My hands clamp over my mouth to keep me from letting out a cry. The shot rings in my ears.
The kill I’d once seen Jax make now comes back to me in a wave, and I double over, hunching against the wall as I try to brace myself against the onslaught of the memory.
We believe that there are too many people in the world who go unpunished for committing terrible crimes.
Those were Taylor’s words that had ultimately persuaded me to join the Blackcoats. She had told me they fought for causes they believed in. Their actions were justified because she—they all—feared what Hideo was capable of.
But in a single moment, every positive thing I ever thought about the Blackcoats, every word they’d plied me with, vanishes. Tremaine was alive just a second ago and now he’s dead, and it’s because of me.
Breathe.
Breathe.
But I can’t think straight. I can’t function in this moment except to crouch like some kind of coward, trembling uncontrollably against the wall. The glass room in front of me blurs and straightens. I think I see Taylor stepping back as two guards drag the body away, another lingers behind to clean up the floor. Zero leans toward Jax to speak in a low voice, while Taylor tucks something into the hands of the other guards. No one looks concerned. It suddenly occurs to me that the guards here were paid to wait around and bring Tremaine’s body outside, so that they could drive it off somewhere. They were prepared to execute him.
My panic is cutting my breath short. I feel faint. The edges of my view are darkening, fading out, and I fight against it, the logical part of my mind telling me that if I collapse now, here, they’ll find me. And if they know I’ve seen all this, they won’t hesitate to do the exact same thing to me that they just did to Tremaine.
Jax looks bored—exasperated with that person who took up her time—she hadn’t even looked back at Tremaine’s body, which she’d left on the floor. How many has she killed this way?
The Blackcoats are murderers. Tremaine had warned me to stay away from them from the start—he’d only been here because he was looking out for me. And I’d gone ahead anyway. Now he’s dead. What if the Blackcoats are already out looking for me, having learned the connection between Tremaine and my work?
What have I done?
I can’t do this. I can’t stay here. I close my eyes and count, forcing myself to focus on the train of numbers in my head until they’re all I see. Hideo needs to know this. But what do I tell him? I don’t even understand everything I just saw. What is that robot that Zero had been commanding? And if he’s not here in person, where is he?
Get up, Emi.
I whisper the words over and over, until finally I unfreeze myself. I push my body off from the wall, rise from my crouch, and stumble back the way I came. Feverishly, I pull up my menus and set my maps for the hotel. I make my way far enough so that I’ve left the horrible room behind me and have reentered the soaring main lobby of the complex.
I swing my new board down toward the floor, ready to hop on it—but my hands are shaking so badly that I drop it with a clatter. I lunge in vain to catch it.
A click makes me whirl around. Jax is standing there, her pale skin stark against the black walls, her gun pointed directly at my head. Her gray eyes pierce through me.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she says.
17
I don’t dare answer. I just stay where I am and lift my hands over my head.
She waves her gun once at me. “Up.”
I do as she says. There are a few flecks of blood on her glove, Tremaine’s blood, and my eyes lock on to the sight. She’s going to kill me for being here, and there’s nowhere for me to hide. I’m going to die on the floor of this building, just like Tremaine did.
“Why the hell did you come here?” she snaps at me in a whisper.
“I was looking for Zero,” I say, not even believing my own bad excuse. My words come out haltingly, and I can hear the tremor in them. “I’m meeting Hideo tomorrow night. I—”
Jax observes me carefully. She knows I’m lying—but instead, she says, “You saw, didn’t you?”
I shake my head vigorously. “I heard.” Usually, I can lie better than this—but right now, the panic in my eyes gives me away. “It was too dark. All I got were voices down the hall.”
Jax sighs; she almost looks like she feels sorry for me, and I wonder if she recognizes the same look on my face from when she’d killed my assassin. “It’s impressive that I didn’t catch you on your way into the building. But here we are now.”
The echo of Tremaine’s killing shot still rings in my head, bursting over and over again, and my hands yearn to reach up and cover my ears.
Jax tightens her grip on her gun. This is it. My limbs are frozen in place.
“Walk.”
What? My feet feel rooted to the floor.
Jax seizes my arm and shoves me once. Her nails dig hard into my skin. “If they know you’re here, you’re dead,” she growls in my ear, shoving me forward. “Go.”
Her words register through my chaotic mind, and I manage to shoot her a confused glance as she starts pulling me along the shadowed wall of the main lobby. “Where are you taking me?” I whisper.
Jax leads me down another dark hall on the opposite end of the lobby. “Less talking, more walking,” she replies.
Whatever shred of silence I’d managed to hold on to now breaks, and my words come spilling out. “And then what? Will you take me out, too? A shot to the head, just like Tremaine? Where are you taking his body?”
She turns those pale gray eyes on me again. “So, you did see.”
I shake my head repeatedly, trying in vain to get Tremaine’s crumpled body out of my mind. “What are you all doing here?” I say over and over again. “What is that robot Zero was controlling? Where is he?”
Jax doesn’t answer me. We reach the end of the hall and a small side entrance that opens into the back of the building, where a few cars are parked.
Here, Jax suddenly shoves me up against the wall and presses a gloved hand over my mouth. She looks as cold as ever, but there’s tension in her eyes now, and she keeps glancing around to make sure we’re alone. “In a minute, I’m going to tell you to go outside and get in the car farthest to your left. It’ll take you back to the hotel. The guards out front are busy with Tremaine’s body. Keep your head down and don’t try to come back here. Do you understand me?”
I struggle out of her grip. “But you—”
She shoves me again hard and puts her gun right against my head. Ice-cold metal. I hear it click at my temple. “But I hit your stupid friend Tremaine with a grazing shot to his head. I’ll direct his car to a hospital. Don’t you dare visit him tonight, unless you want Taylor to find out that you somehow knew he’d be there the instant he arrived. Wait until tomorrow morning.”
None of this makes sense at all. “What? Taylor?” My whisper turns hoarse. “You shot Tremaine. Zero’s the head of—”
Jax lets out a quiet, surprised laugh and lowers her gun. “You think Taylor works for Zero, don’t you?”
A note of hesitation enters my voice. “She tried to warn me. Zero—”
Jax’s smile is cold. “Zero doesn’t run things. Taylor does. We follow her command.”
Taylor leads the Blackcoats. I blink. That can’t be right—she’s far too quiet and uncertain for that. Her soft voice, her delicate shoulders, and thoughtful look . . . Hadn’t she deferred to Zero the first time I met them? Hadn’t she let him talk?
Let him talk. Like he worked for her.
“But,” I try to say, “Taylor doesn’t seem like . . .”
My voice trails off at Jax’s expression. She is dead serious, and in her eyes, I see an emotion I’ve never seen before on her face. Real fear. Fear of Taylor.
Jax, the girl who can eat a snack and then shoot someone in the head, who doesn’t bat an eye at the sight of blood . . . is terrified of Taylor.