Imagine Me (Shatter Me Book 6)

Ella

Juliette

When I open my eyes, I feel steel.

Strapped and molded across my body, thick, silver stripes pressed against my pale skin. I’m in a cage the exact size and shape of my silhouette. I can’t move. Can hardly part my lips or bat an eyelash; I only know what I look like because I can see my reflection in the stainless steel of the ceiling.

Anderson is here.

I see him right away, standing in a corner of the room, staring at the wall like he’s both pleased and angry, a strange sneer plastered to his face. There’s a woman here, too, someone I’ve never seen before. Blond, very blond. Tall and freckled and willowy. She reminds me of someone I’ve seen before, someone I can’t presently remember.

And then, suddenly—

My mind catches up to me with a ferociousness that’s nearly paralyzing. James and Adam, kidnapped by Anderson. Kenji, falling ill. New memories from my own life, continuing to assault my mind and taking with them, bits and pieces of me.

And then, Emmaline.

Emmaline, stealing into my consciousness. Emmaline, her presence so overwhelming I was forced into near oblivion, coaxed to sleep. I remember waking, eventually, but my recollection of that moment is vague. I remember confusion, mostly. Distorted reels.

I take a moment to check in with myself. My limbs. My heart. My mind. Intact?

I don’t know.

Despite a bit of disorientation, I feel almost fully myself. I can still sense pockets of darkness in my memories, but I feel like I’ve finally broken the surface of my own consciousness. And it’s only then that I realize I no longer feel even a whisper of Emmaline.

Quickly, I close my eyes again. I feel around for my sister in my head, seeking her out with a desperate panic that surprises me.

Emmaline? Are you still here?

In response, a gentle warmth rushes through me. A single, soft shudder of life. She must be close to the end, I realize.

Nearly gone.

Pain shoots through my heart.

My love for Emmaline is at once new and ancient, so complicated I don’t even know how to properly articulate my feelings about it. I only know that I have nothing but compassion for her. For her pain, her sacrifices, her broken spirit, her longing for all that her life could’ve been. I feel no anger or resentment toward her for infiltrating my mind, for violently disrupting my world to make room for herself in my skin. Somehow I understand that the brutality of her act was nothing more than a desperate plea for companionship in the last days of her life.

She wants to die knowing she was loved.

And I, I love her.

I was able to see, when our minds were fused, that Emmaline had found a way to split her consciousness, leaving a necessary bit of it behind to play her role in Oceania. The small part of her that broke off to find me—that was the small part of her that still felt human, that felt the world acutely. And now, it seems, that human piece of her is beginning to fade away.

The callused fingers of grief curve around my throat.

My thoughts are interrupted by the sharp staccato of heels against stone. Someone is moving toward me. I’m careful not to flinch.

“She should’ve been awake by now,” the female voice says. “This is odd.”

“Perhaps the sedative you gave her was stronger than you thought.” Anderson.

“I’m going to assume your head is still full of morphine, Paris, which is the only reason I’m going to overlook that statement.”

Anderson sighs. Stiffly, he says: “I’m sure she’ll be awake any minute now.”

Fear trips the alarms in my head.

What’s happening? I ask Emmaline. Where are we?

The dregs of a gentle warmth become a searing heat that blazes up my arms. Goose bumps rise along my skin.

Emmaline is afraid.

Show me where we are, I say.

It takes longer than I’m used to, but very slowly Emmaline fills my head with images of my room, of steel walls and glittering glass, long tables laid out with all manner of tools and blades, surgical equipment. Microscopes as tall as the wall. Geometric patterns in the ceiling glow with warm, bright light. And then there’s me.

I am mummified in metal.

I’m lying supine on a gleaming table, thick horizontal stripes holding me in place. I am naked but for the carefully placed restraints keeping me from full exposure.

Realization dawns with painful speed.

I recognize these rooms, these tools, these walls. Even the smell—stale air, synthetic lemon, bleach and rust. Dread creeps through me slowly at first, and then all at once.

I am back on base in Oceania.

I feel suddenly ill.

I am a world away. An international flight away from my chosen family, back again in the house of horrors I grew up in. I have no recollection of how I got here, and I don’t know what devastation Anderson left in my wake. I don’t know where my friends are. I don’t know what’s become of Warner. I can’t remember anything useful. I only know that something must be terribly, terribly wrong.

Even so, my fear feels different.

My captors—Anderson? This woman?—have obviously done something to me, because I can’t feel my powers the way I normally do, but there’s something about this horrible, familiar pattern that’s almost comforting. I’ve woken up in chains more times than I can remember, and every time, I’ve found my way out. I’ll find my way out of this, too.

And at least this time, I’m not alone.

Emmaline is here. As far as I’m aware, Anderson has no idea she’s with me, and it gives me hope.

The silence is broken by a long-suffering sigh.

“Why do we need her to be awake, anyway?” the woman says. “Why can’t we perform the procedure while she’s asleep?”

“They’re not my rules, Tatiana. You know as well as I do that Evie set this all in motion. Protocol states that the subject must be awake when the transfer is initiated.”

I take it back.

I take it back.

Pure, unadulterated terror spikes through me, dispelling my earlier confidence with a single blow. It should’ve occurred to me right away that they’d try to do to me what Evie didn’t get right the first time. Of course they would.

My sudden panic nearly gives me away.

“Two daughters with the exact same DNA fingerprint,” Tatiana says suddenly. “Anyone else would think it was a wild coincidence. But Evie was always careful about having a backup plan, wasn’t she?”

“From the very beginning,” Anderson says quietly. “She made sure there was a spare.”

The words are a blow I couldn’t have anticipated.

A spare.

That’s all I ever was, I realize. A spare part kept in captivity. A backup weapon in the case that all else failed.

Shatter me.

Break glass in case of emergency.

It takes everything I’ve got to remain still, to fight back the urge to swallow the sudden swell of emotion in my throat. Even now, even from the grave, my mother manages to wound me.

“How lucky for us,” the woman says.

“Indeed,” Anderson says, but there’s tension in his voice. Tension I’m only just beginning to notice.

Tatiana starts rambling.

She begins talking about how clever Evie was to realize that someone had interfered with her work, how clever she was to have realized right away that Emmaline was the one who’d tampered with the results of the procedure she’d performed on me. Evie always knew, Tatiana is saying, that there was a risk in bringing me back to base in Oceania—and the risk, she says, was Emmaline’s physical closeness.

“After all,” Tatiana says, “the two girls hadn’t been in such close proximity in nearly a decade. Evie was worried Emmaline would try to make contact with her sister.” A pause. “And she did.”

“What is your point?”

“My point,” Tatiana says slowly, like she’s talking to a child, “is that this seems dangerous. Don’t you think it’s more than a little unwise to put the two girls under the same roof again? After what happened last time? Doesn’t this seem a little . . . reckless?”

Stupid hope blooms in my chest.

Of course.

Emmaline’s body is nearby. Maybe Emmaline’s voice disappearing from my mind has nothing to do with her impending death—maybe she feels farther away simply because she moved. It’s possible that upon reentry to Oceania the two parts of her consciousness reconnected. Maybe Emmaline feels distant now only because she’s reaching out to me from her tank—the way she did the last time I was here.

Sharp, searing heat flashes behind my eyes, and my heart leaps at her response.

I am not alone, I say to her. You are not alone.

“You know as well as I do that this was the only way,” Anderson says to Tatiana. “I needed Max’s help. My injuries were too serious.”

“You seem to be needing Max’s help quite a lot these days,” she says coldly. “And I’m not the only one who thinks your needs are becoming liabilities.”

“Don’t push me,” he says quietly. “This isn’t the day.”

“I don’t care. You know as well as I do that it would’ve been safer to initiate this transfer back at Sector 45, thousands of miles away from Emmaline. We had to transport the boy, too, remember? Extremely inconvenient. That you so desperately needed Max to assist with your vanity is an altogether different issue, one that concerns both your failings and your ineptitude.”

Silence falls, heavy and thick.

I have no idea what’s happening above my head, but I can only imagine the two of them are glaring each other into the ground.

“Evie had a soft spot for you,” Tatiana says finally. “We all know that. We all know how willing she was to overlook your mistakes. But Evie is dead now, isn’t she? And her daughter would be two for two if it weren’t for Max’s constant efforts to keep you alive. The rest of us are running out of patience.”

Before Anderson has a chance to respond, a door slams open.

“Well?” A new voice. “Is it done?”

For the first time, Tatiana seems subdued. “She’s not yet awake, I’m afraid.”

“Then wake her up,” the voice demands. “We’re out of time. All the children have been tainted. We still have to get the rest of them under control and clear their minds as soon as possible.”

“But not before we figure out what they know,” Anderson says quickly, “and who they might’ve told.”

Heavy footsteps move into the room, fast and hard. I hear a rustle of movement, a sudden brief gasp. “Haider told me something interesting when your men dragged him back here,” the man says quietly. “He says you shot my daughter.”

“It was a practical decision,” Anderson says. “She and Kishimoto were possible targets. I had no choice but to take them both out.”

It takes every ounce of my self-control to keep from screaming.

Kenji.

Anderson shot Kenji.

Kenji, and this man’s daughter. He must be talking about Nazeera. Oh my God. Anderson shot Kenji and Nazeera. Which would make this man—

“Ibrahim, it was for the best.” Tatiana’s heels click against the floor. “I’m sure she’s fine. They’ve got those healer girls, you know.”

Supreme Commander Ibrahim ignores her.

“If my daughter is not returned to me alive,” he says angrily, “I will personally remove your brain from your skull.”

The door slams shut behind him.

“Wake her up,” Anderson says.

“It’s not that simple— There’s a process—”

“I won’t say it again, Tatiana.” Anderson is shouting now, his temperature spiking without warning. “Wake her up now. I want this over with.”

“Paris, you have to calm d—”

“I tried to kill her months ago.” Metal slams against metal. “I told all of you to finish the job. If we’re in this position right now—if Evie is dead—it’s because no one listened to me when they should have.”

“You are unbelievable.” Tatiana laughs, but the sound is flat. “That you ever assumed you had the authority to murder Evie’s daughter tells me everything I need to know about you, Paris. You’re an idiot.”

“Get out,” he says, seething. “I don’t need you breathing down my neck. Go check in on your own insipid daughter. I’ll take care of this one.”

“Feeling fatherly?”

“Get. Out.”

Tatiana says nothing more. I hear the sound of a door opening and closing. The soft, distant clangs and chimes of metal and glass. I have no idea what Anderson is doing, but my heart is beating wildly. Angry, indignant Anderson is nothing to take lightly.

I would know.

And when I feel a sudden, ruthless spike of pain, I scream. Panic forces my eyes open.

“I had a feeling you were faking it,” he says.

Roughly, he yanks the scalpel out of my thigh. I choke back another scream. I’ve hardly had a chance to catch my breath when, again, he buries the scalpel in my flesh—deeper this time. I cry out in agony, my lungs constricting. When he finally wrenches the tool free I nearly pass out from the pain. I’m making labored, gasping sounds, my chest so tightly bound I can’t breathe properly.

“I was hoping you’d hear that conversation,” Anderson says calmly, pausing to wipe the scalpel on his lab coat. The blood is dark. Thick. My vision fades in and out. “I wanted you to know that your mother wasn’t stupid. I wanted you to know that she was aware that something had gone wrong. She didn’t know the exact failings of the procedure—but she suspected the injections hadn’t done everything they were meant to do. And when she suspected foul play, she made a contingency plan.”

I’m still gasping for air, my head spinning. The pain in my leg is searing, clouding my mind.

“You didn’t think she was that stupid, did you? Evie Sommers?” Anderson almost laughs. “Evie Sommers hasn’t been stupid a day in her life. Even on the day she died, she died with a plan in place to save The Reestablishment, because she’d dedicated her life to this cause. This was it,” he says, prodding at my wound. “You.

“You and your sister. You were her life’s work, and she wasn’t about to let it all go up in flames without a fight.”

I don’t understand, I try to say.

“I know you don’t understand,” he says. “Of course you don’t understand. You never did inherit your mother’s genius, did you? You never had her mind. No, you were only ever meant to be a tool, from the very beginning. So here’s everything you need to understand: you now belong to me.”

“No,” I gasp. I struggle, uselessly, against the restraints. “No—”

I feel the sting and the fire at the same time. Anderson has stuck me with something, something that blazes through me with a pain so excruciating my heart hardly remembers to beat. My skin breaks out in an all-consuming sweat. My hair begins to stick to my face. I feel at once paralyzed and as if I’m falling, free-falling, sinking into the coldest depths of hell.

Emmaline, I cry.

My eyelids flutter. I see Anderson, flashes of Anderson, his eyes dark and troubled. He looks at me like he’s finally got me exactly where he wants me, where he’s always wanted me, and I understand then, without understanding why, exactly, that he’s excited. I sense his happiness. I don’t know how I know. I can just tell from the way he stands, the way he stares. He’s feeling joyous.

It terrifies me.

My body makes another effort to move but the action is futile. There’s no point in moving, no point in struggle.

This is over, something tells me.

I have lost.

I’ve lost the battle and the war. I’ve lost the boy. I’ve lost my friends. I’ve lost my will to live, the voice says to me.

And then I understand: Anderson is in my head.

My eyes are not open. My eyes might never again open. Wherever I am is not in my control. I belong to Anderson now. I belong to The Reestablishment, where I’ve always belonged, where you’ve always belonged, he says to me, where you will remain forever. I’ve been waiting for this moment for a very, very long time, he says to me, and now, finally, there’s nothing you can do about it.

Nothing.

Even then, I don’t understand. Not right away. I don’t understand even as I hear the machines roar to life. I don’t understand even as I see the flash of light behind my eyelids. I hear my own breath, loud and strange and reverberating in my skull. I can feel my hands shaking. I can feel the metal sinking into the soft flesh of my body. I am here, strapped into steel against my will and there is no one to save me.

Emmaline, I cry.

A whisper of heat moves through me in response, a whisper so subtle, so quickly extinguished, I fear I might’ve imagined it.

Emmaline is nearly dead, Anderson says. Once her body is removed from the tank, you will take her place. Until then, this is where you’ll live. Until then, this is where you’ll exist. This is all you were ever meant for, he says to me.

This is all you will ever be.