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  Libby moved to the bumper and slumped down on it. She didn’t even notice that Chloe stood only a few feet in front of her. That alone showed how devastated Libby was from what she’d seen. That alone showed me that she believed Parker was dead … and that made my body shake with a wave of paralyzing fear and loss from the inside out.

  Libby’s words were hesitant when she spoke again. “I was still connected to him. He wasn’t fully free from the dream. It felt like … it felt like much more than just a break from our connection. I wanted you to know what I felt. But you’re right. I can’t be sure that he’s dead … that it wasn’t just … ”

  “Okay.” I walked to the front of the van and took a seat on the grass. No one joined me, but I could hear Finn asking Libby questions. He sounded terrified. He sounded like I felt.

  Parker couldn’t be gone already … they said they would trade him. According to their plan, they had to keep him alive.

  I gripped the grass between my fingers and ripped it from the ground. If they didn’t keep that promise, then screw the formula … I would kill them all.

  Chloe sat down beside me and I nearly jumped. Somehow we felt even farther away from finding the formula than we had this morning. Parker wouldn’t tell me where he was and now I wasn’t even sure if he was alive to be saved. My hand trembled. The blades of grass I’d already ripped free flew out in a passing breeze and landed all over Chloe’s lap.

  “Sorry.”

  Her eyes widened so much that I could sense it even behind the sunglasses. She seemed genuinely surprised. “You don’t need to be sorry. Why are you sorry?”

  “A million reasons … I’m sorry that I don’t know what to do. I’m sorry that I may never finish the formula like I promised you. And I’m sorry that your brother is an ass and I’ll probably have to kill him.”

  My hands balled into fists and I rushed to go on before she could tell me not to. I wasn’t sure if she would, but still, I couldn’t hear anyone defend Cooper right now. “You should probably leave us now.”

  Chloe’s face fell like the crest of a wave. “Why, Jack? Where am I suppo—”

  “Why?” My voice was too loud, and she stiffened, so I lowered it before I kept going. “Seriously, Chloe? How can you ask me why? It’s unlikely that I can even make the formula, so there’s no point in you sticking around here. Your brother might be killing my brother as we speak. Your dad was responsible for everything bad in my life. And you—you knew this about your dad from the beginning and never told me. Where do we even go from here?”

  I turned my back, but she shifted around in front of me. “When exactly should I have told you about my family, Jack? When I was pretending to be Finn? No … that wouldn’t have made sense. What about after I helped you and betrayed everyone I’ve ever known? I only went back to see them once and even then I’d been trying to help you. I told them Parker was your brother and you were just trying to save your family. I asked them to understand that and leave you alone. The next time I came back, they’d moved out of the Benton base and didn’t even tell me where they went. They all blamed me for the explosion and losing Eclipse, Jack. Should I have told you then? Should I have volunteered the piece of information that would’ve made you kill me or kick me out of Parker’s house? Should I have done that right then … when I had no one else left to turn to?”

  When I didn’t respond, the silence between us filled with the huffing sound of her uneven breaths. Her eyes filled with tears, but she never allowed them to fall.

  “Every time I thought of telling you … ” Chloe stopped and pulled in a long breath. Resting her hands on her knees, she faced me directly. Her stance, her expression, her body—everything about her overflowed with honesty. “There never was a time when you wouldn’t have reacted this same way. There’s never a good time to tell a friend you’re the daughter of someone they hate, someone who destroyed their life. They don’t make cards for that.”

  I watched her. It was like she’d been poised, waiting to talk about the truth, and now I’d finally given her the chance to get it all out. I couldn’t help but wonder how anyone as crazy and brave and unexplainable as Chloe could possibly have come from a monster like Steve Campbell. If genetics play any role in who we become, her mom must’ve been incredible.

  I couldn’t help but return the small smile she gave me. Even if she had a point, none of this changed anything. Knowing that Cooper might have already killed Parker brought home what it meant to be dealing with Steve Campbell’s kids. I’d thought maybe Chloe could help, but I was wrong. “It doesn’t really matter. I can’t have you with me.”

  “Why not?” She was starting to sound less devastated and more argumentative. Finally, a Chloe I knew how to relate to.

  “Because of who you are.” I emphasize the last three words, exasperated. “I’m not saying you’re like them, but you’re still one of them. How do I trust someone whose dad brought together the enemies I’ve been fighting against my entire life?”

  “Don’t you see?” Chloe scooted closer to me, but when I leaned back, she stopped and stared up at me. Her short hair fell back against her ears. “That’s exactly what you are to me, Jack. Are you saying that I can’t trust you?”

  There was something so magnetic about her, but I forced myself not to be drawn in. “Considering I had a knife to your throat only a few hours ago, I’d probably say that you shouldn’t.”

  She didn’t move. “You wouldn’t have hurt me. I know it and so do you.”

  “Did Cooper know it?” I asked.

  Chloe grimaced, and I could instantly see how much pain my question caused her.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t answer, but she scooted a few inches back.

  I went on. “I’m sorry about all of it, Chloe. Whether I should believe it or not, my gut tells me you aren’t like them. I’m grateful you helped Parker to set Finn free and … ”

  “You think I did it for them?” she asked softly as she bent forward, studying the ground between us.

  As her words sank in, I was surprised to pick up on a secondary meaning. But we hadn’t even really gotten along at the time … she didn’t mean …

  “You didn’t do it … for me?” My words were so quiet I could barely hear them, and I knew I’d misunderstood immediately when her head whipped up, her mouth curved into an expression stuck halfway between shock and amusement.

  My spine stiffened and I shifted my weight onto my knees, preparing to get up. “Got it. Not for me.”

  “Jack.” Chloe grabbed my hand and the contact felt like being hooked to a static machine—all the tiny hairs on my arm felt like they stood on end. It froze me in place as I turned back toward her and forced myself not to let the sensation show on my face.

  “Chloe, you just need to find somewhere else to go, okay? I’m not sure I can trust Cooper to keep Parker alive. I don’t know if I can trust you to even be here right now. He is too important.” I felt stupid. I hated feeling stupid.

  “Jack, listen to me.” The frustration in her voice made me stop everything and listen. “I didn’t do it for any of you, but the reasons, my reasons, for helping set Finn free instead of fighting it might matter to you … they meant everything to me.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Being in Finn’s head while on Eclipse like that … it was different than ever before. Normally, when I take a Dreamer, I can access bits and pieces of information that I need: bank PINs, names, stuff like that. But Eclipse changed the connection. With Finn, it was like he became pure emotion and memory. My dad spent years convincing us all of his truth, you know—brainwashing us. He always taught us that we were more than normal people, we were like gods … we were evolved.” Her words sounded choked out and surprisingly repulsed as she spoke her last sentence. It was the way I’d have imagined myself sounding if I’d been saying those words.

 
“But I’d always believed him, Jack,” she said. “I believed he knew better than me and that he was right. He was our leader and my father. Everyone else believed him; why wouldn’t I? But with Finn … the connection felt so different, I could see immediately that my dad had been so wrong.”

  I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting Chloe to say, but it hadn’t been this.

  She lowered her voice and continued. “Finn cares so deeply about everyone—his parents, Addie, Parker. I witnessed firsthand just how much they would all do for each other. I’ve never seen a Taker sacrifice for someone like that. Never.” Chloe ran her hands up the back of her neck and pulled on the bottom of her short hair as she looked away from me. “My own kind sacrificed me to an experiment that easily could have killed me. They used me like a lab rat to test a drug that would help them steal other people’s lives, Jack. I didn’t want to be the test subject for an experimental drug and I hated that they made that decision for me. I had to choose whether to fight for the way I’d lived—the way my family taught me to be—or to choose something new, something terrifyingly different. I wanted what Finn had in his life, and it was hard to deal with the idea that I’d stolen that from him, willingly or not.”

  Chloe closed her eyes for a moment before speaking again, her voice very soft this time. “And now I’m choosing to help you, Jack. Because I want better for my people than the choices my family has given them. I want better for myself. My brothers left me here with you. They would let our enemies do whatever they wanted to me. That isn’t more than humanity, if you ask me. It’s so much less.”

  She shifted onto her knees and then looked straight at me. “Please, Jack. My kind have to stop what they’re doing. My father led us toward becoming monsters. I need to be a part of stopping that from going any farther. I have to help end it.”

  Before I could answer, I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye and raised my eyes to see Finn standing a few feet behind Chloe, obviously listening.

  She didn’t notice him and finished with, “You can trust me because no matter what happens, no matter what or who is at risk, I would never let you give Eclipse to Cooper. I know you say that isn’t possible anyway, and I want to believe you, but if you get desperate and find a way to do it, I’d need to stop you. Even if it meant losing your brother and both of mine, I’d find a way. Nothing is worth what my brother having Eclipse would cost the rest of us.”

  It was silent for a few seconds before she said, “You watch Wendy’s dreams tonight. I’ll take over her husband’s body. I might not be able to access his past with the clarity you can, but I can root through his mind and his recent memories, make sure there aren’t any secrets he’s deliberately hiding from Wendy.”

  So that explained her need for sunglasses. But I didn’t want to support her taking anyone. I opened my mouth to argue, but she jumped in before I got a chance to speak. “Relax. I promise not to hurt him at all. I’ll make sure he only feels like he tossed and turned a bit more than usual. That’s it.”

  Then she stood and walked back toward the driver’s side of the van before I could say anything else. After she’d gone, Finn blew out a giant breath of air and stepped quietly over to sit beside me.

  “She saw everything in my head, huh?” He shuddered.

  “Apparently. You didn’t know?” I raised my eyebrow.

  “I’d suspected. And it really explains a lot. She knows exactly what I’m thinking so often.” Finn frowned and reached up one hand, tugging on the bottom of one ear. “For what it’s worth, I saw some of her memories, too.”

  I turned toward him in shock. I’d had no clue it could work that way. “You did?”

  “Yes, and she isn’t lying.” He picked up a rock on the ground nearby and threw it out in the road like it had somehow offended him. “I think she could help us find the ingredients. I think you should let her help.”

  The surprise on my face must have showed, but Finn just shrugged and hopped up to his feet. I sat for a couple of minutes more as I tried to find the right answers. Eventually I decided that if the guy who Chloe had taken over was saying I should trust her, maybe it was time to start really listening.

  I heard Dad’s voice in my head telling me not to trust anyone. But Chloe’s reasons had shaken me. Maybe it was time for me to learn something from her. If I didn’t want my life to turn out the way Dad’s had—keeping secrets from all those closest to me, always being on the run, and sacrificing myself at far too young an age—then didn’t I need to try not to make the same mistakes?

  That was yet another thing I could tell Parker about our dad, once I got Parker out of this mess—and, assuming he was still alive, I would get him out. For right now, there was nothing for me to do but hang on to hope and believe my brother was okay. There was no other choice.

  Finn stood looking at the now-empty park in silence, waiting for an answer or clue from me as to what I was intending. When I shifted my weight to get up, he extended his hand down to help and I took it.

  “At this point, Finn … I suppose I’m not in much of a position to say no to anyone who still wants to help me figure this out. I’m making zero progress, and time keeps moving no matter what we do.”

  “Good.” He gave me a look of pure determination. “That’s what I thought.”

  Maybe I needed to learn to be more like Parker instead of trying to teach Parker to be more like Dad … and more like me. A good way to start this, I thought, might be to rely more on Finn. He’d already saved Parker in more ways than one. Maybe he could help me find a way to do it again.

  I thought carefully, trying to pick the right way to reach out to him … the way Parker would do it. When it came to me, I smiled. “By the way, I’ve been thinking, and you’re right. This new formula really will need a name. Any new ideas we should consider?”

  Finn’s face glowed with the widest grin I’d seen since we’d lost Parker. Seeing his face like that made our whole situation feel strangely more hopeful.

  “I have SO many ideas … ”

  Twenty

  Parker

  The white nothingness of the Hollow felt like peace and oblivion after the waking nightmare in that awful cell. It didn’t smell like rot in this not-really-sleeping limbo, and I wasn’t cold or shivering. I wasn’t in pain, or hallucinating my own heartbreak. I didn’t feel like I was drowning.

  Apparently my standards had lowered a bit in the last few hours.

  I tried not to heed the dread that I felt sinking like an anchor deep into each of my bones. Maybe when Cooper had forced me to make eye contact with him, he’d only been making sure I wasn’t still connected to Libby; maybe his goal wasn’t to connect to me. Since he was a Taker, there were plenty of normal people who were much more useful for Cooper to make eye contact with than a Watcher like me. And if he had made eye contact with some Dreamer, he wouldn’t be connected with me anymore and I’d be on my own.

  At least I thought that was how it worked. To be honest, some of the details of how the Takers operated were still a mystery to me.

  The edges of the Hollow began to expand and contract and I kept my eyes closed, knowing what was probably coming. When the minds of a Taker and a Watcher merged, it created an inky, suffocating blackness. I’d spent two nights trapped in it before: the solid black nothing of Chloe’s coma-like state, which had allowed me to unite with Darkness and separate Finn and Chloe’s minds, and before that, Cooper’s sleep-state, which had released Darkness in an entirely new way. In both cases, Taker-Watcher connection had messed with my brain and made it hard to breathe, and I hated it.

  And it appeared it was about to happen again.

  Our sleepless states merged, Cooper’s smothering shadow overcoming my white void until the blackness was complete and without end. It was like the ocean and I was a tiny raft. I couldn’t see where it started or ended. It was just everywhere, leaving me no escape.

/>   It was even worse than I remembered. It was like an ink well that overflowed until it filled everything up, including me. My lungs were heavier; my eyes blinked, but I couldn’t tell if they were open or closed. Everything about me was drenched in it.

  But I’d been trained on how to control dreams now. This was at least half my space, my mind. If part of Cooper’s plan was to keep me locked up in his thick, dark sludge all night, I wouldn’t make it easy on him. Thanks to Jack teaching me how to manipulate regular dreams, I knew how to fight back now, and I was definitely going to use that knowledge this time.

  I forced my pounding heart to slow its pace and then pictured the darkness lightening and fading to a violet. It started working. I pictured myself sitting on a dark floor with air around me instead of floating in the black nothing. This was more of a struggle; my brain ached and it felt like I was stretching a sore muscle, until it finally worked.

  I sat in a small bubble that glowed with a slight light. I took a long breath of cool, clear air. It was sweet and the ache in my head started to subside.

  Before I took in a second breath, everything I’d created unraveled. The air around me collapsed mid-breath and the sudden thickness in the air made me cough and struggle in a choking fit. The suffocating pressure intensified dramatically. The density around me squeezed every inch of my skin before my surroundings started vibrating with laughter. Cooper was aware. He was squeezing me, hurting me, and enjoying it.

  One panicked thread in my brain unraveled and my furious need for air shoved back, with ferocious strength, against Cooper’s changes to the atmosphere. The air suddenly cleared around me again and I curled up, panting on the ground, focused on keeping the darkness at bay for a few minutes to catch my breath. My head was pounding. There was a growling sound, low and furious. It echoed throughout the dream and I couldn’t tell where Cooper was. Then I realized the sound came from me.