The Deathless Trilogy

3.23. Hellhole

Sometimes I fear that everything I see is part of some elaborately designed computer program Mitchell never told us about. I wonder if I'm not still stuck in the program, unaware that all the happiness I've found in my family, my friends, Daniel, the Deathless, my job, and now in the rubble sweepers isn't all a creation of my own mind. I wonder if Gunther is somewhere pulling the strings, setting me up for failure and ultimately death, and if one day he will pull the plug and I will wake up. He will look at me like the President did when he told me Nate was never real: like some poor, stupid, helpless girl.

But today that fear will be washed away with the solution Dr. Guzman perfected. Today, 10 days before Roberts' crew lands, I'm getting my implant out.

3 days ago we set off for Hellhole on Ava's orders. Now we are all nearly there: the Immortal, the Beast, the pods, and the hundreds of rubble sweepers traveling in reconstructed cars or on horseback. Hellhole is a cave in West Virginia, and apparently another hub of rubble sweepers and survivors. It's one of the deepest caves in the continental US, and Ava has a plan to blow out the ground beneath the Immortal so it falls into the cave, tucked safely beneath the earth. Of course, we would never be able to get it out again, so it would be our gift to the rubble sweepers in exchange for destroying a portion of their West Virginia hub and helping us. Or it could be our home when this is all done.

That's the part that she and Phoebe have been fighting over the past three days. Just barely recovered from the implant, and Phoebe is already back to asserting her authority. At least she hasn't tried to overstep her bounds when it comes to Declan's, Mom's, and my leadership. But we still have to ask the rubble sweepers living there if this will be okay. They might not even allow us, and then what will we do?

All of these thoughts swim in my head as Dr. Guzman and Mom prepare me for my implant removal. I'm turned on my side so that my incision point is easily accessible, but also so that I can't see all the giant needles Dr. Guzman has assembled on a silver tray beside the bed. Mom holds my hand and locks her eye on mine.

"Are you nervous?" she asks.

"A little," I say.

We are the only people in the medical lab right now, and I lie on a bed Dr. Guzman has brought in from the infirmary. The only sounds are Dr. Guzman's clanging instruments, his feet shuffling to prepare for the procedure, and my own heavy breathing.

"Everything is ready, Isla," Dr. Guzman tells me.

Mom meets his eyes and nods. "Here we go, honey," she says. "I have to go now. I'll be right outside in the biology lab with Dad and Daniel, okay?"

I nod, and she kisses my forehead before leaving. I hear the door close, and then Dr. Guzman's voice is closer, as he stands over me. "Isla, I'm going to inject the first solution. At first you will feel a cool sensation, but soon after, it will feel like you've got a sudden migraine. Please don't move when you start to feel that, because as soon as that happens, I will be injecting the cerebrospinal fluid solution to stabilize the pH levels. Okay, Isla?"

I nod. "Yeah, okay."

"Alright, injecting the first solution," he says, and almost instantly, I feel the prick of a needle slicing through my barely healed incision. The cool solution seeps into my brain, and then, bam! A pulsing, stinging migraine rips through my head like a lightning bolt. I squirm, and I barely feel the pressure of Dr. Guzman's hand holding my skull still as another prick of a needle bursting through the searing pain. And then, like water dousing a fire, the migraine calms and my brain is once again cool and still.

"Isla, how are you doing?" Dr. Guzman asks, his voice becoming less painful to hear as the question continues.

"Better now. That really hurt."