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“Myparents!” she screamed. “Those were myparents!”
CHAPTER 51
MEED LURCHED TOWARD the bed, reaching out with both arms. Irina grabbed her hard and wrestled her toward the door, whispering harshly into her ear.
“It’s over!” she said. “There’s nothing to be done.”
Meed shook free and staggered down the corridor. Disoriented, she turned right past the living room and jerked the front door open. She ran down the front steps and into the middle of the street. Not thinking about exposure. Not caring. She dropped to her knees and started retching onto the dark pavement. Irina was at her side, tugging her to her feet. Meed swung wildly with her fists, her blows glancing off Irina’s shoulders, mostly striking empty air. She started screaming again.
“No!” she wailed.“No, no, no!!”
Up and down the street, lights began to pop on. Silhouettes appeared in second-floor windows. Halfway down the block, a front door cracked open. Meed couldn’t walk, couldn’t move. She felt Irina’s arms tight around her shoulders, supporting her, holding her up. And then she felt the sharp sting of a needle in the side of her neck.
In two seconds, Meed was limp and unconscious, unaware that for the second time in her life, she was about to be carried up a dark mountain.
CHAPTER 52
MEED’S EYES DIDN’T flicker open again until 4 a.m. She was in her bed. Her lids were heavy and her vision was slightly blurred. The sedative had not fully worn off. But as her mind flashed to what had happened just hours earlier, the fury burned off the fog. In her rage, Meed was clear about what she had to do. The events in that bloody bedroom would not be her final test.
Thiswould be.
Meed turned her head from side to side to check around the dormitory. The other girls were sleeping soundly. She slipped out from under her blanket and rested her feet lightly on the wood floor. She slowly slipped on socks and boots. Then she reached under her thin mattress and pulled out a three-foot strand of knotted rags. It had taken her weeks to collect and prepare them. They had been hidden under her mattress for months. She never knew exactly when she would need them.
It was now.
Two beds over, Irina lay curled under her blanket, her head facing the opposite wall. Meed walked quietly to the sink, turned on the tap, and let a slow trickle of water soak the cloth. She twisted the excess water from the whole length and snapped it tight. It could have been a noose or a garotte. But it was neither. It was a science experiment.
Meed tiptoed to the window, an arched opening with a hinged frame of thick glass. Meed flicked the latch and slowly pulled the window open. Behind the frame were sets of vertical metal bars set into the stone, top and bottom. The water was starting to activate the acid mixture with which she’d infused the cloth, giving off wisps of white vapor.
Meed knew she had to work quickly. She wrapped the rag strip around the two center bars, close to where they were set into the granite sill. The iron began to steam and sizzle. As the reaction intensified, Meed pressed her body up against the window. Sparks from the melting metal sprayed onto her forearms, leaving small searing marks on her skin. She winced. Her eyes teared with pain. But she did not make a sound.
In just a few seconds, the cloth had dissolved. The bases of both bars were now withered and shaky. Meed pried the loose bars out of the bottom sill and pushed them out as far as she could, creating a gap barely ten inches wide. It would have to be enough.
She looked back at her sleeping classmates, and then wormed her way through the opening. The rough stone scraped her thighs through her thin cotton pajama pants. Her arms burned with pain. She clung to the two remaining bars as she slid her shoulders and head through, and then hung dangling against the outside of the building. She was twenty feet off the ground. If she fell the wrong way, she would break an ankle or a leg. Her training had made her both an athlete and an acrobat, and she would need both skills now.
The grass at the bottom of the wall sloped slightly away from the building. Meed braced her feet against the stone and kicked away as she let go with her hands. As she landed, she tucked in her arms and rolled to the bottom of the slope, coming to rest on her belly on level ground. The coarse grass scraped against her burns, now a pattern of swollen red welts on each arm. As she lay flat, breathing hard, Meed dug into the ground with her fingers, then rubbed cool dirt onto the wounds. It was all she could do. It was a pain she could deal with.
The dawn light was just beginning to stripe the horizon to the east, toward the village. Meed rose to her feet and started to run in the exact opposite direction—slowly at first, then full-out, feet pounding, hair flying. She had no map, no weapons, no tools. She was leaving the only place she had ever known, and there was nobody in the outside world that she could trust. Nobody she even knew. Not a single human being.
She had only herself.
CHAPTER 53
Chicago
“READY TO BE dazzled?” asked Meed.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
That was the truth. I was nervous. I didn’t know what to expect. For six months, I hadn’t once looked in a mirror. Meed hadn’t allowed it. One of her many rules. Since the day I’d been kidnapped, I’d never seen a single picture or video of my new self. I’d learned to shave my face by touch.
Of course, I knew how I looked in bits and pieces. I could see the changes when I checked out my arms, my chest, my legs, my abs. I knew that I was bigger and stronger than I had ever imagined. I could recite my new measurements to the centimeter. But I didn’t have the whole picture. I had no clue how I looked to anybody else. Only Meed did. So she’d decided that tonight was the big reveal. Tonight, I was being introduced to myself.
She was holding a full-length mirror turned backward against her torso. I was standing in my gym shorts and bare feet. I was still pumped and sweating from my workout. For some reason, I guess she thought this was my best look.
“On the count of three,” said Meed. She wiggled the mirror in a little tease. “One… two…three!” Then she flipped it.
When I saw the man looking back at me, it was like looking at a stranger.
