Immersive Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Text and cover design

  Copyright © 2020 Becky Moynihan

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. And resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Published by Broken Books

  www.beckymoynihan.com

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7327330-4-6

  ISBN-10: 1-7327330-4-X

  Cover design by Becky Moynihan

  Cover model by Neostock

  www.neo-stock.com

  To the hopeless and oppressed,

  to the weary souls and heavy-hearted:

  You are worthy.

  The dream always started with running and a countdown.

  Heart pounding, legs churning, I raced to escape.

  Only twenty strides to go.

  But no matter how fast I ran, he always stopped me. I could feel the heat of his gaze on the nape of my neck.

  Run faster!

  Five more steps until the treeline. Mum was maybe a handful of yards beyond that. If I called out, she would hear me. But I didn’t yell her name. Instead, I counted aloud as my feet whisked me away from him.

  “Four, three, two—”

  “Why are you counting?”

  At the boy’s voice, always startling in its familiarity, I skidded to a halt. Drew in a tight breath. Slowly turned. And there he was, all gangly limbs, wildly unkempt hair, and golden eyes. Shorter than me, he stared, curious but sad.

  I shrugged my bony shoulders and answered him despite the incessant need to run. “Counting distracts my mind. Sometimes my thoughts drown me, and I have to escape them. So I run away before they swallow me whole.”

  His eyebrows scrunched together. My fingers twitched. I wanted to smooth the puckered skin but didn’t move. I knew I should, though—not toward him but away. Every time I lingered and talked to him, my chest started to ache.

  Run, my mind demanded.

  But it was too late. I couldn’t run. My feet were rooted in place. His eyes. Gold. Piercing. Haunting. I couldn’t look away from them.

  Run! He’s misery and pain. Heartache and betrayal. A lie. He’ll destroy you.

  Did I really believe that, though?

  Then the tears came. They always did, because my body knew what I was going to do next. I backed away. “One.” Just one more step and a tree would separate us. Hide me. Free me from this inexplicable agony puncturing my heart. I slid backward . . .

  Panic flared in his golden eyes. “Don’t go. Please.” He reached for me. “Lune, I need you.”

  I need you.

  Why did guilt writhe in my stomach every time he said those words?

  Why did I feel like screaming, crying, punching the tree that I was inching behind? I was leaving again. Why was I leaving? No. Stop. He needed me. But my body wasn’t my own. It was moving farther away, forcing me to lose sight of the boy.

  “Lune,” he pleaded. Begged. “Lune!”

  “I’m sorry,” I whimpered, letting the tears fall unchecked. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Lune, please!”

  “I—” My voice gave out as I choked on a sob.

  “LuLu.”

  The trees swallowed me whole. Suffocated me. Stole my vision.

  My heart pounded fiercely.

  “LuLu, wake up. It’s just a dream.”

  I bolted upright, the boy’s name bursting from my lips. “Bren!”

  “Shhh,” my mum whispered, smoothing my hair back as I gulped in cool night air. I blinked away the moisture from my eyes and took in my surroundings. Moonlight illuminated the black bars on the windows. A pale, threadbare blanket covered my legs. Cast in shadow, a face I knew well—and yet didn’t—lingered beside me. She smiled softly. “You’ll alert the men.”

  It wasn’t the warning that made my breath hitch but the fact that my mum, my mother was here, comforting me as only she could. When I lay back down, she guided my head to her lap, stroking my hair some more. I’d yearned for this very thing ever since the day I’d been stolen from her, but now that I knew, now that I understood what she went through this past decade, it felt odd. Like being touched by a stranger.

  I caused this.

  When I’d followed Bren into the woods all those years ago, the Recruiter Clan had found her, too. Had kidnapped her. Brought her to Asheville. My mother had been less than a day’s journey from me for the past eleven years and I never knew. Never knew that Iris had been raised here. Never knew that I had not one sister, but two. And a brother.

  All because of me.

  Something in my mind had unraveled the day Bren was shot by Skervvy. Having my memories restored, leaving my friends back at Blue Ridge Sector, enduring Ryker’s ultimate betrayal, being reunited with Mum and learning what she’d suffered through—too much. My unbreakable brain fractured. I couldn’t use my Visionary ability, couldn’t form a mental tether with Bren to see if he was still alive. The only time I ever saw him was in my subconscious—in my dreams. Even then, I only saw younger versions of him begging me to stay.

  And I never once did.

  I always ran. I knew now that I was running from the guilt and accompanying pain. But no matter how fast I ran, I could never escape my mind. It cast judgment on me in the form of nightmares, reminding me again and again of my failures.

  Thirteen days. Almost two weeks of not knowing what happened to him. Each minute of unknowing was a lifetime. A knife to the heart. A pulsing ache.

  But it was my own fault.

  If I hadn’t fled The Ridge with Ryker, he wouldn’t have used me to distract Bren, then sell him out to the Recruiter Clan. I should’ve stayed under the mountain like Bren wanted me to. I could’ve watched over him from afar, using my abilities—safe, where I wasn’t a distraction. And now . . .

  Now I was broken. And numb to what awaited me. I would endure the same fate as my mother and every other woman here.

  To be implanted with mutated DNA.

  My second day here, Mum had explained what females were required to do if they wanted to be fed. Any resistance was met with a swift trip to �
�The Cells.” I had asked what happened there, but no one would tell me, not even Mum. The mere mention of The Cells struck fear into the hearts of these women.

  But what they did talk about was their duties. If their assigned chores were completed by sundown, they earned a warm shower and hot dinner. And with most of them pregnant, they would do practically anything for those two commodities.

  Thankfully, the clansmen didn’t touch the women—not in that way. It was the only mercy in this screwed-up breeding operation. An injection was all it took to impregnate the captive women over the age of eighteen, to keep them from running away. For what mother would leave her child behind, test tube baby or no? At least, that’s what my mum believed.

  Iris. Sweet Iris.

  She was one of them—a DNA experiment.

  The numbness lifted, enough for a solid weight to smother my attempts at breathing.

  Don’t think about it. Don’t think about anything. Block out thought.

  Feel, don’t think.

  No!

  Feeling made me think of Iris locked away in a cell, alone and terrified.

  Feeling made me imagine a bullet ripping through Bren’s body. Made me see him fall. Was he dead or alive? Unknown.

  “I can’t,” I gasped, clutching at the bear tooth necklace Bren had given me—a familiar comfort. If I used my Visionary ability and found nothing, if I searched for them and they no longer existed . . .

  “Can’t what, LuLu?”

  I looked up into hazel green eyes identical to mine. Identical to Iris’s. I hadn’t told her that Iris was being held and possibly tortured by the man who called himself my father. I hadn’t explained my countless scars. I hadn’t confessed that I fell in love with the very same boy who kidnapped me eleven years ago. I couldn’t. Not now. Maybe not for a long time.

  It was too much. Too much everything.

  And so I whispered, “Nothing.”

  Because I could do nothing for myself or anyone else.

  Block out feeling. Just exist. You are nothing.

  Where was the girl who fashioned sticks into swords? Where was the girl who plunged into lakes to slay water dragons?

  She drowned.

  “Lune.”

  I felt the warning nudge but didn’t bother looking up. I flipped another page and burrowed my nose even deeper into the book, my dark red hair a curtain around me. Nothing, nothing would distract me from this story I’d thoroughly lost myself in—a world filled with pirates and sword fights and a swoon-worthy love interest.

  For the first time since childhood, I was reading a book. Actually, this was my second book in a week—the other one took me a total of forty hours to get through since my reading skills were still weak. But once I started, I couldn’t stop.

  Binge-reading, my mum called it. I smuggled the book with me everywhere, even into the communal bathroom. Sleep became an afterthought—I only succumbed to exhaustion when the moon vanished over the old correctional center’s rooftop, making words on a page impossible to see.

  Books offered me something I’d only ever dreamt about: freedom. Not physical freedom, but freedom of the mind, which was something I desperately needed. Books allowed me to escape reality and immerse myself into a world unbound by chains. In fact, the main character of my current read captained her own ship on the high seas where the only walls were the quarters she slept in at night. Endless possibilities filled her horizon and I marveled at the unwavering way she steered her destiny.

  Adria, my bunkmate—my very pregnant bunkmate—nudged me again, a quick elbow jab to the ribs. “Skervvy’s coming,” she hissed, forcing me back to the real world. I avoided looking at her distended stomach, or acknowledging that she was only a year older than me. “Remember what he did last time?”

  My upper lip curled as I recalled the altercation. He had slammed me up against a wall in the mess hall, saying I should watch my surroundings and not the waste of paper in front of my face. A guard had stopped him from harassing me further, but I’d seen the look in his eyes.

  He wasn’t finished with me yet.

  He blamed me for the death of his partner, Thane—the creep who’d felt me up more than once during their attempts to capture me. Maybe I should feel a touch remorseful for the bloody, grisly way he died, but I didn’t. Not when Bear, the loyal wolf dog who’d trailed me up and down the mountain, had been a casualty. Not when Skervvy had taken out his vengeance on Bren.

  Crap. I was thinking about him again. And thoughts bred feelings. Before I could shut down the emotions, tears clogged my windpipe, cutting off my air supply.

  “Is the book that good, or is my nearness causing the abrupt mood shift I’m sensing from you?” a male’s voice crooned in my ear. I stiffened as Skervvy’s nose rubbed against my exposed neck. Every cell in my body shrieked at the invasion, at the show of dominance. He didn’t want to violate me like Thane had, but he waited with bated breath for me to react.

  If I did, he’d release his need to inflict pain. My upper arm was still recovering from the throwing knife he’d sunk into it two weeks ago.

  I didn’t reply, which I knew aggravated him. These days, it was the only form of rebellion I could muster. Somewhere inside of me, the desire to unleash myself on him for all he’d done, all he’d stolen, simmered hotly. But that would require energy—and emotion. And I had none to spare. Staying on my own two feet while I performed the daily tasks required of me took all the stamina I had.

  Just yesterday, as we’d stood side-by-side folding laundry, I’d confessed to Mum, “I should feel happy being reunited with you. I’ve thought of little else for over a decade. But I—I just feel . . . empty.”

  She had smiled sadly in understanding. “You are grieving. Grief is like a sandpit with no bottom. It’ll swallow you whole if you don’t fight the pull. Escaping reality through books will provide some relief, but don’t forget to live, LuLu, no matter how bleak things are.”

  In response, I’d picked up my book and burrowed into it again so she couldn’t see the spark of anger on my face. Shouldn’t mothers make everything better? Couldn’t she distract me? Or reassure me that she had a plan to escape this prison where women were forced to pop out mutated babies?

  Apparently, she was retired from baby-making and had been appointed to den mother, meaning she looked after the needs of the children and pregnant women. The role was only given to women of exemplary behavior, Adria had told me, which meant that my mother had willingly submitted to the men ruling over her.

  I wanted to hate her for it, but I couldn’t. Iris was a lot like her: kind and gentle, docile and naturally subservient. There was strength in kindness, but I’d rather be vicious if it meant freedom from those who dared oppress me.

  Which was why I refused to play Skervvy’s game. The more I could aggravate him, the more he’d reveal his weaknesses to me. I may be numb with grief, but I wouldn’t let this place bury me. Soon, I would figure out how to escape, and how to get help freeing the others imprisoned here. There was no other option.

  “Soon,” I whispered.

  “What was that, girly? You mouthing off to me?” Before I could reply, Skervvy ripped the book from my grasp. I shot up from the rusted bench Adria and I had settled onto for recreational hour, squinting as the sun above Skervvy’s head struck my eyes. My hands curled into fists when I caught sight of his wicked smirk. A taunt. A challenge.

  Don’t do it, don’t do it. Don’t react.

  Just exist.

  His dark gaze flicked to the book, then returned to mine. I could practically see the dusty wheels inside his empty brain turning, somehow formulating an idea. “Beats me why the boss allows you women to have these books. If it were up to me, I’d destroy them all. Starting”—without taking his eyes off me, he cracked open the book—“with”—his hands gripped the two halves—“this one.”

  Crap. Crap! I lunged for him, but it was too late. The sickening sound of paper ripping tore through the afternoon air as he severed the s
pine in two. My numb state of mind vanished as shock jolted through me. Rage quickly followed, loosening my tongue. “You son of a—!” I swung my fist at his jaw. The fleshy impact sent pain streaking along my knuckles and up my arm.

  Stars, I wanted to do it again. And again.

  A feral grin pulled at my mouth. It faltered a second later when Skervvy returned the look, silently gloating that he’d won. I immediately straightened and neutralized my expression, but the damage was done. I had played right into his hands like the complete reactionary fool that I was. And now, I would face the consequences.

  Skervvy spread his arms wide and slowly turned in a circle. “You all saw it.” His voice rang across the small courtyard, no doubt to gain the guard’s attention. From the corner of my eye, I saw my mum slowly rise to her feet. “She acted in violence without cause and must be disciplined.”

  Without waiting for the guard’s approval, he snagged my upper arm and hauled me against him. As my chest bumped into his, I stiffened, preparing to pry myself loose, but his fingers dug into my arm and squeezed. I clenched my teeth, refusing to cry out.

  Push past the pain. Push past the—

  He tossed my destroyed book to the ground and intentionally stepped on it, tearing pages free. They scattered over the dirt yard. I had to look away, had to blink several times so tears wouldn’t escape. The courtyard was eerily silent as Skervvy dragged me toward the only exit, which led into the bowels of the correctional center.

  I didn’t dare look at my mum as we passed by her. Our captors probably didn’t know that she was my mother, and it needed to stay that way. Connections were dangerous in a world bent on exploiting people.

  “Before the Silent War, this place used to hold criminals,” my mum had explained to me my first day here. “And now, the criminals are holding this country’s next generation. I fear for our future, LuLu.”

  Fear.

  And fear has a tendency to turn into violence, wouldn’t you agree?

  I understood the point Dr. Moore had been making now that my memories were back. Fear, if left unchecked, was the path to insanity. Renold had told me over and over that fear was weakness, yet he’d raised me to be afraid, to react to every little threat. But what purpose did my fear serve? If he really was planning on using me as a weapon, wouldn’t my out-of-control emotions be a hindrance?