Evie’s in addition to our own. In addition to everything else.”

“I was doing my own job just fine,” Anderson says, his voice like acid. “No one asked you to step in.”

“You’re forgetting that you lost your job and your continent the moment Evie’s daughter shot you in the head and claimed your leavings for herself. You let a teenage girl take your life, your livelihood, your children, and your soldiers from right under your nose.”

“You know as well as I do that she’s not an ordinary teenage girl,” Anderson says. “She’s Evie’s daughter. You know what she’s capable of—”

“But she didn’t!” Ibrahim cries. “Half the reason the girl was meant to live a life of isolation was so that she’d never know the full extent of her powers. She was meant only to metamorphose quietly, undetected, while we waited for the right moment to establish ourselves as a movement. She was only entrusted to your care because of your decades-long friendship with Max—and because you were a scheming, conniving upstart who was willing to take whatever job you could get in order to move up.”

“That’s funny,” Anderson says, unamused. “You used to like me for being a scheming, conniving upstart who was willing to take whatever job I could get.”

“I liked you,” Ibrahim says, seething, “when you got the job done. But in the last year, you’ve been nothing but deadweight. We’ve given you ample opportunity to correct your mistakes, but you can’t seem to get things right. You’re lucky Max was able to fix her hand so quickly, but we still know nothing of her mental state. And I swear to you, Paris, if there are unanticipated, irreversible consequences for your actions I will challenge you before the committee.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“You might’ve gotten away with this nonsense while Evie was still alive, but the rest of us know that the only reason you even made it this far was because of Evie’s indulgence of Max, who continues to vouch for you for reasons unfathomable to the rest of us.”

“For reasons unfathomable to the rest of us?” Anderson laughs. “You mean you can’t remember why you’ve kept me around all these years? Let me help refresh your memory. As I recall, you liked me best when I was the only one willing to do the abject, immoral, and unsavory jobs that helped get this movement off the ground.” A pause. “You’ve kept me around all these years, Ibrahim, because in exchange, I’ve kept the blood off your hands. Or have you forgotten? You once called me your savior.”

“I don’t care if I once called you a prophet.” Something shatters. Metal and glass slamming hard into something else. “We can’t continue to pay for your careless mistakes. We are at war right now, and at the moment we’re barely holding on to our lead. If you can’t understand the possible ramifications of even a minor setback at this critical hour, you don’t deserve to stand among us.”

A sudden crash. A door, slamming shut.

Anderson sighs, long and slow. Somehow I can tell, even from the sound of his exhalation, that he’s not angry.

I’m surprised.

He just seems tired.

By degrees, the fingers of heat uncurl from around my throat. After a few more seconds of silence, my eyes flutter open.

I stare up at the ceiling, my eyes adjusting to the intense burst of white light. I feel slightly immobilized, but I seem to be okay.

“Juliette?”

Anderson’s voice is soft. Far more gentle than I’d expected. I blink at the ceiling and then, with some effort, manage to move my neck. I lock eyes with him.

He looks unlike himself. Unshaven. Uncertain.

“Yes, sir,” I say, but my voice is rough. Unused.

“How are you feeling?”

“I feel stiff, sir.”

He hits a button and my bed moves, readjusting me so that I’m sitting relatively upright. Blood rushes from my head to my extremities and I’m left slightly dizzy. I blink, slowly, trying to recalibrate. Anderson turns off the machines attached to my body, and I watch, fascinated.

And then he straightens.

He turns his back to me, faces a small, high window. It’s too far up for me to see the view. He raises his arms and runs his hands through his hair with a sigh.

“I need a drink,” he says to the wall.

Anderson nods to himself and walks out the adjoining door. At first, I’m surprised to be left alone, but when I hear muffled sounds of movement and the familiar trill of glasses, clinking, I’m no longer surprised.

I’m confused.

I realize then that I have no idea where I am. Now that the needles have been removed from my body, I can more easily move, and as I swivel around to take in the space, it dawns on me that I am not in a medical wing, as I first suspected. This looks more like someone’s bedroom.