Numbers Collide (Numbers Game Saga Book 5)

by Rebecca Rode

  “I wouldn’t joke about this. I’ll call Travers when I get outside.” She patted her pocket, where I knew she hid her short-range radio. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  My jaw clenched. She met my gaze with a determined stare of her own. Only Legacy would threaten to end a relationship over her boyfriend trying to save her life.

  A rough day, I assured myself. That’s all it is. She’ll come to her senses tomorrow.

  “Fine,” I said in a nonchalant tone. “But I’m going first.” I stepped outside and closed the door behind me before she could say a word. Then I slid my stunner out and checked every possible hiding place in the hallway and stairwell. Not a soul, even outside. At least none of my neighbors had heard the intruder’s yelling.

  I was on my third pass around the dead lawn when Legacy stalked out. She reached the sidewalk just as Travers pulled up.

  “All clear, princess,” I growled just loudly enough for her to hear. Deep down, I knew I was being a jerk, but she wasn’t exactly helping things either.

  She didn’t spare me a glance, just yanked the transport door open and launched herself inside. The door slammed shut as the vehicle sped away and vanished into the darkness.

  Four

  Kole

  Somewhere in my nightmares, I knew two things: darkness surrounded me, and the darkness was hot.

  Thick blackness clogged my throat and lungs like smoky tar. It wouldn’t go away no matter how hard I coughed.

  I threw myself free of the mattress and hit the floor, hard. Orange light flickered from beneath the door, revealing a black cloud pouring in around the doorframe. No wonder I couldn’t breathe. Hot tears forced my eyes into rapid blinking, and my ears refused to clear. Then I realized it wasn’t my ears—it was the sound of flames devouring my living room.

  This was no dream.

  Alarm slapped my mind awake. My door was all that kept me alive right now. My only exit would be the window, but fire escapes didn’t exist in the Shadows. The buildings had insurance to back their worth, but human beings didn’t. Anyone poor enough to live here wasn’t worth saving.

  Something crashed on the other side of the door. Part of the roof?

  The window it is.

  I threw the window open so hard the glass rattled in its frame. The fresh air made me gasp. I stood there, panting, looking at the long drop below as the black smoke billowed out past me.

  I could jump to the ground four stories below. I might live through it. It would just break both my legs and probably my neck while I was at it. It would take Dane all of twenty-four hours to discover me at the hospital and finish me off. A flash of memory returned—my mom with Dane’s knife in her chest and the life draining from her eyes. I had no desire to repeat that scene from a gurney.

  No. Jumping and taking a chance on my life wasn’t an option. The roof, then. There had to be a section that hadn’t caught fire yet.

  I turned around and pulled myself up by the window frame. An extension of rooftop jutted out above me, the one benefit of living on the top floor. I grabbed it and immediately jerked my hand away. Even the shingles felt like molten tar. The fire had spread far beyond my living room.

  Several slams echoed in the night as others opened their own windows. One woman screamed for help on the floor beneath me, her voice shrill and terrified. I looked down and swore.

  Not a woman. A child. She couldn’t be older than eight or nine.

  I ran through my options, which had seriously begun to dwindle by this point, and made a quick decision. As bad as ending up in the hospital seemed, abandoning a kid would be worse.

  I adjusted my grip on the windowsill and set my sights downward, lowering my body with shaking arms until my toes reached the top lip of the girl’s window frame. Now for the hard part. I grabbed a drain pipe that ran beneath my window, and when it began to pull away from the wall, I balanced most of my weight on my toes. A deep breath, and I lowered myself to the windowsill. My grip slipped a bit from perspiration, but I took a few short breaths, coughed, and continued on. Soon I crouched on her windowsill, grabbing the frame for support.

  “Climb onto my back!” I shouted to the girl.

  She pulled back and wrapped her arms around herself. As her arms moved, I saw what I hadn’t been able to see before. Another face, and even more afraid. A little brother, perhaps two or three years old. Somewhere inside, a massive crash shook the building.

  My lips released a torrent of curses now. From the sound of it, their parents weren’t coming to get them.

  I extended an arm. “Can you hold on?”

  Her eyes went wide, and she pulled back again.

  Great. Just as I lifted one foot to slide inside after her, the building shook again. I grabbed for the window frame with both hands but missed and found myself falling, scrambling to find something to catch me, something—

  And one hand caught the windowsill.

  I reached up with the other and hung there, my legs trembling and my breath coming in quiet gasps. Just above me, muffled sobs came from the children, who watched with round, horrified eyes. They knew the same thing I did—I’d nearly plummeted to the ground alone. How was I supposed to help two kids reach the ground safely?

  A long wail sounded in the distance. The fire team. Finally. A crowd gathered below, and several of the neighbors I’d spent the past weeks avoiding watched with upturned, anxious faces. A glance up revealed a bright orange light coming through my bedroom window. My room was now aflame. That meant we didn’t have much time here either. The fire team would be here in a few minutes, but those were minutes these kids didn’t have.

  I gripped the sill with both hands, alarmed at the shaking in my fingers. “I need you to climb onto my shoulders,” I called up to the girl. “Can you do that?”

  She shook her head.

  “We need to help your brother get out,” I said, switching tactics. “If you can lower him down to me, I’ll hold him while you climb onto my shoulders. Are you willing to try?”

  She paused but then nodded shyly.

  “Good. Now, it’s time to be really strong. I know you can do this. Lift him out, but hold on to his arms really tight.”

  The boy cringed as she wrapped her arms around him from behind and lifted him with a grunt. Then his legs and a couple of tiny bare feet appeared.

  I ordered my grip to hold and reached upward, guiding him down, then placed his arms around my neck, feeling his legs curl around my ribs. I lifted my knee upward to help support his weight.

  “Hold on tight,” I told him. “Don’t let go of my neck no matter what.”

  He gave a tiny sob and buried his face in my chest.

  I looked upward at the girl, ready to tell her to climb onto my back, but my entire body trembled from exertion now. My fingers felt like they were coated in butter and slid backward no matter how hard I gripped. I could barely hold my weight, let alone the boy’s. If I added any more weight, we’d all be done for.

  The girl must have seen the fear on my face because she started to weep.

  “I’ll take the boy!” a woman called out from below, and I felt hands grabbing my legs, guiding them to the next windowsill down. Then she extended her arms. “Slide him down. I won’t let him fall.”

  I believed her. It was my own arms I didn’t trust. But I nodded and peeled the boy’s arms off my neck one-handed. “Hold on to my leg now,” I told him, and he wrapped himself around it like the baby monkeys in the old zoo videos.

  It took a minute to ease him down, but the woman finally grabbed him. His weight lifted from me, and I took a second to wipe the perspiration off my fingers before looking upward at the girl. My precarious perch on the hot window frame below me wouldn’t hold forever. My legs trembled. The girl’s eyes were anchored on her brother, making sure he reached safety. I heard a shout as a bearded man positioned himself below us, calling to the woman, offering to catch the boy. A two-story drop instead of three. It could mean the difference between life and death.<
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  Something collapsed above us, sending a cloud of deadly smoke and hot debris showering onto my head. The girl yelped and ducked back inside as I lowered my head to protect my face, pieces of the collapsing roof singeing my scalp. The building shuddered and groaned, an awful, soulless cry, like a wounded animal approaching death. It sent goose bumps across my flesh despite the incredible heat.

  “Your turn,” I shouted up to the girl.

  Her face appeared again. She sent a quick look inside, as if waiting for her parents, then swung down and stepped onto my shoulders, sliding down to wrap her arms around my neck like her brother had. Her weight hadn’t quite settled yet when an explosion of massive heat tore my hands from the windowsill.

  There was nothing but air.

  The girl shrieked, clutching me tighter, closing off what little air supply I had. I flailed, grabbing for the sill again, all the while knowing I was falling and the girl would fall with me and I couldn’t save her after all.

  Something snapped tight around my waist.

  My hand found something hard and solid—a windowsill?—and we slammed into the building once again, eliciting a yelp from the girl and a grunt from me. I grabbed the sill with my other hand and hung, panting and staring upward incredulously. The window I’d perched above just a second earlier was just above us now. I barely felt the scrapes along my legs and feet for the realization that I was alive.

  Then I understood the source of our salvation—a bedsheet wrapped around my waist. The second-floor woman must have thrown it around me earlier. As I fell backward, she’d yanked hard enough to pull us back. Even now, I saw the effort in her red face as she grunted, her entire body shaking, hovering just inches above us. Had she wrapped the sheet around a bedpost for leverage? Smart woman.

  She’d probably intended to use this for her own escape. I shot her a grateful smile, one she returned with a shaky grin.

  “Tell me when you’re ready, and I’ll take the girl,” the bearded man called from below.

  A few breaths to calm myself, and I helped the girl down. Through the hot, black smoke and my warm tears, I caught a glimpse of him catching the girl and carrying her across the lawn to the street, where he set her down next to her crying brother. They wrapped their arms around one another. As the man strode back to us, I turned to the woman above me.

  “Your turn,” I called to her, reaching upward.

  Then the building exploded.

  I looked up at the night sky. I felt something soft beneath me. I took in a long, deep breath of clean air and winced at the sharp pain that followed. The ground below me felt wet and, oh, so very cold against my burned and scraped skin.

  A man’s face appeared above me, his mouth moving as if yelling, but no sound emerged. Then I realized I could hear nothing but a faint, persistent, muffled ringing. I shoved the man’s face away and sat up—or tried to, as my body refused to cooperate—and let my eyes focus on the odd lump of soft and hard beneath me.

  A body.

  I scrambled to my feet, or tried to anyway, and ended up on my backside again. The bearded man’s eyes lay open, distant, and sightless. From the angle of his head, I knew he wouldn’t be seeing anything ever again.

  It all came back, and I turned to the pulsing, glowing mass of orange light and smoke. Only a massive pile of rubble remained where my building had just been. Debris covered the lawn. No, not debris. Bodies covered in dirt and blood. Black, brown, red, and gray—all too clear under the bright moon.

  My hearing pulsed, returning in slow bursts of sound. Shuddering sobs sounded in slices from several of the spectators. The boy I’d just helped wailed from the street, his hand held by his dumbstruck older sister. I released a long breath, grateful they were both fine. I searched the frantic crowd with growing dread. The woman who’d helped the three of us was nowhere to be seen.

  Several of the figures on the lawn sat up, groaning, their voices muffled. I counted them and quickly did the math. Four stories, four apartments each. There must be two or three dozen people still unaccounted for.

  The shaking in my body turned violent, and suddenly I was cold despite the wave of heat emanating from the building.

  So many deaths.

  I held my side, testing a deep breath. Probably a bruised or cracked rib or two. My body felt pummeled, and my lungs wouldn’t be the same for a long time. But I was alive. I shot another glance at the man who’d cushioned my fall, feeling a pang of regret. I chose to believe he’d been dead before I landed. I couldn’t handle the alternative right now.

  “That fire spread way too fast to be natural,” someone said, the voice sounding far away as my ears adjusted. In the distance, the fire team transport pulled up. “I’ve seen dead trees burn slower than that. Foul play here. I’m sure of it.”

  Now that I could focus on something other than survival, a nagging suspicion gripped my senses. Foul play indeed. That Chadd guy? He could have pretended to run away and then come back to set the fire. But why announce himself first?

  I shook my head. If he did this, it was under someone else’s direction. And I knew exactly who that someone was. This would make the eleventh arsonist attack in seven weeks, and only one person in this city was greedy enough to kill a building of innocents just to make a point.

  “You win, Uncle,” I muttered into the night. “Let’s play.”

  Five

  Legacy

  I absently pulled the crust off my toast in one long piece, then tossed it onto the plate. I hadn’t taken the crust off my bread like this since my dress-wearing phase at age five. Apparently, my lack of sleep was sending my brain spiraling into childhood.

  The kitchen around me offered no answers. It stood still and quiet, just as hours before when I gave up on sleep and crept downstairs past Gram’s sleeping door guard, Bernard. Everyone in the house slept except the person who actually needed brainpower today. By lunchtime, a dozen or more new supporters would find my scouts and join our cause. By dinner, I would receive a lecture from my cabinet about training my followers for battle. They didn’t realize I had a different plan, one that didn’t involve arming those who only wanted to protect their families. Any day now, General Knox would arrive from the border to assist us. Then we’d storm the Block, take the Copper Office back, and throw Alex and his Firebrands behind bars.

  Meanwhile, Millian would discover how to heal the affected citizens, and Physician Redd would unravel the mystery of implant removal. I would take control until Dad awoke, and all would return to normal.

  But until then, I’d suffer one sleepless night after another, worrying about all the things that could possibly go wrong while my brother hunted me like a rabbit.

  “I hate this,” I muttered to the empty kitchen.

  “That’s because it’s old bread,” Travers said from the bottom of the stairwell. “There’s a better loaf in the pantry. In fact, let me make you a new piece. Toast is the one thing I excel at cooking.” What remained of his still-wet gray hair glistened, his chin freshly shaven. He wore civilian clothes again today—trousers with a casual collared shirt—although I knew he preferred Dad’s black uniform. I’d had to order him to wear something less conspicuous or he wouldn’t be driving me anywhere.

  To a stranger, Travers looked every inch the stiff driver this morning. But I saw the redness in his eyes. Travers hadn’t slept much either.

  I tossed the uneaten toast onto my plate and sighed. “I’m not really hungry.”

  “Couldn’t sleep?”

  Not at all. That response would earn me a one-way ticket back to bed, so I just said, “I have a lot on my mind.”

  He watched me, weighing my response. “Are you ready to talk about what happened with Kole?”

  I shook my head. That made the third time he’d asked me that question since I dove into the transport last night, but my answer would remain the same for some time yet. I still didn’t know what to make of Kole’s strange behavior last night. Protectiveness was one thing, but he�
�d acted almost irrationally. Paranoid. Like he and I stood against the world, including everyone I loved.

  He’d acted exactly as Physician Redd warned he would.

  Travers crossed the old carpet, eyed my plate, and gave me a wry smile. “I know exactly what you need. A nice, peaceful drive. I’ll fetch some of the guards outside to come along.”

  “No guards,” I said quickly. “But a drive sounds perfect.”

  The park before us was as quiet as our safe house had been. A bright line of sunlight moved toward us with the rising sun. The sky looked almost blue today. A clear day for once. But, for some reason, it only added to the weight I carried in my chest, especially when I looked at the dull, gray morph of a metal statue in the center of the park.

  Travers ordered the transport to park behind an abandoned truck to hide it from view. Then he turned around in his seat.

  “I thought we were going for a drive,” I said, pretending I didn’t already know exactly where this conversation was headed.

  “We did. Now we’re stopping.”

  “Because I haven’t visited Mom’s statue yet,” I guessed.

  He gave me a long look. “I know grief when I see it.”

  Folding my arms, I sat back in my seat. Disappointment added weight to the pain in my chest. Travers may have misinterpreted the source of my silence this morning, but he was dead on about the grief.

  I refused to believe Physician Redd could be right about Kole. The expression on my boyfriend’s face as he suffered under Virgil’s brutal attack returned to my mind, making me cringe, and I banished the memory to the far ends of my brain. Kole never discussed it, preferring to pretend it had never happened, and I’d been all too eager to comply. But if I’d pushed him to get treatment before now, would things be different? In some ways, was I just as guilty of the damage he now suffered?