I passed the bar without a glance. Folding my arms to keep my hands from shaking, I crossed the ballroom with faster and faster steps until I reached the balcony, shut away behind double glass doors. With one violent heave I shoved them open, the sounds of the streets below rushing past with the night air. After shutting the doors behind me, I draped myself over the balustrade and blew out a long, whining sigh.
“Oh, are you okay, Maia? Are you okay? No, I’m not okay, but by all means please feel free to do everything in your power to remind me of my family’s rotting corpses, you fake assholes.”
I pressed my forehead against the smooth wooden railing and moaned. Wrapping my fingers around the rail, I peered over the edge, at the parked cars, the valets, the handsomely dressed couples just entering the hotel below. “I need to get out of here.”
“Even if you do, it’s five stories down. Granted it’s quicker, but I think far messier than an elevator.”
I swiveled on my heels. I hadn’t even seen the guy in the corner, but how could I have? He was lying down on the floor, practically hidden behind a fully set table. With his back propped up by a wall, his fingers were busy clicking away at a handheld game console. I could only just make out the sound whispering through his earphones because one of his buds was out.
For a minute I was too shocked to speak. “Uh, I’m sorry,” I finally said. “I’ll just—wait, I wasn’t going to jump!”
“That’s between you and god.”
“Cute,” I muttered with an incredulous huff.
If it weren’t for his hair, I would have thought the most striking thing about him was his lazy, sea-blue eyes, ghostly clear. But his hair—I couldn’t stop looking at it. It was silver, like it’d been drained of its color, packed into a short ponytail at the back of his head. Looked good. Looked natural, though a bit jarring against his more ballroom appropriate—and, um, nicely fitting—gray vest and white dress shirt. Considering he was tucked away in a corner playing video games, I figured he was enjoying the benefit as much as I was.
“Is that next gen?” I asked, pointing at his handheld.
“Just went on sale.”
“What’re you playing?”
“Metal Kolossos 3D: Reve—”
“Reverse Reincarnation!” Covering my mouth, I gave myself a second to feel embarrassed before scurrying up to him. “You have that game? Oh my god, I hate you!”
He smiled. “I get that a lot.”
“No, seriously, my preorder was delayed or something.” I stopped at his feet. “Um . . . The graphics must be so awesome. . . .”
And I smiled at him. Taking the hint, he passed it over.
“You know I haven’t even started playing that yet.”
“Sorry.” I sat down in the chair next to him. “I honestly just want to watch the opening video. That’s all, I swear.”
“Keep it as long as you like.” He laid his head against the wall and shut his eyes.
He was cute. Slim, muscular build, a pretty, sculpted pale face, and full lips. He was probably only a few years older than me too. . . .
Swallowing a lump in my throat, I focused on the game, on the lush graphics of its gorgeous yet confusing opening movie as it quickly recapped the story thus far. The Metal Kolossos series told the tale of Earth’s final Effigy, Aki, who alone defended the last of humanity in a postapocalyptic underground city called Ring. The fact that she was part cyborg made everything all the more badass, but this time, apparently the series’s Japanese creators had decided to tell a related side story taking place in sixties-era Seattle.
Of all settings.
“The Seven-Day Siege,” said the mournful narration. “Indeed it took only seven days for humanity’s bane, the phantoms, to obliterate a once-flourishing city. Seven days to reduce it to nothingness.”
“God, Japanese games are so dramatic, aren’t they?” he said.
“Aki time-travels back to the sixties in this one. The entire game takes place during the Seattle Siege, right?”
“Depressing, isn’t it?”
On the game’s thread in the Doll Soldiers forum, there were plenty of people annoyed at the fact that such a horrific moment in US history was going to be used as the backdrop to a video game. I was on there for days defending the narrative’s deeper thematic possibilities to the naysayers, losing sleep over it because that’s what happens when nerds fight other nerds on the internet. Dark times.
“My name is Saul, by the way.” He sat up. “I thought you might like to know the name of the guy whose game you’ve hijacked.”
“O-oh, right.” My face flushed again. “Sorry.” I wasn’t really. I handed it back to him.
Saul laughed, and when he lifted his arm to smooth his fine hair with his long fingers, I noticed a bright ring around his right middle finger.
“Ooh, that’s nice,” I said, pointing at it.
“Oh, this?” He turned it over. Though the jewel’s dazzling white reminded me of a pearl, heavy brushstrokes of smoky black streaked the center. “Got it off my dad.”
And I suspected he’d be paying a visit to the local pawnshop after the party.
“But enough about that,” he said. “You know, about that game?” He leaned back, giving me a rather mischievous sidelong glance that, truthfully, quickened my pulse. “I heard the development team wanted to make the main villain another Effigy. But not one of the regular four—a fifth one.”
“A fifth Effigy?” I frowned. I hadn’t heard this. Why hadn’t I heard this? “Was this during the early stages or what?”
“I thought that might interest you.” Saul lifted his hand. “Earth, fire, ice, wind.” He counted them off with his fingers. “Everyone knows there’s only four.”
“So they were just going to throw in another Effigy?” I didn’t know what pissed me off more: the fact that they dared consider messing with real-life canon, or the fact that I hadn’t even heard about it up until now.
“Their original idea was that she’d be the one who caused it. This fifth Effigy. In this continuity, she was the one who destroyed Seattle.”
One girl razed an entire city to the ground? I shook my head. No, what destroyed Seattle was a freak accident. Its Space Needle was the country’s first antiphantom device of its size and scale, but there were too many bugs and it flaked. Simple. Having some perpetrator behind it all was pretty revisionist, even for this series.
“Okay, but why would an Effigy destroy Seattle?”
Saul smiled. “Obviously to kill people.”
“O . . . oh . . .” I shifted uncomfortably.
“Or something. Who knows?” He shrugged. “I just think it’s interesting, what with all the stuff that’s been going on lately. You’ve heard the theories, right?”
“I thought conspiracy theories were for basement-dwelling tinfoil-hat wearers.”
“The arrogance.” With a pretty laugh, he reached into his finely cut gray pants and drew out a cell phone. “See this?” He got up and took the chair next to me. “One of my friends has some connections of the shadowy variety. He showed me these pictures.” He started flipping through them. “You know when all those APDs went offline. Moscow, Incheon, Frankfurt, Bern. Even here.”
“O-oh yeah?” I nodded stiffly, trying to not think about the light brush of his model-long legs against mine. “Wait, what is that?”
As I leaned in, my narrowed eyes locked on one picture. I couldn’t tell where it’d been taken, but it didn’t matter. There was something grotesquely universal about the desperation to stay alive. It was there, captured in the frame, frozen on the faces of the fleeing masses. But somewhere in the midst of the dark, blurry chaos—
“Is that a mask?” I squinted. I could barely make out the person wearing it, but I could see the round, black shell clinging to his face.
“It’s a ‘false face,’” said Saul. “There’s no mouth, but do you see those slits for eyes?”
That was the problem with conspiracy nerds: geeking out over the very thing tha
t should terrify them. But I wouldn’t let myself cross the panic threshold just yet.
“Okay. So what are you implying?”
Saul leaned against the table, his slender back tugging the cloth. “This guy isn’t in all the photos, but the fact that he’s in more than one? Imagine.” He clicked his phone off. “So?” he asked with an unmistakably Cheshire grin. “What do you think?”
He waited. It wasn’t every day I stumbled into a conversation with a good-looking guy, but this particular conversation had gotten a little too weird, even for me. I tried to form a response. Something like: How should I know? But the words stayed buried in me. It was the way he looked at me. His eyes pierced mine, expectant, impatient. Why was he looking at me like that? Why did any of this even matter? But still, he waited. He barely even blinked. His frozen smile sent a not-so-subtle shiver through me.
Instead of answering him, I rose to my feet a little too quickly. “I think a game is a game. Don’t start freaking yourself out over nothing.” Don’t freak me out over nothing.
It’d been a while since the music had stopped playing, replaced by a long-winded speech from whoever was running the event. It would be cruel to leave Uncle Nathan there alone for any longer. As fascinating as it was bumping into an Effigy fanboy here of all places, it was time to go.
“You never told me your name, poupée.”
“Huh?” I turned, confused. The boy’s demeanor had changed. I couldn’t put my finger on how. But Saul was simply watching me.
It was really time to go.
With a hasty smile, as polite as I could make it, I waved good-bye and shut the glass doors behind me.
The rest of the evening should have passed by like a dull groan. The plan was to wait down the clock and then escape the premises without any more complications.
Alas:
“Holy shit!”
Twenty minutes after my conversation with Saul, I overheard the expletive from where I sat, though the young woman who’d uttered it sat at the table behind me. “Stacy totally just saw Belle Rousseau in the lobby!”
I gripped my half-filled glass tightly.
“Seriously?” said another girl. “You sure it was her?”
“I mean, it was a blond girl with a French accent who looked exactly like Belle Rousseau, so . . .”
“What’s she doing here? Hookup?”
“Stacy said she’s here looking for someone. An Effigy.”
My hand dropped like a stone against the table.
“No way, seriously? There’s one here?”
Tick, tick. Time was up.
“MAIA, WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”
“Bathroom!”
That was a lie, of course, but I didn’t have time to convince Uncle Nathan to drive me home. Even if I did, who was to say there wouldn’t be Sect agents waiting for me?
So where could I go? Half-baked ideas fired off one after another, none of them carefully considered because overwhelming panic tended to dull one’s critical thinking skills. Maybe that was why I stupidly stuffed myself inside a crowded elevator instead of using the stairs to sneak off unnoticed. I pressed B, figuring that once I got to the basement, I’d jack a car and drive to . . . Siberia. Anywhere. Anywhere. I could learn how to drive after getting there.
The elevator door slid open, but to a brightly lit lobby instead of the shadowy parking lot I’d been expecting. A breath hitched in my throat. Belle wasn’t there, but if Belle really had come to recruit the next Effigy, she’d probably brought some Sect agents with her. I couldn’t let myself be seen.
I pushed up against the back of the elevator as a group of people lumbered out at an infuriatingly slow pace. If that weren’t bad enough, a bellhop tried to push a giant, loaded luggage trolley into the elevator before I could get out. I yelled at him to back up, but when one wheel got stuck at an awkward angle, the door wouldn’t close. And the longer the door stayed open, the longer I was exposed.
“I’ll help,” I said, and pushed the trolley as if my life depended on it.
“Miss,” said the flustered bellhop, “miss, wait, that isn’t help—”
“Let me give you guys a hand.” A young man grabbed the trolley on the other side. “We’ll lift on three, okay?”
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d seen him before. I could see his dark eyes, bright behind a pair of black-rimmed nerd glasses just large enough to make placing his face that much more difficult.
“You ready?” he asked.
I snapped out of it long enough to help them lift and heave the trolley over the threshold, but not without a suitcase toppling over and landing right at my feet. Both the young man and the bellhop looked at me expectantly. But—
“Sorry, I have to go.”
I stepped over the suitcase and slipped by them both, my heels clicking furiously against the marble floor. This was ridiculous. How did I become this paranoid mess? The guy had been wearing a polka-dot bow tie, for god’s sake. Was I going to live my entire life like this? Looking over my shoulder, wondering if every pretty-boy hipster that crossed my path was secretly an expertly trained agent come to spirit me off to start my Effigy schooling?
La Charte’s grandiose revolving doors were in my sights. A pair of wet children running out of the aquatics room almost toppled me over as they sped past, but a firm arm around my shoulder pulled me back in time.
The boy with the glasses.
“Yikes. That was close.” I could see Nerd Glasses smile out of the corner of my eyes. “But why are you in a hurry, Maia?”
No way.
“You . . . are you . . . ?”
Strip the tie and the glasses. Strip the wicked grin and the white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up around his elbows. Once I saw past the civilian look he was currently sporting, I realized that it was the same tousled black hair falling over his eyes, the same fine-bridged nose and full lips. Same battle scars on his arms.
The young agent from the day of the Category Three phantom attack.
“So you remember me, right?” The young man studied my face. “From the attack not too long ago? Honestly, when they showed me your face, it took me a while to place it. Shocked the hell out of me, but then . . .” And he leaned in so that only I could hear. “Who knew you’d turn out to be the next Effigy?”
I took a step back.
“I’m Aidan Rhys. Most people stick with the last name, though.” He introduced himself with an all-too-casual smile and stretched out a hand. “It’s gonna be okay. Don’t be scared, Maia.”
I ran for the doors.
“Hey, come on!”
I could hear him yelling after me, but I didn’t stop, not until I realized, as I prepared to cross the street, that running was pointless.
Where was I even running to? The Sect had already found me—it was a done deal. What could I feasibly, realistically even do to avoid them for the rest of my life? It was time to stop lying to myself.
The city’s usual cacophony barraged me from all sides, and a slight chill reminded me I’d fled without grabbing my coat. Biting my lip, I stared at New York’s skyline, at the bright lights scuttling up and down the Needle on the other side of the river.
Eleven days ago, just two days before the attack, that was when everything had changed. I remembered waking up in the dead of night with this tight pain in my chest, heaving as something secret and horrible seeped into me with a deep breath. I remembered the short calm, deadly silent, and then a storm of screaming. I remembered thrashing under my covers, and then watching in terror as the lightbulb screwed into my standing lamp caught fire and exploded. That I was an Effigy, the next one after the famous and heroic Natalya Filipova—it wasn’t something that I had to realize. I just knew. The knowledge was just there, as calmly and as surely as I knew my own name.
And then after it happened, all I could think was that they’d gotten it so wrong. Whoever “they” were, they’d called the wrong one. It was supposed to be June. June was always the livelier one. L
ivelier, stronger, braver.
The one who should’ve lived.
“You’re not running anymore.”
I wiped my face with my bare arms and turned. Rhys had his hands in his pockets as he watched me from the hotel entrance.
“There isn’t anywhere I can go, is there?” I said.
“Well, I didn’t want to say it, but . . .”
As Rhys took a few tentative steps forward, tears trickled down my cheek, each more pitiful than the last. Ridiculous. June wouldn’t have run. If she were me, she’d face everything head-on. She probably would’ve tested her powers by now too, instead of nearly throwing up at the thought of it like a damn coward. And then, over the years, she would’ve become a hero. A legend to rival Natalya.
It probably would have been June, if I’d managed to save her that day.
The tears were flowing openly now. I turned my back to the agent.
“Maia,” he said, gently, carefully. “It doesn’t have to be this hard. I’m not here to lock you up. I’m here to help. It’s what we do. We help people.”
I wiped my face one last time, but I still wouldn’t look at him.
“It’s been a rough few days, right? We’ll help you make sense of it.” He sighed. “We’re not the enemy, Maia.”
My tear-soaked reflection in a parked car’s window stared pathetically back at me. I watched myself crying and shivering and freezing in the middle of the sidewalk. Natalya’s successor.
I had to be better than this.
It took me a moment to pull myself together. Squeezing my hands into fists, I finally gave Rhys a curt nod, silently readying myself for the next step. Though my heart sank at the thought of Uncle Nathan, I had no choice but to bury it deep. He was going to find out sooner or later. Crying about it wasn’t going to change anything. I had to focus on this. So I did. After sucking in a breath, I turned back toward La Charte.
• • •
Rhys was much taller than me; he must have been around six feet. Tall and slender, with broad shoulders and defined arms. I loved arms. Still didn’t make this any less awkward, though.
We stood at opposite ends of the elevator, neither of us talking. I was too nervous to face him, but I could still see him in the mirror, sizing me up. At least when I did it, I was subtle about it.
Fate of Flames Page 4