Renegade Red

by Lauren Bird Horowitz

  Callum’s voice was drowned out as the ward alarms screamed and strobed in green. The flashes and noise reverberated so loudly, so chaotically, the ceiling and floor seemed to vibrate.

  “What the hell—” Judah began, cut off by the storm of boots and yells, five Guards charging toward the offender. But who? It hadn’t been Callum or Judah, couldn’t have been, because the flashing light was green—

  The Guards swirled down like a tornado on Noa’s cell. Noa turned in confusion and suddenly understood why the alarms were so shattering and intense: they were screaming not just in the hall, but also from the wrist cuffs of the Fae who stood two feet behind her, the Green Fae with whom she shared a cell, who had set them off:

  Geezer.

  His eyes were fierce and bright and bold, his mouth a determined, angry sneer. A greenish aura seemed to radiate around him; he stood up tall, feet planted, snarling at what was to come. Noa caught his eye, awash in confusion, not understanding what was going on.

  The Guards flung back the bars to their cell with a blistering crash; they muscled Geezer to the floor, bending his arms so far his every joint popped wetly with dislocation—but Geezer didn’t even scream. As he was dragged out, he caught Noa’s eye—defiant, piercing, sharp—and a wave of courage broke over her, filling every cell.

  Geezer suddenly lashed and screamed like a banshee. The Guards tried to subdue him and hauled him away, hurriedly slamming back Noa’s gate. As it crashed home, Noa heard him cry, in a strangled, terrible yell, “Hail harmony—!” just as the gate bounced back, ending up slightly ajar.

  Noa looked at the gate: Geezer had shoved her bread-shiv into the track. Noa’s cell was open.

  And the Guards hadn’t seen it.

  Every Guard was racing, crowding eagerly around the clear-glass room to watch Geezer liquefied to Greenish sludge. Geezer had given them their distraction.

  Noa didn’t pause to wonder why Geezer had done it, didn’t let herself feel confusion, fear, or even sympathy. There was only urgency and this moment, and the courage that surged through her pumping veins.

  Noa opened her gate and ran to the brothers’ cell. She pulled at their gate fruitlessly. Not letting herself think, because to think would be to fear, she left their cell and sprinted to the jostling, jeering crowd of Guards who were now watching Geezer melt. Noa refused to let herself look and, thinking instead of Isla, of Marena, she deftly lifted keys from one of the Guards cheering wildly at the back.

  Then she was back at Callum and Judah’s cell, forcing the key into the lock, heaving back their door. And they were running, all three of them, for the front entrance gate, the one that slammed down and pulverized anything in motion with its jagged teeth—

  “Save me! Save me too!” The hall exploded in a sea of panicked cries and pleas echoing from every cell, reaching arms flailing through the bars. Noa stuttered, the voices finally piercing through her armor of single-minded action. Judah grasped at her—we can’t, there isn’t time—and Noa knew he was right, there wasn’t, the Guards had seen them, now alerted by the pleas.

  Judah yanked her hard, pulling her after him toward the last jaw-like gate.

  “Now!” Callum cried to his brother, and Noa watched as he and Judah both threw pieces of prison bread at the gate, hitting the ground beneath it simultaneously on separate sides. The gate fell and then retracted, hitching in sensory confusion, the way it had the day Noa had incited the bread rebellion with too many targets at one time. In that split-second delay Callum dove and rolled through the gap, Judah pulling Noa to leap with him right behind—

  “Noa?”

  Noa froze, skidding to a halt. Her fingers slipped from Judah’s as he dove beneath the gate and rolled through, right before it smashed its jaws, severing her from the brothers and from freedom.

  “Noa!”

  The voice was all Noa could think about. No time to realize what she’d just given up. She spun and sprinted directly at the Guards who were rushing up behind her, catching them by surprise. As they tried to halt their forward momentum, she Channeled Sasha and dove through their legs. Her body sprawled and skidded to a stop in front of the cell that had been Movie Star and Crazy’s, whose new inhabitant had finally recovered from the Smoke.

  “Marena!” Noa cried, leaping to the cell’s gate, fumbling with the keys, flinging back the door, pulling the girl free. But then the Guards were on them, everywhere, grasping at Noa’s arms, ripping at her hair. Noa spun and kicked and bit and punched, screamed and lashed and struck out with the brass knuckles of the keys. Beside her, Marena slipped and ducked and darted, too sharp and quick to catch. But they were too many, and too strong—

  “Stop!” Noa suddenly screamed, making the word itself her weapon. The Guards stilled in shock for the splittest of a second—but it was enough. Noa grabbed Marena, alarms still blaring and pulsing chaos in every color, and they sprinted toward the gate. It was on lockdown now, stuck fast—

  “Callum!” Noa screamed through the hard, thick stone, not knowing if he could even hope to hear her, not daring to slow her stride. The Guards thundered on their heels; Noa smelled Spider-Eye’s breath. Noa looked desperately at Marena, hoped the girl remembered too: running like this before, from roof to roof:“Callum, now!”

  And with nothing but faith and the wild hope of prayer, Noa and Marena leapt directly into the solid mass of stone—

  —and shimmered through its altered atoms, tumbling into the hall beyond.

  • • •

  Lockdown alarms blared in the outer hallway, the flashes so bright and fast it was difficult to see. Judah helped Noa and Marena scramble to their feet in staccato, strobing frames of panicked movement.

  “I can’t hold it!” Callum yelled somewhere behind them, just before they were all blasted backward.

  Guards poured through the exploded gate as they struggled to free themselves from concrete chunks and swirling dust. Judah’s leg spun into Noa’s ribs; she shrieked in pain as he sprang up and pulled her to her feet. His hand was slick with sweat, his body heaving, overwhelmed by the exertion. But there was no time to rest—they were running down the hall through strobe and dust and noise, unable to see, Callum first and Judah right behind, Marena pulling Noa through the pain of her fractured ribs.

  “Right!” Callum called, swerving at the hallway’s end. Judah turned the wrong way but caught himself, nearly slipping into Marena’s stride.

  Another hallway just the same, strobing and screaming, but Callum had focused on something: a set of double doors, waiting at the end. Noa tried to focus on them too, to erase everything else from her consciousness and leave no room for fear. She stared those doors down as she sprinted toward them, made them the center of her world—

  Which was how she saw the horde first.

  “Guards!” she cried, skidding to a clumsy stop. The windows of the doors were filling, as surely as silver boots thundered toward them from behind.

  With nowhere else to turn but sideways, Callum flung himself at the hallway wall, spreading his body against it to maximize the points of touch. The section he touched shimmered then liquefied, splashing like boiling water to the floor.

  Judah didn’t hesitate, leapt through the waterfall and into the darkness behind it. Marena followed immediately on his heels. Noa reached for Callum’s hand to pull him after her, but he shook his head.

  “I can’t let go too soon!” There was no time to argue, but Noa didn’t like the look in Callum’s eye: resignation and self-sacrifice—and a frightening kind of peace. She jumped through, but at the last moment grabbed his hand hard anyway, startling him, and yanked him into the waterfall. But his connection to the wall was lost, and Noa screamed as the wall began to return to stone around them, forming on all sides.

  Marena and Judah yanked Noa free just before she was crushed inside the wall. She tumbled forward in a hail of rock and stone, her
left hand tight on Callum’s even as she heard the bone in her forearm snap. She screamed in agony and released him as he crashed out behind her. Marena shrieked: Callum was free from the wall, but his whole body sagged beneath his head without any structure, like a bag of shattered sticks and glass.

  “Keep running!” Judah ordered Marena and Noa as he ripped off Callum’s shirt. He moved his brother’s hands for him, onto Callum’s own chest, and forced Callum to look into his eyes. Noa knew she should be running, but even though Marena pulled at her, she couldn’t move.

  Judah glared into Callum’s eyes, clearly thinking hard into his brother’s mind, Suggesting with all his might. “Dammit, heal!” he finally screamed aloud, full-voiced, and finally Callum’s mind started to take the order. His body began to shimmer under his own healing touch. His ribs rebuilt, his legs stretched out. Judah yanked him roughly to his feet.

  “Just run!” he yelled. Callum obediently shook himself, pushed his rebuilt legs to move. Noa found her feet again too, and together they tore into the darkness of this new room—the room on the other side of the wall—when the rest of that wall blasted in behind them, bringing Guards and rubble and blinding shards of light.

  Noa nearly stumbled as the room took shape in the new illumination. Judah and Callum stuttered too, for it was not a room but a huge indoor arena, two football fields in length and width and several stories high.

  “We’re in the Training Center!” Judah yelled, sweat pouring down past his wild eyes. Noa felt a burst of panic: the last time Judah and Callum had been in the Training Center, it had been burning to the ground.

  Callum’s determination vanished; fear and confusion took its place. But Judah growled, sprinted harder, like a beast, roaring to the lead. He veered and jumped, dodging training apparatuses left and right, leaving Noa, Marena, and Callum to do their best to follow in his path.

  They ran, but explosions like grenades bit at their heels as the Guards closed in. They were Channeling Blues, but luckily, were clearly wary of destroying too much of the arena around the ducking, dodging fugitives.

  Finally Noa saw where Judah was leading them: a section at the far end of the Center hung with ropes from the ceiling, at the very top of which—several stories up—was a line of small windows designed to let in a roof of light.

  When they reached the ropes, Judah immediately launched himself onto one, climbing hard; Marena did the same a moment later. Callum had just reached his when he saw Noa, trying and failing to climb hers, unable with her fractured ribs and a broken arm.

  Instantly Callum was behind her, bare chest against her back, hands around her grasping the rope.

  “There’s no time to heal me—” Noa protested, but it seemed that wasn’t Callum’s plan. Instead, the rope shimmered and became a pulley, whisking them both upward amid a hail of fireballs launched in their direction.

  “Learned about these pulley things in your world,” Callum breathed into Noa’s ear, and Noa could feel his smile in the midst of all this panic and what she knew was the trauma of his worst memories.

  With the efficient pulley, they bumped up to the top of the rope ahead of the others, reaching the ceiling first. Callum began to swing their rope, gaining momentum until they crashed their feet against the nearest window, breaking the glass. Glass slivers rained down past Judah and Marena, who were just reaching the top.

  “What about the other side?” Noa cried, suddenly realizing just how high up they were, and how far they would fall. In that second, the rope in Judah’s hands burst into flame beside them. Judah looked surprised for a moment as he found himself suddenly grasping ash, then his arms began to pinwheel, his body fall. Marena quickly reached and caught him by his fingers, screaming as his sudden weight wrenched down on her tiny frame. She began sliding down her rope, dragged by his body like an anchor, her palms smoking from the rising friction.

  Callum immediately swung his rope over and transferred himself and Noa to Marena’s. Noa looked down and her mind screamed what there was no time to articulate in words—luckily Marena’s mind had the same thought, and, shrieking with every ounce of strength she had, she released her rope hand and grasped Callum’s foot instead. They were all clustered now: Callum’s body a comma around Noa’s, Marena dangling from his foot, Judah dangling from her other arm. Behind them, their former rope-turned-pulley vanished into ash. Their current rope was next.

  Strain snarled from Callum’s throat; their rope combusted—but instead of falling, Noa felt them all pulled upward in an odd jerking motion. Noa twisted to look at Callum: he wailed in agony as pain flared across his face, and she gasped—behind him, great white wings burst outward from his spine.

  Howling, tortured, Callum flew all four of them clumsily toward the window. A hail of fire arrows, Channeled by Guards from Blues, soared up from below; Judah yelped as one thunked into his thigh, but then they reached the window’s opening, Marena and Judah dragging across its jagged edges.

  Noa tried not to hear the slicing, ripping, tearing sound as Callum pulled them out into the sun—then suddenly, his body shuddered all around her and fell from them, spinning away, its great white wings—bloody where they had burst from his interweaving scars—utterly, utterly still, like those of a murdered, falling angel.

  In that moment of total weightlessness, Noa saw Aurora all around them, horizon to horizon—

  —and then she and the others plummeted, stones to the rocks below.

  • • •

  In that moment, the moment Noa knew she was going to die, she saw her mother. Hannah’s head was tilted, eyes soft. My Noa, said her voice, as if to ask a question. My Noa, who shines the light—

  Then Noa slammed into the ground, and she never heard the rest.

  • • •

  Noa was dead.

  She was dead, and there was nothing. No color, sound, movement, for there was nothing after death.

  The question was asked and answered only with stillness.

  Except.

  Except the ground was not still. Not entirely.

  It was falling, sinking…

  And then rising.

  Sinking and falling and rising and sinking, a cycle in slowing peaks. And it had texture too, the ground, for it cut upward in patterns, little squares against her skin. Except Noa didn’t still have skin that could feel anymore, her skin was still now, without sensation, for in death, everything ended.

  So why did her skin feel?

  Noa opened her eyes. She was several feet from the stony ground, tangled in a net gently rising and falling from the momentum of its basket catch. Noa was sure it had not been there moments before—she had looked down at Callum’s bloody wings, she was sure of it, and there had been only stone beneath them—

  Noa craned her head to look around; her neck screamed with pain, but she ignored it until she saw them, Judah and Callum and Marena too, also safely caught inside the webbing. She barely had time for relief when a voice chilled any wonder or gratitude from her heart.

  “Hello again,” Arik said, fingering the net appreciatively, like a fisherman delighted with his catch.

  • • •

  Arik wasted no time signaling to his Guards. They immediately pulled the net fast and tight into a bundle, not caring how the prisoners collided. Callum’s body rolled without resistance, unconscious, and pinned Judah’s against the net. Noa slid on top of them, too stunned to even think to fight, but Marena, on her other side, squirmed and scratched and hissed fruitlessly at the enclosing ropes. She had been farthest out and found herself on a part of the net now near the top; she clung to it with wiry fingers so that she dangled, avoiding squashing Noa.

  The Guard nearest Marena—a woman with green eyes and a bored expression—sighed and whacked Marena’s head with one strong blow, knocking the small girl out. Marena’s thin body toppled onto Noa’s, her left hand smacking Noa like
a whip against her cheek. With Marena dislodged, the net pulled tighter, smaller. Judah kicked out as best he could; Noa tried to take up the struggle.

  “Just Smoke them!” Arik ordered, irritated. Immediately green mist was thick in Noa’s lungs again, and once more the world sparkled out.

  • • •

  Noa woke from the Smoke first again, but this time she felt groggy, confused, disoriented. She wondered if they had used more Smoke, or if her body was simply wearing down—this time she’d had no interim of sound and dark, only complete oblivion. And now that she was waking, it was an aching kind of wake.

  Noa looked blearily around her. They were not back in their cells, but in a room, together. Judah, Callum, and Marena lay unconscious on cots set against the wall. Noa’s palms found the surface beneath her, soft and spongy; she was sitting on a cot as well. It was actually comfortable. She pushed her fingers into the plush surface and realized her wrist and arm had been healed. And as far as she could tell, so had all her bruises.

  Noa got to her feet, intending to test her legs and ribs, but her leg caught; her ankle was chained and bolted to the floor. The cot was bolted too. Alarm tubes were embedded in the chain and the cot’s metal.

  Noa looked around the room more closely this time. A chill of misgiving went through her when she realized there were four walls but no door. Every wall was identical, even to the ceiling and the floor—monotone stone without even vine or leaf or pattern.

  They were in a cell. Just a different kind.

  Noa looked at her cot with newfound dread. This semblance of comfort made her fear this prison more.

  Marena shifted on her cot, then suddenly broke awake in a torrent of choking coughing. Noa instinctively jumped to help and tripped over her lashed ankle. Noa watched helplessly as Marena coughed and coughed, her face turning purple and then blue—then, like a volcano, the pixie vomited green bile on the ground. Marena slowly raised her head, heaving gulps of air.

  “Marena! Are you okay? What happened?”

  Marena closed her eyes tight, like the room was spinning.