But when Richard had told Mary—Everly’s mother, Richard’s daughter, the catalyst for all of this—to stay home, she had. And then she had died, when she was very much supposed to live.
Without that friendship, the Warden, who hadn’t always been the Warden, had gotten pregnant.
And Michael had come to be.
Now, trembling where she stood, Everly fixed the Warden with the fiercest glare she could manage, hot tears burning at the back of her eyes for this boy who’d never been allowed to experience a normal childhood. For the lives that had been stripped from all of them. “That kid deserved so much better than you for a parent. He deserved so much better than to grow up in a building like this, all alone. We all deserve better than to be here, but he was never even given the facade of a choice.”
Through all of this, the Warden hadn’t spoken a word. Nor had her expression altered, except now the same sneer as before crossed over her lips.
“The boy was a mistake. Nothing more, nothing less. But he will find his place in the building. Just like you.”
Red bled into Everly’s vision, blocking out everything else. She heard screaming in her ears—her own screams, probably—and before she knew what she was doing, she had charged up to the Warden again, shoving her once more, but harder, putting all of her force behind the movement, until the other woman’s legs buckled, and she fell to her knees, eyes widening ever so slightly in what might have been shock.
“I’m done,” Everly said quietly, now looming over the other woman, whose head was tilted down, so her auburn hair fell across her eyes. “I might not know how to leave yet, or how to help the people you’ve trapped here, but I’m done being a part of this initiation ritual, or whatever it is you think we’re doing. You’re on your own.”
With that, Everly spun on her heel, walking confidently out the door, trying to tell herself she felt victorious. Pretending she hadn’t seen as the Warden shifted her head so that the hair slid away from her face. Pretending she hadn’t seen the smile that had crossed the Warden’s lips in those final seconds while she was still sprawled out across the floor. Pretending the smile hadn’t looked triumphant, hadn’t looked pleased.
Everly shoved lingering doubts about the Warden away. She’d hinted that she didn’t have much more time until she became like all the other people upstairs—until she wouldn’t be able to be the Warden anymore. So Everly just had to find a way to wait out the time until then. She had to find a way to survive, and then it would all be okay. They’d find a way out, and they’d make it. She just had to wait.
Without really meaning to, Everly’s feet had decided to direct her toward the office. Even though she had never been there before, she knew exactly where to go, and though a nagging doubt at the back of her mind questioned whether she should follow her feet in this one instance, she didn’t know where else to go anymore.
She placed her hand flat against the black paint of the door and waited for the click she knew would come. Let this time be different, she thought, with her hand still on the door. I’ll do anything for it to be different. Give anything for it to change.
As she thought the words, Everly felt a strange warmth spreading through her hand, into the wood of the door. Surprised, she jerked her hand away and looked at it, expecting it to be red or singed. Nothing. It was just a hand. Hesitantly, she reached out and tapped a finger against the door. It was cool, solid. Just a door.
Everly frowned but quickly shook her head. There were by far stranger things to have happened in that building.
Pushing the door open, Everly encountered the blank surface of the divider that sectioned apart the room. A breath, and then she walked around the divider, to the rest of the room.
And then she saw him.
“Luca,” she said. She blinked and she knew him, then she blinked again and she still knew him, but it was different.
She knew how this story was supposed to end now. And she didn’t like it.
Blink blink blink and she was back in the moment and Luca had rushed over to her, wrapping his arms around her in a tight embrace that she had barely even registered. He pulled away and looked her over with worried eyes.
“What did they do to you? How did you find us?”
Everly shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened.” Her eyes strayed to the desk, behind which Richard was sitting. He was watching her closely, but not with the same concern as Luca. In his eyes was something else. Something more dangerous, perhaps. Or more interesting.
“But you’re okay?” Luca asked, pulling Everly’s attention back to him. “You’re really okay?”
She tried to smile. “Yes,” she said, though she wasn’t so sure anymore. The Warden hadn’t hurt her, not exactly, but she’d done something that Everly thought might have been worse. She’d changed her, and Everly still wasn’t sure how much. “And you?” Her eyes flicked from Luca over to Michael, who was looking at Everly with a more guarded expression than she had ever seen on the boy before.
“Yeah, yeah, we’re good,” Luca said, running a hand absently through his hair. He laughed awkwardly, maybe a little unsteadily. “We’re all good.” He looked relieved, but also unhinged, in a way. Everly knew how he felt. “So, what do we do now?”
Everly’s gaze rested on Michael, standing silently across the room.
And she knew.
Almost without knowing what she was saying, Everly whispered the words out into the open: “We leave.”
Despite how quietly she had said it, all eyes in the room were on her.
She knew the answer now. Finally, that missing piece clicked into place in her head, and she could see it.
Michael was not brought into the building. Not like Everly. Luca. Everyone else there. He did not arrive, drawn to the front entrance or carried unwillingly in the arms of someone dressed in red.
He was born there.
Ten years ago, Michael was born inside the building, which itself was not exactly a place or a time, so by all reasonable accounts, Michael did not exist anywhere.
Except that wasn’t true. He clearly did exist, which led Everly to believe that he in fact existed everywhere.
More than that, he was the child of two people with the genetic anomaly. She now knew—oh, how well she knew—that the file she had found with Michael’s name on it, with hers and Luca’s names listed beneath it, hadn’t been a lie. Michael was born to the Everly who came before her, the Luca who had come before him. He was, as far as she knew, the only person who’d been born to not one, but two enhanced persons.
She thought back to what Luca had told her, too. About how Michael always seemed like he was trying to escape, was always running for the doors, without even knowing why.
She thought she could see why now. Michael knew—or his blood knew, or his DNA, or something else inside of him—that he would be okay, if he were to leave the Eschatorologic. He wasn’t impacted by the same draw that kept the rest of them tied to the building because his body didn’t know to anticipate anything else. Any other way of living, any world other than this half-world that he had always known.
And then she thought of the first time she had met Michael. She thought of touching his hand, the memories that had flown through her. But more than that: she’d felt freedom in his touch, as though his very being had been trembling with the need to burst out of the building, to fly far, far away.
Even more than all that was an answer, drizzled in her ear. She almost would have said it was the building trying to tell her something, trying to speak now. It wasn’t a voice, exactly. More like a feeling—a feeling telling her she was right.
The secret was Michael’s blood. The secret was him.
Michael really was their way out of here.
