Fragmented
Book Two in the Untamed Series
by Madeline Dyer
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ONE
Snakes and fires and angry Goddesses fill my dreams, and I wake to the feeling of feathers running along my shoulder blades. A spirit.
Get out. Leave us. Go.
The voice hovers around me, and I blink several times, half-imagine the words by my face, gaining substance, wrapping themselves in thick, outer shells. Wispy tendrils unfurl from each pod and reach out to me, strive to cling to my skin, but then something extracts the soft, singing bodies from their cages, pulls the words farther and farther away, until they’ve gone. Without their melodic centers, the armor disintegrates, and a moment later the lingering ethereal footprint of each husk disperses into dust, destroying all evidence that anyone—anything—ever spoke…until I’m certain no one did, and it was all my imagination.
I roll over—flaking mud from my clothes—careful not to disturb Corin’s sleeping body next to me. The air tastes strange, like it’s waiting for something, like it’s humming with a slow-burning zeal.
I sit up and look down at Corin. He’s a big man, broad-shouldered, tall, and he takes up most of the mattress we are sharing. His eyes are shut, his eyelids smooth, his expression peaceful as his chest rises and falls with the temporal security. For several moments, all I can do is stare at him, drink in his appearance. He looks so relaxed, so peaceful; it’s almost possible to forget what has happened—all the blood, the losses, the deaths….
Yesterday comes back to me in flashes, and I inhale sharply, feel the air around me move. A glimpse of blood. A purple sky. A sharp knife. A gun, glinting in the light. A man with—
Something cold washes over me, pulls me from the broken echoes in my mind, and I sit up straighter, looking around. I shiver. The temple is cool, crisp, yet the air ripples. It starts off slowly—little, small movements—but then the momentum grows, and the atmosphere gets heavier, thicker, choppier.
The spirits move faster. I can’t see them—they’re invisible, because they’re weak now, after the battle—but I can sense them, feel them. A biting frostiness that scatters icy particles over my shoulders. A flurry of movement against my bare arm.
My mother’s Seer pendant around my neck feels heavier, bulkier than usual, but it’s a reassuring presence. As if it can protect us from everything.
For a few seconds, all I can see in front of me are rapid snatches of my mother; how she looked yesterday when the slight wind lifted stray tendrils of her dark hair away from her face. How she still had those small scars on the side of her neck. How reflective her eyes were.
How Corin shot her in the leg.
I swallow hard and look down at my own legs, stretched out in front of me. They’re covered in dirt, soft clay—like the rest of me. I look at Corin. We’re both daubed in sludge, blood, mud. The back of my neck prickles. We…we—we slept like this… We didn’t wash ourselves. I get a bad taste in my mouth, still can’t remember arriving at the spirit temple. But we slept here. I try to recall my dream, but the angry Goddesses are only impressions now—a chalky silhouette, the shape of a head, and a lone arm—impressions that slither away like the snakes I think were there. The dying impression of a flame lingers a little longer in my mind, before fading into unease.
Spirits. I nod. Has to be. They took us there, knocked us out…made sure we got some sleep, some energy?
I look back at the pulsing air.
“Sev?”
I jump, turn at Corin’s voice. He’s awake, looking up at me. His eyes are pools of warmth that try to draw me in and swallow me.
Last night, he said he loved me.
“You okay?” He sits up, and his arms draw me close, away from the moving spirits, and I’m wrapped in the tangy smell of old smoke and mud.
I lean into him, liking the feeling of being close. Close to him, when the spirits are moving. I swallow hard, my fingers only shake a little. I manage to nod, but the action feels fake. Am I okay? I bite my lip. Nothing’s okay anymore.
So, go! Leave! Get out, now.
Shivers run through me as I hear the spirit’s words. It jogs something in me, makes me remember an earlier voice, movement, and words disappearing, their echoes disintegrating in front of me. My eyes widen… It wasn’t my imagination? I sit up straighter. Leave? I hold onto Corin tighter, counting the beats of my own heart, and—
A spirit shrieks, cutting the air in two.
We flinch. Corin reaches for his gun from where it lies on the floor, a foot or so away. White light glints off it for a second, and I want to tell him it’s futile—you can’t shoot a spirit with a gun. But the moment he has the weapon in his hand, I feel better.
We stand up slowly.
More spirits scream. Scream because we’re listening, echoing the sounds of last night’s battle. Scream because it’s the only way they know how to grieve.
Get out, leave us!
It’s all around us: memories and pain and shrieks and loss. I hear a soft whooshing sound, see a flash of gold as a chivra spirit—visible now—flies past us. I turn my head slowly, trying to see where the chivra went, but it’s gone.
Something cracks and cackles behind us. I flinch. Corin reaches for my hand, and the gesture sends sparks through me. The air is colder—much colder—but it is alive, teeming, bursting. The wind’s picking up, diving through the rectangular opening in the stonework, howling with the spirits. Something splashes over my right arm, and I taste rust, smell burning flesh. Corin winces as something invisible hits him, then he tries to shield my body with his.
I peer around his shoulder; ahead, the ripples in the air oscillate faster. Gusts of energy reach us in short, sharp bursts, and I step back, pull Corin with me. My shoes squeak against the stone floor, and a spirit imitates the sound. I jump as my back meets the cold stone wall of the temple, think for a second that it’s another spirit.
“What are they doing?” Corin’s voice is a low whisper, tense, and he looks up, flinching, as a flash of silver darts above us.
Eviction. They want us gone. The message is clear. They helped us in the battle, protected us overnight, but now our time’s up.
“We need to go.”
“Have you seen it?” Corin’s dark eyes are intense with emotion. “Sev?”
I shake my head, lean against the wall. The Dream Land hasn’t told me we need to go. I just know it. It’s obvious. Obvious in the way the spirits are telling us, how they’re crying for their own losses, tightening the air against us.
Except…except I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave the safety of the temple. Out there, we’ll be back in the real world. In here, we’re safe…but not for much longer, I know that. Spirits aren’t usually hospitable; we were lucky they allowed us to stay, protected us. But now they’re turning, revoking their invite.
A gust of hot air urges me sideways, toward the exit.
“We need to see if they’re still out there…” Corin frowns, starts to choke. “We need to see… We need to see if she’s alive.” But even as he says the words, I detect the weight in his voice. We both know the answer.
I nod, steel myself. I don’t want to think about it, but I know ignorance is not bliss. The Enhanced Ones came for us, and—at the moment—Corin and I are the only survivors. My brother’s dead; I saw him get shot. We need to send his body off, say the Spirit Releasing Words, make sure he gets to the New World safely—if it’s not already too late.
And the same for Esther….
We have to find them both.
The spirit temple’s opening is a small uneven gap in the stone wall, no door to speak of. Yet it had felt enclosed earlier, when we slept, hadn’t it? But I can’t remember. The brimming air pushes us toward the exit, nearer and nearer. Corin goes first, but he holds onto my hand tightly. So tight, I can almost feel his heart beating. With every step, the journey toward the door gets easier, and we walk faster; the spirits are eager for our departure.
Leave us! Go!
My eyes latch onto the gun as Corin tucks it under the back of his waistband with his free hand. Seeing it makes me wish I had a weapon. But I don’t. Corin left his knife in Raleigh’s chest when he stabbed him.
We reach the gap in the stone, see the early morning light. Corin steps out, then pulls me with him into the outside world.
Sheets of sudden rain smack against me, sharp and stinging. The wind yowls, grabs me with icy fingers. Corin’s grip on my hand gets tighter. He pulls me forward, then stumbles before regaining his balance. Behind us, the spirits scream. The hairs on the back of my neck rise at the sounds of their power, their grief.
We stop once we’re a good twenty feet from the spirit temple, and I look around. The air is hazy now, the rain lessening. So I concentrate on the sky. If I look at its moodiness, as its hues flit from orange to blue, to purple to yellow, and feel its weeping tears on my face, I don’t have to look at the dead. I can almost pretend we’re not standing above a battlefield.
“They’ve all gone,” Corin says after a moment, “the live ones—they’ve gone. It’s just their bodies, left behind.”
I nod. I know he’s talking about the Enhanced. Now I have to look. I have to see the corpses strewn across the landscape below us as though an unseen power simultaneously picked them all up and threw them down with such force their lives broke. I turn and look at the nearest hill—soft land rising out of the new basket of death—and I scan it for my mother’s body. I can’t see her. Then I survey the horizons. There are no signs of any towns; it’s just wilderness. I don’t know where she’s gone. Where any of them have gone.
I look back at the bodies below us, cradled in the long-sunken land—there are so many of them. Even from here, rotting stenches fill my nostrils, the smells penetrating and pungent, as if they’ve been here for weeks, not hours. A living graveyard. One that stretches on and on and on. Logic tells me our enemy suffered more than us, because the spirits that joined in were generally on our side; there are hundreds and hundreds of bodies, and they have to be Enhanced. Raleigh had an army prepared. Our number was only four, when it came down to it. And we’ve got one confirmed death—my brother’s. Half of us—or three-quarters, if Esther’s still alive—survived, thanks to the spirits.
I squeeze Corin’s hand, notice my arms are nearly clean from the rain, then my eyes focus on a shape three hundred feet away. My stomach twists. That could be Three’s body. I gulp. My brother. Dead. It doesn’t feel right. It can never feel right.
I look up at Corin. His expression is unreadable.
“Do you think it’s safe down there?” he asks, his voice husky. “To look through the bodies?”
I stare at the fallen soldiers, somehow glistening under the morning light and the now-weak drizzle. This shouldn’t have been the answer. This shouldn’t be what the world’s come to when the majority of people want to use chemical augmenters to alter and control their own feelings, appearances, and lives—and force the use of augmenters onto everyone else. We shouldn’t be fighting to keep our own lives pure.
Pure. I am not pure.
I gulp at the memory. It’s in the past. I have to focus on that. It wasn’t my fault. But the echo—the feeling—of me unscrewing the lid of the vial and tipping the sweet, delicious augmenter into my mouth is beautifully strong….
But it’s not right. I have to stay Untamed. I know that now.
“Sev? Should we go down there?”
“I don’t know.” At last, I look up at Corin. I’m tall for an Untamed girl, but he is taller, built like a true warrior: tall, strong, broad. Powerful. “The Enhanced have gone. I don’t want to stay here long.” I pause, trying to steady my breathing. A huge part of me wants to turn back, head for the temple again, beg the spirits to let us stay longer, beg them for safety…just for an extra day, an extra night. But I already know the answer. “We should look quickly, then leave.”
He nods, eyes somber. I know he’s thinking of Esther, his sister.
We start out for the scattered remains of humans, hand-in-hand. This is what our life is now: looking through bodies for our family and friends, and always being on the run, trying to find a safe place for the surviving Untamed—a place that doesn’t exist. A place that can never exist.
I don’t even know where we’re going to go after this. The spirits won’t have us back in their temple.
The ground is wet and slightly squelchy underfoot. We go to each body together. If we can’t see the person’s face—but the build and coloring of the individual matches either Three or Esther—then one of us nudges the corpse over, until we can. I can’t help but notice no weapons have been left with the dead.
We keep doing this, over and over again. Five minutes. Ten. Twenty. Despite my earlier assertion that we should look quickly then leave, I know we’ll keep doing it until we’ve found who we’re looking for, or until we’ve checked every body. No matter how long it takes.
It’s rhythmic, really. A routine. But I haven’t actually thought about what we’re going to do when we’re confronted with their corpses. I don’t think Corin has either. It’s not something I want to think about. But I am, subconsciously. I imagine myself crying, falling down, fainting even? But it’s not happening now, and it doesn’t have to happen… I don’t want to find Three or Esther’s bodies. Yet I can’t leave without confirming their fates, without saying the Spirit Releasing Words over their bodies, making all the signs of the Journeying Gods and Goddesses over them. Because I know neither Three nor Esther could have survived that—not without the spirits’ help. And the spirits only took Corin and me to the temple.
After rolling over a particularly mutilated body with my foot—getting my only pair of shoes covered in congealed blood—Corin freezes. His face is ashen, and I follow his gaze.
Cold air wraps around me as I stare at the body.
It’s Corin.
It looks exactly like him. This man’s lying at an angle, his dark hair semi-obscuring a deep gash across his forehead. The red on his white, gaunt skin is blinding. I feel heat rising in my throat, and, after looking at the dead Corin’s open eyes—the mirrors are still bouncing light—I have to look away.
I squeeze Corin’s fingers tighter, appreciate the warmth of the man—the live man—next to me. “How?”
“They’ve cloned us all,” Corin says. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I suppose we leave DNA in their towns when we’re raiding. Or it’s their appearance-altering augmenters… Temporary clones like Marouska was? Shit. This is messed up. Clones.” He shakes his head, and the early morning sun blinks in the flecks in his dark eyes. He looks down at the body. The body that’s modeled on him. “They’ve made us into their soldiers…made us attack us.”
For several minutes I can’t say anything. I don’t know what to say.
“Come on.” Corin pulls me forward. “It’s just another Enhanced.”
But it’s not. It’s him. That Enhanced is—or rather was—identical to him…and if I lose Corin, I don’t know what I’d do. The reality of our situation is terrifying. I don’t want to be on my own.
“If we find them, we’ll have to check their eyes. Check that they’re not actually the Enhanced copies of them.” Corin’s hand shakes as he speaks, and I hold onto him tighter, as though my life depends on it.
We carry on checking the bodies. Corin never lets go of my hand. I am glad.
Minutes pass. Then hours. I hadn’t realized how big the battleground was before. Or maybe the spirits have stretched it out, messed with the land. I turn back for a second, look for the spirit temple. It slices into the sky in the distance, so far away.
Corin squeezes my hand. We continue looking.
“Oh Gods.” The words escape from my mouth before I can stop them. My eyes are already trying to examine the body in the distance… Female… Short, cropped, dark hair… A muscular build, like Corin’s.
“Sev?” Corin’s hand tenses, all the muscles in his fingers going rigid against mine.
Then we’re running.
It could just be a clone. It could just be a clone. It could just be a clone.
The mantra’s shouting itself over and over again in my head.
But the closer I get to the body, the more sure I am. My spine tingles, my heart pounds. I can hardly breathe.
The young woman’s lying on her side, her back to us. Dirt and grime and dried blood cover her pale skin. Her arm twitches. She’s…she’s not….
We reach her a second later. Untamed eyes. My neck clicks.
Esther. She’s alive. She’s still alive. Hope erupts from within me. If she is, then surely—
No. I saw my brother get shot. He’s dead. We’re not going to find him alive. We’ll be lucky to find his body intact.
“Esther…” Corin says. His voice is strange, too quiet.
Then he throws himself down at his sister’s side. I step around him and look down at her. Dark eyes, like warm chocolate—just like Corin’s—watch me. There’s still life in them—Untamed life. I know it’s her—my Seer powers tell me that—but she’s weak. Her face is divided in two by a long, bloody gash. Her skin’s too pale. Far too pale and—
I choke as I see the bullet in her shoulder—a harsh glimpse of metal among torn muscle, bloodied tissues, shredded skin.
Bile rises in my throat. I bite my lip, look around. There are other bodies not far off; I don’t recognize them.
Esther makes a gurgling sound as she rolls over onto her back with a blood-curdling scream. She looks at us, and I watch her absorb Corin’s appearance, noting the obvious relief on her face, the way her shoulders sag slightly into the muddy ground. Then her face moves a fraction, until she’s looking at me, and—
I know what she’s going to say. I don’t know how. But I know.
“No.” I look at her, shake my head. “No… No, Esther, no.”
Her eyes are on me, and she nods.
But she can’t say those words, she mustn’t. I clench my fists, feel the blood vessels over the back of my hand bump up.
I don’t want her to speak. Esther can’t say the words. It’s impossible.
Blood drips down the side of her face. Corin tears part of his shirt off, tries to dab all the redness away, but the fabric soaks up the blood until it’s bleeding itself.
Esther’s lips start moving, and her eyes are still on me. “Seven, please, he’s alive—”
I shake my head. He can’t be. Half his face was shot off, and another bullet went into his abdomen. My brother’s tough, but there’s no way he could have survived that.
“He is alive.” Esther shuts her eyes briefly, and her whole body shudders. When she opens them, I feel sick. “He was still breathing, Seven. I saw him, but—”
My spine clicks. Something strange happens to my legs, and I fall as she speaks.
“They’ve taken him. The Enhanced Ones have taken Three.”
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