Deception

  2019 First U.S. Edition

  Copyright © 2019 by Teri Terry

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Charlesbridge and colophon are registered trademarks of Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.

  At the time of publication, all URLs printed in this book were accurate and active.

  Charlesbridge and the author are not responsible for the content or accessibility of any website.

  Published by Charlesbridge

  85 Main Street, Watertown, MA 02472

  (617) 926-0329 • www.charlesbridge.com

  First published in 2018 by Orchard Books

  An imprint of Hachette Children’s Group

  Part of The Watts Publishing Group Limited

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK Company

  www.hachette.co.uk

  www.hachettechildrens.co.uk

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Terry, Teri, author.

  Title: Deception / by Teri Terry.

  Description: Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge, [2019] | Series: Dark matter trilogy; book 2 | “Orchard Books.” | “First published in Great Britain in 2018 by The Watts Publishing Group”—Copyright page. |

  Summary: “Believing that she is a carrier of the deadly disease they are calling the Aberdeen flu, Shay has surrendered herself to government armed forces and, along with other survivors, becomes an unwilling test subject in the effort to find a cure; but when the lab is attacked, she and a few of the others with the strongest supernatural abilities escape, and her boyfriend Kai is determined to find her, while ghostly Callie, the true carrier, will atone for her deception.”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018037920 (print) | LCCN 2018049079 (ebook) | ISBN 9781632898654 (ebook) | ISBN 9781623541064 (reinforced for library use)

  Subjects: LCSH: Epidemics—Juvenile fiction. | Human experimentation in medicine—Juvenile fiction. | Carrier state (Communicable diseases)—Juvenile fiction. | Genetic engineering—Juvenile fiction. | Identity (Psychology)—Juvenile fiction. | Brothers and sisters—Juvenile fiction. | Science fiction. | Great Britain—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Science fiction. | Epidemics—Fiction. | Human experimentation in medicine—Fiction. | Diseases—Fiction. | Genetic engineering—Fiction. | Identity—Fiction. | Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | Great Britain—Fiction. | LCGFT: Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.T2815 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.T2815 De 2019 (print) | DDC 813.6 [Fic] — dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018037920

  Production supervision by Brian G. Walker

  Cover and map art by Sarah Richards Taylor

  Ebook design adapted from printed book designed by Sarah Richards Taylor

  Ebook ISBN 9781632898654

  v5.4

  a

  The stages of deception—shock, outrage, examination, tolerance, and acceptance—inevitably lead to veneration. Deception can serve truth as well as truth can unseat deception…it’s all a matter of perspective.

  —Xander, Multiverse Manifesto

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part 1

  Chapter 1: Callie

  Chapter 2: Shay

  Chapter 3: Callie

  Chapter 4: Shay

  Chapter 5: Callie

  Part 2

  Chapter 1: Kai

  Chapter 2: Callie

  Chapter 3: Kai

  Chapter 4: Callie

  Chapter 5: Kai

  Chapter 6: Callie

  Chapter 7: Kai

  Chapter 8: Callie

  Chapter 9: Kai

  Chapter 10: Callie

  Chapter 11: Kai

  Chapter 12: Callie

  Chapter 13: Kai

  Chapter 14: Callie

  Chapter 15: Kai

  Chapter 16: Callie

  Chapter 17: Kai

  Chapter 18: Callie

  Chapter 19: Kai

  Chapter 20: Callie

  Chapter 21: Kai

  Chapter 22: Callie

  Chapter 23: Kai

  Chapter 24: Callie

  Chapter 25: Kai

  Chapter 26: Callie

  Part 3

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part 4

  Chapter 1: Callie

  Chapter 2: Kai

  Chapter 3: Callie

  Chapter 4: Kai

  Chapter 5: Callie

  Chapter 6: Kai

  Chapter 7: Callie

  Chapter 8: Kai

  Chapter 9: Callie

  Chapter 10: Kai

  Chapter 11: Callie

  Chapter 12: Kai

  Chapter 13: Callie

  Chapter 14: Kai

  Chapter 15: Callie

  Chapter 16: Kai

  Chapter 17: Callie

  Chapter 18: Kai

  Chapter 19: Callie

  Chapter 20: Kai

  Part 5

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part 6

  Chapter 1: Kai

  Chapter 2: Callie

  Chapter 3: Shay

  Chapter 4: Kai

  Chapter 5: Callie

  Chapter 6: Shay

  Chapter 7: Kai

  Chapter 8: Callie

  Chapter 9: Shay

  Chapter 10: Kai

  Chapter 11: Callie

  Chapter 12: Shay

  Chapter 13: Kai

  Chapter 14: Callie

  Chapter 15: Shay

  Chapter 16: Kai

  Chapter 17: Jenna

  Chapter 18: Shay

  Chapter 19: Kai

  Chapter 20: Jenna

  Chapter 21: Shay

  Chapter 22: Kai

  Chapter 23: Jenna

  Chapter 24: Shay

  Chapter 25: Kai

  Chapter 26: Shay

  Chapter 27: Kai

  Chapter 28: Shay

  Chapter 29: Kai

  Chapter 30: Shay

  Chapter 31: Kai

  Chapter 32: Shay

  Chapter 33: Kai

  Chapter 34: Shay

  Chapter 35: Kai

  Chapter 36: Shay

  Chapter 37: Kai

  Chapter 38: Shay

  PART 1

  SHOCK

  Even an ending must have a beginning.

  —Xander, Multiverse Manifesto

  CHAPTER 1

  CALLIE

  I PANIC WHEN I RETURN to the house and my brother, Kai, isn’t inside. Has he vanished while I was searching for Shay? Have they both
left me behind?

  But I soon find him behind the house, standing on the cliff and gazing at the sea. His arms are crossed, his body rigid. He stares at the waves breaking on the rocks far below, like he is thinking of joining them.

  I’m afraid.

  Don’t leave me too, Kai. I need you. I say the words even though I know he can’t hear me. Shay wasn’t just Kai’s girlfriend and my friend: she was also the only one who could see or hear me. Now that she’s gone, I’m powerless to reach him.

  I place myself between him and the cliff’s edge. If I move close to him, I feel a resistance, the same as if I push against anything—a person, a rock, a door. They all feel the same to me. I stare at his eyes. They are hazel—almost green now in the sun—and are full of rage and pain. He is my brother, and there is nothing I can do to help him. Nothing I could do to stop him if he decided to step over the edge. I could go with him, fly down the cliff, watch his body smash on the rocks and break and bleed and die, but I would just go on and on.

  It’s hard to die when you’re already dead.

  But I’m hurting too. Shay left both of us. I want to tell him this, and the frustration of not being seen or heard makes me howl and wave my fists at the sea.

  Kai looks toward me, his eyes startled. Did he hear something?

  When I screamed in the underground institute at the techs who vacuumed up my ashes after Dr. 1 had me cured in fire, they jumped. Then later one of them whistled along when I sang. Maybe Kai can hear me, even if only a little?

  Kai! I’m here! I shout the words out with all that I am.

  He frowns, then shakes his head and turns and walks back to the house.

  Maybe he can sense me, at least a little, but he doesn’t believe it. At least I’ve interrupted whatever he was thinking as he stared at the rocks and the sea.

  Inside, he paces back and forth. He reaches into his pocket and takes out a letter. It looks all crinkled, like he’d rolled it into a ball and then smoothed it out again. He looks at it, but moves it around too fast for me to see what it says.

  He stuffs it back in his pocket and flops onto the sofa.

  “Callie, are you there?”

  I’m here, I’m here! I want to cry when I hear his voice, when I hear him say “Callie.”

  “Shay’s left. She says she didn’t take you with her, that you’d want to stay with me. That I should talk to you.” He wraps his arms around himself like he’s trying to hold something in.

  “She’s gone to turn herself in at the air force base, to tell them she’s a carrier and that the epidemic started here in Shetland. In case…in case that goes wrong, she says we shouldn’t follow. We should leave the island and go back to the mainland. Tell everyone we can about the origin and spread of the epidemic and don’t let them cover it up.

  “She says that I should tell you that she’s sorry.” His voice is bitter with anger. “Like being sorry makes it all right!” He raises his hand in a fist, but then his body seems to collapse in on itself. “Shay, how could you?” he whispers. He fights it, but his shoulders are shaking.

  And…and…he’s crying. Kai—my big brother—is crying?

  This is so wrong. It makes me twist up inside like I’m about to cry too, but tears are something I don’t have anymore. And even worse, there is a horrible feeling gnawing inside me.

  It’s my fault. Isn’t it?

  It’s my fault Shay left. She thought she was contagious, that everyone—including her mother—caught it from her and got sick and died. I let her think this; I didn’t tell her the truth.

  I didn’t tell her that it was me who was the carrier all along. It never occurred to her, what with me being dead: who ever heard of a contagious ghost? But all the major centers of the epidemic—from the beginning when it spread from Shetland to Aberdeen, then to Edinburgh, and then to Newcastle and beyond—were places I’d been. The disease always hit soon after I was there: it had to be me.

  Later, when Shay got sick and survived, she could see and hear me. She was the only one who could after I was cured—apart from the dying. After that, the disease did follow wherever she went—but only because I was there too. She’d never even been to Aberdeen or Newcastle. She’d explained that away by saying there must have been other survivors in those places, but I never found any when I was there.

  She would never have left Kai and me if I had told her the truth, but…

  No!

  It’s not my fault; none of it. Everything goes back to Dr. 1. He’s the one who did this to me. He’s the doctor who gave me the illness in his lab underground—and when I survived and changed, he cured me in fire and turned me into whatever it is that I am now.

  It’s his fault.

  Everything I’ve done from the beginning—getting Kai and Shay to come to this house on Shetland to find the source of the epidemic, and then not telling Shay that it’s me who is the carrier, not her—was all to get at Dr. 1.

  I wanted to go with Shay. Once she tells the government that Dr. 1 is the one who started the epidemic, they’ll hunt him down. I want to be there when they find him. That’s why I couldn’t tell her the truth—she wouldn’t have turned herself in if she’d known she wasn’t the carrier.

  But she left without me.

  Why? Why didn’t she take me with her?

  Kai cries, and the rage and heat inside me strengthens, grows—a fury that could destroy and swallow the world.

  Dr. 1 must pay for what he’s done.

  CHAPTER 2

  SHAY

  BEFORE I CAN FINALLY take off the biohazard suit that the soldiers made me wear, I’m locked in a small, sealed room. Even without the suit, the claustrophobic feeling of not being able to breathe fully is still there. One wall of the room is glass—very thick glass.

  Dr. Morgan is on the other side of this transparent wall with two men—older ones, not the same ones who came out to get me earlier. All three are in uniform. They’re talking, but I can’t hear them.

  I knock on the glass. They continue talking, but then a moment later Dr. Morgan reaches for some controls, and I can hear them clearly.

  “Hello, Shay. Sorry about the barrier.” She gestures at the wall between us. “Are you more comfortable without the suit?”

  I shrug. “Sure. Yes.”

  She smiles, but there is an edge to it.

  “Now, Shay, we’ve found out a few things about you.” She looks at a tablet in her hands. “Such as…you are wanted in connection with a murder. Also, it says here that you were reported as immune?”

  “I didn’t kill anybody!” Then I realize that’s not true: many, many people have died because of me, haven’t they? I sigh and cross my arms. “I mean, I didn’t shoot that boy they say I did.”

  She nods, a careful look on her face, disbelief in her aura.

  No. No way. Are they not going to believe anything I say because I was framed by SAR?

  I grip the edges of the table between me and the glass and lean forward. “Listen to me. You have to listen.”

  “We’re listening,” she says.

  “I had the flu. I thought I was going to die. My mother did die.” I push the pain away. “And we went back to Killin—”

  “We? That’d be you and Kai Tanzer, currently also wanted after mysteriously going missing from a police cell in Inverness? Do you know where he is now?”

  “No. Anyway, I said I was immune, like Kai. We helped at the hospital tent in Killin. Then this creepy lieutenant from SAR—”

  “SAR?”

  “Special Alternatives Regiment of the army.”

  She half raises an eyebrow, and I can see it: she’s never heard of this regiment. How can that be? I know this is an air force base, not an army one, but I wouldn’t have thought they were so separate that they didn’t know the names of each other’s regiments.

  “Anyhow,
this lieutenant—Kirkland-Smith, he said his name was—came looking for me and said he knew I was a survivor and that SAR was taking me away to help study the epidemic, but he was lying. They wanted to kill me.”

  “How did you know he was lying?”

  “I just did.”

  “I see. Try this, Shay: I’ll tell you two things—one a lie, and one the truth—and you tell me which is which.”

  “Seriously? Aren’t there more important things to be—”

  “Humor me. Please.”

  I stare back at her, then shrug my shoulders. I’ll go along with anything if it’ll help them believe me. “Okay, fine,” I say.

  “All right. My middle name is Hannah. My middle name is Helen.” As she speaks, I study her aura—the waves of color that surround her, that are unique to her—as it changes with her thoughts and feelings. When she says “Helen,” there are ripples of silver blue, and I feel the truth within them. When she says “Hannah,” her aura is disturbed, with slashes of mustard and green—it’s a lie.

  “You lied about Hannah; your middle name is Helen.”

  “That’s just a fifty-fifty guess,” one of the men says. They’ve been silent until now. “Try again,” he says, and gives me a list of ten possible middle names for himself.

  I roll my eyes. “Your middle name is Monteroy. Congratulations on middle-name weirdness. Can we carry on now?”

  He nods.

  “Impressive,” Dr. Morgan says. “Okay, so let’s just assume you knew this lieutenant was lying. And then?”

  “I ran away. They shot at me and hit me in the ear.”

  “That wasn’t that long ago. I didn’t notice any injury.”

  I shrug. “I healed it.”

  “Really.”

  “Oh, for…Look.” I bite my lip, hard. A trickle of blood runs down my face, and the pain helps me to focus, to keep my temper.

  “See? I’m bleeding.” And then I close my eyes and reach for the pain, reach inside me: to the blood and tissue and their components, down to a cellular level, then molecular, and atomic. Atoms are made up of particles: particles that can behave as waves—waves that can be influenced and changed. I heal my lip and wipe off the blood from before. The cut is gone. “And now I’m not.”

  Dr. Morgan frowns. “I don’t know what trick that is, but—”