A/N: I made more covers... which are in a slideshow at the side. My mother says she likes the b&w one...thoughts? I'll probably change it to one of those three regardless, just for the sake of trying something new. Oh, and the reason this author's note is at the beginning...well, you'll see at the end.
Chapter Fifty
Delaney
I watched as Caleb was overtaken by Mason and twisted into a headlock. I watched as Jeanette was dragged away, kicking and screaming, toward the rush of other candidates, who stared at her curiously. I watched, powerless, dying, as everything crumbled around me.
Leary was going to take the candidates—all one hundred of them—away, and turn them into Superiors, leaving his old set to die. It was cruel and heartless, it was totally insane—it was nothing unexpected, not from Dr. Leary. Even now, as he watched Caleb fight with Mason, his expression cold and blank, I wasn't surprised. He wouldn't have cared if Caleb had been hurt, or even if Mason had been hurt, for that matter; all he wanted was to succeed at his sick little goal, regardless of whether that meant sacrificing some of his men.
Caleb had managed to remove himself from Mason's death grip, and was now showering the other Superior with a series of powerful punches. The remaining candidates stared at the fight with doe eyes before be hurried on by a harried Superior.
I watched Caleb move, deadly and quick, beating Mason down, and couldn't find a single similarity to the collected Popular I'd met all those weeks ago. He was angry now, really angry; angry enough to injure someone, if not kill them. His body was stronger, more durable, and with it he could do terrible things.
Had he always been that way? Had this ordeal brought out a violent alternate personality from within him that had always been there, dormant? Maybe calm, cool Caleb had never been the real Caleb; maybe this—whatever this was—was the real Caleb.
It began to seem more and more likely as he forced Mason to his knees, grasping the Superior's arm and flipping him over onto his back. A gun, the same Merit Z100 model that Dr. Leary had used, skittered from his pocket and across the concrete floor and came to a rest at our feet.
Trai and I were staring at the weapon, unsure whether or not to pick it up, when a voice cut through the noises echoing through the station. I tensed at the sound and felt Trai stiffen beside me. Even Abby, a few feet away, looked suddenly anxious.
Trai pivoted slightly, enough so that I could see the pretty girl who was standing at the end of the flow of kids, her familiar face a picture of disbelief.
"Delaney?" she said, repeating her words from moments before. "Is that you?"
Caleb
I froze mid-kick at the sound of her voice. Mason was on the ground, clutching his ribs where my foot had already connected. I'd found a burst of strength somewhere, but it was now forgotten.
"Trai?" continued the voice, somehow familiar. "And, wait, A—"
I stepped down on Mason's face as she continued, the crunching of it drowning out whatever she said next. Mason howled; his nose was flattened. It was hardly a killing blow, but it would suffice while I dealt with the girl.
I spun around slowly until I saw her, the girl with long, honey-blonde hair and blue-gray eyes. She wore a tight blue dress, formal like all the other candidates, and a pair of silver high-heels were clutched in her fist. Her eyes were wide and doe-like as she stared at Delaney, looking nothing like the cunning girl that Nessa had described to me.
"Carlie," I breathed, taking an unconscious step toward her. I didn't have any memories of her, not complete ones, but I knew that, more than anything, she wanted to become a Superior. And I couldn't let that happen.
Though I had spoken her name at barely a whisper, she immediately turned to look at me, her expression becoming sharp before softening in bewilderment. For a while, she gazed at me in confusion; then her eyes widened, and her face opened with recognition.
"Caleb," she said, tightening her grip on her shoes. She didn't seem disgusted by my changed appearance; rather, her mouth was agape in awe.
Somewhere behind me, I heard Leary laugh.
Carlie stared up at me. "Y-you're...a Superior," she murmured.
"Yeah," I muttered grimly. She marveled as I edged closer to her, ignoring stares from the others. I forgot about Leary, Mason, Jeanette, and the three kids staring at me in shock; all that mattered was preventing Carlie from getting inside that train.
"Carlie, listen to me," I ordered, my voice low and serious. "You need to come with me, right now. You can't go with Dr. Leary, no matter what he says. That man—he's a lying, scheming, disgusting excuse for a human being, and you can't trust him. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?"
Carlie's eyes, which had gone unfocused for a moment, came back to reality. "You don't know what you're saying," she said calmly. "Dr. Leary is our savior. He's going to protect us from the Pro-Inferiors." Her tone was naïve and light, like a child's.
"Dr. Leary kills candidates," I insisted, grabbing her wrist. "He cuts them apart and experiments on them and leaves them to die. You will never be safe with him."
"He's a genius," Carlie replied flatly. "You're a liar."
That provoked another laugh from Dr. Leary, who was sidling over to us with a smug look. "I don't believe your friend is going to pay any attention to you, Caleb," Leary said. "Isn't that right, Carlie?"
"Don't listen to him," I hissed, shifting so I blocked Carlie's view of the doctor. "He's the heart of this government, the source of the corruption." I shook her arm, still clutched in my wrist. "You can't let him fool you."
Carlie looked at me, then at the van, then back at me. A dozen emotions flickered across her face. "I don't know why you're here," she said eventually, "any of you. But I know why I'm here, and that's to become a Superior. Like you, Caleb. I want to be like you."
She was staring at me shamelessly now, her light eyes widened in longing. I managed not to squirm under her gaze, but a wave of shame washed over me: shame at what I was, what I had become.
"I want to be Superior, Caleb," she whispered. "I need this."
"You do not need this," I snapped.
She glanced at my tight grip on her wrist, one that her human strength could not rival. "Please," she murmured.
I stared at her face, beautiful already without the enhancements. There was an urgency there: she wasn't kidding. I could see it in the twitch of her lips, the wrinkle of her nose, the tears forming at the corners of her eyes. She really did want to become Superior. That knowledge made me feel sick, and my grasp loosened slightly.
"No, Carlie," I protested weakly as she began to wriggle away. "No!"
"You can't take this away from me!" Carlie shrieked, wrenching her arm out of my grip. I could only watch dazedly as she sprinted away across the station, past Leary and into the train.
Delaney
The station was nearly empty now.
All the candidates had been packed into the subway cars; I could see their faces pressed against the windows, watching us. Carlie was gone, Jeanette was gone—who knew if we'd ever see them again? The only people left were Mason, whimpering on the ground, and the guards Ana and Mahoney, who had taken up post near the train. And here we were—Caleb, Trai, Abby, Leary, and I—staring at each other as second after invaluable second ticked past.
"Well," Dr. Leary said after a while, "wasn't that fun?"
He was met with silence.
I looked up at Trai, who was staring at the doctor with a clenched jaw and shadowed eyes. His nostrils were flared, just slightly, and there was a disgusted raise to his upper lip. He looked as though he wanted to kill Leary himself. His sister wore a similar expression, but there was a shimmer of pain in it, too.
"Dr. Leary," she said, her voice quieter than usual, "why are you doing this?"
The doctor said nothing for a moment, his expression thoughtful as, most likely, he considered what his response should entail. Finally, he sighed.
"All growing up," he began, "I was picked on for being different. No matter how intelligent I was, I was always the ugly, awkward boy, who made people uncomfortable and could not endure physical education for more than five minutes. In short, I was a Loser, as I believe socially disinclined children are called these days."
I could feel Leary looking at me, knowing that he was referring to my past social standing, and cast an uncharacteristically fierce glance in his direction. He blinked.
"As I got older," he continued, "my plight did not get any better. I graduated at the top of my class in both high school and college, was invited to numerous study projects, and eventually found a job at one of the most high-end laboratories in the country. But nothing changed. In high school, I was the teacher's pet; in college, the overambitious know-it-all; and at Chatelaine, I was nothing more than a new biology major who might have been rather smart, but was much too irritating to be worth any attention.
"The thing that I noticed consistently, however, through all those years of being a Loser, was that my tormentors were really not any better than me. They were just ordinary people, many of them as bumbling and unattractive as I, yet they still took it upon themselves to point out my insecurities. And I always thought: what right do they have? They're not perfect, either. They're ridden with flaws, just like me, just like every other human being on the entire goddamn planet. So what right did they have?"
Dr. Leary took a deep breath and wiped a hand on his sweaty brow. "Naturally," he went on, "when the Superior Project was introduced at the lab, and I was asked to work on it, I was intrigued. After all, here was the chance to attain perfection: the perfection I had never had, and the perfection that all those oppressors hadn't, either. But in that project, I was still treated as an inferior, an underling. There was only one man, a batty old coot named Farrows, who ever so much as gave me the time of day.
"And suddenly, I became angry. I was through and done with being unworthy. Hell, I was brilliant. I deserved better. I wanted to take the flawless creature that we were creating and flaunt her to all those who had ever scorned me, showing them that they were imperfect, flawed, and would never attain the true paradisaical state of a Superior. That is why I do what I do. Because this way," he added softly, "I thought people would stop persecuting those who were a little less than perfect, because they would know that they are not perfect themselves."
Caleb
It was Delaney who spoke first after Leary's admission trailed into silence. She looked awful, pale and weak and slumped against Trai's shoulder, but her eyes glittered and her tone was firm.
"Well," she snapped, "it didn't work. Populars still go around schools, bullying the Losers. Teachers favor kids with higher Ranks, and you can't get friends unless you're over a five. Creating perfection didn't make people more self aware, Leary; it gave them something to strive for. And with the Choosing, that just worsened the problem. Now, people don't just think they're better than their peers; they know they're better, because with the idiotic Ranking, they have proof. If anything, it's worse than before. Nothing has changed."
Delaney was fuming; her eyes were slits.
Leary didn't laugh; he didn't sneer, or shout, or smile. He just let out a long, quiet breath, so that his shoulders slumped and his chin tucked into his sternum. In that brief second, he looked more human than I'd ever seen him.
But just as quickly, the moment was gone.
"I'm afraid that isn't my problem anymore," he said briskly, waving a dismissive hand. "And while it was certainly a pleasure to chat, I must be going. I have places to go, bombs to outrun...but I do wish you luck at attempting to survive."
I glanced quickly at my watch then, and was shocked and horrified to find that it was one forty-seven, less than fifteen minutes until detonation. And, I realized, I had no idea where we were going. I had seen what I thought was a door, far against the wall, but who knew if that's what it really was? We could have gone the wrong way, and if that was the case, we had pretty much zero chance of getting out of there alive.
Well, if we weren't going to make it, then I was determined not to let Dr. Leary do so, either.
I readied myself as the doctor bent over, grabbing a keening Mason—"Come now, Mason, let's not cause a fuss."—by both of his bloody hands and began dragging the Superior across the concrete floor.
With clenched teeth and fists, I rushed forward, planning to catch Leary by surprise. But as I neared him, my running footsteps silent, something materialized in front of me, catching me hard in the stomach and sending me skidding back. Pain racked my abdomen, flaring around the area of the bullet wound, as I slid backwards across the station floor. The rough concrete tore my shirt and chafed my skin.
When I finally came to a stop some twenty feet from where I'd been, I opened my eyes and saw Dr. Leary watching me from all the way across the station with a hideous smirk. He had kicked me at last second. Without even looking, he'd effortlessly blocked my attack. Mason lay on the ground behind him, but as I watched, two hands reached out of the barely open train door and pulled his body inside.
"Sixty years gives a man ample time to perfect his reflexes," Leary called.
Seething, I tried to stand, but was quickly overcome with agony. I could feel the shredded flesh on my back, bloody and peeling, a wall of fire that forced me back to my knees.
Dr. Leary raised a hand in farewell.
Something came back to me as I knelt there, staring past the frozen trio of my former friends to Leary's leering face. It was the words I'd said to Carlie in my effort to make her stay.
He's the heart of this government, the source of the corruption.
"Hey, Leary!" I shouted, just as he was about to step into the train. He didn't turn around. "You know, it's really not this government that's corrupt: it's you. All this time, I've been fighting the system, when I should have been fighting the lunatic right in front of me." I took a painful breath. "You deserved every bit of torment you got, you bastard. Every single bit. You're the root of this government's corruption, and you deserve to rot in hell."
There was no sound as I finally got to my feet, my hands on my knees. Still, Leary did not turn, denying me the satisfaction of seeing his face.
"Maybe I did," he said at last, his voice loud enough to be heard but sounding like a whisper, "and maybe I am. But Caleb"—he looked at me then, eyes glittering—"will Jeremy Fairleigh be any better?"
And then he straightened up, stepped into the train, and was gone.
Delaney
I watched silently as Leary disappeared into the train. Trai was supporting my weight on one side, and Abby stood clenching my arm on the other. When the door closed behind Leary, she sucked in a sharp breath, her grip tightening. It hurt, but I didn't stop her. I would have done the same.
I didn't know what was left to do now. Leary had won; he'd beaten Caleb, taken the candidates, and would now ferret himself off to who-knows-where while the four of us were left to die. The situation, in all honestly, seemed hopeless.
Beside me, Abby was shifting from foot to foot, her expression taking on a note of uncertainty. She knit her eyebrows and pursed her lips, looking unsteady and highly explosive.
"I can't let him win," she muttered suddenly, releasing her grip on my arm. Her eyes had glazed with that familiar determination, her muscles clenched in anticipation.
"Abby," Trai hissed in warning. "What the hell are you doing?"
But his sister ignored him. Before we could do anything to stop her, she tore off across the platform, sprinting at top speed toward the waiting train. She curved toward its front, where Leary's two guards were still standing; they watched in disbelief as she approached them. Meanwhile, the train was starting up, making a quiet hiss as it prepared to move.
"Stop the train!" she yelled. "Don't go anywhere!" She waved her arms in a wide arc, evoking a confused reaction from the kids within the train. Her effort was a valiant one, but completely hopeless.
"Hey, get back here!" Trai screamed, taking a few steps forward. I didn't move with him, and crumpled to the ground as Abby continued her mad dash. Trai cursed loudly under his breath, already hurrying after her, but he was too far behind. My heart climbed into my throat.
"Stop!" Abby screeched. "Stop right there!"
She was only a few feet from the guards now, and when she came within reach, the man (Mahoney) grabbed her by the arm. Abby screamed, still in motion, as her momentum made him swing her around in a crazed pinwheel. The action nearly took off the head of his partner, who barely ducked in time.
He swung her around one, two, five times, each revolution loosening his grasp on her arm until they were holding on by fingertips. If the situation hadn't been so dire, they would have looked hilarious. Trai was still sprinting toward the pair, and reached them just as they came around for the fifth time. He tackled the guard, but in doing so, made the man lose his grip on Abby's hand.
Abby was sent into the air, spiraling and flailing, her mouth open in a silent O of terror. From the ground, I watched her descent almost in slow motion as she floated down, past the drop-off and toward the subway tracks below.
Then time sped up, and she hit the ground with a heavy thud. I couldn't see her from my angle, but I screamed her name. There was no answer. Trai, who had given up on the guard and was now knelt at the end of the platform, called to her as well, his expression desperate. But he didn't get a response either. And a few feet away from where Abby's body had landed, the train was finally ready for departure. I felt a shock of fear for a moment, thinking that Trai would jump in after his sister, but he only fell backwards, away from the subway cars.
"Abby!" I shrieked again, my voice cracking. I tried to drag myself forward. "Stop! Stop the train!"
But, ignoring me, the machine gave a final creak, then sped forward, a sleek, black, unbeatable behemoth that thundered relentlessly over the place where Abby lay. Four seconds, maybe five, and them it was gone. I squeezed my eyes shut as it passed, expecting a squeal, a cry, a whimper—but even worse, there was silence.
She didn't make a sound.