by Platt, Sean
“The viceroy is under arrest,” Raj said. “As are these two. As Guard Commander, I hereby order you to take them away or whatever you do with criminals, when you send down shuttles and … well, do whatever. And as systems administrator, I can report that the viceroy and his accomplices have not only breached a secure area—”
“Using my authorized palm print,” Meyer added.
“In order to install malicious software into the system that has already caused irreparable damage to—”
“Damage that you were too busy with us to worry about,” Meyer said. “Which is a shame, since protecting our systems is your job.”
Raj jabbed a finger toward the door, glaring at the Titan. “Take them away.”
There were footsteps from Heather’s side. She turned to see Mo Weir, Meyer’s aide, approaching without any hurry.
“What’s going on here?” he asked.
Meyer looked at Mo then at the Titans. Finally, his eyes settled on Terrence, and Heather saw him make a decision. A normal person would feel bad about what Heather realized he was about to do, but Meyer believed in big rights and big wrongs, and the small ones to match. It was always fine to commit a small wrong in the service of a larger right … even if that right benefitted mainly Meyer and those he cared about while sacrificing others. He’d done such things for their entire marriage. Heather hated how much it had always turned her on. He was willing to make hard decisions, and make unfortunate sacrifices when there was no other way.
“Heather and I caught Terrence doing something to infiltrate the house system, which has since spread into the city network,” he said.
The overhead lights flickered as if in agreement. Heather had no idea if the network’s failure would kill the city’s power, but it might be possible. Their computers would stop being able to connect to other computers, and those still wired in (or connected over the air) might be irreparably damaged. Phones would stop working. They’d be cut off — an island in the middle of hostile outlands.
Terrence glared at Meyer but said nothing. He must realize, Heather thought. Someone had to take the fall, and he was half there already. Lying about Heather and Meyer’s involvement wouldn’t change his fate, but still she could see Terrence’s resentment as it bored into Meyer — as it bored into her.
“That’s not true,” Raj said.
“Take him to confinement. Let me know when it’s done.”
“That’s not what happened!” Raj put his face close to the nearest Titan’s. “You saw! You were there! They were all around the terminal, all three of them! They’re all in this together. He’s a traitor!”
Meyer gave Mo an eye-rolling smile. “He’s misinterpreting my talk with Terrence upstairs.”
Mo’s returning look said, Oh, that silly Raj.
Raj was staring, stewing, boiling hot. His already dark complexion reddened. He didn’t seem to know where to aim his plea — at the Astrals, who should have seen what was right in front of their faces, or Mo Weir, who’d never liked Raj any more than Meyer or Heather had.
“Take him,” Mo told the Astrals, pointing at Terrence, “but leave them.” He flicked his finger between Meyer and Heather.
One of the Titans widened his eyes slightly — a look Heather had come to interpret as, “Are you sure?”
Mo nodded. “Ms. Hawthorne is a … well, she’s a character. They have a complicated history.”
The Titan continued listening, making no sign that he understood the subtleties of either “character” or “complicated history.”
“We’ll detain her,” he said. “I’ll let you know if further action is needed.”
Raj looked ready to leap from his skin. “Are you kidding me? You’re letting them go? You can’t let them go! Don’t you know who I am? Didn’t you see what they were doing?”
The Titans made short, simultaneous nods. The Reptars’ currently yellow eyes flicked toward Heather, but they didn’t move or make any of their terrible noises. Then all four, with Terrence in tow and Raj following, remonstrating like an angry Rumpelstiltskin, walked through the front door to what Heather now saw was a waiting shuttle inches above the lawn.
When they were gone, Mo looked at Heather then turned to Meyer. “Everything okay then, boss?”
Meyer nodded. “I’ll handle her. Thanks, Mo.”
Mo curtly nodded then walked back the way he’d come.
Meyer reached into the drawer of a hallway side table and removed a small pair of scissors. He snipped Heather’s plastic tie and met her eyes.
Outside, the shuttle rose from the lawn, taking Terrence away.
“We count to fifty,” Meyer told Heather, taking her hands. “Then we run.”
Chapter Sixty-Two
The room came alive with Titans, surrounding them in an enormous semicircle, having poured from dozens of unseen rooms and offices. Cameron was reminded of gophers rising curiously from their holes — except that instead of gophers, the just-now-diminishing alarm inside the archive had attracted the attention of scores of bland-faced, albino, hairless bodybuilder accountants. An odd combination, and plenty intimidating. But this had always been their worst-case scenario, and Benjamin had thought of everything.
The Titans could call for reinforcements, but the tunnels were still at the group’s back. They could pile in and run. Benjamin’s analysis of the tablet had given them an escape route that the leaders — including Cameron — had memorized. It was a route that the Templars who’d built this vault’s predecessor had expanded between Astral visits, without bothering to let their intergalactic partners know.
The ring of Titans moved closer. Slowly.
“It’s okay,” Cameron whispered to Piper. “Titans don’t attack. They can’t.”
“Shuttles,” was her reply.
Cameron nodded toward the exit, where he could see daylight teasing through an encroaching line of white giants. “Shuttles can’t get in here. The doors are too small.”
“They’ll shoot their way in. They’ll—”
Cameron took her arm, silencing Piper before tugging her gently backward. Benjamin was shooing people toward the concealed tunnel, but the door had closed and nobody, yet, had summoned the nerve to break the stalemate by reaching to open it.
“We have to go.”
“Where?” She eyed the domed entrance beyond the Titans.
“The tunnels we came out of. There’s another exit.”
“They’ll come after us.”
Behind them, Andreus was reaching for the door, never moving his eyes from the Titans. The room and passageway were large. The hidden rooms the Titans had spilled from — inside which they’d apparently been hiding so the groups could do their work, until their deception was uncovered — were kissing the edges. Andreus could open the door right now. Cameron imagined that Titans could sprint, but it was hard to believe they would … or if, once they caught up, the intruders would get more than a stern shake of a disapproving finger.
They could block their way, though, and push them around.
They could grab them then call for Reptars.
Cameron and Andreus had played that scenario out, too: how long, once a signal was sent, would it take for reinforcements to arrive?
Minutes, surely.
But it would be enough time to reach the tunnels and lose them down further hidden doorways and labyrinthine passages.
Cameron looked back. Andreus’s hand was on the concealed door’s latch.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Hurry. Before they call for help.”
Cameron gently nudged Piper and turned toward the door. His skin prickled, sensing something behind them that couldn’t be heard or seen or felt.
Around the room, white-skinned Titans were bending at the waist, touching their hands to the ground, beginning to change.
Cameron watched their limbs elongate. Their movements become more insectile. They grew the long torsos of animals, their skin now black scales laced with a haunting blue glow.
Every Titan in the room turned into a Reptar and started to purr.
Then the screaming began.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Out the back door.
Across the lawn.
Past Heather’s small house, which she’d so resented.
There was a rear guard house, but Meyer raised his hand to the man inside with his usual charming smile. The guard didn’t look at them twice. Why would he? Meyer was the viceroy. He could leave his house with whomever he wanted, and take them wherever he pleased.
They didn’t run. Meyer didn’t want to take any of the home’s many vehicles because he preferred to stay nimble, and vehicles could box you in — something Piper had vividly described to Heather from their time on a Chicago expressway when the Astrals were still on their way. Nor did he want to run because flight was an admission of guilt. So they walked. Fast. Staying out of sight.
Heather let him lead but felt their actions amounted to trying to have their cake and eat it too. Meyer had come over to Terrence’s side in the end — humanity’s side, really — but he was still proceeding on viceroy’s eggshells, hoping his authority might protect him. They couldn’t stay in the mansion (that house of cards was top heavy; Mo Weir had either been protecting his man or genuinely ignorant, though Raj would find plenty of evidence to damn them eventually), but they weren’t yet fugitives.
They were in that curious in between: something not quite rebel and not quite sympathizer, not quite complicit and not quite insurgent. They had to keep moving, knowing they could never return, trying to find their way out and into the wilderness beyond the fences — where being world famous as Heaven’s Veil’s viceroy was a detriment rather than an asset.
But they could worry about that later. For now, there was only flight, guilt, and cold sweat.
Maybe a quarter-mile from the fence, they were almost sideswiped as a motorcycle screeched into the street ahead. The rider dismounted then removed his helmet. He drew a pistol from a holster and centered it on Meyer’s chest.
Raj.
Meyer raised his hands. Heather could see the lack of compromise in Raj’s eyes. Meyer wouldn’t be talking his way out of this one. They had to flee, or they’d be arrested then put on trial for treason for sure. The other option was being shot dead.
“I never had a chance, did I?” Raj said.
Meyer’s head cocked between his raised hands. Whatever he’d expected Raj to say or do, that wasn’t it.
“If none of this had happened, you’d never have accepted me as Clara’s father. You’d have pretended I didn’t exist.”
Meyer stammered the beginning of a response, but Raj went on.
“I tried to protect her while you were gone. After you abandoned her. I did my best, but it wasn’t good enough. Just like I wasn’t good enough for you even before you knew about the baby. Just like you wanted to leave me behind, before Lila forced you to take me. But I always did what was right. Even after people broke in, and everyone made friends with the intruders. The same people who betrayed you, before you turned on the rest of us. The same people who, I’m pretty sure, included the man who slept with your wife.”
Heather looked at Meyer’s face. Meyer Dempsey was never at a loss for words. Meyer Dempsey was never bested in conversation. Never. But he was speechless now.
“I always wanted to help. Always tried to protect this family. I kept the guard even while you ignored it. I played second fiddle to Christopher even though I was supposed to outrank him. And when the chips were down, it was me — not Christopher — who kept stepping up. When Piper went missing. When they were plotting against you. When they did exactly what you said they’d do with the network center, and I dutifully reported it just as you’d asked.”
Raj’s eyes bored into Meyer’s. The gun was rock steady, aimed at his chest. Heather remembered a few Raj gunshots gone awry, hilarious in the past like a best-of bloopers reel. But there wasn’t a chance of him missing this time.
Her eyes searched the street. There were a few bricks in a pile near an adjacent building, but they were just bricks. If she went for them, he’d turn and shoot her.
“I’m going to watch you burn, viceroy,” Raj snarled.
Meyer, seeming to sense futility, tensed for a pointless fight. Heather saw it happen, but Raj somehow missed it, his glare intent upon Meyer’s face. It was a stupid, stupid thing to consider, the gun leveled as it was.
Heather was about to shout for Meyer to knock it off — blowing his cover to Raj but saving his life — when Meyer struck. He did it when Raj’s eyes flicked toward a sound down the street, gaining a partial second’s advantage. But it wasn’t enough, and Raj wasn’t close enough to grab or strike.
Meyer lunged forward.
Raj took his shot.
In the moment of shock that followed, Heather leaped for her brick — with all the fury of impending, righteous loss — and smashed it into the back of Raj’s head.
Raj collapsed, unconscious.
Heather rolled Meyer over, down on her knees in the street, finding her hands wet with spreading blood, in time to see him form two final words before dying.
Meyer didn’t make sounds, but she could read his lips just fine.
The last words she’d have expected from the great Meyer Dempsey’s final breath.
“Love you.”
Chapter Sixty-Four
The Reptars came for them.
Cameron was breathless beside Piper, staring toward the advancing horde of black, panther-like shapes, his breath leaving shallow and fast. His hand, on her arm, had gone slack.
The nearest of them leaped. It moved shockingly fast, scuttling across the space like a spider. Its mouth opened, revealing concentric semicircles of needle teeth. The inside glow that bled between the creature’s scales shone brighter within its throat. Piper stood frozen, seeing how its mouth seemed to disengage past 180 degrees, the top of its head becoming invisible as it presented only tongue and teeth.
The thing gave its rattling purr as it came forward, its Titan reticence entirely gone. It struck at one of the rebel survivors, Taylor, and tore her arm off at the shoulder. She screamed, her motions jostling Andreus from the only partially ajar doorway.
They came. En masse, they came.
No hesitation. The Reptar that had started with Taylor finished her off, its bite ripping the head from her shoulders. Her friend, Olivia, battered stupidly at its body, but her ministrations were cut short when a second Reptar ripped her in half at the waist.
Cameron yanked Piper away, dragging her through throngs of humans and black alien limbs whirring like the churning blades of a food processor. Blood sprayed Piper’s face, her bare arms, her chest. She saw Ivan ripped apart in front of her then nearly lost her footing as his blood drenched the concrete underfoot.
They were headed the wrong way, sprinting to duck behind a truck left in the entry cavern following its final delivery. Cameron pulled her down, wrapping his arm around her from the back, clamping his blood-streaked hand over her mouth without delicacy. The air left her lungs.
The group had dispersed. The door to the tunnels was still ajar, but Piper had no idea if anyone had managed to get through. The first Reptar — the one that had ripped Taylor and Olivia apart as if holding a grudge — had panicked the group. Maybe its desertion was good. Right now, Reptars seemed occupied with slashing their party to pieces and were ignoring the unused doorway — a positive development if anyone hoped to use it without being followed like snakes chasing mice through their furrows.
“They’re shapeshifters,” Cameron said, breathing heavy, his eyes bulging with fright. “Titans. Reptars. It’s just an illusion. All this time, they’ve been able to change from one to the other.”
Maybe, Piper thought. But the ability to shift forms was something no human had ever seen and lived to report. It was a secret the Astrals had kept carefully guarded — pretending to be harmless Titans at all costs instead of revealing their nature. Surprising
the Astrals into changing now meant that before today, nobody had seen them angry.
No one would be leaving alive.
“We have to reach the tunnels,” Cameron said, his panic apparently forgetting that he’d dragged them away to hide behind the truck.
With a tremendous crash, their hiding place was torn into the air. Piper saw three Reptars behind the truck, all with their front limbs up as it flipped through the air in a tight spiral and struck the concrete ceiling, making rain from shattered pebbles. It crashed back down as Cameron leaped atop Piper and drove her to the ground.
One of the three beasts turned then shot after a male lab tech — Piper couldn’t tell who. He fell apart like sliced meat. With horror, Piper saw Danika with her hands shielding her face behind the fallen tech. Her eyes met Piper’s before the thing impaled her with one of its claw limbs.
The two remaining Reptars over Piper and Cameron reared like horses then came down just feet away. Both opened their mouths to purr then flicked their heads upward as something heavy struck the one in front. Piper’s eyes followed the object’s trajectory (it turned out to be a small tractor tire, pulled from somewhere on a gantry) above and saw Benjamin with his arms out, post throw. Charlie was beside him in his usual buttoned shirt and bland tie, a solid right-hand man to the end.
The struck Reptar turned then jumped upward in two giant bounds. It made quick work of the climb, on the gantry in seconds. Benjamin and Charlie were already sliding down a ladder like firemen. The thing followed, but at the bottom its eyes lighted on Tina, the tech Piper had seen earlier. It went through her like mown grass as Charlie and Benjamin dove behind a pile of boxes.
The final Reptar struck, charging them with a wide open mouth, unhinged like the one from before. The alien looked like the head of a hairbrush: a large, flat oval studded with spines sharp as knives. It shoved toward them, but Cameron had scrambled for a push broom in the corner. The thing had a heavy metal handle, and Cameron jammed it into the Reptar’s mouth. The creature bit on the pole, momentarily stymied, but the skin on Cameron’s right hand was flayed as it brushed one of the razor-sharp teeth, skin hanging in a flap, a torrent of blood spilling down his arm.