The Sowing

The machinery buzzing around Cage sparks. The hum dies out. Cage has reached his limit and bowed out.

It’s over.

It appears that this Trial has now ended. Cassius’s voice is as cold and emotionless as ever. Recruit Cage’s participation has been terminated. He must now make his choice.

Styles and Echoes appear out of the darkness and grab Tristin and me. The others’ faces are a blur of stunned expressions as we’re hustled away.

“Lucian,” Arrah sobs. “I’m sorry.” She rushes forward but is intercepted by a couple of other Imps who block her and Dahlia from following us. “Let go of him!” Her shouts sound like they’re so far away.

Styles and Echoes shove Tristin and me into our cell and strap us in. Styles’s lips graze my ear. “Looks like it’s finally the end of the line for you, pretty. Shame we never got the chance to get better acquainted.”

The doors clang shut and the entire cell begins to rise up the dark shaft. I crane my neck. Above, there’s a light shining in the distance, growing brighter and brighter.

I turn to Tristin. She’s sobbing quietly. I wish I could reach out to touch her hand. “It’s okay. You’re going to be fine. Promise me you’ll help the others get the hell away from this place.”

She squeezes my fingers. “Don’t worry. We’re going to stop them from doing this to anyone else. I promise.”

We share a smile as the grinding gears reach their apex. Light floods into the cell as it lurches to a halt.

We’re here.

Just outside our cell, the backrests on the silver slabs rise, elevating the Recruits, including Crowley, to a sitting position. They all look haggard, exhausted. Cage is pale as snow, his lips torn from where he bit into them. A thin red stream flows from them, glistening as it trickles down onto the bobbing nub of his throat.

All my struggles—the separation from Cole, losing Digory and then finding out that he was using me, my vigilante attacks against the Establishment, my involvement with the rebels—every struggle and setback now comes down to this one last moment.

The moment of my death.

Recruit Cage. You must now make your choice.

Cage opens his eyes. They glisten with moisture as he stares at us long and hard. “I wish it didn’t have to be like this. But I can only make one choice,” he says.

I nod. “It’s okay.” I almost break out into a chuckle. Nothing has ever been so not okay in my whole life. “Do what needs to be done, Cage.”

“I swear it, mate.”

Your time has expired. Make your selection now.

His eyes fix on me. “I choose…” His voice chokes. “I choose Lucian Spark.”

I hear my name as if from the fragments of a dream. Everything feels so disconnected, as if I’m no longer in my own body, but a puff of vapor caught in a swirling eddy that’s slowly tearing me apart until everything that’s me will fade into nothingness.

The metal grapplers around my arms and legs screech to life, tugging my arms until they’re opened wide and my legs are spread-eagled. I look up, staring at the gleaming hydraulic cables coiled like a beast poised to spring at any moment. Drops of oil trickle from the mechanism like dark blood, mixing with my sweat as it oozes down my neck, over my heaving chest.

They’re going to rip me apart like a rag doll, tear me limb from limb while the others watch me bleed out right before their eyes.

I struggle against the clamps holding me in place, but it’s no use. Every second is an excruciating blur, waiting, wondering when it’s going to happen, what it’ll feel like when my tendons and ligaments snap like rubber bands, when my muscles are torn to tattered shreds, when my bones pop free from their sockets, gouging out chunks of flesh…

I’m so sorry I failed you Cole.

I look up and face my unseen audience. “Do it!” The words singe my throat.

The hydraulics rattle. My limbs grow taught as the tension in my restraints builds… any moment now…

The hydraulics whine to a halt.

The pressure in my joints relaxes as the restraints go slack.

Why are the lights going dim? What’s happening?

A crazed thought boomerangs through my brain. Am I already dead?

With a crackle, the speakers come to life once more.

We regret to inform you that Recruit Crowley has succumbed to his injuries. It would appear that the sensory overload of this last trial has proven too much of a challenge to his weakened system, and he has expired.

Crowley dead? Of course he is. And I did it. I pushed him over the edge because of my own selfishness. And it was all for nothing.