My father meets his glare with a look I’ve seen a hundred times: it is the look I’d receive whenever I pushed the limits just a little too hard. “I’m afraid that’s a risk I’m willing to take.” Not defensive, nothing to prove—this is the father I remember. “Especially since you don’t have the authority to revoke my benefits, and since I’m under no contractual obligation to explain myself to you.”
“She’s here, Will!” Gray explodes, and it is as loud as I feared it would be and more. His fingers dig even tighter. This time I see stars. “Your actions have been more than questionable lately, and it is absolutely within my rights to demand an explanation.”
Gray reaches for his earpiece again. “Backup at Aries,” he says. “Bring a single dose from the lab.” He lowers his finger, focusing all his energy on Dad—and my arm—again. “Pell’s taking the zip, so he’ll be here any minute. When he arrives, you will prove your loyalty to the program you’ve helped us build. Wolves before blood, remember the pledge?”
Dad’s eyes meet mine for the briefest of seconds before he averts them. Everything shifts with this one look: he is still in there. His kindness, his warmth, his compassion, all of it. It’s there, but he’s hiding it for some reason.
He’ll defend me. He’s been sketchy with his answers because he has something else up his sleeve—there is nothing in the world he wouldn’t do for his family. I’ve read it over and over on the respiratory physiology page of the field guide, his words to Mom: I’d do anything for you.
Gray pulls me to the far wall, where security feeds fill twenty, thirty high-def screens. He pushes an unmarked button on the control board beneath it; the green glass door slides open.
A short, thin, black man who wears tight white pants and a white V-neck—like Lonan’s outfit of choice, but in reverse—strides in, a full syringe in one hand. It is terrifyingly familiar, but filled with bright purple liquid instead of amber. He opens his other hand and sets a tiny silver case on the table, shaped like the one Emma used when she wore contact lenses.
“Well, Aries?” the man says. Pell—short for Pellegrin? “You want this one, or should I do it?”
I truly, truly believe it is for my safety when my father nods, and takes the syringe, and picks up the silver case—that all of this is an act put on for the sake of keeping these things away from the people who want to hurt me.
I believe these things wholeheartedly.
I believe it right up until he plunges the needle into the hollow of my neck. The purple liquid disappears underneath my skin, and I melt with it.
“You can trust me,” my father says.
He is not speaking to me.
SIXTY-SEVEN
THE ROOM IS a buzzy, fuzzy haze of varying shades of white. I’m warm down to the core, like my veins are oozing with the slippery, viscous hot oil treatment I tried on my hair when I was in seventh grade. It still stings at the base of my throat, where the needle pierced me. There is a crumpled paper towel on the table now, right next to Dad’s coffee mug. The paper towel is smeared with the remains of purple they wiped from my skin. Also, my blood.
I am led to a chair that reminds me of the dentist. Gray finally, finally releases me and I sit. My skin sticks to its mint-green patent leather covering. Various tools rest on a nearby tray. None of them appear to be dental tools.
“What is happening?” I try to say. “What are you doing to me?” Even to my own ears, my words are an indecipherable slur.
“It’s best if you hold still, Eden.” This voice is not deep, and it’s not my father’s. Pellegrin appears at my right side. His dark fingers are soft and silky, a contrast in every way to Gray’s. He is careful with my arm as he positions it forearm-side-up on the armrest, delicate with the straps as he buckles me into place. The oozing purple liquid suppresses my instinct to fight so much I’m surprised I feel it at all.
He picks up a pot of iridescent liquid from the tray of tools, pulls a cone-shaped metal stopper from its opening. I am at a carnival, I think. I will be painted, and then I will stuff my mouth with cotton candy.
The paintbrush holds all the fire of ten thousand wasps in its tiny pinprick tip.
My instinct to scream is coated in a thick layer of purple liquid, too. And I don’t feel it, but I’m crying. I know this because my father appears at my left side with another paper towel. He is all tenderness as he blots my tears away. As if he doesn’t have everything to do with creating them. I’ve come so very far, searching for answers, but I’ve found no closure, no clarity. All I have is more questions. What is he thinking?
Pellegrin is a quick artist. Or perhaps my sense of time is skewed. Either way: he turns on an ultraviolet light, and there it is.
I am officially compromised. One of the HoloWolves.
Eternally hollow, I amend. Never a Wolf.
The image is mesmerizing, shimmering with the illusion of depth. I stare and stare until someone—Pellegrin again—gently leans my head back against the chair. He swiftly parts my right eyelids, like he’s done this a hundred times, a thought that is comforting and frightening in equal measure. My eyes struggle against him, fighting to close, but before he allows it he puts pressure directly on my pupil. He repeats the process on the left side.
I blink.
The world is clear again, clearer than ever. Which is strange, because my vision was already clear long before I was made to sit in this chair. The purple liquid made it hazy, for sure, but now it’s digitized, almost, like I’m seeing everything through an enhanced filter. It’s like they’ve fused some new form of silk tech to my eyes.
“Activate her,” Gray directs.
My father moves toward the control panel on the far wall. He does not hesitate to turn his back on me.
“After he activates you, you won’t remember any of this procedure,” Pellegrin tells me. As if it should comfort me that they have the ability to cause pain in me and then wipe my memory clean.
I can’t fathom a world in which the pain of my father’s betrayal isn’t a raw, gaping slice straight through my chest. But then, he probably isn’t talking about that aspect of the procedure.
Pellegrin squeezes my shoulder. “This is it,” he says, so low I’m sure I’m the only one to hear it, as Dad leans down toward the control panel. “Hold on tight.”
But Dad doesn’t push any of the buttons.
I’ve never seen him move so fast—a small, slender tube rests in the grooves of the control panel, but not for long. He grabs it, he puts it to his mouth, he blows.
A needle-thin dart lodges itself in Gray’s chest, just above his heart. He slumps to the ground.
“Now,” my father says, “we can talk.”
SIXTY-EIGHT
MY EMOTIONS ARE whiplash; my head is confusion.
He injects me, but he blows a dart at Gray.
He stands by while Pellegrin marks me with the wolf, but he doesn’t push the button to activate me.
He lets me feel pain, but he is apparently not against me.