Page 53 of Anarchy Chained: Alpha Thomas

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - SADIE

Sadie, Sadie, Sadie.

The words are in my head but they are flashing across my eyes too. My closed eyes.

Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?

It must be them. It must be Prodigy School. They’re looking for me. Or maybe hunting me.

They’re trying to communicate with me with some kind of link. Mentally? I don’t think so. I think there’s something inside me. Some kind of computer or—

Sadie, Sadie, Sadie, “Sadie!”

I open my eyes and see Thomas. His face is right up next to mine, eyes searching me—filled with questions. He smells like charred metal.

“You had me worried.” His voice is low and deep. Some kind of flashlight is illuminating his face from below. There’s black soot on his cheeks, giving him a hollowed near-death appearance. Like he just walked through fire.

“Thomas,” I whisper.

He strokes my head softly, moving my hair out of my eyes. “Try again.”

Shit.

And this time I’m not asleep. I know that for sure. This is real. “Sullivan?” I say, trying out the name.

“Ding. Ding. Ding.” He says the words slowly, pausing between each one. “You’re gonna be OK. You seem to be… working the way you’re supposed to.”

“What the hell happened?”

“You tell me. You’re the one who did it.”

“What?”

“You grabbed your head, Sadie. You and Thomas were talking about things you shouldn’t be talking about. Then you grabbed your head and the fucking train just shut down.”

“We were coming up on the gates.”

“Correct again. If this was a game show, you’d be two for three. What the hell did you do?”

He’s got a very stern look on his face. But it’s so different from the other times I’ve met him. This is real. And clearly those times were real too. He really had me tied up. He really did touch me that way. “I don’t understand.”

“That’s because,” he says, letting out a long sigh. “It’s because you have no idea what you are.”

“What am I?”

“How the fuck should I know? But look.” He points to my body. I’m lying down with my head resting on this thigh. So I have to sit up a little to see what he’s pointing at.

My leg is… disgusting. My jeans are ripped open. But that’s not all that’s ripped open. The denim is covered in blood and the wound is gaping and huge. But it’s… “Oh, my God. There’s little things moving around. Are those bugs inside my leg?”

“No,” Sullivan says. “They’re little fucking computer fuckers. Nanites, but like… supernanites. Globs of them. Gross, isn’t it?”

“What the hell is a nanite?”

“What part of little fucking computer fuckers didn’t you understand?”

Dick. “What are they doing?” I try to sit up to get a better look, but Sullivan’s hand is on my shoulder, pushing me back down.

“Don’t get up. Just let them work. They fix you, Sadie. They repair you. Prodigy put a scaffolding mesh of healing… whatever the fuck it is. I don’t know what it is. But Thomas and I have it too. It repairs tissue damage.”