The Death Code
DEDICATION
To my dad, Don Cummings, who taught me how to be fearless.
And to my #booknerdigans, for all your love and support.
CONTENTS
Dedication
Part One: The Shallows
Chapter 1: Zephyr
Chapter 2: Meadow
Chapter 3: Zephyr
Chapter 4: Meadow
Chapter 5: Zephyr
Chapter 6: Meadow
Chapter 7: Zephyr
Chapter 8: Meadow
Chapter 9: Zephyr
Chapter 10: Meadow
Chapter 11: Zephyr
Chapter 12: Meadow
Chapter 13: Zephyr
Chapter 14: Meadow
Chapter 15: Zephyr
Chapter 16: Meadow
Chapter 17: Zephyr
Chapter 18: Meadow
Chapter 19: Zephyr
Chapter 20: Meadow
Chapter 21: Zephyr
Chapter 22: Meadow
Chapter 23: Zephyr
Chapter 24: Meadow
Chapter 25: Zephyr
Chapter 26: Meadow
Chapter 27: Zephyr
Chapter 28: Meadow
Chapter 29: Zephyr
Chapter 30: Meadow
Chapter 31: Zephyr
Chapter 32: Meadow
Chapter 33: Zephyr
Chapter 34: Meadow
Chapter 35: Zephyr
Chapter 36: Meadow
Part Two: The Outsiders
Chapter 37: Meadow
Chapter 38: Zephyr
Chapter 39: Meadow
Chapter 40: Zephyr
Chapter 41: Meadow
Chapter 42: Zephyr
Chapter 43: Meadow
Chapter 44: Zephyr
Chapter 45: Meadow
Chapter 46: Zephyr
Chapter 47: Meadow
Chapter 48: Zephyr
Chapter 49: Meadow
Chapter 50: Zephyr
Chapter 51: Meadow
Chapter 52: Zephyr
Chapter 53: Meadow
Chapter 54: Zephyr
Chapter 55: Meadow
Chapter 56: Zephyr
Chapter 57: Meadow
Chapter 58: Zephyr
Chapter 59: Meadow
Chapter 60: Zephyr
Chapter 61: Meadow
Chapter 62: Zephyr
Chapter 63: Meadow
Chapter 64: Zephyr
Chapter 65: Meadow
Chapter 66: Zephyr
Chapter 67: Meadow
Chapter 68: Zephyr
Chapter 69: Meadow
Chapter 70: Zephyr
Chapter 71: Meadow
Part Three: The Ridge
Chapter 72: Zephyr
Chapter 73: Meadow
Chapter 74: Zephyr
Chapter 75: Meadow
Chapter 76: Zephyr
Chapter 77: Meadow
Chapter 78: Zephyr
Chapter 79: Meadow
Chapter 80: Zephyr
Chapter 81: Meadow
Chapter 82: Zephyr
Chapter 83: Meadow
Chapter 84: Zephyr
Chapter 85: Meadow
Chapter 86: Zephyr
Chapter 87: Meadow
Chapter 88: Zephyr
Chapter 89: Meadow
Chapter 90: Zephyr
Chapter 91: Meadow
Chapter 92: Zephyr
Chapter 93: Meadow
Chapter 94: Zephyr
Chapter 95: Meadow
Chapter 96: Zephyr
Chapter 97: Meadow
Chapter 98: Zephyr
Chapter 99: Meadow
Chapter 100: Zephyr
Chapter 101: Meadow
Chapter 102: Zephyr
Chapter 103: Meadow
Chapter 104: Zephyr
Chapter 105: Meadow
Chapter 106: Zephyr
Chapter 107: Meadow
Chapter 108: Zephyr
Chapter 109: Meadow
Chapter 110: Zephyr
Chapter 111: Meadow
Chapter 112: Zephyr
Chapter 113: Meadow
Epilogue: Three Weeks Later
Acknowledgments
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About the Author
Books by Lindsay Cummings
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
PART ONE
THE SHALLOWS
CHAPTER 1
ZEPHYR
It’s going to be a dark night.
Weeks ago, the darkest nights were the worst. Bodies dropped like flies around the Shallows, and blood dried in rivers all over the streets. The Dark Time meant dread. It meant the Murder Complex and its Patients came out to play.
That hasn’t changed. If anything, the deaths have gotten worse.
But something good will happen tonight.
It’s a new moon, and black clouds are gathering over the tops of the crumbling buildings. The thunder and lightning and the Dark Time combined make for the perfect distraction, the perfect storm.
And that means Lark Woodson will come out of hiding.
I’ve been tracking her for weeks, but every time I’m about to find her, she disappears. Like the wind.
Not tonight. Tonight, I’m going to catch her.
As I run, I see Meadow’s face in my head. Her gray eyes, determined and cold as steel. Her dagger in her hand, slicing Patients and Leeches as she fights her way through the Leech Headquarters from the inside out.
It’s been three weeks. She has to be alive. I’d know it if she were dead, wouldn’t I?
Maybe not. Maybe she is dead. Like Talan.
Oh, god, Talan. My best friend. Dead, because of me. I try to shove the guilt away, but it’s too strong.
“Damn it!” I growl and sprint harder, faster, down the streets of the Shallows. The gun sheathed at my thigh bobs with every step. I skid around the corner of an alleyway and stop. Fade into the mass of people heading for safety before the Dark Time takes over.
The Leeches are out in packs, searching, but they won’t find me easily.
I pull a baseball cap low over my eyes. My arms are covered in temporary tattoos, drawn on just this morning.
Hiding in plain sight is exactly what the Leeches wouldn’t expect me to do.
The crowd moves along, and I walk with them. I keep my head on a swivel, searching. Always searching, for the woman who created me. Turned me into a monster.
Five minutes, and the Night Siren will go off.
There’s a crackle in my left ear, the only good ear I have left, where a stolen Leech earpiece sits. Take the alley directly across the street. And hurry up. My little sister runs faster than you.
It’s Rhone, the guy from the Resistance who was so interested in sending Meadow into the Leech Headquarters in the first place. Now she’s gone, stuck inside. And I can’t reach her.
Zero, move! Now.
I do what he says, shove my way through way too many people. Running is still hard since losing my ear, and my balance isn’t quite right. But I can’t stop now. I wobble on my feet before I leap over the train tracks, then dive into the alley to my left. The setting sun disappears, and suddenly it’s dark.
And quiet. Too quiet, almost like it’s the Silent Hour.
I stop and look around.
There’s a Leech lying all bent and broken up against the brick building to my right. His rifle lies on the concrete at his side, and there are empty bullet casings all over the place. But no other body, which means if Lark was here . . . she’s gone. I take a step closer to him. Fresh blood drips from a slit in his throat, a perfect line of red, like a smile. The Leech chokes, lifts a hand for help that he’s not going to get.
“She was just here,” I say into my wrist mic. “Slit throat, like all the others.”
We’ll get her next time, Zero, Rhone says, and I want to believe him, but he’s been saying the same thing for weeks. 21 days, and 7 hours, to be exact. I’m on my way.
I sigh and run a hand through my hair. I have to find Lark. When I do, I’ll take her to the Leeches, knock down their front door, and hand her over in exchange for Meadow. I’ve thought about killing Lark instead. But in the chaos that will come afterward, I might not get to my moonlit girl.
Trading Lark for Meadow is best. We’ll be together again, and we’ll find some way, any way, to leave the Shallows behind. Find where the Leeches have taken her family, set them free.
I promised her I’d rescue them.
But I won’t leave without her. I refuse.
The Leech groans, one last time. He takes a rattling breath and dies.
“You deserved it,” I say to his body. I lean down to grab his rifle, and that’s when I see it.
A bloody footprint, just a few feet away from him.
And then another, and another, heading out of the alley, toward the exit that leads to the beach. The footprints are small, but not small enough to be a child’s. They could be Lark’s.
I lift my wrist to my mouth. “Rhone, I think she’s hurt. She couldn’t have gone far from—”
The Night Siren goes off.
It starts as a whoop, dipping low, and then goes so high it’s like a piercing scream. I cover my ears and drop to my knees. My whole body shakes, all the way to my fingers and toes. I hear a voice in my head. Lark’s voice, welcoming me to the Murder Complex.
And suddenly I want to kill, destroy, give in to the pull of the system in my mind. I feel myself slipping away, feel my heart turning cold and solid as stone, see a victim in my head, their Catalogue Number, 65098, in bright red numbers.
But I think of Meadow. I think of one word, with four letters, and it’s stupid as hell but I don’t care.
Because love is what saves me and sets me free. It’s still working, for now, but each night it’s becoming harder. If I don’t save Meadow soon, I’m afraid of what I’ll become.
I shake the Murder Complex from my mind and sprint into the darkness.
CHAPTER 2
MEADOW
Something is different tonight.
On normal evenings, when the sun begins to set into the sea, the waves are calm and quiet. They whisper and crawl and collapse onshore, as steady as a heartbeat.
Tonight, the sea is angry.
The waves crash harder than ever against the rocks. Sea spray erupts into the sky, stinging my skin. Out in the water, the shipwrecked boats rock and groan like they are begging for mercy.
“Meadow?”
I blink and look down. My little sister Peri sits beside me on the sand, her silver curls dancing in the wind.
“Yes?” I ask. My voice sounds hollow. Empty.
“How much longer?” Peri asks me. She grabs my hand, entwines her fingers in mine. They are so cold that I flinch. “I want to go home.”
“I know you do,” I say, as I look back out at the sea. “Me, too.”
There is a storm on the horizon, a promise that chaos is soon to come. We should go home, back to our houseboat where my father and my brother Koi wait. But something tugs at my mind, begs me to stay. The gray clouds rumble just beyond the Perimeter. The Pulse blinks in time with the lightning, and the hair rises on my arms. I shiver.
“Just wait,” I say. “A few more minutes.”
Peri shifts beside me. “What are we waiting for?”
“I . . . I can’t remember,” I whisper. My breath comes out in a puff of fog. Something that has never happened before in the Shallows. It is whisked away by the wind, carried into the bleeding sky.
The colors of the sunset are the same, reds and oranges and pinks, like the citrus my mother used to love. But still, I sense it.
Something is different tonight.
Seagulls dip and dive, screeching a warning. But a warning for what?
“I’m cold,” Peri says. She leans against me, and her body is like ice.
A voice tugs at the back of my mind, whispering my name over and over. Meadow, Meadow. Wake up. Pay attention, Meadow. The voice sounds like my father’s.
Peri starts to sing. Her voice is soft and lovely, and for a moment I close my eyes and let it roll over me like the wind.
Somewhere in the distance, the Night Siren goes off. It is a wail that belongs to those who mourn the dead. A warning that soon, something will come.
But what? I can’t place it, and everything feels off.
Peri stands up, suddenly, whirls around to look at the beach behind us. Sand sprays my face. “Is that what we’ve been waiting for?” she asks.
I can hear a sound, like shuffling feet moving across the top of the sand. But I don’t want to turn. Something begs me not to.
“Meadow!” Peri tugs at my hand. “Meadow, look!”
I take a deep breath and turn, slowly, and in my head I hear my father’s voice again. Wake. Up.
And that’s when I see them. A wave of Patients stumbling toward us in the sand.
“Run,” I hear myself say. “Peri. Run!”
But when I turn to look at her, my little sister is gone.
In her place sits a puddle of fresh blood.
CHAPTER 3
ZEPHYR
I sprint into the trees at the edge of the alley.
“Lark,” I say. My voice is strong and steady. “I know you’re in here.”
Movement in the overgrowth catches my eye. I stand up just as Lark appears in the tall grass. She stumbles toward the beach like a wounded animal. At the sight of her, I lose what’s left of my sanity.
I fire the gun in her direction. And curse it all, I miss.
So I run, sprinting across the jungle floor, the wind blowing into the hole in the side of my head where my ear should be.
“Stop!” I scream, voice ragged. Lark trips, and I close the distance between us. I dive, fingertips grazing her ankles. I land on top of her and she cries out, her eyes reflecting the craziness that’s inside of her.
“You left us to die!” I spit. “You left your daughter to die!” I whirl her around so we’re facing each other. For one second, seeing her is like a punch to the gut.
She looks so much like Meadow.
“They can’t touch my daughter, Patient Zero,” Lark says, smiling with blackened teeth. “She’ll live.”
I punch her in the face, and she groans, then bursts into laughter. “Go ahead and kill me,” she says. “Kill me and drag my body back to the Initiative. Do you think they’ll hand Meadow over then?” She laughs, and her breath is so bad I want to puke. “You’re a murderer, and you always will be. I made you perfectly in that way.”
“Then this will be easy,” I say. I turn the gun, level it at her forehead, right over her Catalogue Number. I’m ready to do it. Ready to kill willingly, and I’m not afraid. As soon as her heart stops, the fail-safe she put into the Murder Complex will activate. The Patients will turn their attacks onto the Leeches, and the Shallows will erupt into chaos.
Should I do it? Do I kill Lark, and use the chaos to help me rescue Meadow . . . or do I carry Lark in, alive, and use her in exchange for setting her daughter free?
“You’re a fool,” Lark spits up at me.
I’m about to squeeze the trigger when she looks right into my eyes and whispers something, a string of words and numbers and things that don’t make any sense. But she seems to know exactly what she’s doing, and she smiles as she finishes speaking.
That’s when the pain comes. I see a bright white light in my head, and suddenly, Lark’s voice whispers from deep inside of me.
Welcome back to the Murder Complex, Patient Zero.
Initiate Termination.
Lark squirms under my body. I roll away from her, clutching my skull. I’ve already fought the system tonight.
I can’t do it again, not twice, not when I’m exhausted, not when my stomach is empty and I haven’t slept in days. I need Meadow near me, close by, to fight it.
We’ve been separated for way too long.
Before the system takes over, I see Lark stand up and stagger away, a trail of blood in her wake.
“Stop . . .” I groan. “We have to . . . Meadow . . .”
But it’s too late. The pain intensifies, and my sight goes.
Somehow, the Murder Complex has me in its grip.
I have enough strength to lift my wrist to my mouth. “The beach,” I gasp to Rhone.
Then darkness pulls me under as the system takes control.
CHAPTER 4
MEADOW
I wake up screaming for my father.
Someone has dumped a bucket of ice-cold water over my head, and it feels like knives against my skin.
“Where is your mother?” a man’s voice asks. I try to get my bearings, figure out where I am, but my head is heavy. My mind is a million miles away.
“Where is Lark Woodson?”
I don’t answer. More water. Cold, so cold that I fear I will never be warm again.
I cough, gasping for air. I try to wipe the water away from my face, but my hands won’t move. I try to sit up, but something holds my body down, my arms and legs, a heavy weight on top of my chest. It is like I am inside of one of my old nightmares, back on the houseboat with my family when I was younger. All I had to do was wake up, and I would be safe. But this time, the nightmare is real.
There is no waking up.
“I asked you a question,” the voice says.
I groan, lift my head as far as I can. I am strapped to a metal table. Around me are gray walls. And thick bars.
Movement shifts behind my head, and someone steps into view. It is a man, pale faced and dark eyed, wearing the all-black uniform of the Initiative.
“Where is your mother?” he asks me. A name tag on his chest says Interrogation Expert, SPC. Scientific Population Control. “Where is Patient Zero?”
“I . . . don’t know,” I whisper. The fragments of my nightmare are still dancing around me, making me shiver and shake.
“Where is the Resistance?”
“I have no idea.” My voice trembles, my teeth chatter like rattling bones. The man dumps another bucket of cold water over my head.
I gasp. The pain draws forth a memory, flashes of a mission, gunshots, a dying dark-haired girl.