I wondered if this was how the ancient Gladiators I had once read about felt. A fight to the death lying just beyond closed doors, and all you could do was wait.
My hand twitched to my vest tapping the breast pocket. Folded carefully inside was a drawing of a young man and girl, between them a smiling child. Triven’s fingers wove in mine, pulling my hand back down to my side with a squeeze.
“We did the right thing. She will be safer with the other children here.” He reassured me again. It was what we had agreed on. Even Mouse understood she would be a liability on the front line, but it still felt wrong not to have her with us. To not have her at my side.
“I know, but…” I trailed off. It was selfish. Stupid.
“I know.” He repeated.
“How much time?” Otto approached us from the milling crowd. He was not the first to ask this question. We had fallen into a rotation. Someone asking every three minutes or so. Archer the most frequent offender. I had finally set the screen on the roof ledge where everyone could see it. But they still asked.
I glanced first at Ryker’s ticker then up at the night sky. We would get no cover tonight. The moon was bright and nearly at its peak. Ryker’s clock was true.
“One hour.” I confirmed. “Light the markers.”
Otto threw up a hand, giving the signal. There were two soft pops and smoke laced the moonlight. He hesitated, watching the smoke grow. “You think they’ll come?”
Triven squeezed my hand again as he spoke. “I don’t know.”
There were only fifty of us. The first wave of attack. We were the battering ram, the ones to clear a path for the slightly less abled. We would enter first with the Tribes flanking us for support.
Support wasn’t the right word though.
They were not on our side exactly, they were more like gasoline being added to an already burning fire. We hoped they would fuel the chaos and little more. With the Sanctuary’s eyes turned on us and the Tribes, our second wave could enter with less resistance. This is where Triven’s mother, Arden and the remainder of our friends and family were. Five miles away, they waited on a roof of their own, ready to launch a secondary invasion. We had no way of communicating. No way of knowing if the other half of our group was safe. Our only hope of finding each other—of finding the rebels—were the two beacons Ryker had given me. Nos currently had ours stowed in his hip pocket, while I had entrusted Arden with the second one. Once we crossed The Wall, the beacons would activate and the rebels could find us.
Arstid hadn’t said it out loud, not even as she parted ways with her son, but I knew she understood the truth about her team. They weren’t just a second infiltration team, they were our backup plan. The Tribes didn’t know about them and if our team failed—if the Tribes turned on us—Arstid’s team was our last hope.
I had taken to prowling the roof line as the clock continued to tick, periodically flicking pebbles at The Wall’s protective field. Each one hit the invisible shield with a crackle of electricity, turning the rocks to ash. The Wall still stood tall, strong. Twenty feet within our reach and yet completely untouchable. There was no penetrating the iron-clad base—it stood nearly three stories high and was at least a block’s width thick. Not even a Sanctuary bomb would put much of a dent in the reinforced barricade. But the dome, electrified with enough intensity to fry anything that touched it, that was the only weak point. Though completely impenetrable from the outside, it could be taken down from the inside. If The Wall’s power failed, then so would the shield. Thaddeus had warned us that there were backup generators, that once the dome’s power was cut, the seconds would begin ticking before it turned back on. The generators would be targeted and taken out next, but there was no guarantee the Rebels could deactivate them all before they powered up. Scattered throughout The Wall’s infrastructure, the generators would have to be shut down manually, one by one. If a generator fired on, anyone not clear of that section would be fried.
Salvaged beams and makeshift ladders lined our roofs, ready to drop down and span the gaps the instant the shield dropped. This was the only way in.
At twenty-six minutes, thirty-seven seconds, a shrill whistle cut the night and the rooftop to the left of ours came to life. Bodies slid from the shadows, their silhouettes blurred at the edges, moving in the breeze. White painted faces staccato with blue slashes swam in the darkness and Archer took a step backward.
The Wraiths had come.
There were nearly one-hundred and fifty of them, their numbers alone outweighing ours. A shiver ran down my spine. The whistle rang out again and the foremost shadow raised a glinting blade in the air, tilted the hilt toward me and then clutched it to her chest. A salute meant for me. Teya had been true to her word. They were here to fight next to us.
With a signal from their leader, the Tribe twisted as a unit and in a flowing movement they turned away from us to face The Wall. Only six scouts stayed posted at the other three sides of the building, two to an edge. The two facing us had not drawn their weapons but they were watching me.
They would be the ones to shoot me if The Wall did not come down. I was sure of it.
Ten minutes and seventeen seconds later, a peel of laughter broke the stillness. The Taciturns arrived in an array of organized chaos. Maroon and grey paint splattered their clothing, but unlike the Wraiths, their skin remained exposed. Tattoos proud, many of the Taciturns presented fresh ink and raw skin. I counted seventy-three of them. The Tribesmen were no longer acting as human shields for their new leader, who skipped along the building’s edge on light toes. Twice Sedia flipped from her feet to her hands and then back again, nearly slipping off the ledge before covering her face with her tattooed hand mask.
“Did you start the party without us?” She looked up at the looming Wall as if it might be an illusion. “Who am I kidding, we are the party.”
She giggled again and several of her Tribesmen joined her.
I hated to think what they considered a party.
The Subversive members gathered closer together as the Taciturns leered at our band of misfits. We had been right to cover them in war paint of neutral colors. To hide the ex-Tribesmen in plain sight. The Taciturns looked hungry, and I wouldn’t put it past them to shoot a traitor on the spot.
At seven minutes, forty-six seconds, there was a shuffling on the Taciturns’ roof as their attention moved to their right. The Scavengers were the last to show themselves, but I had a strong feeling they had actually been the first to arrive. The rats were just biding their time. Waiting to see what played out before committing. There were the fewest of them. Maybe thirty-five at the most and nearly half of them looked ready to bolt at any second.
“Damn vermin…” I heard Nos mutter somewhere behind me.
A Taciturn caught my eye. Tilting his head, he pointed two fingers at me, then pressed them to his head, miming pulling a trigger.
Archer snarled next to me. “I’ll put a real bullet between his damn eyes.”
“He doesn’t deserve a quick death like that.” Otto’s grip tightened around his weapon, casting the Taciturn a brief glance.
“Know that jackass?” Archer asked surprised.
“He’s my brother.” Otto refused to look back at the man staring at us.
With Otto’s face covered in paint, little resemblance could be found, but I could see his features in the cut of the other man’s jaw, in the up-turn of his eyes.
Archer cast a sideways glance to her left at the Wraiths. “Family is overrated.”
“Agreed.” I piped in, staring straight ahead.
The seconds that had earlier ticked down like hours suddenly seemed to speed up. Each passing second felt like another bullet aimed in my direction. I could feel everyone’s eyes on the clock, but mine stayed resolutely on The Wall.
Less than a minute.
There was a collective intake of breath and I knew the clock had run out.
Nothing.
“Come on, Ryker.” I hissed as Triven tensed next to m
e.
I cast my eyes up to moon. It was at its peak. This was it. This was the moment.
Murmurs buzzed, filling the night and a movement caught the corner of my eye. Guns were pointing my way. Aiming at everyone around me. On instinct, I stepped up on the building’s ledge making myself a clearer target. As Triven lunged to pull me back down, an explosion sent everyone ducking for cover. Barks of shock and triumph rang out, but dampened quickly.
It wasn’t The Wall.
In the distance, the spindly-legged tower rose in flames. Metal screeched as The Healer’s water tower collapsed and a blood-thirsty Ravager battle cry followed. A moment of grief slapped my thoughts for the old woman, then reality crashed back. Suspicion began to fill the air and guns were raising again. There was no mistaking their target this time.
Me.
Desperately, I threw my hands up begging them not to fire and as I opened my mouth to scream—to plead—a deafening crack split the darkness.
Louder than thunder and brighter than any lightning, a blinding blue wave of energy spidered out from a point on The Wall’s shield nearly a hundred feet above our heads. The surge pulsed outward before sucking back in on itself with a series of violent crackles. Hexagonal panels exploded to life as the energy pulsed through them. For a split second, a perfect starry sky appeared in the shield, hinting at the illusion projected to the world inside, then piece by piece, the panels flickered out revealing the city beyond.
A city untouched by Tartarus’s rot.
A city ablaze with fire.
29. FLOOD
A BLAST OF heat slammed into my cheeks, whipping back my hair with its force. The air above The Wall shimmered, hissing and popping as the dome once protecting it sizzled out of existence.
For the first time in all our lifetimes, The Wall had come down.
Tartarus and the Sanctuary were one.
No one moved. Not even the Tribes mustered a battle cry. Then a shoulder slammed into mine.
Triven was the first to move, the one to break the spell, and suddenly the rooftops were alive. Shouts broke out instructing hands to take hold, feet to move. My own fingers felt numb as they clumsily snatched the tablet from the ground, stowing it safely back in my pocket and then gripped the dense beam tilting up next to me.
“Release!” Voices were yelling and the makeshift bridges tipped in plummeting arcs before slamming down onto the top of The Wall and connecting our worlds. The beam before me had barely stopped bouncing before I leapt on. Triven was on his too, sprinting toward our goal, side by side. Other planks fell in my periphery and soon the Subversive members were not the only people careening toward the Sanctuary.
My feet ran the beam with practiced movements and I quickly outpaced those moving with more caution, Triven and I pulling level.
Ten more feet to the iron giant.
I focused on the horizon. The once perfect city beyond was smattered with pillars of smoke and flickering electrical lights. Dampened by the still crackling grid, gunfire mixed with screams echoed somewhere in the distance.
The Rebels’ war had already begun.
There was a shriek somewhere to my right followed by a heavy splat. One of the Scavengers had not been careful enough.
My toes fell hard onto the top of The Wall’s metal fortification. It wasn’t solid as I had expected but perforated. The surface seemed to flex slightly under my steps, but I didn’t spare it a second glance. Instead, my focus stayed locked on the other side of The Wall, on the edge thirty feet in front of us and the drop-off looming after it.
One figure far to my right moved with a spring in her step, blade drawn, mouth grinning. Sedia was leading the fray with her Taciturns trailing closely behind, whooping and hollering like hyenas. There was no sound to my left, but the Wraiths were there, surging forward like ghosts. Even their feet seemed to make no noise. Though running a line parallel to mine, the figure in front of the Tribe was gaining on me, her long legs covering twice the ground mine could. Teya’s face was fierce and this suddenly felt like a race.
Who would be the first to breech The Wall?
I was not about to be outdone.
Forcing my legs to shove harder, I began counting the steps to The Wall’s end.
Twenty-six.
A sharp whistle screeched behind me. Otto’s signal. All our people had crossed safely.
I pulled my gloves on.
Eighteen steps.
I raised a hand, letting out a long whistle of my own. Twelve more echoed back. The Tribes to our sides were slowing down, eyeing the edge, but I lengthened my strides further.
Ten steps.
My hand dropped sharply and twelve guns fired from behind. The anchors whistled as they sailed through the air, arcing high over our heads. Black tethers trailed out behind them. The Tribesmen recoiled as the small metal claws embedded themselves into the perforated surface with a series of pops, three in front of each group. The Subversive members surged headlong toward the edge after theirs.
Three steps.
A rope was tossed out over my head, the coiled end disappearing over the side just as I reached up to snag the thick line. On the final step, the very tips of my boots hit open air and I shoved off the ledge. Twisting mid-jump, I kicked out my feet and swung down, back toward the metal barrier. The rope snapped and my feet hit The Wall with bent knees before sliding downward. Triven’s body shot out into the open space above me, rope in his hand. There was a grace to the way he fell, then like mine, his boots were screeching against the metal surface as we slid downward. Other people were quick to follow, though more cautiously. The Wall was shorter on this side, the ground of the Sanctuary built up to accommodate the maze of tunnels and safe houses below it. The earth seemed to fly up to meet us. The cushy green surface absorbed most of the impact and I was quick to move aside for Cortez, whose boots were hissing down toward my head. The wisps of smoke from the palms of my gloves was smothered as I grabbed my guns. Then I slumped to a knee, scanning the empty streets beyond us. Triven stepped back, squinting up at the top of The Wall, his lips moving, counting our people as he drew his own weapons. Cortez landed with a thud next to me and quickly moved out in front mirroring my position. This is when we would be the most vulnerable. The most exposed.
Archer hopped down the last two feet from her line, twisting to face the streets too, gun already drawn. There was an unmistakable air of triumph on her long face. But a flurry of white and rattling bones quickly snuffed it. Teya was the first of the Tribesmen to touch ground and the Queen was wearing the same look as her daughter. Her dark gaze landed first on me, then on Archer. For a second, the Wraith leader’s face went slack, then the practiced mask reappeared. Archer snarled, her gun twitched in the direction of her mother, but she held true, lunging forward to place Triven between her and Teya. Triven said something I could not hear and Archer gave him a shaky nod, two quick jerks of her sharp chin.
The tense moment was shattered as trilling laughter echoed down the metal wall, and I turned just in time to watch Sedia come to a screeching halt, dangling face-down on her tether, her boots twisted in the rope to slow her fall. The Taciturn’s nose narrow missed smashing into the grass before she flipped herself upright and cartwheeled off the rope. She didn’t wait for the rest of her Tribe to touch down, instead the crazed woman paused only to give me a wink and then pulled two spiked sticks from her backpack, twirling them as she took off at a prance toward the city. A listless tune whistled from her pursed lips and as the other Taciturns landed, they were quick to follow their pied piper.
The few Scavengers that had made the journey—most seemed to have deserted—were scattering. A group of them were still gathered at The Wall’s edge, debating the descent. I craned my neck back to check our numbers and that’s when I felt it.
What started as a tingling was now raising the hair on my arms. I glanced down at the rigid hairs, then twisted back to The Wall. Three people were waiting to get on our ropes and two were still perche
d on the ledge watching the others. Many more of the Tribesmen were still figuring out how to get down.
My skin crawled.
The generators were kicking back on and much sooner than we had anticipated.
The ropes were insulated, designed not to transfer electricity—or that’s what Ryker had told us. But that would only protect those on the lines. Anyone left standing on The Wall wouldn’t stand a chance.
The scream tore loose from my throat. “OTTO!!!”
My warning reached the tall figure just as a blue arc shot across the sky. I recoiled. It slammed into The Wall twenty feet to his right, blowing a Taciturn out into the air. The body twitched before plummeting into a smoldering heap.
The first spark of the force field trying to come back to life.
Hurried movements quickly turned into panicked desperation. Tribesmen began scrambling over each other to reach the ropes first. Three Scavengers fell like brown birds, flapping to save themselves. The Taciturns began leaping from higher up on the ropes, two undoubtedly breaking ankles as they slammed into the ground and the Wraiths began barking orders. Having the most people, they were in the gravest danger of not clearing The Wall in time. Larger Tribesmen began throwing smaller fighters on their backs, some even shouldering two people at a time as they slid down the insulated ropes. Others at the bottom formed nets with their arms and the bravest members threw themselves down into the waiting human webs. While there were groans of pain with each impact, they were catching people.
Our own ropes were lined with the last of the Subversive members—each person falling faster than those before. Feet barely collided with the ground before the next person was tumbling down on top of them. Those of us already down, pulled the scrambling bodies apart making room for others. As I yanked a struggling woman to her feet, my shoulder grazed the cool surface of The Wall and I jerked my head upward again.
The chaos was happening all at once—bodies falling on either side, orders being shouted, but it was the scuffle above us that caught my attention. Two figures shoved at one another at the top of my rope. Not to displace one another, but to force the other on first. Otto had volunteered to be point man, the last across, the last down, and it seemed he was determined to fulfill his role, even if it meant his own death. Nos appeared to have different plans. Grenald, who hung ten feet below the men, appeared to be trying to climb back up toward Otto.
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