by Nina Walker
“Where are we going?” Jessa asked.
“Someplace safe,” Sasha responded before adding, “Oh, and Lucas and I aren’t really dating. You can spare me the public displays of affection, though. I want to be able to fly this thing without barfing.”
“You’re not together?” Jessa shook her head.
We were flying fast and low over the landscape. It blurred by in a stream of color as we left the city behind us. Jessa glanced out her window and nearly flinched. She stiffened in her seat, settling in. I was sure she’d never flown before. Regular citizens certainly didn’t travel by helicopter. Even the wealthiest ones didn’t have that luxury. Helicopters were a commodity controlled by my family.
“It’s okay.” I put my arm around her. “We’re safe up here. Sasha knows what she’s doing.” How does Sasha know what she’s doing?
Jessa seemed to relax as the chopper shot through the morning air. Luckily, it was perfect flying weather.
“I think you two have some explaining to do,” Jessa said.
I paused, and when Sasha didn’t jump in, I decided to start.
“A few years ago, I started to suspect that maybe the GC wasn’t as innocent as it seemed.” I considered the best way to explain this. “I would notice strange things that concerned me. People would go missing. Royal officers would be sent with the guardians on missions, and everyone would come back full of secrets. I had no proof of anything. And I don’t even think most alchemists noticed the things I did. Most of them were kept out of the loop, and they still are. But something wasn’t right.”
“So what does that have to do with Sasha?” Jessa frowned.
“Well, a few months before you got here, my father pulled me in on something that confirmed my fears. The GC is running secret tests on innocent people. Dangerous tests.”
“What kind of tests?” Jessa asked.
“I don’t know exactly what they’re for, except to test the boundaries of alchemy. But you know how when the color is all used up, only gray is left behind?”
She nodded.
“Well, it has to do with that. They’re testing to see if people can live off of gray food, gray land, gray…everything.”
“And they can’t?”
“No,” Sasha interjected sharply. “They cannot.”
“Then someone sent me pictures. They were horrible. Children starving. People getting sick or dying. As you can imagine, I was upset when I learned the truth. My father was behind the whole thing and expected me to understand. He’s been traveling to the test sites with Faulk every few months to check on the progress. I went with him on one of the trips. This has been going on for years. I didn’t know what to do when I saw that people were dying. Richard’s my father, you know? How was I supposed to stop him without tearing my family apart?”
“And that’s when Lucas met us,” Sasha’s voice piped in. “The Resistance. We’re part of a national network that was created in response to New Colony’s inhuman tactics. I have been working with Lucas on behalf of those who also want to stop the king and people like Faulk. We’re not violent. We don’t kill people. But we have to do something before things get any worse.”
“So why did you pretend you were dating? Why keep this a secret from me for a month?”
“I wanted to tell you. But I was following orders. The Resistance didn’t know if they could trust you.”
“Don’t be so hard on him,” Sasha added. “He tried to convince us to tell you everything. A number of times, actually. And if it makes you feel any better, everything between us was just a cover. Lucas doesn’t have feelings for me. None whatsoever. He made that clear.”
Was that true? When I first met Sasha, I had definitely been interested. But as soon as I’d met Jessa, that all changed. Again, I was amazed by how much this girl affected me. She’d changed me, simply by being herself. Simply by standing up for who she was and what she wanted.
“All right.” Jessa’s half-smile calmed me a bit. But she still didn’t move back into the crook of my arm. I needed to feel her near me. We’d probably only been given a few extra hours together. I didn’t want to miss a second with her.
“I believe you, Lucas. Now, where are we going? Do you know where my family is?”
“Don’t worry. We’ve got them in hiding.”
Jessa let out an audible sigh of relief. I hated the reminder of my own failure to take care of Jessa’s family. I could only be grateful for Sasha’s good news, for the safety of the Loxley family.
I peered out at the landscape again and realized where we headed, the shadow lands. This wasn’t safe. This was the last place we should take Jessa. Ever. She needed to get away from the GC. Not head into their territory!
“Sasha, what is going on?” I asked, keeping my voice calm. I didn’t want to alarm Jessa. “We need to get somewhere safe. This is not what I had in mind.”
“This isn’t just about Jessa’s safety. It’s also about making sure she understands what’s at stake. She needs to be firmly on our side.”
I willed myself not to punch the seat in front of me. “Are you crazy? Of course she’s on our side!” So much for calm. “This is the last place she should go. Or any of us, for that matter! It will be crawling with GC royal officers.”
“What’s going on? Where are we going?” Jessa asked.
“Turn around,” I said to Sasha. “Fly us somewhere else.”
“No.”
If I had to rip off my seat belt, shove her out of the pilot’s seat, and fly this helicopter myself, I would.
“Jessa, look outside. Look carefully.” Sasha pointed to the vast expanse of earth below. The changes in our field of vision were gradual at first. But then they came all at once. “This is what is left after these tests have finished.” Sasha’s voice was low, laced with the sour tinge of regret. We stared out from behind the shiny glass, our faces reflecting back expressions of disbelief.
The rolling hills, farmhouses, and the forest beyond were a sickening shade of gray. It was almost as if the land had been painted with a fine layer of ash. Only this wasn’t ash. It wasn’t anything.
“Where is all the color?” Jessa whispered.
She leaned in closer. The sweet scent of summer rain mixed with lavender brushed past me as her hair fell in a dark wave around her face. I breathed her in, wanting nothing more than to hold her hand, or better yet, to kiss her. I remembered how she’d pulled away from me earlier, and I decided that now wasn’t the time to be distracted.
“It’s all gone,” Sasha said.
We stared at the vast landscape below us. The remnants of life and energy were only a memory now. We didn’t have to guess how this happened. We were all too smart for that. We knew it was the result of color alchemy. Serious alchemy.
“You want to know what happened to the people?” Sasha asked what I was thinking. “They’re dead. The life was sucked right out of them, as well.”
“Why would an alchemist do this?” Jessa asked.
Sasha caught my eyes in the rearview mirror. As our gazes locked, I remembered her confession. She’d been taken as a child to work out here. She’d been a part of all of this. But color alchemy was usually strongest in younger guardians, and when her power had started to fade, she’d probably been moved on to other assignments.
Children. They made children participate in this.
“I’d known about the experiments. But I didn’t know it was this big. This is so much land. How has this been hidden?” I asked.
Did my father’s reach really extend this far? What he’d shown me on my one trip had only been a fraction of this. Could he really hide something so obvious, so massive, and so egregious as miles and miles of land, all in ruins? Why hadn’t anyone said anything? Why hadn’t the people rebelled?
Sasha was stiff, watching us carefully.
“The GC. Faulk. Your father, Richard. That’s how. Any civilians who figured it out were either killed, imprisoned, or worse—they became part of the trial.�
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“What are these trials even for?” Jessa asked.
“Like Lucas said, it’s all about testing the boundaries of color alchemy. To keep New Colony on top. To stop West America from starting a war. To gain more power. You were smart to keep your red ability a secret. Despite what you were told, there are others who’ve done it before. But poorly. That’s why Richard is looking for someone who can sustain the red ability, hone it in a targeted way. So far, all it’s done is cause widespread pain. And now? Well, they want to be very strategic with how they use it.” She looked wistfully out at the landscape.
I noticed Sasha didn’t include herself in the group of “others” who had been called upon to use red color alchemy. But, in her past, she’d been part of these ghastly tests.
“Thank you for trusting me on that one,” I added, looking at Jessa. “I wanted to tell you about the red, but I didn’t know how.”
“What happens to the people?” she asked. “The ones whose blood gets manipulated by the alchemy?”
“At best, they become extremely forgetful. Most end up with some kind of brain damage. And the worst cases die from brain aneurysms. But there’s definitely more to it, and I think you already know what that is,” Sasha said. “We need to stop more innocent people from getting hurt.”
Jessa just stared straight ahead.
“Tell us, Jessa. What happened? What is it that’s made Richard pursue you so aggressively?”
A small part of me hoped it was all a mistake. That maybe there was still some good left in my father. Maybe why he was doing this was something else entirely than what Sasha believed.
“I know why.” Jessa looked at me as if it was painful to confirm the truth. “I never told you what happened before you picked me up,” she said. “Someone found me. A younger girl from my old high school. She was looking for me. She was working for Faulk. She’s a royal officer in training, she said. She attacked me, and when I tried to defend myself, I broke her nose.”
I smiled inwardly at the thought of Jessa knocking some royal officer girl’s lights out.
“I used red alchemy on her blood. I turned a lot of it gray. I was just trying to get away. And it worked.”
Sasha interjected, “The red helped you, didn’t it?”
“Yes…because I controlled her mind. I told her to stop screaming, and she did. I told her to sit down and count backwards from a thousand, and she did. She did exactly what I said.”
The weight of the news was more damaging than I could have guessed. I mean, I already knew about red blood. Sasha had told me everything weeks earlier. But still, the confirmation shook me.
“I’m sorry, Lucas.” Jessa reached out to me, but I couldn’t even move to hold her hand. “But I’m pretty sure your father wants to brainwash people. To control them…by using me.”
So it’s true. My father’s a bad person. What happens to me now?
I really didn’t know.
“This is the news we’ve been expecting,” Sasha said. “Thank you, Jessa.”
“Thank you for what?” she replied, her voice rising. “I probably left that girl brain-damaged. And I did it to my own sister. I did it to Lacey back in January. She fell and got really hurt. I messed with her blood, and while I was doing it, I told her it would be like the whole accident had never happened. And guess what? She forgot everything! I could have killed her. I could have given her an aneurysm! And then she lived for six months with a small amount of that horrible gray dead blood flowing through her veins. What kind of damage have I unknowingly caused her? My whole reason for being in the GC, the one thing that is most unique about me, is the ability to hurt other people. To control them.” She laughed in frustration. “The irony is, I hate being controlled. I hate that people like Faulk and Richard only want to use me. But I’ve been training only so I can help them control others! What do I do now?”
“You hide,” I said.
“I’m not sure it’s that simple,” Sasha said.
“Sure it is,” I scoffed.
“We’ve got company.” Sasha’s hands gripped tightly on the controls.
She dropped the helicopter low over the terrain as the jet appeared from above. It was coming in at an alarming rate, moving in fast. My heart slammed into my chest when I glimpsed our royal family emblem on its side. The three red stars were a stark contrast to the shiny white jet.
“It’s my father,” I said, knowing what those stars meant.
Order. Progress. Justice.
“Then you better hold on tight,” Sasha said as she veered the chopper in a 180-degree turn.
Jessa slammed into me, her slender frame flush against my own, and I grabbed her hand. I squeezed it tight and caught her eyes. I was pleading with my every emotion that she could see how sorry I was. I shouldn’t have trusted the Resistance to take her somewhere safe. I’d been so careless with Jessa, over and over. And now, this was it. These were the only moments we had left together. We’d definitely be caught. I didn’t know what would happen to me. But if they discovered I was a traitor, it would be drastic. And Sasha would be executed. Would they do that to Jessa? No, she was too valuable to them. Her fate would be worse.
“What’s going to happen to us? Are they going to shoot us down?” Jessa asked, panicked.
“Not if they suspect you’re in here,” Sasha replied.
We zipped through the air, and Sasha moved us as close to the gray earth as she possibly could. The line of decaying trees up ahead was becoming dangerously close.
“What’s your plan here?” I asked.
“We’re going to land in there and take cover. We have to hide.”
“We can’t go in there. It’s all dead. We’ll starve to death. Or get lost. We won’t make it out.”
“Do you have a better idea?” Sasha called over her shoulder as we approached the ashen forest. If we didn’t crash in the landing, we’d be lost in this wasteland. Or get caught by the royal officers. I didn’t know which fate was worse.
I knew what I had to do. Without a doubt in my mind, I knew I had to let it all go. All the secrets, the half-truths, and the lies.
It was time for me to save our lives.
21
Jessa
I’d sometimes wondered how I was going to die. Death by helicopter crash had never crossed my imagination. But there was no way out. We were going down. Even I knew that at the speed we were moving and the thickness of the trees up ahead, there was nothing Sasha could do to save us.
Was my life supposed to be flashing before my eyes? That wasn’t happening. It was more of a sudden realization, in slow motion, that this was the end. An unwinding of stillness as everything around me took perfect form. The rough feel of Lucas’s hand clutching mine. The comforting smell of the warm leather seat beneath me. The thumping movement of the chopper blades, spinning too fast to follow. The desolate gray land created such a stark contrast against the bright morning sun, the wide blue sky, and the large puffs of feathery white clouds that sat low.
“Go up!” Lucas yelled. “Right now, go up, Sasha.”
Sasha didn’t acknowledge him. She was still focused on attempting a successful crash landing in the forest cover. I didn’t think it was possible.
Lucas ripped off his seat belt. He dove over the seat in front of us. He practically sat on Sasha as he shoved her away. They grappled for the joystick, and he pushed it down. The chopper rose.
“What are you doing?” Sasha hissed, grabbing the controls.
“Sit down,” he yelled, shoving her back.
She didn’t listen.
I watched in shock over their struggle.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash. The three red stars visibly announced our imminent capture.
“Someone will see you!” I yelled at Lucas, realizing he was now in clear view, sitting up front like that.
“No, they won’t. We’re almost there.”
He pulled back with the entire weight of his body and we jolted upwards,
much faster than before. In another breath, we were catapulted through a mass of white clouds. Dense and thick around the chopper, they provided momentary cover.
“Hover here,” he said to Sasha, as he let her back into the pilot’s seat.
“No!” Sasha scoffed.
“Just do it. And stay buckled!”
He put his hands up against the door. It slid open. I screamed, reaching for him. He didn’t respond, just kept his eyes held shut and stretched his hand out into the white atmosphere. Utter concentration lined his strong features. His dark hair fell in waves, covering his face. As his whole body stilled, it was as if everything stopped, suspended in space.
Sasha gasped, realizing something I was seemingly missing.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
Lucas shuddered, then looked up at her.
“Go,” he said, slamming closed the door. “I got a lot, but I won’t be able to hold this for long.”
She nodded and threw us forward. We flew quickly out of the clouds, into the open blue again. I looked around for the plane and all at once, there was nothing. We were invisible!
“They can’t see us?” I screamed. Is this real? “What’s happening?”
It was like flying, but not. We were sitting. There was no wind. But the earth was barreling below and the inertia made me want to scream again. I heard the clasp of Lucas unbuckling his harness and felt him fall into my lap. “It’s okay. We’re completely safe. But this is quite exhausting. I need you to keep me awake,” he said.
Keep him awake? Why? What was wrong with him?
“Just do it,” Sasha called back. I couldn’t see her, or anything besides the world flying by! But somehow she managed to maneuver the helicopter. “I’m serious, Jessa,” Sasha yelled. “He can’t fall asleep. He needs to hold this. He’s our only chance right now. Do something!”
What in the world were they talking about?
I felt his warm hand on the back of my neck. His thumb rested in the small indent just below my hairline. An unexpected shiver ran up and down my spine. I lost my breath.