Jaesin and I dash forward, and the four of us press ourselves together, the crackle of energy from the maz itchy on the back of my neck. We shuffle to the edge of the alley, taking it slow to get the hang of moving together, then step cautiously into the road. Ania has hopelessly terrible rhythm and can’t quite march on step and the rest of us adjust to her as best we can. If one of us gets too far away, the strain could cause the whole spell to collapse.
Of course, a car chooses that moment to come diving down from the traffic lanes overhead, angling in to park on this street.
“Look up,” I whisper, struggling to keep my voice low. Ahead of me, Jaesin stiffens and hisses, “Double time, now!”
The four of us scurry as best we can to the side of the road, reaching the curb just as the car slams down to hover height on the road and continues on through the next intersection, cruising toward a club that’s still open, in defiance of the city’s district-wide closure. There’s no time to stop and ponder our near death, though. As soon as our boots hit the curb, the staff entrance pops open, Davon’s welcome face peeking out from inside.
“Hurry,” he mouths, waving us forward as he looks over his shoulder. A cool relief blooms in my chest at the sight of him, and I smile despite the circumstances. He catches my eye and smiles back, then steps out to allow us to slip past him into the hallway.
The door shuts behind us with disturbing finality. We actually have to do this. Our plan for getting back out is vague at best, but we have no choice. It’s this or let MMC destroy an entire district of my city. My city. Which is not happening.
“Hey,” I murmur as Davon brushes past me. I snag the edge of his sleeve and tug. “Everything good?”
He wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls me in for a quick hug. “Good to go. You all ready?” he asks, turning to address the others.
Everyone nods, expressions serious, focused, nervous. I have the ridiculous urge to throw myself at them all for a group hug, to let Ania fuss and Jaesin ruffle my hair, to pull every inch of Remi’s body close to mine. The moment for that is long over, though. Instead, I give Davon what I hope is a firm, confident nod.
“Okay,” Davon says. “Follow me and stay close. I’ve diverted some camera feeds between here and where we need to go. I started in on the security to see what we’re up against, but it’s heavy duty. Diz, I’ll need your help once we get to the restricted area.”
Dang. If Davon can’t handle it solo, it must be some major ice. Sometimes two perspectives helps, though. We’ll handle it. We have to.
We follow quickly and quietly, turning down hallway after deserted hallway. I hold my breath at every corner, expecting someone to jump out and shoot us, to end this whole thing before it even begins. But nothing. Turns out eleven at night is the perfect time for abandoned hallways and silent rooms. I keep glancing up and to the right, waiting for a notification from my little drone, parked on the ceiling of the MMC boardroom. Nothing yet. We still have plenty of time.
“How far in is this place?” Jaesin whispers after about three minutes of twists and turns, looking over his shoulder every five seconds.
“Not long now,” Davon says. “One more hallway. They put the most secure part of the facility in the dead center.”
Sure enough, one more turn, the end of the hallway opens up into a larger, darker space, with a door edged in orange warning paint.
RESTRICTED AREA. LEVEL FIVE ACCESS ONLY.
So close.
The lights must be on a sensor, because as soon as we walk in, they flicker on, blinding me for a second. Something in the air changes too, though, like a pressure difference, or movement—
—and when my vision clears, we’re surrounded by MMC security, all with maz or guns leveled at us. Not maz-powered stun guns like ours. Real, lethal ones.
Adrenaline hits me like a wave of firaz, burning me from the inside out.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Jaesin says, voice flat. I look over at him, and I’ve never seen his face like this before—twisted and hateful. I follow his gaze back to the MMC guards surrounding us . . .
. . . and to Davon, standing next to the guard captain at the head of the group.
My mind goes perfectly blank.
I shake my head once, then again, my horrified gaze locked on Davon, pressed and polished in his MMC polo shirt, standing between the barrels of two leveled guns.
“No,” I say. “No, this isn’t what it looks like. Davon, tell me—”
The head of security gestures to me. “Is she the one?”
Davon nods. “That’s the deal. You touch her, they’ll have your job.”
“Calm down, kid, I know how to follow orders,” she says, holstering her gun. “Take the others into custody.”
Officers step forward and take hold of Ania, Jaesin, and Remi, forcing their arms behind their backs. My heart lurches painfully, watching them seize Remi’s shoulder and force them to their knees, the look on their face. . . .
Jaesin snarls and yanks against the guards’ hold, like a bull about to charge. “You complete garbage asshole of a human being, Davon, you godsforsaken—”
His breath rushs out of him in a whoosh as one of the guards slugs him in the stomach. My hands fly to my mouth.
“Davon, you—”
I cut myself off, fury threatening to strangle the words right from my throat. “How could you do this? After everything? After—”
I can’t speak. I can’t understand. I can’t . . .
“I told you, Dizzy. I’ve always got your back,” he says, hands held in front of him imploringly. “They knew we were family. They came for me after you left for Jattapore. I negotiated for you. Your job offer stands and your warrant gets wiped, and that comes straight from the executive board. You’re free. You still get to have a good life. We can get a new place if you want, just the two of us, and finally live like family again. We always wanted to when we were kids, remember?”
I do remember. We used to lie on the roof of Davon’s house and imagine what kind of place we’d have as grown-ups, all the things we’d buy for it, who we would marry and how they would totally not mind sharing a house because we’d all be best friends. The fact that we lived in separate houses as kids frustrated us to no end. We wanted to be a “real” family. Because, of course, to a child, family didn’t mean the same thing if you didn’t share a roof. I dropped my face into my hands and shook my head.
Real family.
He has no idea about real family.
A wave of rage hits me, hot and sudden, and I pin Davon with a fierce glare.
“How could you ever think I would want that?” I shout, the ragged sound tearing itself from my throat. “That I could just pick up and continue my life as if this never happened? As if I could just forget my friends? Forget everything we’re here to fight for?”
Davon sighs, exasperated. He has the nerve to be exasperated?
“Dizzy,” he says. “You and me, we’ve always known how the world works. We do what it takes to survive. We look after each other before all others. I know MMC’s history is messy, but there’s a balance to everything. We can’t go back and undo the past, but we can make sure things are the best they can be now. We can work to make things better. You would have done the same thing, if it were me in trouble. You know this was the right move.”
I shake my head and back away, one step, then two.
“No.”
Another step.
“No, Davon. I could never—” I break off, lift my chin, and look Davon dead in the eye. “I could never do what you’re doing right now.”
I turn to look at Ania, Jaesin . . . and Remi. Kneeling, faces twisted with pain as the guards wrench their arms, bruise their wrists.
I did this to them. It’s my fault.
“You have it all wrong,” I say, looking back to Davon. “They are my real family.”
Silence.
“Well,” Davon finally says, stone-faced. “I’m sorry you feel that w
ay.”
We stare at each other across the room, surrounded by guards who seem to be waiting for something. Waiting to see if I’ll turn violent so they can justify taking me down, probably. Waiting for Davon to give up on me so they can take me too.
There has to be a way out of this. There’s no way we can come this far only to stop right outside the door. MMC will continue with their drilling, destroy the whole district, Ginny’s bakery, the clubs, the factories. More people out of jobs, more maz-15 in the system, more people ill. More people dying. More control for MMC.
I look around the room with a disorienting sense of deja vu. Was it really less than a day ago that we were in this exact same situation at the professor’s house, surrounded, no hope of ever . . .
Wait a minute.
“I told you we went to Jattapore,” I say, putting it together. “You ratted us out. You’re the reason we got ambushed at the professor’s house. And at the train station. It’s your fault the professor and his husband were almost killed. That I could have been killed.”
Davon shakes his head. “They wouldn’t have hurt you, Diz. They were under strict orders not to.”
I snort. “Yeah? Well, it sure felt like they were planning on it when they had me on the ground with weapons and spells pointed at me. Sorry, I’m just not really feeling the forgiving vibes.”
But we got out of that situation. I annoyed people, the others fought, and we lived. Barely. There are double the guards here, though.
Can we pull that off again? Do we have another choice?
I turn to the others and take in how they’re being held, where they’re facing.
They have Remi by the biceps, but their fingers are free. Mistake.
They’re clearly favoring Jaesin’s right side, expecting the most struggle to come from there. Mistake.
They have Ania’s arms much more firmly secured, two hands locked around the ware on her wrists. Her feet though, with their heavy-heeled shoes, are unsecured. Mistake.
There’s a chance. Just a chance, but . . .
I pull myself together and take a long, deep breath in through my nose.
“I’m learning all kinds of things today,” I say, loud, so every guard can hear me. “Thing number one.”
I hold up one finger and meet Remi’s eyes. The corner of their mouth quirks, and the faintest, tiniest thread of dark maz slithers out of their necklace, under the collar of their shirt, and down their sleeve. I need to keep the attention away from them, so I spin dramatically and point a finger straight at Davon. The guards all tense at my sudden movement, raising their guns, but I press on, my heart racing. No tremor in my voice, no hesitation in my step, and absolutely no looking back toward the others.
“Number one,” I say again, staring into Davon’s eyes. “You’re a tool. I thought you were the best person in the world, my brother in all but blood, but I guess you’ve drunk the MMC poison. Tragic.”
I pace to the left, then the right, moving around to keep all eyes on me. How long will Remi need? No way to tell. The guards are twitchy, looking uncertainly from me to Davon to their captain, clearly unsure how long they should tolerate my antics. I draw it out as long as I can.
“Number two,” I continued. “Professor Silva, who you may remember as a genius maz researcher who was unceremoniously fired from MMC eight years ago, is an utterly delightful man who knows a whole lot of interesting things about this place. For instance,” I say with a grand gesture, meeting every guard’s eyes, willing them to focus on me. I’m a mess, look at me, look at me. “Did you know that MMC caused the spellplague? True story! It’s caused by this stuff they don’t want you to know about called maz-15. A new strain of maz, big deal, right? The world should know! Except for that spellsickness bit.”
The guard captain rolls her eyes. “What a load of conspiracy theorist, tinfoil-hat-wearing bullsh—”
“And!” I interrupt. “The same thing that causes the spellplague? Totally responsible for the earthquakes and hurricanes too! Funny how those all started right after the spellplague, don’t you think? See, MMC made a little drilling mistake ten years ago, right here in this very facility, and they let something out that was never supposed to be free. But did they clean up their mess?”
The guards on the left side of the room are drifting, their attention waning, eyes rolling, so I twirl toward them with a flourish.
“No!” I declare dramatically, stomping my foot and pointing randomly at one of the guards. “They figured out they could profit off their mistake, so what did they do? They kept drilling for the same maz that killed off your friends and family.”
A sure bet. Because everyone in Kyrkarta lost someone in the plague, unless they came to town afterward, and even the newbies have a healthy respect. I risk a quick glance back at the others to make sure their guards are still paying attention. Remi has their hands gently cupped behind their back, and they lower their chin in the faintest nod. Yes.
“That drill shaft, by the way, is somewhere behind that door, bringing more and more plague into this world every day,” I say, pointing behind me. Who knows, maybe someone here will actually believe me. If we die in this attempt, someone needs to know.
“And finally,” I say, willing my body not to give the plan away. One . . . two . . .
“Three!”
I drop to the floor, and the room explodes.
The spell goes off at the guards’ chest height, spreading out in a painfully bright disk that throws the guards and Davon back and holds them fast to whatever wall caught them, stuck flat against it like a living mural. Jaesin, Remi, and Ania lurch to their feet as soon as the spell passes overhead, Jaesin snatching his gun back from the struggling form of the guard who’d held him. Remi immediately begins to weave a new spell, this one an odd, intense blend of colors threading together so quickly I can barely catch them, red and gold and violet and black.
“Get to the door!” Remi shouts. “Just blow it open and get inside, Ania. I think we’re past trying to be stealthy.”
Ania promptly obeys. She’s awful at explosives normally, but this time she doesn’t need finesse, just raw power. She whips up an explosive cocktail of magnaz and firaz as we run and, twenty feet out, throws the spell at the door.
BOOM!
The door stays stubbornly closed.
The wall around it, however, now features a nice human-sized gap. When in doubt, make your own door.
I shove Ania and Jaesin through first, then turn back to check on Remi. Davon is still pinned to the wall, recovering from the stun hit, but the spell is wearing off enough for some of the guards to reach for their weapons. Remi tosses a furious look over their shoulder at me.
“Get behind the wall!” they shout, whipping their spell into a frenzy over their head, weaving in more and more gold and glowing violet. I crawl through the gap and press my back against the wall next to it. Right as Ania throws a barrier over the opening, the thought right on the tip of my brain finally clicks.
A color of maz I haven’t seen much. Only twice, in fact.
The intense violet shade of maz-15.
“Remi, no!” I shout, launching myself off the wall.
Too late.
Twenty-Six
THE BLAST FEELS LIKE ALL the air being sucked out of the room, like a sudden vacuum swallowing all of existence. Then—BOOM!
A whomp of pressure slams into the wall at my back, the tremor nearly knocking me to the ground even from this side, the flash of violet light shining through the crumbling gap we came through. Debris rains down, dusting our hair gray and coating my throat. I stumble back to standing with a hacking cough and peek around the corner.
The guards—and Davon—are all flat on the ground, sprawled with their various complexions washed out in the pallor of illness, blood pooling around a few who hit their heads in the fall. The onset of spellsickness? Or just an effect of the spell? Their chests still rise and fall, mostly. Davon’s does, at least. Stars, Davon . . . is he spellsi
ck now? Do I even care, now that he’s completely betrayed me in the worst possible way?
My eyes fixed on the rise and fall of his chest, bile burning in the back of my throat. I don’t know what to think or feel, other than a mess.
He’s alive. That has to be good enough for now. Even after everything he’s done, the thought of losing another family member to the spellplague is unbearable.
But that thought came too soon, because in the center of all the blood and bodies is Remi, on their knees and sprawled forward with their face pressed to their folded forearms, sides shaking with coughing sobs that fill the whole room. My heart squeezes hard in my chest, and my foot catches on a piece of broken concrete as I stumble back through the gash in the wall and to Remi’s side, falling to my knees beside them.
“Are you hurt?” I ask, laying a hand on their shoulder, running the other through their hair. “Remi, are you okay?”
Remi shakes their head, then shoots up to kneeling, their puffy red eyes wide.
“Dizzy, get out of here! The maz might not have settled yet, and—”
“I don’t care,” I say, cupping their face in both hands. They’re pale, so pale, and their breathing is thready and uneven. I brush my thumbs over their cheekbones and swallow hard. “I don’t care. Can you stand?”
They keep their eyes fixed on my face as they take several deep breaths, then nod. “I just caught a bit of blowback from the spell. I was sloppy. I’ll be fine in a minute.”
Fine is relative, but I’ll take their word for it. I sling Remi’s arm over my shoulders and push from my knees, staggering a bit as they lean hard on me until their legs steady. Jaesin dashes out a second later, taking Remi’s other arm over his shoulders and helping me get them out of that room and its stink and blood and fading, deadly maz.
“Dizzy,” they whisper. “I’m sorry. There were so many of them, I didn’t know what else to do. I don’t want Davon to be ill, I don’t think he will be, but if he is—”
“Hey,” I say gently, stepping over a groaning guard. “It’s not like you’re a trained combat weaver. You did what you had to. Where did you even get the maz-15 from?”
Spellhacker Page 24