Page 49 of Anarchy Missing

“She had it around your throat. Do you remember that?”

“She did?” I ask, reaching for my neck. “No, I don’t remember that.”

“She was about to behead you, Case. I shot it, snapped it, and saved your life. If she had pulled a little harder I have no doubt it would’ve cut you in two. But look,” he says, taking both my shoulders and turning me towards the window. “You have no scar. Do you find that weird?”

I can barely see my reflection in the glass as I reach for my throat again. But I don’t need to see myself to know he’s right. There is no scar on my neck from that rope thing Molly was using as a weapon that night.

“Weird?” I ask. “I guess. Do we even know what that thing was?”

“No,” Thomas says. “But it cut your skin. It might’ve been laced with something.”

“Did anyone else get cut by it?” I ask, unable to remember all the details. “Everything happened so fast. And then I took that hit in my shoulder and… that’s all I remember about the end of the fight. The next thing I knew we were flying back up to the helicopter on that grappling wire.”

“Lincoln did. On his arm. But most of what the barbs tore off his flesh was… the new kind, you know?”

The new kind of flesh. I wonder what that is, exactly?

“He told me it grabbed onto the steel plate, punctured a gas canister, and then embedded into his skin for a few seconds before she pulled it out and tried to behead you.”

“He has a scar?” I ask, still stuck on the fact that I don’t.

“Yes, nasty one, too. But you don’t.”

“Maybe the jellyfish stuff healed it?” I ask.

“Maybe it did, Case.” Thomas studies my face for a few seconds. “But then again, maybe it didn’t.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I don’t know, which is why you’ve agreed to let Sheila do whatever it is she wants to figure it out.”

“She’s checked me out a dozen times already, Thomas. She never finds anything.”

“Because she needs to use other tools.”

“I don’t want those nanites in my body. It creeps me out.”

“Something is already in your body, Case.” Thomas frowns at me, looking kind of… sad. “And I’m not going to lose you over something as stupid as a diagnostic test. We’ve been together too long, brother. We’ve been through too much to let some manageable health issue rip us apart. You’re getting those tests.”

Our shared past flashes between us as we study each other.

Prodigy School. The maze, the Omegas, the pain, the killing, the escape. And then everything that came after.

If I hadn’t had Thomas back then to sterilize my emotions and keep the situation rooted firmly in his unwavering logic, I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be dead. Long time ago.

“What are you afraid of?” Thomas finally asks, breaking the silence.

I shrug. “Everything,” I say.

“She can fix it, Case.”

“You don’t know that.”

Thomas places a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “I do know that. Sheila is the most amazing piece of technology humanity has ever built. Let her do what she can. We’ll fix it, Case. We will. I promise you. I’m not going to let you die now. Not after we got this far.”

“You’re right,” I say, sighing. “She is pretty amazing.” And then I look Thomas straight in the eyes. “But she wasn’t made by humans, Thomas. She was made by Lincoln.”

“He’s still Lincoln,” Thomas says quietly.