His eyes darken. “Infinity doesn’t give anybody the luxury of a choice.”
“We had to be sure you weren’t a Resident spy,” Yeong explains with the sort of calmness you’d use on a nervous child. His eyes dart between me and the stranger, and I wonder if his attempt at peace isn’t purely for my benefit. “Or a Hero they planted for us to find and lead back to the Colony.”
“A Hero?” I repeat.
“It’s why we did everything we could to save you,” Yeong says simply.
“Well, you’ve made a mistake,” I say, my body still braced against the wall. “I am nobody’s hero.”
Yeong lowers his arms and smiles. “Your dreams suggest otherwise.”
I blink. The wires. The holograph. The machine. The memories of my parents and Mei and the man who murdered me.
When realization falls, heat rises. “You had no right. Those are my private thoughts; they aren’t for you to just peer into because you think I’m a Rezzie, or a Resident, or whatever it is you call them.”
The young man is still watching me carefully, arms folded across his chest, and I remember I wasn’t just dreaming about my death. I dreamed about my life, too. About Finn.
How much did they see? How many of my memories did they violate?
I’m furious that I’ve lost something so private. Something so mine.
“Call them whatever you like,” Yeong says. “But human dreams are the only sure way to tell them apart from us. Residents can’t dream, you see. They can’t imagine beyond what they learn from others. Specifically, what they learn from humans.”
Tension coils through me, making my bones stiffen in response. “If you needed to look at my dreams so badly, couldn’t you have just asked politely instead of violently attacking a person who was recently murdered?”
“We haven’t survived this long by ‘asking politely,’ ” the stranger interjects, cracking a knuckle beneath his folded arms.
“He’s right,” Yeong says seriously. “Besides, the strongest dream imprints come the moment before we die. You know the whole ‘life flashing before your eyes’ thing? Turns out there’s some truth to that.” He offers a gentle smile, retrieving the wires from the floor and sliding his chair back to the machine. “And if it’s any consolation, we didn’t know you’d been murdered until after we saw your dreams.”
My face is still burning with anger and a little embarrassment, but his words spark my curiosity. I can’t ignore the fact that I’ve been in Infinity for less than half a day and I’ve already been shot, stabbed, and spied on. Maybe a little information could help prepare me for whatever is coming next.
The hazel-eyed stranger hasn’t moved, shoulders tense like he’s bracing for combat. And I don’t know what bothers me more—that he’s drawing battle lines without knowing anything about me, or that I couldn’t give him a fight even if I wanted to.
“Are you a medic too?” I ask, eyeing the knife tucked in his belt. Maybe he was here as backup—in case it turned out I wasn’t human.
His expression doesn’t change. “I’m just here to bring you to Annika.”
Yeong nods. “We’re finished here.”
The stranger looks back at me impatiently, and the implication is clear; he’s waited long enough. I push myself to the edge of the couch, standing carefully.
“I’ll come with you because I have questions,” I say. “But I’m nobody’s prisoner.”
His voice is gruff. “Nobody said you were.” And when he turns for the door, I bite down on my nerves and follow him.
We take one of the elevators to the top floor, walking across rickety wooden planks and sheets of metal until we reach a pentagon-shaped clearing that overlooks the entire Colony. The railing looks like a mix of birch, copper, and cherrywood, with thick rope woven through the makeshift banister like it’s barely being held together. I grip a length of copper pipe and peer over the ledge.
The fall would kill me if I weren’t already dead, but the design of the Colony is frightening on its own. Everything is lopsided and unfinished. A hodgepodge of colors and materials and recycled objects, all thrown together to create this place. There are hints of every type of metal, every type of wood, except none of it seems to go together. There’s no organization—no rules.
A city built from resistance.
Even though the structure feels sturdy beneath my feet, the sight of so much chaos makes my head sway.
“I’m not here to be your tour guide,” his voice clips. When I turn around, the young man is standing in front of one of the huts, motioning for me to hurry inside.
Biting my lip, I pull myself away from the view and step through the bamboo archway.
An enormous table fills most of the room, round with silver studs decorating the edges. On the surface are the circular lines of an aged tree, polished despite a few nicks and scuffs. A vibrant hologram of the entire Princedom of Victory rotates slowly in the center, far bigger than I’d even realized. I spot the fields, the cathedrals, and the village near the docks, but they hardly take up a quarter of the hologram. There appear to be three more triangular sections of Victory, all divided by vast stone walls. In the very center is a circle of trees, and when the hologram shifts, I see the unmistakable shape of a palace.
Towers sprout generously all around it like spores multiplying over time. A courtyard circles the entire palace, pebbled with white stone, with flowered gardens covered in glass just beyond them. At the foot of the palace, a wide set of stairs leads to a pair of doors, taller than most houses and rivaling the decadence of even the palace itself, with faces of mythical creatures carved into the surface and tiles that flicker like they’re fragments of frost and diamond, shimmering with all the purity of a winter’s snowfall.
It’s the most breathtaking castle I’ve ever seen.
“I apologize for causing you additional trauma,” Annika says from the other side of the table. When she waves her hand over the hologram, it disappears instantly, leaving the surface bare. She walks toward me with her hands folded behind her back.
I flatten my mouth, remembering her dagger.
As if guessing my thoughts, she brings both hands forward and opens her palms. “It was necessary. Everyone is checked when they first arrive. Gil went through it twice, after escaping War.”
At the mention of his name, I turn to look at the young man, whose severe face is now locked onto Annika’s.
The battlefield he spoke of…
Gil survived it?
“My name is Annika. It is a pleasure to meet you,” the woman says, extending her arm.
I don’t move. I’m too busy trying to figure out if this is another trick.
“Don’t be rude,” she scolds in little more than a whisper. “We’re all friends here.”
“You attacked me,” I say tersely. “And you may have had your reasons, but that doesn’t mean we’re friends.”
Gil stiffens beside me, and my eyes snap toward his dagger instinctively, making sure it’s still safely tucked in his belt. I don’t know whether there are consequences for speaking up or rules about defying a leader. But if the only power I have are my words, then I’m going to use them.