by Meg Collett
It was heavy, cold, and damning in her free hand. Murderer, it whispered to her. “I’ve got it. Let’s go.”
With her heart in her throat, she stuck her head out into the hall. It was empty. She went right, keeping to the wall. Roman moved slowly, every second step thumping from his wounded leg. He leaned heavily against the wall to keep from dropping Hutton.
Near the end of the hallway, Wren stopped at a door that opened to the set and the main spiral staircase to the conservatory. She glanced back at Roman. He was three steps behind her, his face pale and clammy. He was leaving a patchy trail of bloody footprints behind him.
“Stay in here,” he wheezed. “Use the back staircase to …”
Wren nodded when he couldn’t finish. She turned away from the set door and kept walking toward the end of the black hall, where another passageway branched off along the bedrooms. It was the path she’d taken every morning with Hutton.
She crept along, each step agony. Her breathing sounded alarm-loud in her head, but the halls were silent. If their luck held, they might make it to the conservatory without running into anyone.
She prayed that would be the case. She couldn’t shoot someone else.
Checking behind them, she crossed to the other side of the hall, the corner two steps ahead of her. She waited for Roman to catch up—he was slowing even more—and stuck her head around the wall.
A swarm of serking crew members crouched over something lying on the ground. They clawed and ripped at each other to get in closer for a bite. The sound coming from their mouths was a mixture between a scream and a groan. Even from down the hall, Wren smelled urine and something sharper and metallic. Blood. They were coated in it. The surging mass of bodies shifted and revealed a foot, a sandal dangling from a thin, pale ankle.
Wren clapped a hand over her mouth, her head shaking and her vision blurring behind tears. Roman put a hand on her arm. She looked up at him. He lifted a finger to his lips, telling her to keep quiet.
He inclined his head toward the set door behind them. They would have to take it now.
Hutton groaned, long and loud. Roman froze, a bead of sweat running down his nose. His eyes went to a spot over Wren’s shoulder. She turned to check the hall, hoping the serkers hadn’t heard Hutton.
Nearly thirty bloodshot eyes were leveled in her direction.
“Run!” she screamed.
They spun and ran back down the hallway. Roman’s stride was long but limping, and he braced his free hand against the wall to catch himself every time he staggered. Wren kept pace beside him in case he fell.
Behind them, the office doors rattled on their hinges as serkers pounded down the hall after them. Wren glanced back and saw them crash around the corner, their bodies slamming into the wall and others falling to the ground. The ones left standing scrambled after them, screaming and howling.
Wren raced ahead of Roman, and with no time to check what was on the other side, she skidded into the door and twisted the handle. It swung open, and she practically fell onto the other side. She opened it wide enough for Roman to careen through, and then she slammed it closed behind him and locked it.
A serker collided into the door, denting the metal inward. The hinges squealed. Wren stepped back as more and more serkers smashed into the metal.
“Wren.”
She whirled at the sound of Roman’s voice, expecting another horde. He pointed up at the corner of the wall and ceiling. A camera was perched there, green light blinking.
They were live.
Roman stepped up to the camera. “VidaCorp did this,” he said, gasping as he spoke. On his back, Hutton was stirring. She pressed a hand to her head. “Serk is Pacem. It’s in the water.”
The black hallway door they’d come through groaned against its hinges. A great weight was pressing against it from the other side. The handle shook.
“Roman, come on.” Wren glanced at the camera one last time before they moved away.
Except for the soft squelch of Roman’s shoe as he walked, their footsteps were silent. Wren didn’t want to look back at the trail of blood he was leaving behind. It was too much already.
The hall opened to the atrium, with the spiral stairs twisting up to the conservatory. Back the way they’d come, the black hallway door gave another threatening squeal of metal.
“Hey,” Hutton murmured, her voice garbled.
Roman shushed her and whispered, “You’re okay. Just hang on.”
Wren stepped out into the atrium and instantly missed the security of the walls around her. She scanned the open space for serkers running toward her, and her eyes caught on something on the ground near the stairs leading up from the second floor.
It was Maddox, staring unseeingly up at the ceiling.
Wren rushed over and crouched beside him, her fingers searching for a pulse. She couldn’t feel one. Her eyes roamed over his body. She saw no wounds and no blood. His hand was over his heart, his fingers like claws clutching at his chest.
She backed away from Maddox and turned. Roman was waiting at the base of the stairs. He knew from her face that Maddox was gone.
“You go first,” she whispered.
Roman started climbing as quietly as he could, but each footstep echoed through the silent space. Wren tried not to wince. Once he was a few steps ahead of her, she followed, searching the floor below them as they ascended.
She bumped into Roman and almost screamed.
“Did you hear that?” he asked, eyes wide.
“No—”
A dull crash sounded from the hallway they’d emerged from. Before she could scream at him to go, Roman started running again. Their footsteps crashed and clanged up the steps. Hutton groaned. Wren kept the gun pointed down the stairs as she spiraled upward.
They were four steps away from the conservatory when the horde of serkers came into sight below them. They hit the stairs like a tidal wave.
Roman stumbled onto the conservatory a step ahead of her.
The glass dome shone brightly in the moonlight. She and Roman tore across the floor, knocking plants over and shattering their pots. They were alone. No Whitebirds.
“Where are they?” Wren shouted over the crash of the horde ascending the stairs behind them.
Roman reached the glass wall first and dumped Hutton on the ground. She sat up on her own and cradled her head in her hands. Wren stumbled to a stop next to him. He banged his hand against the window, his eyes locked on the water treatment facility across the street.
“Oh my God,” Wren said as she looked out on Hollywood.
The city was in chaos. Helicopters circled in the air, flashing spotlights on the streets. The billboards were dead, leaving the city cast in eerie darkness. A fire smoked a few buildings over. Even through the glass, Wren could hear the sirens. But the hologram shimmered happily, showing a night’s view of the ocean.
Across the street, on the water treatment facility’s helipad, a helicopter’s blades slowly rotated. In the helipad’s lights, four figures stood all in black, wearing masks. They flashed a red light twice.
“What is—”
“Stand back!”
Roman jerked her aside right as the window shattered. A black device connected to a slinking wire rope shot through the open window and speared into the floor. Prongs dug into the stone, locking themselves in deep with a small blast of smoke. Between the buildings, the rope shivered with tension.
A second later, a black dot swooshed along the line, heading straight for them. Roman caught the device. He pulled it up and shook it straight. It was a harness connected to a metal clip attached to the rope.
From the stairs, the screaming serkers fought and tore their way higher up.
“You’re going first!” Roman shouted at Wren and grabbed her arm, pulling her toward the open window.
“What?” Wren screamed back at him. This close to the edge, the wind gushed through the broken window and twisted her hair around her face. He was already strappi
ng the harness around her waist and between her legs. He buckled it with a sharp click. He took her gun and stuck it in the back of his pants.
“Wait! You should go first—”
He swung her over the window ledge, and she screamed as she free-fell into the open air above a city in ruin.
36:
The wire caught Wren’s weight with a jolt and she zipped downward with her back against the wind, a scream lodged in her throat. Her stomach was where her heart should have been, and her heart was in her mouth. Everything was a blur of smoke and flashing lights beneath her. The world felt like it might never stop spinning.
Seconds later, she jerked to a stop.
A masked face leaned over the helipad, and a rough tanned hand stretched down for her. “Give me ya hand, mate!”
She reached up. With surprising strength, the man hauled her up. Before her feet even hit the ground, someone else was unstrapping the harness. Wren watched as they sent it whooshing back up the zip line.
“Shouldn’t you be dead?” one of the Whitebirds asked her, their masked face revealing only sharp hazel eyes, so light they were almost yellow. “Is Roman improvising again?”
“Get ready!” someone shouted by the pad’s ledge.
Back at the broken window, Hutton huddled on the floor, her hair wild in the wind. Roman, with his back to the window, fired the gun into the conservatory. The harness hit their side of the wire. Hutton hauled it up into the window.
“Oh my God,” Wren said.
“He’ll make it,” the masked person who’d taken off her harness said.
“He has to,” the man who’d hauled her up added.
Hutton screamed at Roman. He turned and stepped into the harness. Hutton crouched in front of him, buckling the straps. Over her head, he fired again. Once. Twice. He tossed the gun aside as Hutton stood.
There they were—the serkers. They ran toward the glass, mouths stretched open, hands grasping to rip and tear.
Roman snaked his arms around Hutton’s waist and lifted her up. In seamless motions so in sync they almost looked beautiful, Hutton wrapped her legs around his waist as he stepped off the ledge. They free-fell for a second that felt like a lifetime.
The line caught them and lurched them back up. Hutton slipped. Roman clawed at her, grasping for purchase.
The serkers reached the edge of the window and kept running into the open air. Their legs and arms contorted, still reaching for Roman and Hutton as they fell. Then Roman and Hutton became a blur that rocketed toward the helipad.
“Ease them in slow!” someone shouted.
“I can’t slow them! They’re going too fast!”
Wren heard the clamp screech against the zip line as it tried to brake. It smoked, but Roman and Hutton were barely slowing. They were ten feet away from the concrete side of the helipad and going too fast.
“Get ready to catch her!”
All four Whitebirds leaned over the edge, reaching and ready.
Roman and Hutton crashed into the failsafe brake on the zip line. Their bodies swung forward then back, straight for the concrete wall. Roman took the brunt of the impact on his side with a sickening crack. The Whitebirds grabbed Hutton’s arm right as Roman slumped in his harness, his dark hair falling across his face.
Wren clapped a hand over her mouth to hold in her scream.
They hauled Hutton up. Her feet hit the helipad, and she stumbled forward, sobbing and gasping for air. Roman’s limp body came up a second later.
“Christ! He’s shot!
“He’s out! Let’s go! We’ll work on him in the heli!”
Three Whitebirds carried Roman between them, while the fourth jumped into the front of the helicopter. Wren watched them, her hair whipping around her face as the rotors sped up. She held her hair back with one hand. With aching care, the Whitebirds eased Roman into the back of the helicopter.
Her breathing came faster.
Twenty-three days.
She didn’t have to go with them. She’d gotten Roman and Hutton to the helicopter, but she could only think of one reason to leave with them.
Roman.
Wren thought she might have to choose between VidaCorp and the Whitebirds, but the choice was more complicated than that. It was her life—her cure—or Roman.
She loved him—she couldn’t help it—but she wanted to survive more than she wanted him.
A Whitebird’s attention caught on a point behind Wren. They pointed and shouted at the others. Wren turned.
Hutton stood near the edge of the helipad, her shoulders slumped and her hand to her head as she stared at the VidaCorp building. She wasn’t moving, but the tips of her shoes kissed the ledge.
Without thinking, Wren ran toward her. The wind gusted against her, and Hutton swayed.
Wren caught Hutton’s hand just in time. She stumbled into Wren’s arms. “Are you crazy?” Wren shouted at her.
Shaking her head, Hutton gathered her legs beneath her like it was the hardest thing she’d ever attempted in her life.
The Whitebirds surrounded them. With Wren’s assistance, they took Hutton to the helicopter and helped her inside as the rotors built up speed overhead. Once Hutton was in her seat, a Whitebird turned back to Wren and shouted something, their hand reaching toward her, ready to help her inside.
Wren shook her head and stepped back.
She wasn’t going.
The Whitebird shouted something else at Wren. For a fraction of a second, Wren thought she heard “Wrenny” whipping through the wind.
The Whitebird pulled up their mask, revealing inch by inch the dark tattoos curling up a pale neck, a sharp chin, and a lush mouth, and then the snapping eyes beneath heavy brows.
The mouth smirked and yelled even louder this time, “Why ya just standing there, Wrenny?”
Mak.
With a cry, Wren fell against her best friend. Mak’s crushing hug tore all the breath from Wren’s lungs. Tears streaked down her cheeks as she sobbed against Mak’s black shirt. Against Wren’s ear, Mak shouted, “I told you I’d find you!”
Wren pulled back. Mak had joined the Whitebirds for her. She was here because of Wren.
“You coming or not?”
Twenty-three days.
There wasn’t a decision to make anymore.
Wren climbed into the helicopter.
Mak slid the helicopter’s door shut behind Wren right as the machine lifted into the air, dipping and swaying. Wren stumbled into a seat beside Hutton, and Mak took the spot beside Wren. When they were buckled in, Mak bumped her shoulder against Wren’s, her eyes glimmering with excitement, a foolish grin plastered on her face.
Wren just stared. Her best friend was a Whitebird.
The two Whitebirds crouching next to Roman ripped off their masks. The man with the Australian accent worked on Roman’s head while the woman with yellow eyes and a shaved head cut into his pants.
The Australian guy was shouting at Wren. “—happened in there? Who shot him?”
Roman’s face was pale, and his eyelids were blue. He’d lost a lot of blood.
Feeling Mak watching her, Wren glanced at Hutton. Tears streamed down her face. Blood, dark as her skin, had dried in her hair. There wasn’t a scrap of the hard-edged handler in her eyes. Wren couldn’t even spot a hint of Sloane’s smirking attitude. There was … nothing.
They’d finally taken everything there was to take from Sloane Lux.
“Wrenny?” Mak yelled. “What happened in there?”
Hutton tried for one of Sloane’s careless smiles, the ones she flippantly tossed around for everyone else’s benefit, but it failed on Hutton’s lips. She was out of practice. “Just tell them,” Hutton mouthed to Wren, her voice lost beneath the helicopter’s roaring.
Tell them what? That Hutton—that Sloane had been yet another pawn in the game between VidaCorp and the Whitebirds? She had cracked and held a gun to Wren’s head, but Wren had killed Kruz. Who was she to draw the line between right and wrong any
more?
And Mak. She’d joined the anarchist group to save Wren. She couldn’t hide from that.
It was time to pick a side, even if it was yet another performance.
Tell them what they want to hear. Smile. Look pretty. They don’t need anything else.
Wren shouted to the Whitebirds, “One of the crew members thought we were serkers. He shot at us as we ran.”
The woman frowned. “A crew member had a gun?”
“Apparently.”
“Why were the serkers so amped up? I watched them eat someone’s face off on the street!” the guy said with too much relish.
“I guess they were thirsty and drank too much water.”
For a second, the Whitebirds, including Mak, stared at Wren. Had they heard her lie? Did they know she had no intention of joining their ranks? But then they erupting into screeching laughter.
“Guess they were thirsty, brother!” The Australian slapped Roman’s chest with enough force that he groaned. His eyelids pried open, and he squinted up at the man. The man pointed at Wren. “I like her. Glad you didn’t kill her!”
Roman’s head lolled toward her. Blood crusted around his eye, and in the dimly lit helicopter, his scar shone like a star. He shook his head weakly, a word trailing behind a gasp. It sounded like, “No.”
No, he should have killed her? Or no, she shouldn’t have come?
Roman’s eyes drifted shut as he passed out again.
Mak howled. The other Whitebirds, even the pilot, joined in as they flew over the glowing white Hollywood sign and straight for the city’s border hologram. With the Whitebirds’ victory cries echoing through the helicopter, they passed through the holo, and blue light fractured across Wren’s face.
Then they were on the other side, and Wren saw nothing but arid dirt and gray sky. The stars were lost behind the low-hanging smog. The view was the same from the window beside Hutton.
The wasteland between worlds was so dark and empty that the window became nothing more than a mirror, and all Wren could see was her reflection.
Sloane Lux stared back at her with a bloody cheek and a blackening eye.
“It hurts, doesn’t it?”