by G. P. Ching
The blond boy takes my elbow and lifts me out of the chair.
The next thing I know, I’m in my apartment, staring out the window at the sunset. I’ve lost hours, again. My own mind is hiding from me. I lived those hours, I’m sure. I put one foot in front of the other, followed the officer to my apartment, and sank into this chair, but I’m not here, not really. I am a ghost. Is this a side effect of the drugs David has given me, or my mind’s way of shutting out the world, of escaping into an internal oblivion?
My father places his hand on my shoulder and gives it a firm shake. “Are you all right, Lydia?”
I turn my head and look up into his warm brown eyes. “Are you disappointed in me?”
He growls and squeezes my shoulder. “Of course not.”
“This life. This isn’t what you wanted for yourself or for me.”
With a deep sigh, he hobbles to the kitchen to grab a chair from the dinette set and drags it next to the recliner I’m in. When he’s settled, he faces me. “You know as well as I do that we don’t decide which hand we are dealt, only the way we play it. If my wife and son had lived through the accident, would I have stayed where I was? Most certainly. But the first time I held you, I wanted a very different life than what I had with them. You’ve been a blessing, an abundant joy. I’m so proud of you, Lydia.” A solitary tear etches a trail down his cheek.
“I don’t feel joyful, Dad. And I don’t think I get to choose how to play my hand. All of my choices have been taken from me.”
“You’ve been dealt a hand a lot like the one I got when the hospital called me about the accident. It’s a life changer, sure. But here’s what I learned about that. When the other player is cheating, the rules of the game don’t apply anymore.”
I nod out of habit but he grabs my shoulder harshly and shakes until I meet his eyes again.
“The rules don’t apply to you,” he says more firmly, emphasizing each word. He rubs my hand. “I’ve raised you in a certain way in a certain place under a certain set of circumstances. But that doesn’t matter now. You’re in the devil’s playground and here, the devil makes the rules. When you deal with the devil, sometimes you’ve got to break the rules to save your soul. You’ve got to know when wrong is right, and the only person who can make that decision is you. I was in your shoes once, when a man who glowed like a star left a baby in my arms.”
As serious as his expression is, he looks better, stronger than he has in weeks. “Do you trust me?” I ask. “To play the hand I’m dealt? In any way I have to?”
“Even if it means the end of me,” he whispers.
I take a deep breath and slowly let it out. “If it means your life, there is no choice.”
A derisive snort cuts me off. “Lydia, there are always choices. Your problem is, you don’t want to have to live with the consequences. You are the strongest young lady I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing, but I wish you’d known my wife. She’d tell you that the hard part about being a woman is knowing which rivers to row and when to get out of the boat. What consequences are you willing to live with? I’m with you whatever you choose.”
“So am I,” Jeremiah says from behind me.
I turn to face him. The weeks he’s spent in this cage have taken their toll. Dark circles shade his eyes, and he’s developed a cynical hunch. It is more than just my life the Green Republic holds in its deadly grip, and I’m beginning to think that death might be better than what lies in store for me.
29
“Jeremiah, if anything should ever happen to me, do you promise to take care of my father?”
He grits his teeth. “You know I will.”
I gather my hair, refastening my ponytail and pulling it tight. “We’ve got to do something. We can’t remain prisoners here forever.”
My father glances at the lamp. We’ve been so very careful about who’s listening or watching.
“I don’t care,” I say. “I’m sick of all of it. Prepare yourselves.” I stand and walk toward the door. It’s locked, of course.
“Lydia?” my father asks.
“Prepare,” I whisper again.
Jeremiah nods and helps my father from the room.
Instead of trying to unlock the door, I place my hands on the nearby wall. I can sense wires behind the paint, like a regular person might feel a pulse beneath skin. I trace the wires to a square of energy inside the wall to my right. If my theory is correct, this is the source that powers the lock. I use my fingernail to mark the paint over my target.
My father and Jeremiah return with shoes and sweaters on.
Shoulders squared, I face my mark. With a deep breath and a snap of my arm, I draw the power into my hands. The air around me glows blue and a hum, like an engine roaring to life, comes from the general vicinity of my heart. I hurl my power at my target, into the box behind the wall, a lightning bolt that I cut off from myself, just in case.
Not only does the door open, but a smoking hole appears in the wall. The lights blink on and off. I shouldn’t be surprised when the sirens start, but I jump at the noise. Jeremiah and my father stare at me with wide eyes, waiting for my direction. I can’t let them down.
“We won’t have long,” I say. “Go, quickly. Left. To the stairwell. Hug the south wall.” The wail of the siren builds to a deafening pitch.
Jeremiah helps my father out the door. I bolt past them to the place where I’ve felt Korwin’s presence. I pray he’s still there. I blow another hole in the wall and kick in the door.
The room is nothing like the apartment I’ve come from. It’s a one-room prison. Korwin lies face down on a cot, one arm hanging limply off the side, wearing nothing but thin white pajama bottoms.
“Korwin?” I rush to him and shake his shoulder. He’s ashen, like a corpse. I shake him again, harder, and roll him onto his back.
His eyes flutter open. “Drained,” he mumbles. The telltale remnants of circular wire attachments are all over his body.
“What have they done to you?”
He doesn’t answer but stares at me with dead eyes from under hooded lids.
“I’m going to juice you. We’ve got to go. It isn’t safe.” I cup his face and my blue glow bathes him in light. As I lower my lips to his, the draw I’ve felt to Korwin from the very beginning takes hold. My energy flows into him freely, in one direction at first, but then just as Maxwell explained, the flip comes and the power between us morphs into something else, dividing and multiplying. He is empty, so it takes some time before the power returns to me. But when it does, it almost knocks me off the bed. Our cells feed each other, revolving faster and faster. Atoms in a perpetual dance of motion heat the air around us. Energy pours out and in until my muscles twitch and the paint on the wall behind Korwin begins to peel and singe.
Korwin breaks the connection and scrambles to his feet. He paces for a moment, getting his bearings.
“Better?” I ask.
“Oh yeah!” A blue shiver dances under his skin. He points toward the hall, at the flashing lights and the blaring sirens. “You?”
“Me.” I lace my fingers into his and pull him toward the hall. “We don’t have much time.”
“Do you know where my father is?” he yells over the sirens.
“No. I haven’t seen him in weeks, not since the holding cell.”
“There’s someone next door. I’ve heard them… moaning,” he says. “Maybe it’s him.”
“Let’s go.”
I bust through the neighboring door, but Maxwell Stuart isn’t there. Instead, I find a skeletal woman covered in sores. I have a strong hunch I know who this is.
“Natasha.”
She rolls her head toward me on the cot. She’s clearly ill. If what David tells me is true, they don’t have to drain her. Without Konrad’s stabilizer, her body will feed on itself and eventually die. This is why David helped the Greens. Natasha is the hold Konrad has over him.
“We need to take her with us,” I say.
“What? W
e can’t.” Korwin glances back at the door, then up at the camera in the ceiling.
“She’s one of the Alpha Eight.”
He shakes his head, his brow furrowing. “She can’t be. They all died.”
“We don’t have time for this, Korwin,” I yell. “Trust me. You need to carry her, so I can fight.”
For a moment he seems at war with himself but thankfully it doesn’t last long. Korwin scoops her into his arms and we rush to meet the others. We make it to the end of the hall, to the locked stairwell door, where Jeremiah and my father wait for us.
“Who is that?” Jeremiah asks.
“A soul who needs our help,” I say. Bracing myself, I blast the door. The stairwell is empty. “Twenty-one floors down,” I command. “I’ll go ahead.”
Jeremiah hooks my father’s arm around his shoulders, helping him forward, and we begin our descent. The incessant blare of the alarm makes it impossible to listen for footsteps. I jog ahead of them, hands flaming blue. It’s a good thing I’m ready. I make it only ten floors before green uniforms fill the stairwell. More than bullets are waiting for me. I dive out of the way and the scramblers barely miss me.
I aim for their knees, electric blue flying from my hands. Screams echo through the stairwell as the men fold to the concrete.
David is a genius. Aside from being the only place in CGEF without security cameras, only so many men can fit on the landing, and they have to come from below, giving me the advantage.
I bound off the far wall, rotating in the air, and kick the door closed. It slams on an entering officer’s head, throwing him backward into the man behind him. A scrambler probe hits the wall next to me, one of the fallen men trying to play the hero despite his wrecked legs. With one hand I solder the door closed and with the other I wrestle the weapon from his fingers, thankful that the scramblers take fifteen seconds to recharge—another tip from David.
“Don’t even think about it,” I say to another who reaches for his dropped scrambler. “I’ll fry you like bacon.”
He retracts his hand.
Jeremiah and Korwin reach the landing about the time I collect the last weapon.
“Looks like you handled this,” Korwin says, almost reverently.
I strap a scrambler to his belt and then to Jeremiah’s. Another goes to my father, and I wrap Natasha’s limp fingers around one. She’s more dead than alive, but it only seems fair.
The officers pound on the welded entryway. “Open the door,” Konrad yells. I should have known it was only a matter of time before he joined the party. “There’s no way out, Lydia. Think about the consequences.”
My thoughts immediately jump to Maxwell, but there’s no time to find him. Giving up now won’t help anyone.
“We’ve got to keep moving,” I say. I race down the steps, soldering door after door before Green Republic officers can reach us. But I am oddly unchallenged. There’s only one way out of this building—and it’s on the first floor. I’m willing to bet that’s where the officers are waiting. There will be no way out but through them.
“Do you have her?” David’s voice cracks from below me. He steps out from the doorway of the training room onto the second-floor landing. By the pounding behind him, I know he’s barricaded himself in. There’s a bag over his shoulder and his face looks drawn.
“Yes,” I say. “She’s coming.”
He exhales a ragged breath just as Korwin turns the corner with Natasha in his arms.
“Jameson?” Korwin asks, bewildered.
Three stairs at a time, David jogs up the steps to him, lifting Natasha into his arms. “Nat! Nat! I’m here.”
“Too late,” she rasps.
He jumps to the landing, laying her down on the floor. Removing the bag from his shoulder, he produces a syringe and vial of neon blue liquid. Konrad’s serum. With shaking hands he draws up a heavy dose and thrusts it into her thigh.
Her eyes pop open, and she screams like he’s ripping her in half.
“David,” I yell. “We have to get out of here!”
He stores the needle and cradles Natasha in his arms. Eyes darting between Korwin and me, he scoots back against the door, then nods toward the concrete wall across from him. “You’re the strongest of all of us, Lydia. This is only the second floor.”
It takes me a second to digest what he’s proposing. He wants me to blast through the concrete and leap a full story to freedom. For a moment I turn in a circle, the concrete walls closing in on me. And then I remember. I am powerful. I am dangerous. I am deadly. All my life I’ve worked to be simple, but now, I can’t pretend anymore. Nothing about me is simple. Nothing about me is plain.
I face the concrete wall and power up. “Korwin, you’ll need to take my father.”
He follows my train of thought and scoops my dad from Jeremiah’s side. Resting my palm on the concrete, I close my eyes, weighing the energy in my fingers.
“Get ready. I’m going to make a mess,” I say to Korwin. I step back.
He pushes Jeremiah toward David, his body filling the space behind me in blue light.
My father gasps. “Lydia.”
I am a star, a supernova of heat and light. An intense spiral of energy courses around me. I concentrate, winding the elastic tighter and tighter at the back of my head. Then I let it go. The stretch reaches the concrete and I know when the wall accepts it because my power flows out of me like fishing line. The atoms in the wall dance for me, pulling my energy, hotter and faster into my target. The entire building shakes. Red blooms and spreads through the white bricks, brighter, hotter. When I think I’ve weakened the structure, I jump and kick at the center of the red. The wall explodes around my foot.
Concrete blocks and iron cables snap against me but bounce off my shield harmlessly. I land on the edge of a hole I’ve created in the side of the building, grit and smoke blinding me from what lies beyond. When the dust clears, I turn toward the others. Korwin’s shield has worked. The rubble has collected on either side of us but my father and Jeremiah are safe, as are David and Natasha, although the latter looks worse than before.
Fresh night air blows in around us, cold air that stings my cheek. “We have to jump,” I say weakly. I’m drained. It will take everything I have left to do this.
Korwin nods. He lifts my father and leaps through the hole I’ve created. The blue glow strengthens him and he lands on his feet in the lawn on the side of the building.
“I can help you, Jeremiah,” I say, motioning for him to come to me.
“Let a man be a man,” he says. He pushes me out of the way, then leaps.
“Jeremiah!” I yell, reaching for him. But I’m not fast enough. He lands awkwardly and rolls out of it.
Korwin rushes to his side.
I turn to David. “Come on.”
“You first, Lydia. I’ve got this. Go!” David’s eyes blaze.
I nod and jump. The air rushes past my ears, my ponytail whipping around my head. The ground comes up too fast and I hit hard, rolling sideways across the grass. My energy has kept me from breaking a bone but not from hurting. I twist onto my side and squeeze my knees to my chest, trying to hold myself together. I can’t breathe.
Korwin’s face appears in front of mine. He rolls me onto my back and cradles my face in his hands. “I have something of yours,” he says. He kisses me. Not the kind of kiss you give a friend or a family member. A full-on real kiss that reignites the flame inside of me. He pulls back much too soon. “Come on!”
I leap to my feet, the air crackling with our power and chase after him.
People have gathered in the street. The grid is a parking lot of open windows and gawking strangers. “Don’t trust anyone,” Korwin says, and this time I agree.
Sprinting for the grid, I find the fastest-looking automobile in the crowd and yank the door open. I drag the screaming driver from the vehicle. His fault for stopping to watch. We pile my father and a limping Jeremiah into the back. Korwin takes the control stick as bullets and
scrambler probes barely miss us. The lawn around CGEF is covered in green uniforms. They’ve only succeeded in frightening the crowd so far, but they’re getting closer.
“Korwin, go!” I yell.
“What about Jameson?”
“His real name is David, and he can take care of himself. Go!”
Korwin takes the car off-grid and drives between the traffic, weaving in and out and jumping the sidewalk to get ahead of the others. He veers down a side street and onto the expressway, and then we accelerate to that lightning-fast speed that sinks my stomach. He switches back to the grid and faces us.
“Do you think they’re following us?” I ask.
“I’m not sure. To follow us on the grid they need the identification number of this vehicle. They’ll be able to get it from the surveillance video or from the driver, but it will take them a few minutes. Then they’ll have to contact the tech people, who will find us on the grid. They’ll have to enter a code to take control of the vehicle. At our speed, we might have another few minutes for the GPS program to catch up with our location. I’d say ten minutes, tops.”
“Not enough time to reach Willow’s Province,” I say. “Where will we go? Who can we trust?” My voice sounds embarrassingly desperate.
Jeremiah leans forward, poking his head between us into the front seat. “Korwin, who is your father’s second in the Liberty Party?”
Internally, I groan. Out of the frying pan, into the fire. I’m not crazy about trusting the Liberty Party after learning about the attack on the West Hub. But what choice do we have?
Korwin’s brows knit and then he types an address into the dashboard. “Jonas Kirkland. It’s dangerous because his location is close to CGEF.”
I vaguely remember Jonas and his daughter from Maxwell’s party.
“Jonas,” my father says. “I know him.”
We all turn to gape at my father. “What are you talking about?”
“I worked with Jonas. At the fire station when I was an Englisher. He was a firefighter, like me.”