by L. J. Hatton
CHAPTER 38
A clock ticked softly in the background.
“Jermay?” I said carefully. “Can you hear me?”
Up close, his wounds were worse than on camera. He favored his left leg in a way that made me wonder if it had been broken.
“Penn?” He leaned toward me, but wasn’t sure enough to follow through and take the step. “Are you real? You look fuzzy.”
He tried to touch me, but our hands couldn’t connect.
“I’m unnoticeable. It’s the only way I could see you.”
His eyes lingered on the bands around my wrists.
“Are you . . .”
“It’s okay,” I said, crossing my arms so my hands were out of sight. “I don’t know exactly where you are, Jermay, but we’re in the same facility.”
Just in different kinds of prisons.
“Did they hurt you?” he asked.
“You’re the one who’s limping.”
“You should have seen the other guy.” He tried for a laugh that turned into a cough. “The fight was only about thirty against four.” He got quiet, then asked, “What about everyone else?”
“My sisters aren’t good. The warden wants to dissect Klok. Birdie’s hiding, and Winnie . . .” I couldn’t tell him about Winnie. He had enough dark thoughts without adding that image to them. “I can get you out. The warden promised that if I—”
“Don’t you dare!”
Jermay jumped forward so fast that his leg wouldn’t hold him. He grabbed for me as he stumbled, and I reached for him out of reflex. Our hands brushed each other as he crashed down, but I definitely felt him.
“Did you—?” he asked.
I lowered my hand with the pinkie out. He reached up and hooked it with his. Impossible or not, I could feel Jermay. I grabbed him in a hug more fiercely than I’d ever hugged anyone in my life.
“How?” Jermay asked.
“I don’t care,” I said, wondering if I could pull him out of the cell and into the room with me. “I’m getting you out of here.”
“You can’t make deals with him, Penn. You can’t trust him.”
“We’re in the air, Jermay, miles and miles above the ground. We need help. You and Birdie reaching the Hollow is our best shot at getting it. You have to find my fath—”
My head spun. I couldn’t even finish the word.
“Penn!”
I was on my hands and knees, unable to focus on him anymore. I’d held the connection too long; it was more than my body could handle.
“Penn!”
Jermay tried to get an arm around me to pull me up, but I was intangible again. His arm went through me. “No, Penn! Come back!”
The cell began to blur until I couldn’t hear Jermay, only the clock ticking. I blinked and I was back in Warden Nye’s office, collapsed on the rug, shaking and freezing cold. The hologram of Jermay was still soundlessly screaming my name.
I stretched out my hand, pinkie up, and held it inside his until my arm grew too weak to keep up. It crashed to the floor, and I blacked out. Again.
Losing consciousness wasn’t like falling asleep. Sleep was a pause; losing and then regaining consciousness was being dragged into darkness against my will and restarting my own body. I woke gasping. My frozen thought process slammed into disorientation, trying to reconcile a room that looked like my father’s office with the presence of Warden Nye and the still-broadcasting hologram of Jermay’s cell.
Jermay was tucked into a ball in the corner and couldn’t hear me when I called his name. I tried to stand up, but fell off the couch instead.
“Not so strong a vessel, after all,” Nye said. He dropped me back on the couch where I’d started.
“Strong enough to save him,” I said.
“Is that a ‘yes,’ then?” Nye asked.
He held his hands toward me. I took them, and reached out with the instincts I’d been raised to suppress to find the rhythm of the current flowing through his arms. I could hear the eroding circuits stutter and feel the groan of pathways on the verge of collapse. This was a lot more complex than getting a creeper light to mimic finger drumming. His components were as sluggish as muscles in atrophy; they didn’t want to move. Wires and fiber bundles rolled like contrary veins evading a needle stick.
“Behave,” I growled at the tech. “Get back in line.”
The proper alignment appeared to me as a blueprint highlighting each malfunction.
I willed the fluid lines to bypass the burnouts, and realigned his joints by begging, all while trying to keep myself from slumping back into the abyss. Finally, the warden’s hands matched up with the natural flow of blood through his body, and I let go.
“They still need replacing, but it’s a patch. They’ll work. Take Jermay home.”
A spray of floating dots shuddered across my eyes; I closed them so I wouldn’t fall on my face again.
“I imagine things like this get easier. You just need a pass through the fire, to harden your edges,” he said. “And you’re about to get it.” He buttoned his sleeves back around his metal parts and turned off the hologram. “You should have taken the offer when I first made it.”
So much for the man who refused to lie.
“I can tell them to never work again,” I threatened, but the bands on my wrists disagreed. A white-hot flash of pain reminded me they were still there.
“Empty threat, pet, but mine wasn’t an empty promise. I’ll release the boy and the child when their safe transport can be assured. This is not that time.”
The room spun again, shuddering wall to wall; the sofa tried to pitch me off. This wasn’t me—something was wrong with the Center itself.
“We have a gyroscopic stabilization system,” Nye offered.
“I’ve seen the rings.”
“They’ve been disrupted.”
The door opened, allowing Greyor back inside. He had his hand to his earpiece.
“Understood,” he said. “Move three to the main doors. Quarantine the nonessentials and face-check each ID. Seal the vents; they’re unsecure.” He looked at me for that last part, like it was my fault their stupid installation was built with vents big enough for airplane props to spin inside. “Turbine seven’s dead,” he told Nye. “Eight’s about to join it. Four through six are at seventy percent and falling fast. The rest are holding steady behind the secondary firewall.”
“He’s into the power systems, then. It’s not physical damage—Iva can fix it.”
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out, but it was long enough for something scary to have happened. The overcharged anticipation of doom I’d felt before the train was lost had settled in the air, and both Greyor and the warden had reached the tipping point of trying not to panic. They were about to fail.
“I could—” I started.
“You could do a lot more than exhaust yourself,” Nye snapped. “Trying to handle something as complex as this facility could burn you out for good. You aren’t strong enough yet, and I won’t risk it without using up our other options first.”
The room shook again, and Greyor reached for his earpiece.
“That was turbine six,” he said. “We’re coasting. Twenty minutes and we’re in amateur radar range. If the under-shielding fails, we’ll be visible before that.”
“Stay with her.”
Greyor nodded as Nye hurried toward the door.
“What about my friends?” I asked.
“One crisis at a time, pet,” the warden said on his way out.
“What’s happening?” I asked Greyor.
“The wardens weren’t persuaded to change their votes in Arsenic’s favor. This is his parting shot in retaliation. He’s either trying to distract Nye to get a crack at you, or he really intends to destroy the Center to keep Nye from it.”
“But there a
ren’t enough transports on the rings to evacuate everyone.”
Birch said that only two of the large vessels could dock at once. It would take at least ten to clear everyone.
“The other wardens are likely already fleeing with the transports, and there aren’t nearly enough emergency vessels for everyone on board. If he damages the Center, we crash.”
“He’ll go down with the rest of us.”
“Ahab always sinks alongside the whale,” Greyor said, using the desk for an anchor against the next tremor. “Now would be a really good time to tell me you can walk on air.”
Maybe if I tried I could get enough lift for myself, but that wouldn’t do him or anyone else any good. Jermay and Birch, Winnie and Birdie, Klok—they’d all be helpless, and so would my sisters, in the shape they were in. I was stuck in that office, surrounded by the family mementos I’d thought I lost when the train was destroyed, and it was about to happen again.
I’d had one idea to save us that night; there was no reason it wouldn’t work here, too. I ran for the other side of the room. “Maybe I don’t need to fly.” I snatched Bijou from his display. He was collapsed, but not fully, and currently about the size of Xerxes’ house cat persona. “If you can get me to my room, I think I can get us out of here.”
I flipped Bijou’s power switch and said, “Hang on tight.” He climbed onto my back and clung to my shoulders like a metal backpack. If his wings had been bigger, I could have used him for a glider.
“It’s broken.”
“And so were Nye’s hands,” I argued. “Two golems should be able to carry seven people.”
Warden Nye could go down with his post.
“Fine,” Greyor said. “But we’re only stopping long enough for you to grab the cat. With Arsenic on the loose, Birch is probably hiding in the greenhouse.”
“What did Arcineaux do to him?”
“He’s twisted, Penn, and so are the people he supervises. Birch was one of the few Level-Fives we had at the Ground Center, and that meant everyone wanted him under their own microscope. Arsenic was happy to oblige, one piece at a time. If Warden Nye hadn’t regained possession of him, I don’t think Birch would have survived. Now come on, we can’t linger here. If Arsenic is done with the power sector, he’ll come here looking for Nye, or to watch his handiwork in real time.”
Greyor headed for the door with me behind him. The alcove and hallway were clear, and when we passed Nye’s prize painting, I couldn’t resist the urge to skim my fingers across the surface one more time.
The warden was right; it was addictive, but it was more than nostalgia that guided my hand across my painted parents and sisters. When heat flared on Evie’s fingers, I pulled it inside myself. I absorbed the ocean in Nim’s eyes. My father instilled me with mechanical precision, and Anise’s resolve left me unstoppable as a boulder crashing down a mountain. Vesper reminded me to breathe. Touching them made me stronger, and it reinforced who and what I was—not just Celestine, or Level-Five. Together, my family had nearly bested the full power of the Commission; I could certainly take care of one warden. Or two.
I reached for my mother’s face, allowing myself to linger on the feel of her cheek and hair. A scent of faint perfume breezed into my nose.
“It’s too big to carry, and we can’t stay here,” Greyor snapped.
I nodded, and took a final moment to shift my fingers to my mother’s mouth and whisper: “I’m sorry, Mama.” But ghosts can’t grant absolution, and paintings don’t mourn for the son missing from them.
I fell back in line with Greyor. Behind me, I could have sworn I heard Iva’s voice say: “As am I, my darling. Now, watch.”
The kinetic weight of the air became more hectic, molecules buzzing and bouncing off one another, knitting a daydream to drape over reality. In it, Warden Arcineaux skulked around corners, every bit the gargoyle he’d seemed when I first saw him. I gasped when I recognized the hallway he was walking, and pulled Greyor back.
“Wha—” he started, but he had his answer. Arcineaux turned the corner.
Most people’s smiles brighten their faces, but Arsenic’s made shadows.
“How convenient,” he said. “Two birds. Now all I need is a stone.”
CHAPTER 39
“Penn, get back.” Greyor raised his gun.
We moved in reverse with Arsenic advancing, until we were back in the office, with nowhere else to go. The warden assessed the room, taking in the damage with a disgustingly approving leer.
“Your doing, was it?” he asked me. “This is more than a little destabilization would cause. But there aren’t any bodies, so I don’t suppose you solved either of our problems and killed him.”
“I’m not a murderer,” I said, feeling the need to defend myself.
“Not for lack of trying.” He bent over, picking at the bits that had flown about the room. With his boot he nudged the sword that had hurtled at Nye’s head. “Looks like you need to work on your aim.”
“Stay there,” Greyor ordered when Arsenic straightened up, but his words were weak and unsure. He shooed me behind him.
Arcineaux circled in front of the monitor, switching the images back on in turn. He barely reacted when the next hiccup in the stabilization system made the Center shimmy. When it passed, he was still grinning.
“I guess I know where our host went.”
He continued around the office, skimming his fingers past a spiked ball on a chain, and straightened the blazons that had been knocked askew. One dagger in particular, which had been paired with the sword, gave him enough difficulty that he had to use both hands to pry it free.
Greyor tensed.
“I remember you from the ground.” Arsenic pointed the dagger at him. “I thought you looked familiar, but it was one of my people who made the connection. You transferred in immediately prior to the security breach that cost me most of my test subjects, then transferred out from the disgrace.”
I took a step forward, wondering if I could muster the anger or control to overpower the restriction bands and send the room into flight again. There wasn’t enough space to extend Bijou and ask him for help.
“And now you’re here, responsible for Nye’s prize possession.” Arcineaux glared at me. “Am I to call that coincidence?”
“Shoot him,” I told Greyor. He didn’t have to kill him, all he had to do was wound him. With the damage Arsenic had done, surely Greyor was justified by Commission standards. The other wardens knew the man had lost it.
“If he was going to shoot, he would have,” Arsenic said. “You see, the longer you threaten someone, the less likely you are to actually act.” His hand dropped to his side, still holding the dagger, but no longer flaunting it.
“I was protecting Winifred,” Greyor blurted. His voice was getting higher, more desperate. “You were torturing her . . . all of them. They’re kids.”
“Subhuman mongrels, and you released them on a population that doesn’t have the sense to know they need protecting.”
“My sister is not a mongrel!” Greyor shouted.
“You’re Winnie’s brother?” I asked, but it already made sense.
He was the reason they never knew how the girls escaped the Center, and he’d let them go at the precise moment that caused the most damage to the man who hurt her.
Winnie was in the twin database. Did that make Greyor the other half of the pair? If so, he had to have an ability, too, but I hadn’t seen him do anything spectacular.
“I would have released them all, if I’d found a way,” Greyor said defiantly.
Ignoring the gun, Arcineaux clasped Greyor on the shoulder.
“And now I see you are an honest man, as well as a brave one.” His voice had turned deadly soft while his focus hardened. “Dumb, but honest.”
The hand that had been slack at his side moved so quickly I didn’t see it
until Greyor pitched backward from the impact. His blood didn’t show on the warden’s gloved hands, but it ran over the hilt and the blade protruding from Greyor’s abdomen. More trickled from his mouth.
“You really should have taken your shot,” Arsenic whispered in Greyor’s ear, then shoved him back. Greyor bent in half, his hands beneath the dagger’s handle but not grasping. His voice had left him; all he could do was swallow over and over and over. And then he fell.
I was on my knees beside him when he hit the floor, trying to do . . . I didn’t even know what. There was nothing to be done. Arsenic’s strike had been brutal. Greyor was gone.
“See? Aim is critical.”
Arsenic pulled the dagger from Greyor’s body. The blade came free with the sickening suction of a filling void that soon brimmed with dark blood. He tossed the dagger into the heap of relics on the floor. I still hadn’t gotten off my knees, or released Greyor’s hand. I didn’t even know when I’d taken his hand.
“You didn’t have to do that!”
“I’m disappointed,” Arsenic told me. “You didn’t try to save him.”
“You did this, not me!”
“He did this.” Arsenic pointed at Greyor. “Ambition can be a deadly vice if you aren’t the one holding the knife.”
I cared less about knives than the sword that had nearly skewered Nye earlier. It was still on the floor, and completely out of Arcineaux’s line of sight. My wrists were on fire, but that only reminded me that people like Arsenic were so afraid of me, they had to try to control me. He couldn’t do that with pain. Pain was the ally telling me that I was still alive, and still dangerous.
“What are you doing?” he asked. From the look on his face, I was pretty sure he’d seen my eyes turn black and knew he was in trouble.
The sword clattered up off the ground, and this time no one caught it.
I was still shaking when I made it back to my cell. Birch was there, but I was in no shape to acknowledge him.