by Lydia Kang
“Actually, I think I might want to.”
“Maybe we could learn together. I’ve a lot to learn too.”
I nod. Kria’s ready to launch herself at me for an epic hug, but I’m still not quite ready for more of those yet. So I just smile. She stays put, smiles back, then shuffles away.
“Kria, are you doing this?” Wilbert points to a green line buzzing up and down in zigzags on the corner of his wall screen.
Kria spins around. “What’s that?”
“There’s an outgoing communication from Wingfield.” He spins around on his hover chair, his faceless head bouncing against his shoulder. “And it’s not coming from your holo.”
Kria’s hand goes straight to her earlobe, but her silver holo barbell is still there. “All the other holos here aren’t even capable of communication,” she says.
“Wait.” I touch the tight red bracelet on my wrist, holding it up. “What about our Inky bracelets? What if these tracked us here?”
“They didn’t,” Wilbert says with confidence. “You have no signal on those outside of a certain radius from Inky. And anyway, if they gave off a signal, I’d be able to pick it up.”
“Did you screen people when they arrived for other devices?” I ask.
Kria frowns. “I’m no Aureus, or Avida. I assumed that we’re all on the same side, so no, I didn’t expect anyone here to want to escape.”
“And Endall?”
“I let him go. No fight.”
“Wait. What is that?” Vera says, her hands spreading out onto the table in front of her.
We all stop talking, stop moving. There’s the faintest hum in our ears and beneath our feet. The holo images on the wall screens blur ever so slightly.
The door slides open and Cy runs in, his face ashen.
“We’re in trouble. Someone’s found Wingfield.”
CHAPTER 33
WE YELL THE QUESTION SIMULTANEOUSLY. “WHO?”
“I don’t know. Come look.”
I grab the book of poetry, and we all exit to spill into the hallway. Above us, a coal-gray cloud shaped like a huge diamond darkens the watery ceiling.
Wait. Not a cloud. A hoverpod.
Kria shakes her head. “That can’t be! I have an understanding with Minwi. They keep our airspace locked out.”
“Maybe this isn’t someone from Minwi,” Marka says.
Kria wrings her hands again. “We need to prepare to evacuate.”
“But we just got here!” Hex says, his four arms rising into the air in exasperation.
“Where are we going to go?” Vera says. She’s already at Marka’s side, holding her hand.
“Wilbert,” Kria barks. “Go to the hoverpod and fix that broken cloaking panel. Now! Everyone else, grab only what’s crucial and head to the main common room. There’s a direct passageway to the hoverpod hangar from there. I’ll call my contact and see what’s going on.” She immediately puts her hand to her holo stud, running down the hallway.
My heart and mind are a tangle of panic. I don’t know what to say, or where to go. Cy rushes to my side. “I have a bad feeling,” Cy says.
“Yeah, I hate those.”
Dyl rushes to my side, clasping her necklace around her neck. “I reassembled Dad’s ring again. We erased the data we just downloaded. It’s ready to be torched if we need to.”
“Where is Élodie?” I ask Cy.
“Yeah. That’s where the bad feeling comes in,” Cy tells us. “I can’t find her anywhere.”
“Do you think she . . . They said someone inside here transmitted a message.”
“Why would she do that?” Cy says, more to himself than to us. “No. It can’t be. She doesn’t have a holo stud.”
“Wait. Where’s Ana?” I ask.
“She’s still sleeping. C’mon, we have to get her.”
In her room, Ana’s staring at the dark shape above her room, spellbound. She’s so freaked out that we have to pack her stuff for her. Together, we gallop to our rooms and gather a few scant belongings. The only thing I care about is Ana’s glass unicorn, which I wrap inside several layers of clothes.
We race back to the main room, the one with the column of fish. All the kids in Wingfield are here, chattering away nervously, staring at the hoverpod still fixed in our watery sky. What are they waiting for?
Kria makes a motion for everyone to be quiet. “I’ve spoken to my contact in Minwi. It’s not the State police. They said that officials from Inky and Neia have forced a federal warrant to search the area on a tip.”
“A tip?” Micah asks. He looks around. “From who?”
“From me.”
We all spin around, searching for the owner of that statement. Élodie steps from behind a broad chair, where she must have been hiding. Her sunglasses hide her expression as she holds out an emerald-green holo stud in her palm. It’s a police holo. She must have snuck away in Chicago to contact them.
“Élodie. Qu’avez-vous fait?” Cy asks, his voice shaking with hurt.
“What I’ve always set out to do. It wasn’t enough to kill the senator. I leaked the truth about Aureus’s products, and sent the shipment to the wrong place in Okks.” She curls her lips back in a grimace. “The momentum was never enough. But now, they’ll recover the list. And it will all be over,” she says, waving at the ring hanging from Dyl’s neck. Dyl clutches it with fear, her eyes catching mine. I can read my own emotions in her face.
Run. We have to run away. Now.
“Why would you want them to have that power over us?” Marka asks. She tries to approach Élodie, who stops Marka with a bitter glance.
“They will always have power over us, because we weren’t meant to be. Benten was evil and selfish for making us. What are we but slaves? That’s all we’ve ever been since we were born. We aren’t normal. We aren’t pure.”
Slick tears track down her cheeks from her covered eyes. Cy motions to Marka to step away, and instead he closes the distance between himself and Élodie.
“You didn’t have to do this. You could have talked to me.”
“You stopped listening a long time ago, Cyrad,” she whispers to him. “You had a chance, but you let her”—she points at me, and the gesture is like a knife in my chest—“you let her convince you that using those . . . mistakes . . . was better than hiding them.”
No one speaks.
“Forget this. Forget all of it,” Dyl says. “Let’s get out of here. We don’t have to stay and be arrested and killed. We have a hoverpod, right?” she asks Kria.
“No. No one’s leaving. Ever,” Blink says, still standing by the door. She withdraws the long tool that Kria was using to repair the hoverpod, and with a swift motion, jams it into the nearly invisible panel by the door that controls the opening mechanism. Cy and Tegg lunge for her but she manages to stab the panel one more time before Tegg pulls her from the door and slams her against the wall. Élodie cries out in pain before she crumples to the floor, unmoving.
“Was that the only way out?” Marka asks Kria, and she shakes her head.
“No. There’s a door in the far corner going to the hoverpod.” Several of us rush over there, but the door won’t open.
“Wilbert?” Kria calls into her holo. “Are you there?”
“Yes. Cal and I are in the hoverpod. I fixed the panel. Where are you guys?”
“You’ve got to come upstairs. The doors have been deactivated.”
“We’re on our way. I’ve a got a good nanocircuit liquid patch that should work.”
Oh thank goodness for Wilbert and his liquid nanocircuits! We all breathe a sigh of relief, but we still know what hovers above Wingfield. Ana quivers in Marka’s arms and Dyl won’t stop squeezing my hand. Élodie comes to.
“Someone tie her arms together,” Kria orders.
“I’m sorry,”
Élodie cries. Her face is turned to Cy. “I’m so sorry,” she repeats, crawling on the floor to the center of the room. Soon, she’s sitting against the tall water column as the gold-and-purple fish zing up and down by the glass, anticipating a feeding of fish food. Her hands splay on the glass as she cries. There’s a little clink of her Inky bracelet against the glass.
Oh my god.
“Get her away from there!” I scream, pitching Dyl away and running as fast as I can. Everything happens in slow motion. My feet won’t run fast enough as Élodie swings her arm back. Cy’s eyes widen in horror when he sees what she’s doing, but we’re both too late.
Élodie slams her bracelet with brutal force against the glass and everything explodes.
Glass flies everywhere, along with a huge gush of impossibly strong water that pours from the broken column into the room. Screams fill the air as everyone flails in the white water. The surge is so strong that it knocks the closest people off their feet, and blood mixes with water as the huge shards of glass slice in the roiling, rising waves.
Marka’s yelling for everyone to grab furniture, and Kria is screaming through her holo for Wilbert to get to the doors.
It’s chaos. And the water is rising so fast, it’ll be at the ceiling within a few minutes.
Élodie’s half submerged in the water, her right arm now a ragged, torn stump. Cy fights the flotsam to get to her side. He squeezes her wrist hard with his hands, and she jerks away, crying in agony.
“No! Let me be!”
“I can stop the bleeding, Élodie. Please . . . I can help!” He squeezes his eyes shut, concentrating. He’s using his trait to pinch her torn arteries shut.
“No! Let me go! God, if you ever loved me, Cyrad, please. I beg you. Let me go!” she screeches.
Tegg and Micah tumble off a table that’s floating nearby, and Tegg’s armored leg accidentally kicks Cy squarely in the face as he falls. Cy shakes his head, stunned. Immediately, Élodie’s stump begins to bleed profusely again. She closes her eyes and sinks beneath the water.
“Élodie!” Cy screams, but it’s impossible to see her under the churning debris.
“I can’t get it open!” Wilbert’s face shows in the holo floating above Kria where she’s treading bubbling water. “The circuit board is drenched!” he yells. There’s a hammering outside the wall, but it only sounds like a distant, quiet thud amidst the roar of splashing and hollers for help. Wilbert is trying to break open the door by hand, but there’s no way he’ll break through in time.
Dyl’s face, cold and wet, presses against my cheek. Her icy hands cling to my waist, and she’s hyperventilating, like I am. Ten feet away against the front wall, Micah stares at us both, but he doesn’t carry that haunted look anymore. In fact, he doesn’t look scared at all.
“Dyl,” he yells over the rushing water. “I am sorry. For you and for Ana, and everything.”
“Can we please talk about this later?” Dyl screams back.
“There’s never going to be a later,” he hollers. His eyes are bloodshot red, and though he’s as soaked as we are, I realize—he’s crying. He starts hyperventilating, gulping air so hard, I wonder if he’s having convulsions or something. After one last look at Dyl, he squeezes his eyes shut and dives beneath the splashing waves.
“Micah!” I scream, but Dyl clutches me so hard, there’s no way I can swim to him. The last we see are his feet kicking and propelling him down to where Élodie jammed the door shut.
The rising water forces us up against the ceiling now. I can touch the force field above that keeps the quarry water from penetrating the ceiling. It feels like vinyl and static electricity mixed together, but as hard as I pummel it, I can’t push through. My legs are exhausted from kicking to keep my head above the water.
A huge, bubbling explosion sounds from somewhere. Suddenly, our heads aren’t bobbing against the ceiling. A strong undertow pulls us closer to the wall as water is sucked down into a vortex.
Micah’s maimed body floats up like a cork, facedown in the water. Red seeps from his tattered, blown-off wrist.
Oh god. He detonated his bracelet to open the door. Dyl shrieks so loudly, the pain pierces my skull. I search frantically for Cy.
“Cy! You have to help Micah! His arm!” I yell, trying to gesture to him. But Cy is behind a berg of floating furniture, pinning him into a corner. The water continues to drain down and within a few minutes, we’re able to stand chest deep in the watery mess.
“C’mon! Everyone to the hangar, now!” Kria yells. We all dive below the surface and let ourselves get sucked out through the broken doorframe. After a slide and a scramble to our feet, Dyl and I find each other, coughing and sputtering.
“Go, go, go!” Cy says, waving us down the corridor.
“What about Micah?” Dyl grabs Marka’s sodden sleeve, but Marka’s eyes say everything.
“We can’t leave him,” Dyl says, shivering so hard, her teeth clack.
Kria shakes her head. “Dyl, we have to go.”
“No. We’re all leaving together,” I say, and I mean it. “It won’t take long. C’mon. Cy, you get Élodie. The rest of us will bring Micah’s body.”
Grimly, we fight the gushing knee-high water. Micah’s and Élodie’s limp bodies are draped over the debris. I know exactly what to expect, but as soon as I fix on Micah’s vacantly staring eyes and gray face, I burst out sobbing. Dyl’s face is empty and haunted.
“Come on. We can’t stay here. We have to go,” she says, and we gingerly pick up his legs, while Kria and Marka lift his shoulders. Cy picks up Elodie’s sagging body. She looks as if she’s only sleeping. His lips are pressed together in a tight line. I don’t know how he’s keeping it together.
We rush as fast as we can down the slippery spiral hallway. I glance up to see the dark gray diamond of the hoverpod still there. I don’t know how we can possibly escape with that thing out there, waiting for us.
The hangar is lit with blue lights everywhere, and the door to the hoverpod is open. We see Hex and Vera just inside it. Their faces relax with relief when they see us galloping in our soaked clothes, heavily burdened, and they run out to help carry the bodies aboard.
We all scramble inside and lay Micah and Élodie gently on the floor.
“Go sit down, quickly,” Kria says, hitting a button to secure the hatch closed. I squelch wetly down on a seat between Cy and Dyl. Wilbert’s already in the pilot seat and Kria runs past me to strap into the copilot seat.
The entire hoverpod begins to hum and there’s a telltale lurch when we launch off the ground. All around us, the windows only show the hangar’s lights. The huge front wall of the hangar begins to rise, and blue quarry water rushes in to flood the space.
“Uh, this thing is waterproof, right?” I ask nervously.
“It better be,” Dyl whispers as the water level rises over the windows. This is too similar to our near-drowning in the room, so I stop watching the windows. I glance over to Marka.
“Where are we going?”
“I spoke to Kria. I don’t think we have a choice. We’re going to land in Canada and see if we can get refugee status there.”
Dyl, Cy, and the others around us nod. At first, I’m relieved. Having protected status sounds like a great idea. But then I think of the thirty other kids on the list. If we’re out of the country, how on earth can I help keep them safe?
“Wait. We can’t go to Canada,” I blurt out to Marka, and she stares back at me like I’m nuts.
“Zelia, we don’t have a choice.”
“If we leave the States, we’ve lost the war. Don’t you see?”
Tegg leans over and gives me a rude look. “If we stay, we’re dead. I vote for ‘not-dead.’”
“We can’t argue about this. Not now.” There’s a hard edge to Marka’s words that nips at my heart. I don’t like fighting with her, but I ca
n’t help it. Leaving the States is the wrong choice.
The hanger is now completely flooded and open to the quarry. The hoverpod glides through the blue water. As it rises and breaks the surface with sheets of water pouring down the windows, Wilbert steers away from the other gray pod hovering above Wingfield.
“There’s a transmission coming in,” Kria announces. “Hold your hats.”
“We don’t have any hats,” Wilbert says.
“Shhh!” Caliga says. “Listen.”
“PLEASE LAND YOUR CRAFT IMMEDIATELY. ANY ATTEMPT TO FLEE WILL BE CONSIDERED AN OFFENSIVE MANEUVER AND YOU WILL BE FIRED UPON.”
Wilbert’s hands are squeezing the steering mechanism so hard, his hands are half-white, half-pink.
“Kria, what do I do?”
She’s gripping the dash of the hovercraft and not moving. We’re all twisted in our seats to watch her. The other Wingfield kids are all murmuring among themselves. Flee. Give up. It’s over. Just make a run for it. Oh god and Oh my god. It’s over.
Her chin drops and she rests a hand on Wilbert’s shoulder.
“Land it.”
“What?” Wilbert croaks.
“Are we going to fight them?” Tegg asks, flexing beneath his armored skin.
“We can’t. We’ll certainly die if we fight. We need to be far more clever than that.”
• • •
OUR HOVERPOD SINKS THROUGH THE AIR AND approaches the swath of wild grass by the edge of the quarry. There’s a crunch as the landing gear gets a foothold on the firm ground. The other gray hoverpod floats close by and lands right in front of us.
For a moment, we all sit there. I memorize the faces of everyone around me.
So this is what surrender feels like, Cy says in my head.
CHAPTER 34
COME WITH ME, CY SAYS IN MY HEAD. We can’t let Kria and Marka do this part alone.
I nod and unbuckle myself. Dyl gives me a questioning look of worry and panic.