Darkness and silence rolled past the subway’s stained windows, the giant iron machine juddering and shaking as it rolled over its tracks. Rebecca hadn’t said anything in nearly thirty minutes. Bianca didn’t know what she should say. Sorry? Really? Hey, Becca, I feel really bad about ripping your eye out of its socket. I’ll try make it up to you somehow, alright? How about I take you out for lunch?

  All she could do was sit still, staring at the grit under her bloodied fingernails, trying not to imagine how she’d plunged these very same fingers into her aunt’s skull and pulled her freaking eyeball out. Nobody else was on the train. Not this late at night. Not with everyone so afraid something else, something worse, might happen. New Olympus wasn’t loud, proud, and overbearingly ignorant of everything evil lurking in its streets tonight, probably because evil had come from above the Upper West this time, and not crawled across the river and into their alleys. Curfew. That’s what the police were trying hard to do.

  Mostly because everyone could almost feel it in their bones now, this feeling of…wrongness.

  She’d been on the subway barely a few hours ago, but suddenly, nighttime felt different. The wind had picked up. The breeze was a little more harsh, slipping through the iron slits above the windows. Bianca held herself, tried to keep the violent franticness of the worms under her skin and nowhere else. Hate. They hated Becky. They wanted Becca dead. Hissing. Whispering. Encouraging. All it would take was a shard of sharp bone through her throat, through her skull, pin Becca down on the subway’s filthy floor and smash open her face with her fists. It was loud inside her head. Loud for so many reasons she could barely figure out why. Above all, though, she wanted Rylee back. And hated that thought, too, because now Becca had put it in her head that maybe she didn’t want her.

  Maybe the thing trying to kill Rylee, trying to break down her bones and muscles, wanted her more.

  Is that any better? Bianca thought to herself. Do we both want her, just for different reasons?

  Or maybe, again, it was the worms telling her this, just so she could feel better.

  As if the thing inside her would ever want that. All it wanted was to feed.

  Becca lit a cigarette, cupped the zippo lighter and cradled the tiny flame. Bianca turned her head, just enough to glance at her. Blue smoke spilled out of her nose, filtered into the air. Bianca’s throat dried as Becca let the slim tube of nicotine sit between her lips. Her arms were folded. Her singular eye was staring straight ahead, as if willing someone to appear across from them. Bianca almost wanted Carson to appear and start talking her ears off.

  Just so this unbearable silence would stop killing her slowly.

  “How’s Rylee?” she whispered. The words slipped past her lips all by themselves.

  “MIA,” Becca muttered.

  Bianca looked at her. “What do you mean—”

  “You’ve got bigger problems to worry about right now, Bianca.”

  “I still care about her,” Bianca said quietly.

  Becca said nothing. Just sighed more smoke, took the cigarette out of her mouth and tapped ash onto the floor. She pulled out her phone, checked something, tensed her jaw and put it away again. “Come on,” she said, as the train’s brakes shrieked and sparks briefly lit the darkness beyond the windows. “We’re gonna use a shortcut.”

  “Where are we even going?”

  “To find Sophie Blackwood,” Rebecca said flatly, then shouldered her rifle, the duffel bag she’d picked up from a car parked several blocks away from Bianca’s house, and headed for the doors. Bianca quietly groaned and shut her eyes, then massaged her face and didn’t get off the hard plastic seats. Goddamit, she thought. Why does everyone care so much about that freaking clone? “Bianca.” She tensed, looked up. The doors had hissed open, and Becca was standing on the platform, waiting for her to move. “We can’t afford to wait. Get up, let’s get going.”

  And so she did. Grudgingly, slowly, and followed Becca onto the empty platform, up the rain-soaked stairs and out into the freezing cold streets. She had no idea where she was. Not somewhere nice, is what Bianca knew. Boarded storefronts. Streetlights that flickered. Tipped trash cans and graffiti that glowed neon-green in alleyways.

  And it was one of those alleyways, not any different than the rest, that Becca led her inside. Darkness ate them both almost immediately. Oily puddles splashed over her sneakers. A butcher shop and a Chinese store stood on either side of them. It meant the dumpster reeked heavily of rot. Flies hummed above them. Cats prowled inside the trash, uncaring and offended two people had gotten so close to their horde of rotted food. Bianca flinched when one of them, a twitchy, tiny thing, hissed at her and swiped its claws, daring her to get closer. The worms sprung up from her flesh, darting from her shoulder and stopping an inch away from the cat’s skull—only because Becca had put her sidearm to the back of Bianca’s head again. The iron was cold and bit against her neck. For a moment, silence dominated. The bladed tendril quivered. Bianca breathed through her mouth, gritted her teeth, then thought, Back. The appendage twitched, then stabbed the wall so close to the cat it slit a cut into the thing’s ear.

  The cat shrieked and bounded behind the dumpster, then scampered into a hole in the brick wall.

  “Get a fucking hold of it,” Becca said quietly, gun still jammed against her skull. “If you can’t even tell it not to attack some cat, how am I supposed to know it won’t lash out and kill Carly? Or your dad? Or rip Rylee apart when her guard is down?” Bianca swallowed, couldn’t answer. She shut her eyes and thought, Please just listen. I—

  “Not good,” it hissed inside her head. She tried not to flinch. She failed. “That woman isn’t good.”

  I don’t give a fuck what you think, Bianca thought, clenching her jaw. You’re in my body, so you’re gonna do what I say. The appendage remained embedded inside the brick wall, still rigid. Back, before you get us killed.

  “Killed?” it whispered, the echo ringing through her skull. “Phage will not allow it.”

  Yeah? Bianca thought, fists balled tight, shaking by her sides, eyes squeezed shut as the gun pressed harder against her head, parting her ponytail, kissing the skin on her scalp. Then why didn’t you protect Ben?

  Silence.

  What’s the matter? You’re telling me you allowed that to happen? What’s any different this time?

  The Phage had nothing left to say.

  The barbed appendaged darted back into her shoulder so violently she spun around.

  Now the gun was pointed in her face, resting right on the tip of her nose.

  Bianca swallowed, then weakly smiled at Becca. “There,” she whispered. “All under control.”

  Becca’s eye narrowed, then she holstered her gun and flicked her cigarette into the dumpster. She turned away with nothing left to say, leaving Bianca quietly following behind her, massaging her shoulder and the bright red wound the Phage had left behind. Deeper into the alleyway they went, until they finally stood right up close to a rusting chainlink fence, and an old steel cellar in the ground. Becca slammed her boot against the metal twice, then stood back and waited. The sound echoed through the night. Someone passing the alleyway cringed and ran.

  “Becca,” Bianca said, her voice swallowed by the shadows sitting right in front of her eyes. “What are—”

  “I’ve already made it clear what we’re doing tonight,” she said dryly. All the fun in her voice was gone, like she was suddenly speaking to an entirely new person, one she’d never met before, one that had never carried her when she was little, plated her hair when she was ten—right now, her aunt felt cold, distant, like someone had scalped the warmth right out of her chest and left behind a corpse with a rifle on its shoulder. “We’re looking for bad people, because these bad people might have a clue where you left Sophie. We need to find her before Lucian does, because, Bianca, if the devil finds that girl before we do, then life isn’t going to be fun. Not for anyone. Especially not for you.” Her single eye narrowed on her. Bianca shrunk under her glare. “Lucian hates the thing inside of you. And after what you did to that girl, she won’t have a lot of nice things left to say, either. You’ve got a target on your back, and quite frankly, your parents are safer away from you. You lost that privilege. You don’t even realize how much of a privilege it is, being able to be at home, being able to sleep in your own bed. And you went and fucked it up, all in a few days, because you let your emotions get the better of you. So, like I said, we’re atoning your sins.”

  “It’s not like I wanted it to take over,” she whispered.

  “It’s not like I want to have to kill you to protect my best friend, but I will. Trust me, Bianca. I will.”

  “Does my mom know that you would?”

  “Your mom is busy trying to convince the president not to send children to war.”

  “War?” Bianca said. “What do you mean war? They want to start a war with the freaking aliens that nearly killed the two strongest superhumans on the entire planet?” Becca, silent as ever, only stared at Bianca.

  She swallowed, then looked into the sky. Clouds. No stars. Nothing to see except sheets of gray air.

  “Not that kind of war,” Becca said quietly, then slammed her boot against the cellar again, leaving a dent in the metal. “America isn’t exactly making many friends right now, but I guess when you’re this young, the news isn’t something you pay a lot of attention to. Guess it doesn’t matter. Not right now, anyway. Not until they’re sending superhumans your age to die for something nobody even believes in anymore.” Again, she slams the cellar, and again, the dull bang her boot makes sharply echoes down the alleyway. “The more things change, the more…”

  “They stay the same,” she said quietly.

  The cellar doors slowly swung open, heaved aside by a girl with stark white skin, frazzled black hair and dark circles around her eyes. She looked like a dead body, and Bianca immediately hated that she knew how one looked. The girl was hauntingly pretty, but also smelt like wet soil and filthy hospital beds. The faint, flickering fluorescent lights behind the girl hollowed her eyes and carved the fat out of her cheeks, if there was any to begin with. The girl was grinning. Grinning so wide the tiny stitches in the corners of her lips tugged and tightly twisted.

  “You’re back!” the girl said to Becca. “And you brought someone new.” She scanned Bianca from head to toe, then shrugged her shoulders. She was wearing blood-smattered blue overalls and a white t-shirt too big for her, also, of course, dotted with blood. “Well, she looks healthy enough. Organs like hers are gonna keep the lights on.”

  Bianca blinked, then looked at Becca. “You’re gonna sell my freaking—”

  “No, I’m not,” she muttered, then walked into the cellar and pushed the girl out of the way. “C’mon.”

  Bianca cautiously followed, then froze at the bottom of the stairs beside the pale-skinned girl with black hair. They looked at one another for several silent seconds, and then the girl poked her ribs with a rigid finger and shut the steel cellar doors with a bang that made Bianca flinch. And almost immediately, her entire body erupted with agony. The pain was so sudden she gasped, then sank her teeth into her tongue and clenched her jaw. Becca stopped, looked over her shoulder. The pale girl frowned and looked at her strangely. And then the other people in the cellar stopped muttering amongst themselves and looked at her, and… And God, what the fuck? Bianca stepped back, nearly tripping on the stair behind her. Heart smashing into her ribs. Lungs tight. And then the worms were on her skin, up to her throat, covering her entire body in seconds. Mask on her eyes. Fingernails of bone tearing out of her fingertips. Fear. Hate. It crashed together in waves, curdling, screaming, turning her entire body into a bonfire of emotions and feelings and she felt so dizzy and so angry and violent and scared all at once, each slamming into her head, nearly making her pass out. But if she passed out, then either Becca killed her, or Bianca killed her aunt.

  So she stayed on the stairs, panting like a sick dog, bone hardening on each of her knuckles.

  “Woah,” the pale-skinned girl whispered. “Can I have some of your skin?”

  A girl near the back of the cellar, sitting on the edge of a small green cot, slowly stood. Short, wild black hair. Sharp blue eyes that turned golden the second she saw Bianca. Kill her. The girl slowly walked forward, bare feet quietly slapping the concrete floor. KILL HER. Bianca winced. Shook her head. Breathed faster and harder. The worms tightened against her body, pulled on her skin and prickled in her veins. Then the girl stopped walking, her head tilted, eyes pulsing softly. Golden electricity crackled between her fingers, the light singing her fingertips.. Another girl stood, brown-skinned, same wild black hair, this time with green eyes, thin-lipped, standing behind the other girl. Both their eyes glowed. Both their jaws were set, shoulders strong. A boy next. No, a man. A beast of a man. So large his chest strained the vest tightly hugging it, stood behind them, a hulking mass of twitching muscle. Two more of them didn’t get close. A thin boy with glasses perched on the tip of his sharp nose. A girl with a soft face, sitting beside him, stared at Bianca, eyes also wide, eyes also bright and golden. The cellar felt too small. Too cramped. KILL THEM. Bianca climbed one step backward. Bone hardened on her knuckles, growing down her fingers and stretching up to her elbows. The group didn’t move. Bianca wanted to. She wanted to lunge. To kill.

  To run away and not look back and hope they didn’t hunt her down.

  When she opened her mouth, saliva stretched between her lips like flesh. “You’re all…you’re all—”

  KILL THEM.

  “You’re—”

  KILL THEM.

  Her hand stretched out. The worms gathered, stretched, hardened and flexed, until a bow was tight in her fingers with an arrow notched against a quaking bowstring. She barely breathed. Barely moved. Her shoulders and back were tense as she held the arrow between her fingers, its sharp, serrated edge pointed at the girl with black hair.

  But…

  It took every ounce of willpower, of focus and strain and energy, to relax her shoulders and loosen the arrow and force the worms back inside her palms. She gasped for air and doubled over, hit the floor and clawed through the concrete as they surged back underneath her skin. It felt like her flesh was getting torn apart. Felt like her head was getting smashed open and brain rearranged. She screamed through her teeth. Screamed and swore and dampened her t-shirt and hoodie with so much sweat she was a shaking, quivering mess on the floor by the time the worms were all gone. Almost gone. The mask remained on her eyes. She grabbed it. Pulled it. Screamed a curse as she pulled the worms off her face, feeling like she was digging her fingernails into her own skin and ripping it apart.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  And then it was off, turning back into the living flesh that hurriedly crawled under her skin.

  Bianca, on her hands and knees, staring at the cold concrete floor, panted. Heaved. Let sweat trickle into her mouth. Wet strands of hair fell over her face. She watched as it fell onto the red backs of her clenched hands.

  Her fingernails had smeared blood on the floor, left it in the claw marks she had made in the concrete.

  She felt wet gravel under her palms, pinching against her skin, now so sensitive it prickled. Ears ringing. Mouth wet and dry somehow. She held her gut, swallowed a rush of bile and worms, forced it back with a swallow.

  The foul taste sat in the base of her throat, lodged there, making it nearly impossible to breathe.

  And, finally, Becca crouched beside her and put her hand on her shoulder. “Bianca?”

  She swallowed. Gasped as vomit and worms filled her mouth, then got forced down again. “Yeah.”

  “Are you alright?”

  No.

  “Yeah,” she whispered, then wiped the spit off her lips and looked up through her hair. The group was still staring at her. Their eyes still burned bright gold. They stood like a wall, bleeding power that reeked of hot ozone.

  And Rylee. They all very, very freshly smelt like Rylee, almost to an overwhelming amount.

  Especially the girl in the middle. The one who hadn’t blinked since she got down here.

  In some ways, her and Rylee kinda looked the same. Almost.

  Not enough to settle the worms tearing through her stomach and raising hell inside of her body.

  “Rhea,” Becca said, looking at the girl standing in front of the group of golden-eyed superhumans. Her aunt stood, pulling Bianca onto her feet. Rebecca got between them, her body partially turned toward Bianca. “If you don’t mind putting away those eyes, we can get down to what actually matters right now.” Rhea didn’t move. Her fists tightened. Sparks jumped from the gaps between her fingers. Rebecca moved forward. “If you’re thinking about hurting her, I suggest you don’t. Rylee wouldn’t appreciate it if you tore apart her girlfriend, so calm down.”

  Bianca’s head wasn’t settled enough to correct her. So she stood, silent, tense, hands shaking.

  She felt like the cat in the alleyway. Frightened. Violent. She almost wanted to hiss.

  The pale-skinned girl gasped loudly. “Goldie had a girlfriend this entire time? How couldn’t she tell me!” She flung herself against Rhea, wrapping her arms around the girl’s shoulders. Rhea, though, didn’t stop staring at Bianca, almost like she didn’t care who Bianca was, only that she should be dead. “My heart can’t take any more of this,” she whispered, then looked at Bianca. “And here I thought I was her type. I bet she’s choked me more times than she’s choked you, wormy.” Bianca frowned, because, well, that was a lot of information crammed inside one sentence. The girl rested her arm on Rhea’s shoulder. “I guess that’s why she stopped hanging out with me. And here I was, making sure her cousin wouldn’t die on me. It was gonna be this massive surprise. Like, she’d be fighting for her life, or whatever, and then boom! Her cousin comes and saves the day, and then I’d be there to help her off the ground, and we’d run off into the sunset, and she’d finally let me take a peek inside of her guts so I can see what a superhero is really made of.” She sounded…swoony? Bianca wasn’t sure anymore. “Alas, a girl can only dream.”

  Bianca let the silence linger, then ever-so-slightly turned her head to Becca. “What…?” she whispered.

  “She saved me when you broke my back and nearly killed me,” Becca said, and Bianca, again, could only try not to look away, guilty heavy in her chest, just like the hate the worms were filling her body with. “Either a cosmic stroke of luck, or Rhea smelt the trace you left behind and came to investigate. You ran off before she could chase you down. Rylee had told me about them, but everything happened before she could ever introduce me.”

  Bianca couldn’t get her eyes off the girl. “Who are they?” she asked quietly.

  “What are you?” Rhea said. Her voice was rigid, commanding. “My cousin wouldn’t put herself in danger falling in love with something like you. Whatever plague you’re infecting her with must be secreting pheromones.”

  Cousin? Bianca stared at her, at her eyes, at her jaw and her nose and holy shit—hooooly shit. “You’re—”

  “Titan’s daughter,” Becca said.

  Bianca pushed a hand through her hair, thoughts racing through her mind. “But…how? I thought Rylee didn’t even have family from her dad’s side. And who’d have kids with Titan! Well, I guess Rylee’s mom had kids with Zeus, so I guess someone must’ve, but…holy crap, where the heck have you been? Rylee needed you guys!”

  “Nope,” the pale-skinned girl said. “These knuckleheads would’ve totally died. Very quickly. And I didn’t put all this time and effort into them just for them to all die. Again. You can only put people back together so many times before their bodies stop working, and these guys? They are prime real estate. Do you know they’ve got organs that regular humans don’t? One of their body parts lets them filter sunlight into electricity! And their muscles can generate it all on their own, and all of that excess gets filtered through this organ that’s kinda like a kidney, and gets sent right back through their bodies so they can heal faster. But that doesn’t mean they’re ready to fight anyone.”

  Rhea shrugged the girl off and said, “We’re capable of taking care of ourselves. And Lord Gayne—”

  “It’s complicated." The thin boy on the bed smiled at Bianca, face soft, clutching a walking stick as he struggled to get onto his feet. The girl beside him told him to rest. He grudgingly agreed. “It’s very nice to meet you. I can’t say we’ve heard a lot about you, and our knowledge of human relationships is strained at best, but by how Rebecca talks about you, then you must be important to Rylee, and thus, you are important to us, too. Hello.”

  “Hi,” Bianca said, digging her thumb into her wrist, trying to stop the worms from raging. “Sorry about…”

  “The Arkphage is on Earth,” the girl with brown skin whispered. “How did it even get here?”

  “It must’ve escaped somehow,” the large boy grunted. “It seems the Empire didn’t fully eradicate it.”

  Kill them. Kill them before they kill us.

  “Cowardice,” the brown-skinned girl whispered, eyes narrowing. “It left its species to die.”

  “Survival isn’t selfish, Thalia,” the skinny boy said. “How many species have had no other choice because the king continues his conquest?” Thalia said nothing, just clenched her jaw. “Tell me,” the boy said to Bianca, hands folded over the cane’s curved handle, “this ‘girlfriend’ name, what does it mean? Are you Rylee’s mate?”

  Bianca’s cheeks were suddenly hot. Very hot. “I— No, that’s not— We’re not even dating.”

  “Good,” Rhea said sharply, folding her arms. “A vessel for that disease shouldn’t mix with our blood.”

  “My mind won’t change, I still love her.” A shrug. “And I think she does, too.”

  The soft-faced girl beamed. “Aw, sometimes I’m so jealous of humans! They express themselves so easily.”

  “It’s infecting her,” Rhea said flatly. “The virus does that. It infects, it plants itself inside a vessel’s heart and their brain. It kills them. Slowly. But it’ll kill us before it ever burns through its vessel’s body.” She looked at Bianca, looked so hard it was almost like she was trying to see the Phage curled around her heart, and Bianca couldn’t help but press her fingers to her chest, feeling the worms frantically crawl just under her skin. “She has to die. Or get put somewhere where she won’t hurt anyone else, least of all my own cousin. I might not side with the Empire, but I personally wouldn’t want to die in the hands of a virus that’ll slaughter all of us again.” She stepped closer. Rebecca visibly tensed, hand resting on her pistol, like that would do anything. “Give yourself to me. I’ll make this quick and painless. Once you’re dead, the Arkphage will attempt to control your corpse. That, too, will be dealt with quickly. Once that’s done, I’ll take the brunt of Rylee’s anger, even if it means she never looks me in the eyes again. At least she’ll now find a mate worthy of her, and not one that might one day be the death of her. Come.”

  Bianca wasn’t going fucking anywhere with someone else who wanted her dead.

  Which she was starting to notice was a trend. A pretty bad trend.

  Thanks, big brother.

  So she backed up and said, “Look, I understand that you want to protect Rylee from me, but I promise you that I’m not gonna hurt her. I never will. And…and if I do, then fine, sure, you’re free to snap my neck or whatever. But the thing inside of me wants you dead right now, and pissing it off isn’t that great of an idea. Plus I also like when my neck doesn’t get violently shattered by my girlfr…by Rylee’s family, so how about we all take a deep breath, chill out, and not kill me, how about that?” Silence. They continued staring at her. “Pretty, pretty please?”

  “I guess she’s right,” the pale-skinned girl sighed. “If Rylee hates your guts, Rhe-Rhe, then that means she hates mine, too, and that’s no fun at all. Let’s put our differences aside, kiss and make up and not kill each other.”

  “Besides,” Rebecca said. “We’re all on the same side right now. We need to find Sophie. And soon.”

  “Humans and their clones,” Rhea muttered, killing the golden light in her eyes. Thalia’s eyes dimmed. The boy behind them grunted as he sat on a stiff cot, massaging his eyes as the light finally faded. Almost straight away, the stink of power in the air vanished, but the worms weren’t any calmer. They almost wanted to kill them more, now that their guard was down. The fight inside of her was tearing her apart, soaking her t-shirt with sweat as she skittishly shifted from foot to foot. “This species is lucky they aren’t smart enough to get into deep space, or else someone else would have decided your fate long before the Empire ever did. Trusting my cousin, though, she’d die before giving up this planet, but I cannot speak for that clone of hers. It’s a creature of foul intent and false ideals.”

  “In short,” the boy in the corner said, “the girl needs a family that’ll teach her right from wrong.”

  HA! The irony. The blood of war mongers and criminals runs through the boy’s veins, and he sits there, preaching about ideals? About right and wrong? The Phage laughed inside her skull, a sound so harsh and erratic it made Bianca want to tear her hair out. The only thing any of them will teach that thing is hatred and conquest.

  “Why?” Bianca asked, ignoring the crazed laughter in her head. “Why do you guys even care about her?”

  “More help.” The soft-faced girl shrugged. “Rylee might not like it very much, but Arkathians don’t often fight one another at a certain age. It’ll be detrimental to both of us. Contrary to what you must think, our people are very peaceful. Well, to each other. Earth can’t afford to have its strongest heroes at one another’s neck all the time.”

  “Sophie needs nurturing and care,” Becca said. “Not government oversight and objectives.”

  “But…she’s a clone,” Bianca said. “Shouldn’t you guys be more focused on training Rylee or something?”

  “Are you able to find her?” Rhea asked.

  “No, but—”

  “And neither are we,” she said, cutting Bianca off. “So the clone is useful to us right now. Besides, the girl knows things we do not, and information is key, on Earth, in space—eveywhere, especially when you’re at war.”

  “Well,” Bianca said, almost a snort, “I still think there’s no point. She’s not strong enough to be useful.”

  That’s if the Phage hadn’t already killed her.

  Deep down, though, she felt that it hadn't, knew that it hadn’t—because the clone had Rylee’s face.

  And Bianca might’ve been partially dazed and very much not in control, but she couldn’t do that.

  She felt it in her bones, in her chest. She hadn’t killed the clone, but the Arkphage wasn’t letting her remember where the heck she must’ve hidden her. Every time she tried, her memories came up blank and empty, almost like she was staring at a brick wall. The answer was there. But not yet. Far enough out of reach to not mean anything to her, because at the end of the day, the entire world had wanted the version of Rylee they could control.

  And not the version of Rylee that had nearly died for them over and over again.

  So what if they never found the clone again?

  Rylee was more than enough.

  Bianca folded her arms and shrugged. “Can’t remember where she is, anyway. Sorry.”

  Thalia moved forward. “All I need is a piece of you to track the girl down, not your memory.”

  “A piece of me?” Bianca asked. “Like, a strand of my hair, or…?”

  “A finger would suffice,” Rhea said, now sitting on the edge of a workbench, eyes still trained on her like an attack dog. An attack dog that could probably kill her before she could blink. “If it were up to me, I’d take your head, and that way we would’ve dealt with two problems at once.” Becca folded her arms. Rhea sighed. “But due to several…convincing factors, Thalia needs a large enough sample of you to find the clone. And then you can go.”

  “Rhea,” the boy with glasses softly said.

  “What?” she said sharply. “The girl is a vessel for the single disease that can all kill us. Do you remember what happened the last time its most evolved form attacked us?” Silence spread through the room. Eyes averted. The girl with pale skin quietly hummed, then wriggled her fingers as she waved at Bianca. An uncomfortable itch spread down her back. “So I’m not going to take any chances. You’ve already seen what it can do. You of all people, Icarus, should know what happens when the Arkphage and its vessel become too bonded. She is a cancer waiting to kill us, and I’ve frankly had enough of dying. She leaves, and I won’t be tempted to kill her. If she stays here, there’s going to come a time when I make a decision, for the sake of all of us. My cousin can kill me for all I care, but Earth is safer without this thing walking its streets. Gods forbid the Empire ever finds out there’s a vessel on this planet.”

  Bianca’s throat was dry, making her voice hoarse as she whispered, “What would happen if they did?”

  “The year they gave Earth?” the large boy said, then shook his head. “They’d be here in days.”

  “Hours,” Rhea said sharply. “The Divergent Virus is enough of a pain. The Arkphage?”

  “It’s a death sentence to any planet it inhabits,” Thalia said, almost in a whisper. “I, myself, aren’t fully Arkathian, but our people are trained to hunt it. We’re the Empire’s scouts. We travel to planets before an Arkathian is sent to conquer it, and one by one, each planet found with a vessel on it was eradicated. Their resources burnt. Their people raped, enslaved, slaughtered. In just days, I’ve seen entire planets get reduced to nothing but sand.”

  “But…” Her voice caught in her throat. She swallowed. Licked her lips. “But I didn’t choose—”

  “It doesn’t matter, not right now,” Rebecca said. “First, Sophie. We’ll deal with the Empire later.”

  “That’s not something we can just ignore!” Bianca said, spreading her arms. “If I’m the reason—”

  Becca slapped her across the face. Bianca blinked, cupped her cheek, feeling her skin tingle with heat. She stared at her aunt. Becca stared at her. “Get your shit together,” she said, almost through her teeth. “Nothing gets better if you start freaking out. You focus on what you can, plan for what you can’t, and get fucking moving. We’ve got problems down here that’ll find us before any of those murderers in space will, Bianca. Priorities. Focus, OK?”

  She massaged her face, then nodded. “Right,” she said quietly. “Sorry.”

  Becca’s eye softened, then she turned her head toward Rhea. “Not a finger. Nothing off her body. She goes with you.” The girl opened her mouth to argue. Becca spoke over her. “The only way she learns to control this thing is with practice. She can’t always rely on reactions and gut instinct. Not anymore. It’s not fun for anyone, but that’s saving the world for you—it rarely ever is, ask Rylee. Besides, you’re the only people who can fully incapacitate her if she loses control. And to Bianca, that’s an incentive to make sure she knuckles down and reigns it all in.”

  Rhea’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not a fan of having to take care of something so disgusting.”

  “I might be human, but call my niece that again and I’ll wire your jaw shut myself.” Becca put her hand on Bianca’s shoulder and gently squeezed. “Take care of her. Make sure she eats food. Real food. Be tough when you need to be, but remember, she’s Rylee’s, and from what I know, that’s not a fight you want to pick, not over her.”

  “Aw,” the pale-skinned girl said. “I wish my aunt was nice like you. All mine does is shoot heroin.”

  Becca pointed at her. “She’s also not yours to play with. Monitor her, but that’s it.”

  She put up her hands. “Fine, fine. Besides, Goldie would totally kill me, so…” She stuck her hand out toward Bianca and smiled, lips pale and cracked, cheeks sprinkled with blood like freckles. “I’m Frankie, wormy.”

  She took her hand off her face, still feeling it sting, and shook her hand. “Artermis. Or, um, Bianca.”

  Rebecca gently patted her back. “I’ll be close. There’s something I need to deal with.”

  “You’re just gonna leave me here on my own?” she said quietly.

  “Afraid, vessel?” Rhea asked.

  “There’s nowhere safer on Earth you can be right now,” she said. “I’ll see you again in a couple of hours. I want to go and see someone Ry used to talk about. Lucian’s kid. She probably knows where he’s hiding right now.”

  “Alright.” She tried to smile. Her cheek stung, dulling it. “Stay safe, Becks.”

  Rebecca looked like she wanted to say more, looked like she wanted to pull Bianca into a hug. Instead, she nodded once, patted her shoulder, and left the cellar. Once the doors had slammed shut, Bianca slowly turned around and looked at the aliens standing in front of her. They all stared. Frankie was still standing right up close, poking and prodding her still red cheek, as if trying to goad the worms out of her flesh. Bianca batted her away.

  Frankie pouted. “Nobody’s fun these days,” she muttered. “Everyone’s so serious, like the world is ending.” She stuffed her hands inside her pockets and shrugged. “Well, looks like we’ve got a new roomie, people. Hey, wormy, you can sleep next to my cot. We can paint each other’s nails and talk about our favorite organs!”

  Bianca looked at her, scratched the back of her neck, then quietly said, “Can I sleep somewhere else?"

  “An hour,” Rhea said, pushing off the table. “Take my cot. When I’m back, we’re leaving.”

  “Where are you going?” Thalia asked her, almost perking up. “Should I come with you?”

  “It’s fine,” Rhea said, and for just a moment, Bianca saw…something—in Rhea’s eyes, in the brief, gently brush of her fingers across the back of Thalia’s hand, as Rhea moved toward the cellar door, shouldering past Bianca and glancing over her shoulder. “I can’t stand to be in this room with that thing. I’ll take the first watch, maybe get the princess something normal to eat.” Rhea shoved open the doors, allowing a gust of icy wind inside. She eyed Bianca for a moment, eyes sharp, jaw even sharper, and then left, slamming the doors shut. A second later, a soft explosion of air echoed inside the cellar. Bianca pursed her lips and tried not to nervously fiddle with her fingers.

  The boy with glasses tapped the cot beside him with his cane. “All yours, courtesy of our gracious leader.”

  Why’d you have to give this to me, Ben? she thought, looking at her bloody fingers. Why did you have to…

  Whatever. Wasn’t the time.

  Like Becca said, she’d just have to suck it up and save the world.

  She curled up on the cot and shut her eyes, pretending they weren’t all staring at her.

  And all the while, the Phage quietly laughed inside her skull, almost mockingly.