Deception | Sequel

No matter how many times I wash my face, I can't get rid of her lipstick or the touch of her lips on mine. It clings to the sink like the purple coating my throat and hanging in my mind in a thick haze. Hot showers, scrubbing with soap, wiping my mouth, none of it takes away the feeling of violet-laced dirt and crawling dread under my skin.

I...don't remember much of what happened last night, only after the fourth or fifth kiss, I drowned in purple and woke up here, with vague impressions of slipping back on my own and an aching chest. It's hard to think, hard to get around the purple hanging thick inside of me, hard to escape the burning shame on my skin.

There's one thing I am sure about what happened: something inside of me broke. I know she made my heart turn purple, that if I let myself love her it would be constructed on lies I am forced to believe, that if I take her offer—if I work with her—I'll become Blank Slate again.

I know if I love her, I'll be gone forever because she'll never let me go again.

And I know that I am more than already halfway gone, already fingers loosening on my will to leave, already bending to her touch. Shame burns in me not because she kissed me over and over, but because I didn't fight her or the purple pouring in.

And I didn't want to.

Wraith was right, so right, and I have been a fool not to take her advice and do anything drastic to get out. Even blank my way out, even if—if I am the only survivor because the alternative is so much worse.

I have to get out of here, pounds in my skull as I pace restlessly in my room. I have to get out of here before I fall and take her offer. Because it's not an if anymore, it's a when, because being Blank Slate might not be— My throat closes and a full-body shudder makes me stumble.

But I don't think I am going to make it, not on my own, not like this. I need something to happen, I need to do something, need to give the Heroes—give Storm Cell—a heads up so they can find me when I escape, and I need to do it now. Today, even. I don't think I have any more time left. Even I fail, even if I end up not wanting to go, under her control, Edison will drag me out of here whether I like it or not. I just need to get him here before I don't want him to come.

But how? Deception surely has measures to keep me inside. Measures like a mansion so large I can't find windows, ASS bots, tranq-darts, tranq-gas, traps, anything that can keep a parasite host from escaping. She's—or Sebastian is—rich and smart enough to have it. But I could probably brute-force my way through, like Wraith said. I am an eleven now. That has to count for something.

Still...I'd likely have more of a chance if I knew what direction to brute force my way through and what and where to avoid. Information I don't have access to and can't look up without hacking a system I definitely can't crack (I don't remember how, at least), and only an insider would know anyway.

What can I do that I haven't done already? Maybe I could ask Wraith for her holowatch again and leave another trail? Would that be fast enough? Would she even let me do that? Last time...no, she definitely knew what I did and she didn't say anything. Maybe if I talk to her I could...do something? If she was on my side, I could pass messages through her to the heroes.

My foot freezes in the air, a bright light slamming into my senses with an idea. Yes, an insider like Wraith. She told me to leave multiple times. She's helped me already once. She wants me to leave already. What's left but to tell me the best way to get out? A risk, yes, but the way she said it...the way she cares enough to yell at me, she has reasons to do it. Reasons I hope are enough to do it.