The Eighth Guardian

CHAPTER 20

I scramble backward on the bed and rip the IV out of my arm.

“What are you doing here?” I spring up and inch my way to the window.

“Those don’t open, in case you were thinking of trying to leap out,” Yellow says. Her voice is as flat as a calm sea.

“How did you find me?”

Yellow shrugs. “It was pretty easy. After you so dramatically flung your tracker at Indigo’s feet, we realized you’d need medical attention and that you’d probably look for it fairly close to the present. So we’ve just been working backward and following up on any traumatic arm injuries reported at the major hospitals over the past few years. We’ve been on quite a few wild-goose chases, but now here you are.” She slowly nods her head with a smug, telling look in her eyes. “And now I’m going to take you back.”

“I don’t think so.” I just need to get out my necklace, and I’m gone.

But before I can make a move, Yellow throws herself straight at me. I grab onto her shoulders and spin her around, slamming her back into the wall. She gasps, then drops down and rolls away. I whip around, and my head explodes with light. I put my arms out to steady myself. And then Yellow kicks me—hard—with the heel of her foot, right in my solar plexus.

I double over onto the floor. The room is spinning. I don’t know the ceiling from the floor. I groan and try to push myself up, and Yellow appears over me, her face only a few inches from mine.

“Submit. Submit now, and I’ll take it easy on you. Continue to fight, and I’ll—” She doesn’t get a chance to finish, as I ram the palm of my right hand up into her nose.

Yellow screams and doubles over.

“My nose!” she screams. “I swear to God, if you broke my nose, I will kill you. I will kill you dead.”

There’s banging on the door.

“Open this door!” the nurse yells. “Open it now!”

I look at the door. The latch is broken. It’s been dismantled. A cheap electric screwdriver lies abandoned by the door. I look back at Yellow. She smiles and nods her head. But then she flies at me again, and I don’t have time to duck. She slams me onto the ground and pins my arms over my head. A flash of pain stabs at my newly stitched wound. Blood pours from Yellow’s nose, ruining her ivory cashmere sweater. I try to lift my arms, but Yellow has them pinned too hard. I’m normally stronger than she is, but I’m too weak in this moment. I roll from side to side, but I’m stuck.

The nurse gives three sharp raps on the door.

“Tell her everything is fine,” Yellow orders.

“Because she’ll just believe me and leave?” I suck in air, and my head spins.

“Fine, whatever,” Yellow says. Her hands are pressed into my wrists. “Take out your necklace. We’re going home.”

“I’m not going anywhere. They all lied to me. I’m one of you, Yellow. I was born into this.”

Yellow’s face contorts into a confused expression, and she presses my wrists even harder. It hurts. “What are you talking about?”

“My father was Delta.”

“Shut up!” Yellow commands. “You’re a liar!”

“I’m not! It’s all there, in the files on the bed. All of it! My dad was Delta; my grandfather was Four. I have the genetics, and I always have. Alpha lied to me. Zeta lied to me. Everyone lied to me.”

“I said shut up!”

“Go look at them.” My head is spinning. Yellow’s pressing into my arms so hard my hands are tingling. “Go and see for yourself. Everything is right there in those files.”

“Nice try,” Yellow says. “I let go of you to read the files, and the next thing I know, your hands are around my neck.”

“I won’t.”

“Yeah, like I’m going to trust you. I know what happened. Alpha told us. The experiment failed because you suck at life, and you freaked out when he told you and ran.”

“There was no experiment, Yellow!”

The banging on the door gets louder.

“Open this door this instant!” the nurse yells. “Open it or I’m going to have security break it down. They’re already here!”

Yellow looks back at me. “Where’s your necklace? I’m taking you back now. Screw the files.”

I smile at her. “The necklace is under my gown. You’re going to have to unhand me to get it.”

Yellow’s eyes travel down to my chest, and I see the exact moment appear on her face when she realizes I’m right. “Crap!”

A big THUMP! comes from the door. They really are breaking it down.

“Go read the file on top. The one marked Delta. Then look at mine.”

THUMP!

“That door can’t take too many of those,” I say.

Yellow grunts and pushes off of me, then jumps up and scrambles over to the bed. I watch her from the floor and push myself up. I’m torn between attacking her and sticking my hand in my gown, grabbing the necklace, and fleeing. But I do neither.

Instead I watch Yellow. I want someone else to know the truth.

She’s holding two files in her hands, and her eyes dart back and forth between them. She shakes her head, over and over and over. “This can’t be right. It can’t be.”

THUMP!

The door splinters and breaks.

Yellow looks at the door, then whips around to look at me, her eyes wide with shock. “We have to go!”

“I’m not going back with you.” I take out the necklace and pop open the lid.

Yellow holds up a hand. “Don’t go! Wait for me!”

“Huh?”

Yellow scoops up all the files and the notebook in her hands, then fiddles with her own watch. “Come back one month with me.”

“What?”

“I need more time to process this!” There’s another THUMP! The door gives way, and two burly security guards barrel into the room, followed by the nurse. Her face is red with anger.

“One month!” Yellow shouts. And then she shuts the watch and disappears—taking my files with her!

The security guards and the nurse stop in their tracks. They stare at the empty space where Yellow used to be and then look back at me.

“I’m sorry.” I know I’m about to give them their second shock, but I have to follow my files. There’s still more I have to know. So I turn the month dial back one click and shut the lid.

Searing pain rips across my entire body, but it only lasts for a second. And then I’m standing in the same hospital room.

“Finally!” Yellow whispers. She nods her head at the bed, where a very old woman is sleeping. She holds up the files. “Tell me you didn’t doctor these.”

“Excuse me?”

“You didn’t make these up, did you?”

“When the hell would I have found the time to do that? And why would I have done it?”

“So these are real? Your father and grandfather really were Annum Guard?”

“Looks like it.” I shake my head. “Listen, I’m just as stunned by the whole thing as you are. But something is going on over at Annum Guard, something they’re clearly not telling us. It’s all Alpha. I think the entire thing was a ploy to get me to kill Ariel Stender.”

“Who’s Ariel Stender?” Yellow asks.

“He created these.” I finger the watch hanging from my neck. “Alpha sent me back to try to convince him not to add the genetic link and then to kill him if he wouldn’t agree. I refused to do it. I was coming back to tell him that I failed, and that’s when I found the files. So Alpha set the whole thing up. But I don’t know why.”

Yellow’s mouth pops open into a little O. “Because Alpha can’t project.”

My stomach lurches. “What do you mean, Alpha can’t project?”

“Honestly, are you that dumb? You never wondered why he doesn’t go on any of the missions?”

I don’t even hear her insult. I’m too busy trying to process. “Alpha seriously can’t project?”

“No,” Yellow says. “He’s the government suit that oversees us. He’s the nongenetic link, there to keep us honest. Same thing with Red, who’s going to take over.”

“Wait, Red can’t project either?” I feel as if I’ve been slapped.

“Gosh, you’re slow. Red is being groomed to take over for Alpha. He’s a suit-in-training.”

The old lady in the bed twitches but doesn’t wake. I drop to a whisper. “I bet the switch is happening soon! I bet Alpha is being forced to retire, and that’s why he suddenly pulled me into all of this.”

Yellow shakes her head. “That doesn’t make sense. If you had the genetic makeup all along, why didn’t you grow up a part of it like we did?”

I shake my head, but in an instant I know. It’s like how your entire life is supposed to flash through your mind before you die. A bunch of images flood my memory, all of my mom.

I’m five years old. We’re at the local park, and I’m swinging as high as I can on the swings, trying to touch the sky. My mom is pushing up, up, as hard as she can. It’s a manic day, back when I was too young to know any better and thought the highs were fun. We’ve already been to the library, the ice cream shop, the toy store; and we spent more than an hour shopping for art supplies. There’s a brand-new canvas for me to throw paint on, too, next to hers in the back of the Jeep. And now we’re at the park.

A woman comes over and starts talking to us. I don’t remember what she says. But I do remember my mom’s reaction. She pushes the woman down to the ground and yanks me off the swing. She barks at the woman to never talk to me, to get the hell out of Jericho and never come back, and then she drags me home. I ask her who the woman is, and all she tells me is “She’s a bad person. Very bad. You stay away from her.”

I’m nine years old. I’m walking home from school when a white van pulls up next to me. It’s a man driving this time.

“Your mom is sick,” he tells me.

I keep walking.

“Your mom doesn’t have your best interests at heart,” he says. “You’re not where you should be.”

I run. Fast. I cut through the park, where there isn’t a road. The van screeches to a halt at the entrance but doesn’t try to follow me down the weathered, cracked sidewalk. I come out the other side and run straight home. At the time I thought the man was from DCF, a social worker called by one of Jericho’s know-it-all citizens, come to take me away from my mom.

It wasn’t.

I’m fourteen. My letter from Peel has arrived. My mom is locked in the bathroom. Her wailing moans travel down the hallway and into my bedroom. I catch bits and pieces. “They can’t.” “She’ll die.” “They’ll take her.”

At the time I think it’s just my mom being my mom. Emotional instability at its best. But it’s not. I get it now. It’s not. She knew about Annum Guard. My dad probably told her what he really did for a living. She knew that he died on a mission, but I doubt she knows the whole truth about his death.

But I do. And I know that my mom has spent her life trying to protect me from the same fate. She knew that if I went to Peel, I’d wind up in Annum Guard. But I thumbed my nose in her face and went anyway. I chose my fate and abandoned a very sick woman in the process. I am a horrible person.

When this is over—all over—I’m going back to Vermont. I’m going to make things right. I’m going to get her help, and then I’m going to fix us.

Yellow is staring at me, eyes wide, still waiting for an answer to her question.

“Because of my mom.” I rub my temples. I blamed her. For everything; for years and years and years I thought that she loved her precious artwork more than me, that I was a distant second. But she protected me. “My mom kept me away from the Guard. Or she tried to, at least. You all got to me eventually.”

Yellow looks down at her feet and blows out a long, sad breath. “I can’t believe this is happening. They lied to us, too. My freaking father lied to me.”

I feel my face recoil in horror. “You’re Alpha’s kid?” My voice is loud, and the old lady stirs.

“What? No.” Yellow drops her voice to a whisper. “Alpha doesn’t have children. My dad is Zeta.”

“Zeta!” The old lady stirs, and I drop my voice to a whisper, too. “No, that’s impossible. Zeta is Indigo’s dad.”

“Yeah, he’s called my brother.”

Yellow and Indigo are brother and sister? How did I not know this?

“I want my files back.” I thrust out my hand. “I need to know what else they’ve been hiding from me.”

Yellow hands them over, and the woman lets out a loud snore and thrashes her arms.

“We have to get out of here,” Yellow whispers. She rubs her hands up and down her arms. “I’m in deep trouble. I projected back in time again. I wasn’t supposed to do that. Red is monitoring me. He probably thinks I followed up on another lead, but Alpha is going to know. He’s just going to know. And then they’re going to come after me.”

“So go back.” I shrug. “Let me be and go back.”

Yellow shakes her head. “I want to know what you’re planning on doing.”

“I don’t know, but Alpha needs to be stopped. He tried to get me to kill an innocent man, just like . . .” Just like my dad. Goose bumps line my arms. Was my dad an innocent man, too? Was he set up by Alpha? There’s so much I still don’t know. So much I have to find out.

“Just like what?” Yellow says.

“Nothing.”

“Look, I’m not going back if your plan is to sneak into Annum Hall in the middle of the night and kill everyone.”

“Wow,” I spit. “Do you really think I’m a sociopath? Honestly. I’m not going to kill anyone. I’m going to . . . I don’t know. Gather all of this evidence and take it straight to the Department of Defense?”

Yellow’s eyes get wide. “You can’t do that.”

“Sure, I can. I just have to collect—”

“No, I mean you really can’t do that. Alpha must have anticipated that you would try to turn him in to the authorities. We’ve already gone back. We’ve changed it. You can’t . . .”

What is she talking about?

“Will you stop with the verbal diarrhea and just tell me?” I say.

“You’re on the most wanted list,” Yellow says, and my neck reels back like I’ve been slapped. “The one they don’t hang in post offices. The one that only a handful of people get to see. You step foot inside DC and you’re done for.”

My body feels light. I made a rash decision when I ran away, and now I can’t ever return. Because I’m wanted.

“Yellow, go back and leave me alone. I’ll figure this out.”

“I’m not going back. I just told you that they’re going to realize I made an unauthorized projection.”

“So tell them you were following a lead!”

Yellow sighs and walks over to the old woman lying in the bed. There’s a plastic drawstring bag on the table next to the bed. Yellow picks it up, opens it, and tosses me a flowered muumuu and a pair of fleece-lined plastic mules. “Put these on.”

I grit my teeth. “I’m not stealing an old lady’s clothes.”

“Put them on,” she snarls. “Someone from Annum Guard is going to be here any minute. Do you want the manhunt to end before it’s even started?”

I huff but realize she’s right. I slip the muumuu over my head, then take off the hospital gown underneath it. I slide my feet into the shoes, and Yellow grabs my hand and leads me out the doorway.

“Yellow, what are you doing?” I hiss as we run down the hallway. But Yellow zips this way and that until we’re running down the stairs and into the emergency room. People are everywhere. Doctors, nurses, patients. But Yellow charges ahead as if she belongs. She flings open the curtains to the triage beds as she goes. There’s a little girl holding a broken arm. An old man whose breathing is all raspy. And then there’s a doctor with a mobile suture cart rolled up next to him, working on a teenage boy with a gash on his calf.

“Who are you?” the doctor practically snarls. He’s young, probably a resident, and has bloodshot eyes with defeat written all over them.

“Sorry!” Yellow says. “Wrong bed. Looking for my mom.” The doctor turns back around, and Yellow swipes a scalpel from his tray. I raise my eyes at her, but she tucks the scalpel into the sleeve of her sweater and leads me out of the ER, onto the street. Only then does she drop my hand.

She hands me the scalpel and holds out her arm. “Cut it out.”

“Excuse me?”

“The tracker. Cut it out of my arm.” Her hand is shaking. The scalpel waves in front of me like a flag in the wind.

“I’m not cutting anything out of your arm. I want you to leave me alone. Go back to the present, Yellow.”

“Like it or not, I’m your only ally now. Alpha has everyone convinced that you’re trying to bring down Annum Guard.”

“So go back and convince everyone otherwise!”

“You don’t understand the climate there. It’s freaking scary, Iris. Alpha has everyone on lockdown. There are cameras all over the place. More cameras. Everyone thinks you’re dangerous. Even my dad.”

I shake my head. “Why should I believe that your dad wasn’t a part of this setup from the get-go? He knew my dad, too.”

“I don’t know what he knew.” She drops down onto a bench and cradles her head in her hands. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. Maybe my dad did know about you all along. Maybe he’s been in on the lie. I don’t know who to trust anymore. And that’s why I can’t go back there. So I’m staying, and you’re going to help me cut this damned tracker out of my arm. That’ll send a message. My tracker will deactivate, and they’ll know I’m not a puppet anymore either. That will rattle them.”

“Or they’ll think I killed you, and that will only strengthen their resolve.”

Yellow holds out her arm again. “Cut it out. Now. Or I will.”

“Yellow—”

“Use the scalpel, Iris!”

“You’re going to need medical attention. How are you going to get it if Annum Guard is already following up on every arm injury to teenage girls recorded in the last—whatever—years? You’re going to get caught.”

Yellow doesn’t respond, but her teeth tug on her bottom lip, so I know she didn’t think about that.

“We’ll go back before there were records,” she says. “We won’t get caught if we go back far enough.”

“And you also might die of blood loss.”

“1812,” Yellow says. “This date, 1812. Set your watch.”

“Yellow, that’s ridiculous. I’m not going to—”

POP!

Yellow and I gasp and turn. Orange stands a few feet in front of us at the entrance to the hospital. His eyes narrow when he sees us.

“Yellow,” he snarls. “What the hell are you doing?”

Yellow turns to me with panicked eyes. “Do it!”

My fingers fumble with my watch as I turn the year dial. The hands fly around the face, and I pray I counted right.

Yellow shuts her pendant, and there’s another POP! as she disappears out of view.

“No!” Orange screams, then he looks right at me. “Don’t you dare!”

“Don’t believe everything you’re told,” I tell him. And then I project back to 1812.