“Eliot?” But there’s no response. “Are you all right?” I shake the person, hoping to wake them up. He or she must be getting kicked and stepped on worse than I am, but there’s no response. I pat my way up the person’s leg until it ends in a sticky wetness and something sharp jutting out. It’s a severed leg. Leaning to the side, I heave the contents of my stomach onto the floor. Someone slips in my vomit and curses me. People continue to rush past me like cattle in a stampede while Ben and I huddle together on the floor.
Another explosion, bigger than the last, rocks the foundation of the room. Next to me, one of the huge glass chandeliers crashes to the floor, sending up a burst of broken glass. Ben yelps when some of the flying shards hit him and jerks on the leash, trying to drag me away.
“Eliot! Where are you?”
I stagger to my feet, my hands slick with some dark liquid. In the hazy light, a glossy sheen of little black droplets covers me. My mind feels numb. More chandeliers fall with the crashing sound of fireworks. Then pieces of the ceiling rain down while smoke billows around me. Ben tugs at the leash, and I follow his lead blindly.
As we get farther and farther away from the initial blast point, the smoke begins to clear. Amid all the fleeing, the injured, and the dead, one figure stands silhouetted against the haze, the smoke, and the flames. His clothes are free of debris and filth, and he stands straight and still, unaffected by the chaos around him. I rub at my eyes, thinking I must be mistaken. No, that is hatred, pure and vicious, glaring back at me in Will’s eyes. Another boom rocks the room. Chunks of ceiling crash to the ground, and as I try to dodge what chunks I can, I can’t shake the image of his rage from my mind. Is he really willing to just stand there and watch me die?
The Worst Of Them All
Will
Bodies clutter the banquet hall. They’re everywhere, trapped beneath tables and chandeliers, even trampled in the mad rush to escape. Occasionally, one of the bodies squirms, twitches, and cries out for rescue, but I don’t lift a finger to help them. They’re not worth it; none of them are.
Socrates is the worst of them all. The root of the problem. He was the first, after all. If it weren’t for him, none of the others would be here. Our country would be known for something other than old men killing children. If it weren’t for him, Mira would still be alive.
The First crouches in the smoky inferno, his head darting wildly as he tries to find a way out. He holds a piece of cloth to his mouth to help him breathe. His dog whines and tries to pull him toward the exit, but he can’t see where he’s going. Good. I hope he never finds the door. A flurry of sparks and flames erupt as an old ceiling tile crashes to the ground next to him. He stumbles away from it. Another blast echoes through the room, and Socrates shrinks away from it. I could save him if I wanted, but I don’t move. Not yet, anyway.
Little metal shards from the boxes we helped stack before the banquet litter the area where the stage used to be. That must have been where most of the bombs were located. Was this set up all along just in case the Free America Bill failed, and if so, what would they have done if it passed?
Socrates bends over, almost double, wracked with deep, wrenching coughs. The dog barks at him, trying to get his attention, but the First ignores him. After catching his breath, he trips on a broken chair and falls to the ground with a startled cry. When another panel crashes a few feet away and sparks erupt, he drops Ben’s leash.
“Get out of here!” He shoos at the dog, but Ben doesn’t listen.
A part of me almost feels sorry for Socrates, but then all the anger, the pain, and the helpless agony I felt watching Mira die and this monster take her place rises to the surface. A grim smile plays across my lips. He deserves this, and after he’s gone, Mira can finally rest.
Socrates forces himself to his feet, and that’s when he notices me. Even through the hazy, smoky air, I can see his sharp intake of breath, the way his eyes widen slowly, and his mouth opens in surprise.
Does he know that I’m not going to save him this time like I did when Carroll attacked him? The rage that simmers below the surface is too great to let him live.
The chandelier above his head sways then jerks as the decorative chain tethering it to the ceiling snaps. As it crashes to the ground, Socrates looks up and his shrill cry echoes through the burning banquet hall before it stops abruptly in a heap of twisted metal and glass.
When the smoke and dust clear enough for me to see, an arm thrusts from the debris and starts scrabbling for purchase. Dammit, why won’t he die? When he pulls his torso free of the debris, he scrubs at his face with his free hand and winces. Having dodged at the last second, Ben jumps in and pulls at his sleeve, but the First can’t move. He’s trapped beneath the broken chandelier. He tugs at his legs, until he realizes he can’t break free on his own.
“Run!” he shouts at the dog, but the animal won’t leave his side. “Get! Go on!” Panic fills his voice, but still the dog won’t move. Ben whines and tugs at Socrates’s sleeve again. He doesn’t realize it’s hopeless. Socrates won’t be walking away this time.
Even though the whole building burns around me, and every fiber in my being screams at me to escape, I carefully approach the injured First. The face that meets mine is slick with sweat, dirt, and blood.
“Help me.” Desperation fills his voice. He reaches one trembling hand toward me. The long cuffs on his dress are ragged and torn. When I don’t move, he tries to pull his legs out of the rubble again but grunts in pain when he can’t.
I crouch next to Socrates. “You want me to help you? Just like you helped Mira?” I shake my head. “You’re a monster. This is what you deserve.”
“Will—” A harsh cough wracks his chest. “Please help me, I’m not…”
I slap my knees to stop him from talking. “Shut up, old man!” I gesture at the room. “You’re not in charge any longer. I don’t have to listen to you.”
Another chandelier smashes to the ground about ten feet away, sending slivers of light and glass everywhere. Some small part of my mind registers the tiny cuts, the smoke filling my lungs, and the weakening cries for help, but nothing can take my focus away from the monster lying crushed before me.
“You don’t understand.” Socrates winces and tugs on his trapped leg again. “Please help me. I’ll explain everything as soon as we’re someplace safe.”
I stand up and dust my hands off on my pants. “No. Don’t you get it? You’re done, old man. This is it. You don’t get to walk away this time.” Something creaks overhead, and I look up just as one of the huge white ceiling tiles breaks free. I leap to the side, but pain explodes in my shoulder as the corner of the heavy tile hits me, knocking me to the ground. Darkness dances around the edges of my vision. Gasping, I beat on my chest until the black spots clear from my vision. I force my arms underneath my body, but only one of them moves. My left arm, the one hit by the ceiling tile, hangs useless at my side.
Squinting through the thick billowing smoke, I see more ceiling tiles rain down around me, and I wave with my good arm, trying to clear the air, but all I see is a pile of rubble. Socrates is gone. I stare at the debris for a few seconds, waiting to feel some sense of satisfaction now that he’s dead, but all I’m left with is bitter emptiness.
Someone calls my name from far away, and I stagger toward the sound. The toe of my shoe snags on a table knocked over on its side, and a pair of rough hands grabs me right before I hit the ground. Agony slices through me as he grabs my limp arm.
“Dammit, boy. What the hell are you doing here? I told Evie to get you to a pod.” Gregor’s rough voice grates against my eardrums.
“Gregor? What are you doing?”
He shoves me through the doorway. “Saving your ass. What does it look like?” He cranes his neck. “Is anybody else still alive in there?”
I can still see the terrified, hopeless expression on Socrates’s face, but I give my head a quick shake to dispel the image. “I don’t think so. Not any of ours,
anyway. If they didn’t get out, they’re not going to.”
“Good, we gotta go. The last pod was supposed to leave for the rendezvous twenty minutes ago. They probably reprogrammed it by now, so there’s no telling where we’ll end up.” Another explosion, this one farther away, echoes from the banquet hall, and Gregor pushes me farther away from the door. “But at least it’ll be better than here.”
James Scoffield races into the room. His normally perfect hair and clothes are wild and creased. He scans the destruction for something or someone, but when he apparently can’t find it, he curses loud enough for me to hear him. When he sees me, he rushes up to us. “You made it! Where is she?”
“Where is who?”
“Mira. Did she head for the pods already?”
I scrub some of the grime from my face. “Why would she do that? Mira’s dead.”
James grabs my head and inspects my skull. “Did you hit your head or something?” He grabs my forearms, but I jerk my injured arm out of his grasp. “No, she’s not. She’s alive, you idiot. Did. You. Get. Her. Out?”
“Maybe you hit your head. Take a look in there, James.” I gesture to the enflamed banquet hall. “Socrates is dead. I saw the ceiling cave in on him myself.”
“Dammit!” A thick lock of hair falls in front of his eyes, and he angrily swipes it away. “You watched her die? You were supposed to protect her!” He peers through the doorway at the burning room.
My smoke-addled brain struggles to understand what he just said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you told me yourself that Mira’s dead. She died, and Socrates took her place.”
With a tired sigh, James scrubs his hand through his hair. “She’s not dead. Socrates arranged his own death. It was Mira all along.”
Everything inside me goes cold as a deep, frigid numbness fills me. No. She can’t be alive. She wouldn’t have kept that from me. My tunnel vision sees only one person: James Scoffield. Gregor disappears, the smoke, the fire, and the carnage; all of it vanishes.
“She’s alive?” My voice, a hoarse, strangled whisper. No. She can’t be alive. It’s not possible. She would have told me.
“She was,” James snaps. He turns away and strides toward the doorway. “And I refuse to believe she’s dead without seeing it myself.”
I close my eyes, but all I see is the pile of rubble and Socrates—no, Mira—begging me to rescue her. “She’s dead, James; I watched her die. I could have saved her, but I didn’t.” I killed her, just as surely as I wanted to kill Socrates. “Mira is dead.”
Alive
Mira
“Mira! Can you hear me?” someone shouts in a muffled voice.
“Do you see her?” a woman calls out.
Weight presses in on me from all sides. Wood, metal, and glass slice into my skin, stab through my clothes, and pin me to the ground. When I open my eyes, darkness clouds my vision, and varying shades of gray mute everything.
“No. Where did he say she was again?” the woman asks.
“By the stage.” The first man’s voice grows louder. “Dammit! Why didn’t they get her out of here before the bombs went off?”
“I don’t know. Look, there’s what’s left of the podium!” the woman shouts with excitement.
“Finally! We have to find her and get the hell out of here. This whole place is going to collapse.”
I open my mouth to shout but cough instead. All right. Maybe I can move my arm or something to get their attention. That doesn’t work, either. Okay. Start small. Take inventory of what works. Carefully I test each part of my body. Hands, check. Legs, oh, ouch. That right one definitely has something wrong with it.
“Over here! There’s the dog, and… I think that’s George Eliot.” The woman’s voice grows quieter. Her silence fills me with dread. “Oh no.”
“Can you get to them?”
“Yes. But… I don’t think it’ll do any good. They’re gone.” She swears softly. “I’m so sorry, James. I know George Eliot was important to you.”
The rubble trapping me moves just a bit. My hazy mind, so focused on survival, refuses to accept her words. Eliot and Ben can’t be dead. They can’t.
James’s sighs, sadness filling the silence. “We all make sacrifices for the greater good. What about Mira?”
“I’ll keep looking. Just give me a minute, here.” The debris moves again, and finally a little bit of light shines through, a ray of hope.
“Help me,” I groan. “I’m stuck.”
“Oh my God! Mira? Is that you?”
I groan again.
“Did you find her?” the other rescuer yells.
“I think so. Get over here and help me!”
Rubble crashes down around me, crushing me, pressing me into the concrete, flattening me so much I don’t think I’ll ever escape. Darkness overtakes me.
“I found her! She’s over here and she’s alive!”
“Thank God. I was beginning to think that boy was right and she was dead after all.” James throws the rest of the wood and what must be a ceiling tile off me. He reaches out and carefully, with every muscle in my body screaming in agony, I take his hand. He pulls me from the ground and clasps me in a tight embrace. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you!” He sets me away at arm’s length and looks me over.
“Will. Where is he?”
“He’s not here. He left with Gregor and some of the other rebels.”
I suck in a deep breath and close my eyes, as if that would shut away the memory of him watching me die. “He just…he just stood there and…”
“Shh, it’s okay,” James says, rubbing my arms. “We’ll sort everything out as soon as we get out of here.”
I shudder at the burning auditorium around us and then glance down at my own injured body. “That sounds like a great idea. I never want to see this place again.”
“Let’s hope you never have to.”
Coward
Will
Two days later…
A thick, meaty hand streaked with soot and blood falls on my shoulder. “Come on. We’ve done all we can. Marcus received word that they set up a new safe house right outside the city.”
I tighten my hands, similarly stained, into white-knuckled fists on the windowsill. “No. There might still be survivors trapped in there.”
Gregor sighs and stares off into the distance. “If anyone’s still in there, we can’t get to them. Better leave it to the military.”
I laugh, a bitter sound. “Those assholes?” Even though we’re almost a mile away from the Smith, I can still see smoke rising in ghostly gray trails from the rubble. Dirty, mud-streaked people probably still scavenge in the ruins, though whether they’re searching for survivors or plundering whatever treasures they can find is anyone’s guess. “They haven’t even dug themselves out yet, let alone launched any relief efforts.”
Gregor grunts in agreement. “Musta been tough to get all them bombs to go off at once.” He studies me, probably trying to figure out what I know.
“Yeah. I don’t think they saw it coming.” Mira’s scream echoes through my head as silence stretches between Gregor and me.
Finally, he pushes himself away from the window and claps me on my good shoulder. “We gotta go. The others are getting antsy.”
I shrug him off. “Of course they are. Now that the real war’s started, they just want to run to safety.”
Gregor’s face turns red. “You better watch what you say, boy. We’re not cowards. A lot of the people left behind have kids. It’s just too dangerous.” He scowls at me. “I don’t know why we’re even talking about this. With Evie and all, you shoulda been the first one ready to leave.”
A frustrated sigh leaves my lips. “But we’re not done here.”
He bobs his sweat-streaked head. “All that smoke ain’t good for her or the baby.”
The crushing guilt eats at my conscience, but I push it aside. “Fine. Let’s go.” As we walk to the door, I give the ruins one last, lingering glan
ce.
Gregor stares at me. “What’s wrong?”
When we reach the door, I stop, uncertain whether to proceed. “It’s my fault. She was trapped, and I just stood there and watched her die.”
Gregor’s frown deepens the folds around his mouth. “You thought she was a First, man. Nothing wrong with that. I woulda done the same thing.”
“But she wasn’t a First. She wasn’t Socrates. She was Mira.” I stare at my hands, at the dark smudges from ash, soot, and blood. Is some of it Mira’s? Many of the bodies are too burned to identify. The putrid aroma of charred flesh still lingers in my nose.
Gregor pushes past me to open the door. “Don’t matter now. We gotta be gone, like yesterday. Sooner or later they’re gonna notice that the Postal Museum is one of the Smith’s last standing buildings. They’re gonna ask a lot of questions, and they have a lot of guns, so I can guarantee you ain’t going to like the way they go about it.” He pauses at the door. “We’re leaving in an hour with or without you.” He hurries down the narrow, unlit service stairwell to the ground level of the building.
Alone again, I creep down a different stairway and slip outside. Darting between broken buildings and debris takes me more than twice as long as I’d expect, but I still make it to the Natural History Museum without being noticed. Once there, I pause to let the tragedy of what happened sink in, like I have every time I’ve come and searched for survivors.
The jagged remnants of walls jut from the ground like rotten teeth. Support beams lean precariously and smoke still wafts from the ruins in a couple places. We’d managed to put out most of the flames, but in some areas it was too dangerous. The area where the stage and the podium once stood still smolders. There’s no way of knowing if all the bombs went off yet, so they don’t want to risk it. They’re right. The logical part of my brain says they’re right. But if my heart was in control, I’d still be knee deep in those ruins, searching for her. Maybe if I found something, even her body, I could finally sleep.
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