“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” I wait for someone else to catch on.
“They will be waiting at the exit,” Miller says.
The corner of Bianca’s mouth curls up slightly for the first time since entering the camp. “True,” she says. “But they can’t block them all. The location of the exits changes in the simulation, which is why each of the guards is given one of these.” Bianca crouches beside her backpack. She unzips another front pouch and several flat, card-shaped pieces of tempered glass tumble out. “They can show us where the nearest exits are.”
Our hope is immediately restored.
“What do we do now, then?” Mo asks, looking at me.
All of them are looking at me. Why? No one else speaks. They shift feet or scratch their chins waiting… for me.
“You are the brains of the operation,” Miller agrees. “Just tell us what to do.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “We have to get everyone up and move,” I say. “If PSECT is really going to come down on us, we need to keep moving toward an exit.” They all nod, heads bobbing as if it makes perfect sense. I’m not sure it does, but I don’t know what else to say. “Let’s get everyone a ration of what we have here and start moving. Bianca and Sho can lead the way.”
And just like that, they listen.
As the others scramble into action to break camp, I pull Bianca aside.
“How many guards are we talking about?” I ask, keeping my voice down so no one else interrupts. “What sort of Powers do they have?”
“Um, twenty. Maybe more depending on how many were called in for this,” Bianca shifts anxiously. “As far as I know, everyone is either a Strongman—a Somatic of some sort—or Telekinetic.”
That’s some good news. Somatics can be beaten by our numbers, and Telekinetics can only do so much at once. It won’t be easy, but it could be worse.
When I pull away to help break camp, Bianca takes my hand and pulls me back. I can hardly resist her superior strength, especially in my weakened state. Not that I want to.
For a moment she just stares at me, silent, terrified. And now I understand. Bianca risked everything to help us. She can’t go back to Paragon. She can’t go home. Bianca is in this with us to the end.
“Don’t worry, we won’t leave anyone behind,” I say, pulling her into a hug. Bianca sags against me, her head resting on my shoulder. A wonderful mix of sweat and her citrus soap fills me, offering some comfort. She mumbles something, and we both pull back. “What?”
Bianca swallows a lump in her throat, then licks her dry lips. “There’s something else you should know.” She pauses, but I just wait for her to finish. “It’s bigger than we imagined. There are more.”
“Guards?”
“Subjects.” Bianca glances around and steps closer, whispers to only me. “I found three other floors like yours, all full of test subjects. Paragon has been filling up ever since the Proposition passed.”
My blood turns to ice despite the heat. “How many?” The words croak out.
“Including your floor, seven hundred, at least.”
Seven hundred? The sheer magnitude of Paragon’s experiments is overwhelming.
I shake my head. “Are they all here?”
The odds of all of them surviving these conditions without warning are—well “slim” would be an understatement. Getting sixty of us out of here seemed like a huge task, but seven hundred? Impossible.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Just your floor.”
All I can respond with is a stiff nod. Better that way. For now, I can just focus on my floor. The rest will come later.
“Okay, well, we should… we should get to breaking camp,” I stumble over the words.
Bianca nods, and together we walk out of the tent to set to work.
Everyone is moving with vigor and excitement, ready to break camp. Miller, Enid, and Mo dole out blue pills to give everyone a Power boost. Sho, Boyd, and a couple of Boyd’s helpers distribute a meager offering of food and water to everyone. Bianca coaxes everyone to their feet, offering words of hope.
I go in search of Celeste.
“Time to go,” I say, gingerly helping Celeste to her feet.
“A ray of hope. A final breath. A chance to cope. A kiss of death. And all the stars shall fall.”
The words send shivers down my spine, but there’s no time for riddles. If security is closing in, we have to move first, ask questions later. I slip an arm around Celeste’s waist and escort her along with the others.
39
After nearly a mile of helping Celeste along, nudging her along with us every time she begins pulling back, the ache in my arm and shoulder screams at me. I don’t know if she senses it or not, because she finally pulls away and walks herself. I watch from the corner of my eye to make sure she sticks with us and doesn’t try to fall back or run. Her loafers drag on the ground, scuffing the dirt and kicking up puffs in the air.
A glance around reveals that everyone in the group is doing the same. Dragging feet, slumped shoulders, lowered heads. Some people are coughing out the dirt we can’t help but breathe in. Most of them don’t have the energy to carry on much longer, not that we’ve made significant progress. It couldn’t have been less than an hour since we broke camp. This pace will raise a red flag and bring security down on us anyway. There must be a better way to get all these people to the exit. Too bad teleportation isn’t a thing.
Confident that Celeste will stick near the middle of the pack, I pick up the pace and join Bianca, Sho, and Leo at the front.
“How much farther?” I ask.
Leo rolls his eyes and grimaces, adjusting Bianca’s pack on his shoulders. He must have offered to carry it a while back. “We don’t even know exactly where the exit is yet.”
“What?” How can they not know?
“We know it’s in this direction,” Sho says with more confidence than I expect. “It’s just… we’re not close enough for me to pinpoint where it is.”
“Well this pace won’t work,” I say. “I don’t know how long some of these people can keep up, and we’re—”
Thunder rumbles in the distance, cutting off further objections. Everyone stops and looks at the sky, but no clouds mar the white-blue blinding light above. A chime echoes across the barren plain once, twice… over and over and over again. I lose count.
Then, silence.
Everyone holds their breath, but no one knows what we are waiting for. Seconds tick by excruciatingly slow. Dread fills my gut. We need to move.
“It’s them,” Bianca says, spinning in place to survey the land.
A shriek shatters the silence. Then another. And another. In a matter of seconds, the entire group of test subjects has descended into chaos, running in every direction, renewed with the instinct to survive.
“Don’t run!” I call out, not confident that anyone heard me. “Stay together!”
Bursts of light flash from the group outward as some of the subjects launch Naturalist attacks north. The ground rumbles beneath our feet. In some places, the earth rolls outward in ripples.
“Celeste.” The name comes out as a whisper, and a moment later my feet are carrying me through the chaos as Bianca screams out my name. But I can’t stop.
I push, bump, elbow my way through the throng of subjects milling in every direction. I peer over shoulders and heads in search of wild black hair. Narrow rock formations suddenly appear amid the test subjects, lanky and thin and as tall as a human—maybe they are. I have no idea what’s going on. All my focus is on finding Celeste.
“Ugene!” Miller’s shout barely reaches through the screams of the other subjects. I spot the top of his blond head through the crowd as he throws lightning north. “Run! Security!”
My gaze follows one of his bolts to see dozens of security guards in their black uniforms approaching from the north, firing at the test subjects. They must have come over the ridge in the distance, a long line of them marching in time toward u
s.
Run. I do, continuing toward where I left Celeste, toward where Miller is fighting.
A glance to the right—at the line of security guards bearing down on us from the north—hastens my steps and provides the extra boost of adrenaline I need to ignore the throbbing pain in my foot. As I pass a girl in dirty scrubs, her face caked with dirt, she knocks backward off her feet, drawing my attention to my left.
“Oh, God.” The words are little more than a breath.
Another line of guards—at least two dozen men and women clad in black uniforms—close in from the south as well. They’re pinching us in, forcing us to break up, just like Bianca said they would.
Shots fire, ringing out from either side over the din. A boulder shaped like a rocket shoots out of the ground in my path, launching into the horizon toward the north. I stumble back into a sudden tornado of dust. It sweeps me from my feet and throws me off course. Pain lances across my temple as my head hits the hard ground. Boyd’s hand wraps around my arm, and he pulls me to my feet.
“This w-way!” Boyd yells, pulling me east, away from Celeste.
I shove him off, calling out to Celeste, but my voice is swallowed by the cacophony of grinding earth, breaking rocks, gunshots, and screaming test subjects.
Bolts of lightning streak across the sky from all directions, moving toward each other, then striking outward and branching off toward the south and north. People in scrubs and loafers attempt to escape in any direction they find. A few make a stand, creating objects from rock and dirt to hurl at security. Others create winds or ripples of earth outward. Still, the guards are closing in, less than fifty feet from our writhing mass of bodies, maintaining a perfectly orderly line of march. A few gaps in their ranks is the only clue that they have lost a few of their own to our attacks.
A return volley begins. Rocks and boulders the test subjects hurled at the guards soar back toward us, launched by the Telekinetic guards as they continue firing, marching ever closer in perfect synchronization. Subjects fall, some unmoving and some seizing on the spot. People scatter and run to avoid being crushed.
“Ugene!” Bianca’s voice is distant, somewhere behind me.
And then I see Celeste.
In the middle of all the chaos, Celeste stands perfectly still, staring north. Test subjects jostle her in their haste to escape the debris, but she remains statue-still. The mere sight of her immobile form freezes me in my tracks.
My panic finally breaks, shattered by fear for Celeste’s life. I break into a sprint. Too late.
Fiery hot pain slams into my spine, sending me sprawling on the ground. Booms shake the earth. I try getting up, then a shock in the back of my skull sends everything into darkness.
~~~
Ringing. Quivering earth. Muffled shouts. Everything hurts, but mostly my head and back feel like they’ve been ripped open. I try pushing away from the ground, standing, kneeling, anything, but my limbs are too weak and resist. My body collapses against the earth, and dirt coats my nostrils and throat. I cough, which induces intense, blinding pain from the back of my skull. Someone shouts beside me. I turn my head, unable to hear what’s being said. Everything is fuzzy.
Enid kneels beside me, holding a hand in the air away from us. Tears streak down her cheeks, creating clear rivers in the dirt caked on her face. Cold hands press against my searing hot back, and the world snaps into sharp detail as the skin on my back stretches, tugs, pulls.
“Don’t you dare die on me,” Enid says with more affirmation than I’ve ever heard from her.
I try to speak, but all that escapes are coughs and rasps. And blood.
“Fix it!” Enid yells at someone beside her, sweat rolling in beads down her temple as she struggles to hold her hand up. I can’t turn my head to see who she yells at.
“I’m trying!” the other girl snaps.
The ground rumbles and Enid growls, pushing her hand outward away from us. Her Power. She’s using her Power for something.
“I can’t hold it much longer,” Enid tells the other girl.
“I just need another minute!”
My spine pops, and tears fill my eyes, but no sound escapes. Healing. The girl is healing me. Rosie?
Rock breaks somewhere on the other side of Enid and me bares her teeth and stands, rushing around to my other side with both hands in the air. Is that rock her doing?
“A tower!” Miller calls out from elsewhere, close enough to hear but too far away to see.
“Get everyone together again.” Leo’s voice is muted by a sudden thunderous rumble.
Enid unleashes a feral scream.
A body hits the ground beside me, and brown eyes stare blankly at me. It takes a moment before I realize who it is. Omar. Shame washes through me at the relief that it isn’t me. Paragon is killing us. Nothing about this should offer relief.
“Up you go,” Rosie says, hoisting me to my feet with her arm around my torso under my arm.
The pain vanishes, replaced now by a feeling like my body has stretched itself too thin. I stumble a step into Rosie, but she holds me steady. Enid releases a cry of relief to see me on my feet again, and the stone wall she created to protect us from attacks crumbles in a rocky heap as Rosie lets me go.
“Celeste,” I say, blinking at the devastation around us.
Test subjects litter the ground. Those still on their feet fight back with their Powers. Rents dot the earth where the rock was ripped out as a weapon. But standing in the middle of it all with her wild black hair blowing in the breeze, utterly untouched by any of the chaos, stands Celeste.
Miller runs toward me from his position at the rear of the group. I stretch a hand toward Celeste. Miller hooks his arm through mine as he runs past, jerking me away.
A hulking mass of man clad in a black uniform raises his stun gun at Celeste. No joy lives in his fixed gaze—nor hate, malice, or satisfaction. His expression is completely blank, devoid of emotion as he takes careful aim.
The arid plains offer no hiding places for us, no shelter from the assault. All around us, security forces close in, only twenty feet away now in perfect ranks, firing at test subjects. Some shots hit. Some miss. Bodies crumple to the ground, screaming in agony. A few subjects run toward the line, engaging their Strongarm muscles to throw punches or seize weapons, but the guards are stronger. Blood pounds in my eardrums, dulling all other noise.
Celeste slowly arcs a hand out in front of her. The guard squeezes the trigger.
“No!” I tug and jerk to escape Miller, but he’s stronger than me.
Celeste’s head kicks back, and her feet lift off the ground. I scream.
Sudden, brilliant bursts of light explode outward from Celeste. A blinding rainbow of colors. I cover my eyes and duck away with Miller, holding my breath as a wave of dust blows past. Before the dust settles, I shove Miller away and spin to find Celeste.
Her limp, huddled form lays on the ground face-down, and I’ve never run so fast in my life. I skid to my knees at her side, fearing the worst.
“Celeste.” Grabbing her shoulder, I pull her over to look for wounds. “Wake up. Talk to me.” Fear clenches my throat. Dirt mars her face, but no blood. I check her torso for an entry wound or signs of blood. Nothing. Did they miss? A bullet casing is lodged in the dirt beside her, spent but unbloodied. “Celeste?”
She blinks, dull green eyes gazing up at me. “Perception in moral character bleeds immoral hearts,” she whispers in exhaustion.
I have no idea what she just said, and I don’t care. Just the sound of her voice fills me to the brim with relief, and I lean over and kiss her forehead, deliriously laughing as if something inside broke under strain.
Test subjects—those not shot or fleeing—stand in clumps, appearing. Some lay unmoving, and I can’t tell how many we lost. Paragon has resorted to killing, to seeing this carnage as an acceptable result of this test. What comes next is your fault. Forrest’s accusation makes these deaths weigh heavy on my shoulders. Did they die becaus
e of me? It’s not a burden I can afford to bear right now.
A brief glance tells me we are alone again. Security is gone, no traces of them remaining. Was that Paragon’s doing, or the result of whatever Celeste just did?
“What did she do?” Miller stands over the two of us, looking in all directions.
“No idea.”
40
Everyone is confused and disoriented, taking this opportunity to rest or deal with the dead. Fifteen confirmed killed. Six mortally wounded. Nineteen with mobility injuries. Rosie did her best to heal who she could, but she’s too weak to do much. Security has disappeared, but it’s only a matter of time until they show up again.
The landscape hasn’t changed. Dry, arid plains with little more than plateaus in the distance. And the newest development—a lone shining tower twisting up into the too-bright sky, shimmering like a mirage. Our small group of unlikely heroes stands in a misshapen circle. Bianca on one side of me, Celeste on the other.
“We need to split up,” Mo says. “It won’t be easy to attack like that if we’re spread out.”
“That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,” Enid says. She stands near Mo, weight shifted to one leg and clearly bored with his idiocy. “We are weaker separated.”
“How many will they bring next time?” Mo asks. “You got a better idea?”
“Stop.” Miller stands at the edge of our small group, pinching the bridge of his nose. He sighs. “Let’s just go to the tower. It has to be an exit.”
“And so clearly a trap,” Enid says. “Towers don’t just appear out of nowhere. That thing wasn’t there before the attack, and now it is. We would be walking right into their open arms.”
Or worse, but I don’t want to discourage them any more than they already are.
“Well, we don’t have the strength to find another exit, and we don’t have the time,” Miller says, crossing his arms. “Either we go to the tower and take our chances, or we keep going and risk dehydration or worse.”
Enid shoots her gaze at me like I’ll butt in and disagree with him. Like I have some brilliant idea. But ideas fail me. I don’t trust Miller, and Enid is right. It could be a trap, especially if Miller is the one saying we should do it. But Miller is right, too. Everyone was weak before that attack. Now… just getting some of these people on their feet has proven a monumental task. Rosie healed as many as she could, but she doesn’t have the strength to treat them all, and no one else has come forward as a healer. The tower may be our only option.
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