Deserted Highways

Songs of Freedom

on the floor. "God Dammit," Jace cried out loudly, standing and tugging on his hair as the tears pricked at his eyes again. "God dammit, this- this can't be, I can't-"

He rubbed his hands over his face, trying to rub away the images of Sarah laughing with him, sitting next to him on Kaelie's bed and letting him cry into her shoulder, letting him just miss Kaelie and not saying a word, her smile, her gentle, soft, face. He heard the echoes of her last words in her ears, the hoarseness of Michae's voice as his screams faded into muffled sobs.

"I'm going to kill her, I swear to God, I am going to kill her," Lilith said, her voice hard and angry, but Jace heard it waver.

"No- Lilith, no. We can't. That- that thing, it wasn't her, you know that. Jordan operated on her, he took her everything, everything that made her her, he turned her humanity off, or something. That wasn't her, she would never do that," he said, his voice rushed and uncertain, and he wasn't even sure if he really believed what he was saying.

"Jace she fucking killed Sarah. Right in front of us, and she fucking laughed. She- she deserves to be put down," Lilith said angrily.

"Jace is right," Michael said finally, brushing his fingers through Sarah's hair, and then over her eyes, closing her eyelids, and she almost looked like she was sleeping.

"What?" Lilith said, whipping her head around to face him. "Michael- you saw that, you saw it, she didn't even hesitate for a second, not even for Jace, she enjoyed it."

"I know. Dammit Lilith I know, my entire fucking life just died in front of me," Michael said, his voice trembling. "But that- there has to be something, some way to fix it because that wasn't her. And you know what, some of what she said was true. We really were about to walk away from her. And she gave us everything, so many times. She let Theo have her because if he took her, he wouldn't go for you or for Sarah. She took the worst of it, running her mouth so they'd leave us alone. And she pretty much died for us, and we were going to just let her go."

He took a shuddering breath. "It's our turn. It's our turn to fight for her, to do whatever it takes, sacrifice whatever it takes until we get her back. Didn't you hear Jordan? He didn't cut the connections, he couldn't because it would likely cause catastrophic damage to her brain. He blocked them, and that means there's hope. Maybe we can't do a surgery, we'll never get close enough, but we can try to destroy that blockage. We can try to bring her back, we have to. We owe it to her."

He looked back down at Sarah. "Sarah forgave her. And we need to, too."

"We have to get out of here. Jordan- he's going to use Kaelie to kill as many humans as she can, those Hunters you saw- I think he created an army of them, just like Kaelie, nearly as nasty and powerful too. We need to find a way out, need to find and warn as many people as we can, prepare them," Jace said.

"Yeah, Jace, unfortunately, we are right back where we started, sans one fucking Hunter. How do you propose us to break out of this room?" Lilith asked, spiteful and angry.

"These walls, they're solid. Unpaneled. He knew everything we'd try. But he has to come back, if not him, someone will, they have to feed us. They won't kill us because Jordan still needs us, needs us to keep fueling Kaelie's rage, needs us alive so he can gloat at the finish, who knows. But if he wanted us dead, he'd have let Kaelie kill all of us, and he didn't," Jace said.

"So, we wait. He left us with our clothes, and there are things we can use, there has to be. You guys aren't stupid, we've had to fight with less. So, we wait, and we get to work. Zippers, buttons, shoelaces, anything sharp or long enough to hurt someone with," Jace muttered very quietly, sure that someone would be likely to listen in.

The hours seemed to pass slowly, like days, and Jace felt his stomach growling angrily at him, empty and hollow. They'd moved Sarah to the corner of the room, laying her on the floor gently, and Michael had taken his shirt off to lay it across her face. They'd sat around her for a while after that, leaning in one at a time to whisper their goodbyes into unhearing ears.

"Thank you," Jace whispered, leaning in close so his tears wouldn't be visible as they leaked out of tired eyes. "Thank you for everything. For loving us, for loving her. For everything you've done for us. For being who you were. You are missed, Sarah. May you find happiness in the next. We'll see you again, one day."

After that, a grim sort of determination fell over them, a hard silence engulfing the room as they set to work. Michael thought there were likely to be cameras watching them, so they sat around Sarah's body, backs to all of the walls, hunched over, like they were still mourning. Michael and Lilith had ripped away the zippers on their jeans, then done the same to Jace's, the strength in their hands more than enough to pull it away from the fabric.

Michael rubbed the zipper along the floor, grinding it into the smooth tile, sharpening it into a deadly point. Sarah had been wearing small, heeled boots when she'd left, and Jace broke the heels off, apologizing in his thoughts, and then joining Michael in sharpening them into something that would break skin, something that would rip flesh apart when it was time for that.

The hours still ticked by and Jace wondered if he'd been wrong, if they planned to just leave them in here until they starved, or if Jordan was just biding his time before he sent Kaelie in for another round. He was tired, he could see Lilith's eyes drooping as she fought too to stay awake. They couldn't afford to sleep, couldn't afford to be anything less than on high alert when that door opened. If someone came in and found their handiwork while they were unconscious, they would dead.

After a while, when they'd done all they could to turn their mangled clothes into weapons, they moved away from Sarah's body, huddling into the corner where the door would block them from view when it opened, and they waited some more.

Jace thought about his mom. He wondered where she was, if Jordan still held her here, if he'd let her go. If she knew about the Hunter army, if she knew about Kaelie, what had been done to her. He wanted to sit with his mom and listen to her slightly off key humming, feel her warmth around him, soothing and reassuring. He wanted to apologize for getting her into this, even though somehow he knew it had nothing to do with him.

She'd worked for the Illusion long before he was born, had been deeply embroiled in this long before his dad got sick, and before she sent Kaelie to save him. He wanted to scream and shout at her about how she could have stayed, how she could have believed Jordan, how she could have let him take Kaelie

Kaelie. Thinking her name made his heart thud painfully in his chest. The flashbulb images of her rampaging in this room were on repeat behind his eyes, like they'd seared themselves into the back of his eyelids. She'd still looked like her, for the briefest of moments when she'd stepped in, in all her high heeled, ethereal beauty, and then she'd looked down on them and Jace had felt the cold fear clawing back up his throat.

It wasn't her, her eyes had held nothing, empty but for the rage and cruel satisfaction, he couldn't see any hint of the real Kaelie, of his Kaelie moving around behind them. She'd looked down on him like she didn't know who she was, like he was beneath her, something disgusting she'd found on the floor. Her face, her angular features, her lips, her grin, ll of it was her and it wasn't her and Jace felt the terror pounding at him in waves.

When she'd shoved him, it'd been like being hit with a piece of lead pipe and as he'd laid crumpled on the floor, he knew she couldn't see him anymore, or any of them, she knew them, but she didn't know them at all, couldn't make the connections in her mind anymore about why they'd been important to her.

The glee, the joy she'd worn on her face when she'd felt Sarah's neck break and splinter under her fingers made Jace feel sick, the nausea roiling in his gut like poison. He'd searched her eyes, her face, for anything, any semblance that she was still there, the real Kaelie hiding somewhere, pounding on the walls of her mind to be let out, screaming, but he couldn't see anything but the ice fire hate in her mismatched irises when she'd killed Sarah, when she'd nearly come to beat him too.

He didn't know if this fight, if Michael's words, all his bravado about saving Kaelie like she'd save them, if it was worth it, if there was anything left to save. He wanted to try, he needed to try, he'd spent too many weeks without her and not enough time with her and he wanted it all back.

God, he missed her, but he was angry with her, angrier than he was at his mom. He wanted to shout at her until she woke up, until something