The Deathless Trilogy

2.26. DNA

Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe it was just one of my nightmares.

I open my eyes and find myself on a bed in the infirmary, just like I had found myself on the Immortal. The pillow beneath me stings my wound. This doesn't mean I was collected, I try to tell myself. Maybe I fell in my sleep. But I know the truth. I'm wearing the same funeral dress I wore earlier, and my fingertips are still stained red with blood from my gash. My ankles and wrists are strapped to the hospital bed, as they were when Gunther wanted my blood sample. A gag of cotton and gauze wraps around my head and through my mouth.

It wasn't a dream. It all happened. The camp was really attacked. The Council is dead, and Gunther is really in charge. I think back to Daniel criticizing the Knock Out serum, and I want to scream. He was right. He was right about all of this. If we had escaped when he said, we'd be safe. Maybe we could have even gotten everyone out. But my mom... Declan... they would still be dead.

Time folds over itself: I've been captured by a Prowler, I'm in a strange infirmary, what made me feel at home has been destroyed, and my family is gone.

At least the first time, I rolled over to find my mom. Now I see only a black haired man to my left. There are screens beside each bed, just as there were on the Immortal, and his screen reads, "Hugh Quail." His head is turned away from me in sleep or coma or death, so I use the opportunity to try to break free. If Hugh is here, Gunther will be back soon.

I poke my tongue against the gag, trying to push it from my mouth, but all the gauze and panicking only makes my mouth fill with saliva. I try to swallow it, but it slips down my wind pipe, and I erupt in a fit of coughs.

He rolls his head to face me, and, upon realizing I'm choking, painfully lifts himself from his bed and leans across to pull the gauze from my mouth. I catch my breath, and thank him.

He looks me up and down. "My brother told me not to interact with you. But you don't look so scary," he says, wincing in discomfort. His voice hints at Gunther's cadence, only lighter. Sweeter. They are unmistakably brothers, from the midnight hair to the ocean eyes, except that the cryo chambers kept Hugh closer to my age than Gunther's. He falls back on his bed, and rests. "I'm Hugh. You look really familiar to me. Do I know you?"

I don't know how to answer his question, or if I even should. This is the brother of the man who just swept me up in a Prowler machine, who turned my friends into robots, and made Daniel, Nina, Celia, Jane, all of them, into bloody slaves. But this is also the man who Declan loved, and who loved him back. Who made him feel valued. My heart breaks into jagged shards in my chest, and I have to push myself up to relieve the pain.

"Slow down," Hugh tells me, "I tried that this morning when I came to." He beams, dimples framing his mouth. "I was in a coma after I had lung implants. My brother, Gunther, made me new lungs. But you probably already know that. He seemed to know you well. Do you work for him or something?"

"Women aren't allowed to work here. I don't know what your brother told you about me, but I really need to get out of here. Do you think you could unstrap me?"

"That depends, where are you going? You might have a concussion, you should rest."

His naive sunniness is refreshing, but just outside those doors are piles of drained bodies, and I need to do my best not to join them. Hugh needs the truth if I'm ever going to convince him to let me out.

"You do know me," I start, "but you probably don't remember. You were in the government bunker, in the cryo chambers. My group attacked to get back some of our own and kill the President, and your brother thought you were out already, so he activated the self-destruct response. He sent out a gas that makes people susceptible to suggestion, so that everyone in the bunker would stay until it blew, but I'm immune to it. I got everyone out. All the people in my group, all the survivors, and all the people in the cryo chambers. Like you. You were having trouble breathing, you couldn't keep up, so I carried you. That's how you know me. As for Gunther, I know him, yes, but in the same way a rabbit knows a wolf. He's going to hurt me and what's left of my family. I can't rest right now, I need to get out."