The Gender End (The Gender Game #7)

Reading was difficult for me. I had learned in the orphanage—Violet had helped me—but after I fell into the river and was taken to the facility, I hadn’t been allowed to read. Well, there was nothing to read, really. Sometimes I wrote Violet’s and my names into the window when the condensation got high, but that was pretty much the only chance I’d gotten to practice.

It took me several seconds to puzzle through the small script.

Dear Tim, it began. She didn’t bother saying a bunch of things about what might have happened to her. I read through it, and though my hands never shook, I felt light and strange inside.

Among everything she’d written—and it was a lot—some phrases stood out to me:

I know we’ve only been back together for a short while, but it has been worth all the times I’ve searched and waited for you to have you back with me.

I’ve watched you grow so much since we rescued you from the Facility.

Viggo and I are married now, but that doesn’t change my feelings for you one bit. You’ve always been my family, and you will always be my little brother. If something happens to me, Viggo will always be your family now, too.

I know you’ll make the right choices.

I’m so proud of you.

It didn’t help me with the mission, but it helped.

I looked back down at the note, and frowned when I saw a few letters printed facing me. I had folded it so the words would be inside, like wrapping them in a blanket. Curious, I unfolded it and realized there were words on the other side, too.

I love you, Tim, it read. A secret message within a secret message. I felt warmth growing inside me, even in this horrible place.

Refolding the paper and stuffing it back into the pocket of my suit, I took a few steps forward and then sidestepped the python that had been waiting for me to move for several minutes. I wasn’t sure if its vision was bad or what, but as its jaws snapped closed on nothing, I leapt back over its coiled body, and then began to run again, trying to give it the slip.

I thought as I ran. Violet’s letter hadn’t changed the situation, but it had filled me with more confidence, like a hug from her—always worth it, even though it made my skin ache—or laughing and joking around with Jay. I would follow the mission I was given, unless I had to improvise.

It turned out to be a good decision. I found a passage and took it, the steady sound of the snake slithering behind me filling my ears. Then I rounded a corner and came to a sudden stop, regardless of the creature chasing me.

A group of boys were standing in the chamber, right in front of an airlock door, as though they had just come through. My brothers, wearing all black and horrible masks that covered their faces, making them into blank-faced soldiers.

Without thinking about it, I tensed my muscles and activated the suit.

Fire exploded over my skin, and I clenched my teeth together as I tried not to cry out. Now my hand did shake, uncontrollably—I could feel it, not see it—and I felt like I was going to die.

The serpent slid in beside me and then reared back, its head moving up in the air and hovering at least six feet over my own, seeking back and forth. Somehow I managed to take a few steps out of the way, and then the other boys swarmed it. Some of them leapt up in the air, while others went low. Two grabbed it and began pushing it back, their legs and arms straining against its muscular body.

One boy lashed out with his foot, kicking it in the jaw, while another pulled out a gun and began firing at its head. The snake started to coil around one of them, opening its mouth, when a fourth boy leapt up and, without apparent effort, thrust his fist right through one of the snake’s beady red eyes. His arm disappeared into the eye, and the snake writhed back and forth as he jammed his arm even deeper. Then the beast started to fall. The boy leapt off of him, landing in a crouch, his arm soaked with blood. But he just stared at the snake, motionless, not even bothering to wipe the blood away.

I fought to breathe through the pain as the snake collapsed, trying to think about what I could do as the boys began standing up. I needed to get through that door to…

My legs were beginning to tremble from exertion. I paused, and, slowly, each movement adding more fuel to the fire burning across my skin, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the vial Dr. Tierney had given me.

Liquid to gas, she had said… Were those black masks that left only their eyes exposed gas masks, too? But they wore them all the time… even in Patrus. The greater visibility in this room meant that the toxic mist was much thinner here. Had Elena sent them into the caverns without any protection?

My whole body was shaking now—a sensation I hadn’t felt since some of the tests I’d been given in the Facility—and I couldn’t spend any more time contemplating. I could run if I needed to. Back into the mists.

Hoping it would work, I tossed the vial into the middle of the room, retreating. The glass broke, and several of the other boys turned toward the noise, converging on it. They raced to the spot, and then paused, their masked heads cocking back and forth. I had time to wonder whether Ms. Dale and Dr. Tierney had tested the serum, which was supposed to negate the effects of Benuxupane in the bloodstream within moments.

Those closest were the first to fall, but after a few moments, they had all collapsed.

I relaxed, letting the suit’s cover disintegrate, and sucked in a deep breath of relief as the fire faded to a tingle, like a thousand pins and needles were using me as a pincushion. I shook out my arms and legs and proceeded to the middle of the room, first to check that each of the other boys was okay, and then, one by one, to take off their masks, removing the camera headset combinations underneath and breaking them apart. I recognized quite a few of them from our time in the Facility together. It filled me with feelings—some sad, some angry, some that I didn’t have a name for—to see my brothers lying there, their faces weary and dirty. Maybe now they’d get a chance to rest and heal.

There were ten boys in total. Four of them were older than me, in their early twenties, at least. I supposed I should call them men. The six younger ones, however, were the first to start to wake up.

I stood in the center of the room, waiting as they slowly climbed up to their feet. Some of them were looking around, confused and bewildered, while others were rocking back and forth, shaking and crying as if they were in pain.

“Who are you?” Colin demanded, and I remembered him as one of the boys who had turned quickly on Viggo.

“Tim,” I replied simply. “We brothers.”

Colin sneered and looked around, squinting as though just waking up.

“How did you get us here, traitor?”

“Not traitor,” I informed him. “I Tim. Your brother.”

“No!” another voice shouted, and I turned to see a boy named Matthew pushing forward through the small group now standing up and milling around, his eyes dark and angry and confused. “You tried to hurt Desmond. She helps us! She gives us medicine so we—”

“She dead. And she lie.”

Matthew flushed red, his hand balling into a fist, and I took a step forward, my gaze menacing.

“Queen using you,” I announced in a low voice.