Bound to Ashes [The Altered Sequence: Book 1]

15 • Strangers Again

[Dev]

Going back is going to be the hardest part.

I can just see it—staring at us like they don't know us anymore. Like they never knew us to begin with. Back to square one... talk about an uphill battle.

But maybe with the information we have, they'll be willing to set aside everything and move on. Like nothing ever happened. Like that incubation room is nothing but a bad dream. As much as I try to reprogram that memory as false, I can't. It stings the inside of my skull. Are we willing to move on for the sake of moving on and nothing else? Can forgiveness be given over time, or will the humans demand it up front? They don't need an apology. It's us that need the apology.

Whatever.

"Dev, come on, I hate to rush us but...."

"No, I know. It's this way." This route seems a fraction more familiar than the others. It just seems less... menacing than the other. Something about the way the path opens up instead of clogged with pipes and rails. But who's to say that the me that was blind with anger thought the same thing? The lost feeling grabs at my chest with icy fingers and I have to stave it off somehow. One foot in front of the other.

I lead us to a stretch of scaffolding that overlooks a massive ravine. Geometric snags of pipes and rails spread out between the mechanical rocks on the side of the canyon. The variation and random placement of shapes make them seem more and more like rocks— technological sandstone. Trying to picture how long it took to make this place, all the planning and labor, makes me dizzy.

"I hear something," Ashton says behind me and that's my signal to freeze and hold my breath.

We wait in nothing more than silence, to me.

"They're coming," he says.

My heart plummets. "Sentinels?"

He smiles and shakes his head. "No, the humans."

Usually those words wouldn't fill me with relief. I'm ready to let this all blow over and get on with things. That feeling of prideful anger keeps resurfacing, though. I should be livid about Alessandra lying to us. But the feeling is overwritten by what she said. You can have a chance at a real life. Even recalling it makes my heart thump faster. They shipped you back to Caduceus instead of the gas chambers.

"Where are they?"

"I can hear them somewhere on the other side of this wall, it's hollow on the inside up there," Ashton says, gesturing above us. Sure enough, windows.

"Can we climb it...?" The 'canyon' walls nearest us are riddled with foot and handholds. We could do it. Maybe the window opens?

"Better idea," Ashton says, pulling something out of his pack. A can opener.

My blank stare prompts him to laugh, but he says nothing, only turns around and throws it straight up. It sails easily to the height of the window and clinks against it gently, deliberately.

Eventually the silhouettes of humans fill the window, stare down for a moment, and rush away.

Here we go.

Should I prepare an apology? But it's them who should apologize. I wish I wasn't so good at making myself nervous.

"Ash...."

"Hm?"

"I don't know what to do about all this."

"About... what happened in the...."

"Yeah. I don't know who's at fault here. Do I apologize, or Alessandra? Or both of us? I just don't know what's going to happen...." It sounds so weird coming out of my mouth. This is usually something I'd work out internally.