by Naomi Hughes
Whatever it takes. The refrain echoes in my mind, but I shake my head, rejecting the notion. Being determined isn’t a bad thing. It’s helping me survive long enough to get back to my brother. It helped me defeat my OCD the first time. It can do it again. In fact, I’m going to take that damned padlock off the door right now and throw it into the cavern, too. And I’m going to ignore the way that urge—the desperate need to prove that I’m not falling under the control of my OCD again—is starting to feel like a compulsion in itself.
I turn my back on Elliott. I stride over to the door. In my preoccupation, I don’t hear the warning signs that I should—the creaking of the elevator floor, the quiet rattling of the padlock’s chain. The scuff of a shoe against metal.
So I’m caught completely off guard when I pull the door open to find the mayor and two cops on the other side.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE PADLOCK IS IN MY HAND. I HAVE HALF A SECOND to decide what to do with it.
The cops—Ginger’s older partner, along with Diaz, who’s covered in mud—are raising their guns. The mayor is stepping forward, palm out, to slam the door all the way open. I backpedal, jerking in shock, then quickly turn that motion into something bigger and more distracting: My left hand flies in front of my face and I shout a warning to Elliott—all while carefully slipping the padlock off its chain and palming it in my right hand.
Diaz inhales sharply, eyes on my face. No, on the injured hand that’s flung up in front of it. I can see her putting together the pieces, realizing why I was screaming in the tunnel earlier. The mayor, though, she doesn’t even look at me. Her gaze scythes over the room and lands on her son.
Elliott’s face freezes. His whole body reacts, reeling back a step, as if his mother’s gaze is a physical force: a blow squarely aimed, unavoidable.
“How did you get back?” the mayor demands, her voice arcing through the room like lightning. She’s not addressing me. She’s not looking at me. Diaz still is, but the mingled shock and pity in her eyes mean—I hope—that she won’t be quick to shoot. I stumble backwards, being sure to keep my right hand behind the angle of my body. I keep going until my shoes scuff against the detritus that’s been knocked off the desk.
“Don’t move,” Diaz orders belatedly.
That’s fine; I’m already where I need to be. I stop moving and let my feelings show on my face, telegraph them all over my body: panic, uncertainty, desperation. It’s not an act. My heart and mind are both racing, combining to make a high thrumming that vibrates through me.
Elliott’s mouth is moving. Nothing is coming out. He looks … broken. Something angry and almost protective rises up in me.
“He came with me,” I say: a reminder to Elliott that he’s not alone, and a reminder to his mother that she gave her own son no choice but to team up with a criminal to survive. My words don’t arc and crackle with electricity like hers did, but they’re something better: a lightning rod.
Her attention leaps to me. Her quick glance dissects and then dismisses me, and she looks back at her son, but the moment’s distraction has given him a chance to recover. He still looks devastated, but no longer quite so broken.
“Mom,” he greets her in that quiet, pained voice. I flash back to that moment on the boardwalk: the gun in my hand, the look on his face. Go ahead, shoot him now.
Out of the corner of my eye I spot a dimly glowing red light. Everyone’s attention is on Elliott, so I risk a glance. The transmitter. It’s still hidden in the shadows of the stair landing, waiting to broadcast our signal to the shelters above.
My heart and brain both settle into a beat that’s smoother and more certain. An idea assembles itself. We’re not going to get a chance to record Elliott’s carefully composed speech … so this moment, this confrontation, will have to do.
I slip my right hand back into my pocket. Maneuvering around the padlock’s bulk, I find the remote, search blindly for the button on the top right—my best guess at where an on/off button would be—and press it. Over the older cop’s shoulder, a blinking green light comes on. It worked. We’re transmitting live. Or at least, I have to hope we are.
Deep breath. This is it. Convince everyone, or lose Ty forever.
“You’re just in time,” I tell the mayor.
She doesn’t even bother to look at me. “I’m not talking to you,” she snaps. Her voice is edging toward sharp now. I take a moment to look her over. Her pants are wet from the knee down. She’s wearing a police windbreaker and a holstered gun. Her blond hair is perfectly tied back. Her face is expressionless, but her violet-blue eyes are snapping with the same electricity as her voice.
She’s pissed. That’s good. Maybe she’ll make a mistake. Maybe she’ll believe me.
“Just in time to see what I’ve done with the place,” I continue.
Now she looks at me. “What.” It’s a demand, not a question.
I sweep my left hand toward the gaping windows and the empty darkness beyond them, still carefully keeping my right hand and the padlock in it angled away. “That is my mirror warehouse,” I bluff, more glad than ever that the cops never figured out my true smuggling methods—which definitely don’t include a warehouse. “And it’s empty.”
Her eyes narrow. “What have you done?”
Elliott is looking at me now too. I feel the moment he understands. He straightens, his expression going blank. “We’ve placed all of Marty’s mirrors around the city,” he tells his mother. “Hundreds of them are hidden in every shelter.”
The air in the room is something brittle and fractured, a plate of glass ready to shatter. “And why would you do that?” the mayor asks him, her voice deadly calm.
I cut in. “Because this world—the fog, the Beings, the island—none of it’s real. It’s a dream, induced by alien technology. All of us have been dreaming together since the Fracture.”
“But now everyone has to wake up,” Elliott says. “Because if we don’t, we’re going to die in just a few hours, or less, now. The dream is about to end one way or the other.”
The mayor’s gaze is sharp enough to cut. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, but you need to tell me right now how you got back to the island.”
“Why?” Elliott asks. I don’t know if his mother can see the hope he’s struggling against, but I can. He knows she’s not sorry for what she did, but he can’t help hoping maybe she wants him back anyway. That maybe she’s finally realized his worth.
That maybe, this time, she might actually love him.
“So I can make sure,” she replies, her gaze pinning him like he’s a grasshopper on a display, “that you don’t do it again next time.” She draws her gun—and aims it at him.
Elliott doesn’t react. Not externally. But I can see the ice slip into him, veins of frost crystallizing over all his hopes.
He stares at the gun. “I’ll never be good enough for you,” he realizes slowly. The frost spreads and cracks as he looks back up at his mother. “Will I?”
She says nothing.
I should be refocusing on the transmitter, on our message, but I can’t look away from that desolation on Elliott’s face. I told him once that his blind loyalty to his mother made him just as bad as any dealer. It was true—how many people did he help exile, knowing how inhumane it was? But now I see just how much that loyalty has hurt him, too.
Because … he didn’t drop me over that rooftop even when he had every reason to. He accepted my fears, accepted me, instead of abandoning me for being a liability. And he came back for me when we were escaping the scorpions because he couldn’t make himself leave me to my fate, even though I’d attacked him, even though I’d gotten Braedan killed.
Elliott Ackermann is a good person.
Except when he’s trying to be good enough for his mother.
He’s still just standing there, staring at his mom, who’s pointing a gun at him. His shoulders rise and fall with a breath. He looks defenseless. Wrecked. The same way he did when he fou
nd his brother’s body.
That angry, protective thing in me rises again.
I step forward, drawing the mayor’s attention. “The mirrors are exits,” I say—not to her, but to my audience in the city above. “That’s how you get out of the dream. Look in a mirror—because there are mirrors everywhere now—and wait for the rainbow sheen, then jump through. You’ll wake up on a ship. There’ll be escape pods. You can go home. To Earth. The real Earth, which is alive, with no fog and no Beings.”
Elliott swallows and raises his head, struggles to focus. He knows my story needs his support. “It’s true,” he manages. “I’ve seen it. Mom,” he says, and his voice breaks. “It’s true. Please, trust me, just this once. Wake up. Live.”
A laugh like gunfire cracks out of her. “Trust you? You’ve gone from failing this family to intentionally undermining it in record time, Elliott.”
He flinches at his name, like it’s a weapon she’s flung at him, but he doesn’t look away. “No,” he says, his voice heavy. “I haven’t failed this family. You have.”
My breathing stills. He’s finally confronting her. I want to hope he can get through, that we can make it out of this without bloodshed, but my cynical side—which is all of me, really—knows this isn’t going to be pretty.
The mayor’s eyes flash. She doesn’t say anything. Even her silence is a weapon.
“You failed this family when you tried to hide my existence to win an election,” Elliott goes on. He takes a step toward her.
“Don’t move,” snaps the older cop. No one looks at him.
“You failed this family when you exiled Braedan.” Elliott takes another step. He’s next to me now. “You failed us when you exiled me.” His voice isn’t heavy anymore. It’s something like a black hole: burning with an impossible gravity, folded over and over on itself in an endless implosion. He takes one last step. He’s in front of me now, between me and his mother, standing at the top of the stairs—framed by the darkness of the warehouse below. The transmitter blinks at his feet. It doesn’t matter if the mayor notices it now. Our job is done, our message out.
Elliott covers his face with one hand and drags in a breath. When he speaks again, his words are muffled. “And you failed this entire island with the punishments you call justice. I didn’t want to admit it. But it’s true. It’s true, and I helped you do it, and I’ll never forgive myself.” He drops his hand and pins her with a look. “But I could forgive you. I could always forgive you. Even when I shouldn’t.”
“Be quiet,” the mayor snaps, but she steps forward—toward him, like she’s drawn into his gravity despite herself. They’re only a step or two away now.
“If you let me save you,” Elliott says, “I’ll do it. I’ll forgive you. Not because you deserve it.” He raises his hands a little, palms out, like he’s surrendering. “It’s because I can’t help it. So, please. For once, just this once, do something for me—and let me save you.”
The mayor’s shoulders square. Something settles over her. “Do not,” she orders, “take one more step.”
She’s still got her gun aimed at him, and she looks like she means what she says. Like she will stop him any way she has to, enforce her will any way she must.
My fingers curl around the padlock. I judge my moment carefully.
“Mom,” Elliott says, his voice so quiet I can barely hear it. He reaches out, slowly, carefully, and wraps his fingers around the barrel of her gun. “I love you.”
He waits for her to respond. She doesn’t. Instead, she starts to turn her head—probably to order one of the officers behind her to cuff us.
Now. I throw the padlock hard at the mayor’s head. She catches the motion, her eyes flicking from her son to me. She shifts her aim in my direction, Elliott’s hand still on the barrel of the gun, as the padlock flies toward her.
She fires.
I’m already ducking out of the way before the gunshot goes off. Elliott must’ve been able to screw up her aim, because no bullet tears into my body, but I don’t have time for gratitude. I’m grabbing for something on the floor—my emergency hand mirror, the one that got knocked off the desk earlier, the one that’s lying only two inches from my foot now. I scoop it up, rip off the masking tape that covers its surface, and stand, ready to implement the next part of my plan: threatening them with the mirror. I look up to find Elliott, to yell at him to follow my lead.
He’s standing in the same spot as a moment ago. No—not quite the same spot. He’s on the landing now, blocking my view of the mayor completely. From this angle he’s silhouetted against the darkness.
He doesn’t move.
I edge toward the desk, which I plan to use as a shield. From here I can see the mayor again. She’s on the ground now, both hands clutching her head. My aim with the padlock was good. It looks like Elliott managed to take her gun away after all, too. He’s still holding it out in front of him, fingers wrapped around the barrel.
I lift the mirror, its deadly reflective surface facing the back wall. “Nobody move. You two, drop your guns,” I order the cops.
Nobody moves. No one even looks at me. The cops are staring at the mayor, and the mayor is staring at her son.
My gaze darts back to Elliott, who’s also not moving—until he sways, just a slight motion, left to right like a ship listing atop a wave. He drops his hand to his side and his fingers slowly uncurl from around his mother’s gun. It falls heavily to the ground. Rust red is smeared across the matte black barrel.
Elliott is bleeding. When his mother fired at me he must’ve—what, blocked the shot with his hand?
He takes a step back. His heel catches on the floor and turns the step to a stumble. He twists sideways, and I get a view of his chest.
Of the ragged hole the bullet tore through it.
Elliott touches the spot. His hand comes away stained red. I feel the blood like it’s on my own hands: warm, wet, sticky beneath my fingernails. My brain fills in the scent of dryer sheets even though it’s not actually present.
The silence is bell-like, pealing. When he swallows everyone can hear it. “Mom,” he says, but this time the word isn’t a plea. It’s an acknowledgment, edged in something sad and jagged. This time his mother is the one to flinch when the word hits her.
“Elliott,” she replies, her voice lilting slightly upward at the end. The name isn’t a weapon anymore. It doesn’t arc with electricity. It’s a question, one that already has an answer but can’t help but be asked anyway.
Elliott exhales. He tries to take another step backwards, toward me, but his heel catches the edge of the stairs. He reaches for the railing to stabilize himself but there isn’t one. He grabs for the doorway—too slow.
He starts to topple over the edge.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE MAYOR REACHES AFTER ELLIOTT BUT SHE’S ON the ground and too far away. Everyone is too far away. The darkness swallows his head, his chest. He’s falling.
A feeling slams into me. It’s … panic and fury and helplessness and horror. It dumps adrenaline into my veins, pumps it hard and fast.
I use it to calculate.
The drop: one hundred feet, give or take, to the cavern floor below.
The angle of Elliott’s fall: slow, backwards, headfirst. He’s already overbalanced, the fall inevitable, but his feet haven’t quite left the stair yet.
The mirror: still in my hand. I throw it like I’m skipping a stone, face up. Can’t risk breaking it, need just the right angle.
It glints, reflecting the dim yellow bulb. Everyone spots it at once. The rainbow sheen flickers over its face as it closes the space between me and Elliott. The exit is open.
Elliott’s feet leave the stairs. The darkness envelops him to the knees. I can’t see his head, can’t see how far backwards he’s tilted by now. I can only hope that my throw was a good one.
The mirror flashes as it skims the ground, its handle making its spin slightly lopsided. For a second the glass surface looks like it�
��s still reflecting the yellow of the lightbulb, but then I realize it’s the wrong color—this is more golden, and there’s a slit of midnight-black running through its middle.
It’s an eye. The eye of a Being, a massive one. I remember the reflective forest, the vast wing, the feathers and scales and claws. The monstrous dark. It’s coming again.
But not for Elliott.
The mirror spins beneath him at exactly the right moment. It skims across his calf—and then Elliott vanishes.
I sag. It worked. I got him out. He’s awake on Mirage now. He won’t fall a hundred feet to his death, won’t be eaten by a Being … but he’ll still have that gunshot wound, and it looked bad.
I have to wake up. I have to find his real body. I know Mirage won’t have enough energy to heal us both, but maybe I could still get Elliott to Earth in time to save him.
The mirror is almost into the dark now. One last rotation—
—and then obsidian talons erupt out of the reflective surface. Each one is as long as I am tall, covered in shadow-edged scales, with tiny, delicate feathers blooming farther up. The claws are as sharp as razors. They latch on to the top landing of the stairs with an earth-shaking blow, and the staircase shudders and groans under the weight. The scales on the massive leg ripple as the muscles beneath them flex.
The mirror continues to fall. The Being pulls itself up and out.
Another set of talons. These stab into the wall, a good seventy feet away. The whole cavern shakes, the yellow lightbulb flickering, clods of dirt shaking loose from the ceiling.
Time to make my exit. Covering my head, I run for the elevator—and then freeze.
The mayor is in front of me. She’s scooped up her gun, its barrel still stained by her son’s blood, and she’s aiming it at me. Behind her, both Diaz and the older cop are scrambling through the elevator and back into the tunnel, but she makes no move to follow.
“What did you do to Elliott?” she demands.
We do not have time for this. I want to lash out at her, but I force myself to stand still. She tried to kill me a minute ago and shot her own son instead. I can’t afford to try her again. “I saved him from you,” I shout back. A support beam creaks and snaps, half of it hammering downward a few feet away. I jump out of its path. “Let me through! We’ve got to get aboveground—we’ve got to find another mirror!”