“I’m two meters away,” I pointed out. “It’s not like you gotta have crackerjack aim.”
At last, Pietro rounded the staircase behind me. “What’s going on?”
“They won’t let me get my geocache!” I said, turning and winking at him so he’d play along.
“Got no idea what that is,” Pietro said, like a moron. “But I’m Pietro Pater, this is my dad’s building, and you need to let us up.”
Well, okay, that was another approach. Maybe better than bluffing.
“We got orders to let no one in,” one guard said.
“We’re going in,” I said firmly. “We can do this the humiliating way, or the super humiliating way. Up to you.”
Once again the guard put the gun to his eye and sighted down the barrel.
I went up a step.
He aimed right at my heart and pulled the trigger from half a meter away. Click! Nothing happened.
I let out a breath. No matter how much confidence I had in Clete, having a gun fired at you point-blank is still pretty scary. “Sorry,” I said, smiling at the guard. “The chips inside your guns are having a day off.”
With a roar of rage, the guard lunged at me, swinging his gun like a club.
I grabbed the gun and used the weight of his own swing to yank him off the stairs, flinging him down to the stairs below me. Right as he jumped to his feet, I stomped on his instep, then whirled and kicked him behind his knee. He sagged but recovered quickly. I spun and knocked the gun out of his hands with an axe kick. It clattered to the ground and I grabbed it, swinging it at his head. Wham! I clocked him right on the temple and he staggered, his eyes crossed.
I glanced back at Pietro, who was just barely holding his own against the other guard.
My guy had recovered and surprised me with a fierce uppercut that made my teeth smash together. I saw stars but stayed on my feet, ducking down and aiming a completely enraged kick at his kneecap. There was a satisfying snap, immediately followed by a scream of pain, and my guy was curled in a fetal position, holding his leg.
I smashed him in the head with the butt of the rifle—a pity move to knock him out. There’s nothing quite like a shattered kneecap to make you wish for unconsciousness.
The other guard was still swinging his gun at Pietro. I took a little hop, unfolded my wings, and flew over them to the top of the steps. The guard’s mouth dropped open and he stared, which gave Pietro time to hook his foot behind the guy’s ankle. They tumbled together down the last few stairs and ended with Pietro leaning way over the guy, still holding on to the gun. But something was wrong—Pietro was way too still.
Then I saw the blood running down the rifle, saw the smile on the guard’s face. He lifted one booted foot and gave a mighty shove, and Pietro simply fell to the side, his eyes closed. At the end of the rifle was a bloody bayonet.
I only had time to scream, “Pietro!” before the grinning guard had jumped to his feet and was lunging up at me with the bayonet still dripping my friend’s blood.
“Oh, you son of a bitch, you’re gonna pay for that!” I swore.
He only grinned wider, unaware he was looking at death’s face.
I jumped up as he swiped at me, then whipped my wings out, startling him when the last bit of soot left in my feathers flew into his eyes. For just a second I hovered above him, inches out of his reach—then I whammed him with the hard, bony tip of my right wing, knocking the rifle away. In the next second, both my feet smashed into his chest with everything I had. It drove him backward in one brutal move against the stair railing. His arms windmilled, his smug face now alarmed.
I landed, grabbed his feet, and yanked them upward, flipping him the rest of the way over the railing.
He yelled for a surprisingly long time as he went down, his screams rising above the smog as he fell.
“Pietro!” I said, falling to my knees next to him. I opened his shirt, afraid of what I’d see. It was bad—close to his heart and pumping out sluggish blood. But he was still bleeding, which meant his heart was beating. So I knew he was still alive. I shook off my already bloody jacket and tried to make a compress, tying his arm over the wound for extra pressure.
That was all I had time for.
CHAPTER 106
That had been it—two guards with nonworking guns. That had been the sum of security outside this door. Pietro had been sure McCallum was up here somewhere. Time to find out. I charged up the last staircase, took the knife out of my boot, and simply lifted the lock’s latch on the door. A rat could have done it. A rat with thumbs, sure. But still. I was not impressed.
I flung the door open, immediately stepping in and to one side so my silhouette wouldn’t be framed by the light outside. Iggy had taught me that.
And… no one seemed to notice me. It was a—TV station? People were rushing back and forth. On one screen I saw films of the morning’s riots. On another I saw McCallum yapping as per usual. And in a chair, surrounded by three cameras, was McCallum. Or was it?
I moved closer, my knife dangling inconspicuously by my side. People were shouting at one another, but it was stuff like “Cut in the drone feed!” And “Patch him in live! Cut the numbers in half!”
McCallum was sitting in a chair, very still, his head nodding. I stayed back in the shadows, trying to sort out what I was seeing. Right now no one was paying much attention to him. Printers were spitting out long sheets of paper. There was a wall with at least twelve vidscreens all playing different things… and then you had—McCallum.
How could this be the same person who railed against the public twenty-four hours a day? He seemed so… low energy? And this close, he looked much older than he did onscreen. Suddenly a harsh spotlight clicked on and he bolted straight up as if electrified. His face contorted and the cameras moved closer as he, like, came to life to spout his usual crap—ungrateful citizens, everyone had a role to play in this successful city, he was gonna lower the price of dope to show he meant well.
“Cut in with the rabbits!” someone yelled, and on a couple of the vidscreens, a family of rabbits started keeping their eyes on a suspicious new family in their neighborhood. Even tiny Fluffums was on to them, and she could barely hop yet.
The light turned off and McCallum sagged again.
This was so freaking bizarre and unexpected and crazytown that for a minute I stood there, just staring. Then, as I circled warily, staying in the dim half-light, I saw a tiny, transparent wire going from his shirt collar up to his ear. Someone was feeding him—lines? Instructions? Dope?
I for one wanted to know who was at the other end of that wire. The studio was chaos, paper churned out of the printers at an alarming rate, but no one was reading them. The light was out where McCallum sat, the video of the bunnies playing on a loop. It looked like they were going to stay with that for the time being. So, I stepped up to the man in the chair.
He hung forward limply, his head sagging onto his chest. Who was he? He was weirdly familiar, and not just as the asshole who ran his mouth all the time. Who. Was. He? For some reason I kept picturing him on the vidscreen in the big room at the Children’s Home. I remembered a bunch of us watching… what was it? I gasped out loud when it hit me, but luckily everyone was too busy going batshit to care.
This guy—being McCallum—was Major Panda! I used to love Major Panda! He’d made up some fake animal that didn’t exist, then called himself that. Major Panda. McCallum, asshole supreme, used to be fun. Now he was a meat puppet being fed lines. From who? That was the question. Because Major Panda didn’t talk about lowering dope prices.
I ripped the earpiece out, the man in the chair barely raising his head as I did. And then I listened.
My mouth dropped open again. Holy shit! Oh, my freaking sun! That’s who is behind all this??
Suddenly, the lights around Major Panda’s chair came back on, fully exposing me. He sat up, whatever dope trip he was on ended by the flash of lights. I dropped the earpiece, opened my wings to their full capaci
ty, swung in a big roundhouse, and kicked that dirty, rotten conspirator Major Panda senseless.
I bolted for the door, leaving a confused clot of aides to watch as I spread my wings, and sailed into the sky.
CHAPTER 107
Max
“There she is!” I yelled, pointing. The Flock and I were right below the gross clouds over the City of the Dead, looking for Phoenix. And, as the only flying creature larger than a vulture, she was easy to spot. Thank god she was flying and not somewhere on the ground.
In a tight vee, we dive-bombed to her level.
“Phoenix!” I shouted, and she looked up. Did she seem happy to see me? I couldn’t tell. Her face was filthy, and tear-streaked.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” I said. “I know your friend Clete…” Her face scrunched together, and I could see her fighting fresh tears. Now was not the time. “Anyway, I was so worried about you.”
“I could use patching up,” she said, and she looked it. She was covered with blood and bruises, one eye almost swollen shut, her lip split and puffy.
“Have you seen the vidscreens?” Nudge asked. “The feed is frozen—McCallum’s not saying a goddamn thing! Something happened!”
“I did that,” Phoenix said, but not proudly. More, like, sad. Like a soldier at the end of a long battle. “I think my friend Pietro is dying, back there. He was the one who showed me where McCallum was broadcasting from.”
“Dying, but not dead?” Nudge asked.
“I don’t know.” Phoenix seemed whipped, her head hanging low.
“Tell me where,” Nudge said. “I’ll go check him out.”
“Thank you,” Phoenix said gratefully. She gave Nudge directions, and Nudge took off, her caramel-brown wings smooth and powerful.
“So where’ve you been all this time?” Gazzy asked Phoenix as we flew south.
“Um, I was in the tunnels for a while, then in the basement of the Pater estate.”
“What?” My heart dropped into my stomach. “We bombed that to smithereens! Is that why—why—I mean, were you there? Did you get bombed?”
My daughter looked at me. “No—I escaped by climbing up a chimney.”
“Oh, thank god,” Gazzy said, putting his hand over his heart. “I remember seeing the basement, after our second or third round.”
“I must have just missed you guys,” Phoenix said, sounding bemused.
“What’d you do to McCallum?” I asked her, and she told me.
“Reeeaaallly?” I asked, an idea popping into my mind. “I think we should be able to take care of that voice permanently!”
“I’m in!” Gazzy said.
“You got a plan, Max?” Iggy asked.
“Yep!” I lied. But I lied with confidence, as I poured on the speed.
CHAPTER 108
“Remember that place we tried to have the peace meeting at?” I asked Fang as we flew. He was matching me stroke for stroke, our wings just a few inches apart, as if we’d been flying together every day for the last ten years. I felt Phoenix watching us.
“Yeah?” Fang said.
“They didn’t pick that at random,” I said. “Those guys—all of ’em—knew that place well. Especially Giacomo Pater. I’ll bet you a tattoo that he’s hiding out there, watching his world implode.”
“I bet you’re right,” Iggy said. “That place is probably full of fake walls and secret escape holes.”
“It’s been around forever,” Phoenix said, actively listening. I liked that about her. It reminded me of me.
“You know something that could help us?” I asked.
She thought, two fingers pinching her lip, exactly the way Fang does when he’s running his little brain hamsters especially hard. “It used to be on a subway line,” she said. “I don’t go there much because it’s full of guys with guns. The subway’s been shut down for… six years. But the tunnels are still there.”
“Good to know,” I said. “Okay, my plan is that me and Iggy will go through the front door, try to find Giacomo Pater. Gaz and Fang, run interference from above.”
“Got it,” Gazzy said, unsnapping his backpack so he could pull it around front, see what explosives he still had.
“I’ll back you up on the ground,” Phoenix said, all no-nonsense.
Of course I wanted her a thousand miles away, or at least back at Tetra, wherever she’d be safe. But she wasn’t a stay-safe kind of kid. I was going to have to accept that, if I wanted her to let me keep calling her my kid.
“Let’s do it!” I said and angled myself to rocket downward.
From above we saw at least twelve guards around the place, including three snipers on neighboring roofs.
“Ooh, ooh! Let me!” Gazzy said excitedly, pulling a tube out of his backpack. “I’ve been practicing and practicing!”
I nodded, and Gazzy put the forty-centimeter tube to his lips. Phoenix watched him, studying Gazzy as he judged wind speed, our speed, wind direction. Stuff any of us could do in a second. Stuff she hadn’t learned yet.
He loaded it up, aimed, then blew as hard as he could. A dart hit a sniper’s back, and he sank to his knees, probably still wondering what had hit him.
“Way to be!” I told Gaz.
“I’ve always said he was full of hot air!” Iggy said, which Gazzy let pass because he was aiming for the second sniper. He hit her in the back of her neck and she went down.
We weren’t so lucky with the third one. He’d seen the other two hit the deck and was scanning the skies. He spotted us and held up his rifle, looking enraged.
“It’s an old gun!” Phoenix yelled. “It still works!”
Quickly Gazzy whipped out an IED and hurled it down. “So does this!”
The explosion made the rest of the Pater cadre flood out of the house like bats at dusk, but we were ready, armed, and skilled at chucking Gazzy’s bombs as fast as snowballs. By the time my feet hit the ground, there was only one guy standing: Giacomo Pater.
He grabbed an old automatic rifle and sprayed a round of bullets at us. But there’d been a reason all those guns had been replaced—after decades of use, the dang things didn’t shoot straight.
When Giacomo saw that he’d missed all of us from thirty meters away, he screamed in fury and threw the gun as hard as he could. Because that works. Sure. Throwing a fit should always be the last resort.
“Your term of service just expired, you piece of shit!” I yelled after him.
CHAPTER 109
Hawk
The Flock was ice under pressure. They just knew stuff. How to coordinate attacks, how to take out snipers. It was all of them, working together. A well-oiled machine.
“Go, go, go!” Max shouted, already pounding up the steps of the club. She pointed to the right and left as she ran, and Fang and Iggy took off, I guess to circle the building.
That left me, and I jumped up the stairs after Max. She yanked the door open—there were cowering servants inside—and tore through the building. I was fast on her heels, ready to go into battle with my mother. But we were finding… nothing. She threw a look at me, and I started back through the rooms, roaring orders, kicking guns away, scanning each room for hidden doorways, nooks, crannies, little hidey-holes, anything.
“Phoenix!” Max yelled, and I ran to the hallway. With one hand, she held a cook’s assistant by the neck—I saw the pink marks her fingers were making. In her other hand she held one of Gazzy’s bombs. This one had a fuse, and it was sparking and crackling. I tried to keep extreme panic and a what the almighty hell expression off my face.
Watching me, Max nudged the poor sap with her elbow. He made no sound but looked down at one of the carved panels of the hallway. Silently, Max raised her eyebrows at him.
Gulping, the guy flashed a glance at a wall sconce that was a fat baby in a tiny diaper holding a light bulb. Max shoved him away from her, strode forward, grabbed the wall sconce and pulled, all while I was trying not to shriek, “Get that thing away from me!” I’d seen what Gazzy�
�s bombs could do to people.
Sure enough, the wooden paneling slid to one side, revealing an opening that I couldn’t believe fat Giacomo Pater fit through. Max motioned to me, and I dropped to the floor and slid through without question. She followed behind, tossing the bomb back into the room just as the panel slid shut again, leaving us in darkness. Everyone screamed, there was a muffled pluff! sound, and Max turned on her shoulder lamp.
“Glitter bomb,” she said, “Gazzy likes to throw a few of those into our packs in case we decide to throw a party.”
Together, we doubled over and started crab-walking through the low tunnel. We came to a four-way intersection where we could almost stand, and I held up one hand.
“Gimme a sec,” I whispered, closing my eyes. I hadn’t been under here in ages, and it was dry—no convenient wet footprints to follow. Breathing in, I figured whether the air was colder or warmer, stale or staler, thick with factory fumes or full of street-cooking smells.
Then I smelled… Pietro. Pietro’s clothes—the detergent. I opened my eyes and smiled at Max, my mother: Giacomo’s clothes would smell the same.
“This way,” I said, and started heading down the tunnel.
“Faster to fly,” Max said.
Confused, I slowly extended my wings, which were about half a meter too wide for this tunnel. I knew Max’s wings were wider than mine.
Shaking her head, she demonstrated: straight ahead on the foreswing, then pull them in enough to push back hard, then pull in again to go straight on the foreswing. It was amazing—a way to fly through tunnels too narrow for regular flight!
But could I even do it? It seemed like the kind of thing that needed practice.
Max must have seen my question, because she gave me a quick hug—one tall, bony female to another. “I think you can do it,” she said softly. “We gotta go!”
And with that, she turned, launched herself in the air, and flew through a tunnel too narrow to fly through.
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