And Alastair Davenport knew that. He knew what her choice would be, just as Ridley had known since the moment she read the message. She squeezed her eyes shut against the dark, ugly picture of herself that took shape in her mind. She had raged across the wastelands after she’d learned her true heritage, her storm self coming apart as she realized she had no idea who she truly was. But the answer was right here: She wasn’t good or selfless. She didn’t really want to help other people. All the tutoring and extramural activities she’d done so she could one day join The Rosman Foundation were for nothing. When it came down to it, she chose the small circle of people she loved over everyone else.
Lumina City’s residents would remain afraid of the magic beyond their wall. Those living in the bunker would have to stay hidden. Any elementals living in the city would have to continue hiding who they were. Nothing would change for these people the way Archer had said it would. Even if the world changed everywhere else, Alastair Davenport would make sure his city remained firmly in his control. Because Ridley couldn’t bear to give up the people she loved.
Sometimes there’s no right answer, Christa had said. Just two wrongs with you stuck in the middle trying to choose the wrong that sucks less. Ridley dropped her head into her hands. She wished she’d never judged Christa for the impossible decision she’d had to make. Of course she chose the people she knew and cared about—the bunker’s residents—over all the unknown elementals she was yet to meet. She had to live with her guilt, and now Ridley would—
She lowered her hands quickly as a swishing sound caught her attention. On the other side of the living room, the curtain stirred as a breeze moved through the open crack at the top of the window. “Nathan?” Ridley whispered.
He appeared a moment later, breathing heavily as if from exertion. He leaned on the back of an armchair. “Okay, we did it. Got back here faster than I expected. Man, I’m tired. But we can rest when this is done.” He sucked in a deep breath and let it out with a whoosh. “Only managed to convince six people to come back with us. Not a lot, I know, and on our own, we wouldn’t stand a chance. But with you, I think we can do it. And we’ve already taken care of the arxium machines. There’s no way they’ll have rebuilt those yet. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s been no storm since we destroyed those machines. Yes, there are some unhappy looking clouds swirling around the panels over the city, but out there beyond the wall, things are starting to clear up. We’ve made a difference already, Ridley. Now we just need to finish what we …” He trailed off, seeming to finally notice that something wasn’t quite right. “Are you okay? Is something wrong?”
Ridley’s insides had been winding tighter and tighter with every word Nathan spoke. Don’t tell him, warned a tiny voice. He’ll make you choose the city over your family. But she wasn’t supposed to be acting on her own anymore. She was supposed to be trusting people to help her. At the very least, she had to tell Nathan she could no longer be part of his big plan.
“What is it?” Nathan asked.
Tell him. Don’t tell him.
Ask for help. Act alone.
Save the city. Save your family. If you don’t, who will?
Ridley pressed her eyelids shut. She saw Dad removing his wedding ring to show her that his AI2 was fused to it. She didn’t know that he’d removed it from beneath his skin years ago. “I needed to know I could protect you if something ever happened,” he’d told her. “So yes, I know how to use certain offensive conjurations.” She saw him fighting on the balcony of a Lumina City skyscraper. She saw him hurling fireballs of magic at Shadow Society pursuers on the edge of the wastelands. She saw Grandpa sitting on the couch in their old apartment saying, “There are things I know. Certain conjurations. Old, dangerous ones that most historians believe were forgotten centuries ago.” She saw Saoirse sitting on a couch in Mrs. Adams’ apartment. “You can just about have a conversation with magic if that’s what you want. You can ask it for things and it will understand you in a way it will never understand the rest of us.”
“Ridley?” Nathan asked. Ridley opened her eyes as he stepped around the chair, concern growing on his face.
She stood, her hands clenched at her sides, her decision made.
26
Ridley stood at the very edge of Lumina City and craned her neck as she stared up at the interior surface of the arxium-reinforced wall. At least ten stories high, she’d thought most of it was solid, aside from the security infrastructure set up at certain points. However, as she’d recently discovered, the windows in this particular section of the wall belonged to Alastair Davenport’s secret research facility. Ridley never would have guessed she’d be back so soon.
She tilted her head back even further and looked at the sky. The unhappy clouds Nathan had mentioned darkened and tumbled over one another and began to cry. Ridley opened her palm as rain showered over her. Please don’t leave me while I’m in there, she begged. Listen to me. There are windows and cracks and gaps. You’ll find a way in and out. A bolt of magic flashed straight down, struck the earth beside her, then rebounded and whizzed around her outstretched hand before vanishing. “Thanks,” she whispered out loud, her chest swelling with gratitude. She wasn’t alone. She felt it now as surely as she had when she’d been broken-hearted in the dark of her old home above Kayne’s Antiques.
She faced forward, fitted a gas mask onto her wet face, and walked toward the door she’d been told to come to. Yes, there was an actual front door. She’d missed that when she and Christa tumbled out of a fourth floor window. Though her presence was no doubt already known by whoever was on the other side of that door, Ridley raised her fist and banged on the metal surface anyway.
Surprisingly, it was Alastair Davenport himself who opened the door. Ridley would have assumed he had security people or Mr. Knockoffs or other minions for things like that. No doubt they were lurking nearby, just in case Mr. Davenport needed something urgently. “Well,” he said to Ridley. “I’m mildly disappointed. I thought you would at least attempt to sneak in using magic and try to get your family out of here before I could stop you.”
Ridley glared at him, an expression he probably couldn’t see but which made her feel slightly better. “This is what you asked for. You assured me they’d be dead if I tried something like that.”
“True. But you don’t have a particularly good track record of doing what I or my subordinates ask.”
“I guess if you’d started by threatening my family, things might have worked out well for you sooner.”
Alastair sighed. “Such a cliché. And yet it almost always has the desired effect.” He tilted his head to the side. “I’m not sure why you bothered with the mask. You won’t be leaving here unless you’re happy for me to dispose of your father and grandfather—who, by the way, I was surprised to discover is still alive. I assume the story behind his fake death is an interesting one.”
It was, but if Alastair didn’t know it already, Ridley wasn’t about to enlighten him. “I’m not taking the mask off,” she told him.
“Then you’re not coming inside. If you’re keeping a gas mask on, then you’re clearly not willing to hand yourself over, so there’s no point. Our negotiation ends here.”
“And if you’re lying about having my father and grandfather?”
“You heard their voices when we spoke earlier. I have the commscreen your father was using. And clearly he’s been missing long enough for you to be concerned about him, since you’re here. But you’re right. I could be lying. Your father could be …” Alastair shrugged. “Missing somewhere else.”
Ridley exhaled slowly. She knew this was probably how things were going to go down. But she’d figured she should at least show some resistance before walking straight inside. Grudgingly, she reached up and pulled the mask off her head, then dropped it on the ground at her feet. She hated how weak this simple action made her look.
“Good girl,” Alastair said. He stood back and gestured politely for Ridley to
come in. This time, the glare she gave him was entirely visible.
Almost drenched now from the rain, she stepped inside. The door creaked as it eased shut behind her. The entrance to this place was simply a hallway with a solid metal, full height turnstile up ahead. “How welcoming,” Ridley muttered.
“As you’re aware,” Alastair said, placing his forefinger against the fingerprint scanner beside the turnstile, “this place isn’t meant to be welcoming.” He pushed Ridley ahead of him. She stumbled forward, catching hold of one of the metal bars as the turnstile swung forward, then clanged to a halt with her on the other side. A minion stood in front of her. He tapped a code onto the screen beside the fingerprint reader on this side. After a beep, Alastair scanned his fingerprint a second time and walked through. “This way,” he said.
Another three muscular minions materialized from the shadows. Two fell into step ahead of Alastair, while two strode behind Ridley. “I hope we’re on our way to your fabulous new containment chamber,” Ridley said, “since that’s where you’re apparently keeping my father and grandfather.”
“Think I was lying about that too?”
“There’s a good chance you’re lying about everything,” Ridley said as they turned a corner and continued along the next passageway, “so I’d like to see for myself that they’re okay, and then I’d like to see you let them go.”
“It’s touching that you have such strong feelings for people you’re not even related to.”
“Yeah, well, I think it’s been established that I’m capable of far more feelings than you are. Your level of concern when you realized your own daughter had taken that useless serum of yours and was probably going to die wasn’t exactly—”
“Do not talk to me about Lilah!” Alastair shouted, startling Ridley as he whirled around to face her, all composure shattered in a second. His dark eyes bored into hers. No one moved. Ridley held her breath, not daring to ask whether Lilah was dead yet or not. Her galloping heart pumped adrenaline through her body. She was prepared to let go of her magic and change to an elemental form at a second’s notice.
Alastair inhaled, turned around, and continued forward. When he spoke again, it was in a level tone. “You are a menace. You and the rest of your kind. You have the sort of power no mortal should possess and you’re using it to destroy what’s left of our world. That is why people like you should not exist, and that is why I’m going to extraordinary means to rid the world of all of you. I may have had to make sacrifices along the way, but the final outcome will be worth it for everyone left behind.”
“We’re destroying the arxium,” Ridley corrected, “not the world. Destroying the world is what you did.”
Alastair stopped in front of a door and turned to face her. There was something like disbelief on his face and amazement in his voice when he said, “You still think you have the right to life.”
Ridley almost said ‘Of course I have that right,’ but she figured that part was obvious. The part that confused her was that this man seemed to genuinely believe the opposite. It hurt in a way that didn’t make sense, given how little she cared about his opinion. “Why shouldn’t I?” she asked.
“I’ve known for some time that elemental fire burns through arxium, but I had no idea until you destroyed an entire building in the wastelands just how easy it was for you. How effortlessly a single elemental could bring about such destruction. I thought our arxium provided us with a decent level of protection from people like you. But even if we reinforce every wall and floor and ceiling of our homes with arxium, you can still burn your way through and then vanish afterwards. Doesn’t that seem wrong to you?”
“You can kill someone and then pay people to cover it up. Doesn’t that seem wrong to you?” Ridley countered. “We all have a responsibility to be decent human beings, no matter what kind of power we have.”
Alastair shook his head. “There is such a thing as too much power, Ridley, and I’m not the one who has it.” He opened the door to reveal a room full of screens. Images across the wall displayed numerous scenes: the grassy area outside the entrance where Ridley had ben standing minutes ago, the wastelands on the other side of the wall, various laboratories and passageways, several rooms like the one Ridley had been kept in.
Alastair gestured for Ridley to walk in ahead of him. Her feet carried her forward as her eyes scanned every screen until she found the one showing two male figures. She rushed toward it, leaning closer to be sure the two figures were Dad and Grandpa. Relief flooded her body. Grandpa sat on a bench, while Dad paced back and forth in front of him. Even from the limited view the screen provided, Ridley could tell the room they were in was sizable. “So that’s your containment chamber?”
“Yes.” Alastair and two of his minions followed Ridley into the room. The other two remained outside. “They’re both capable of pulling magic, given they don’t have their AI2s anymore. The containment chamber seemed the safest place to put them.”
“You think it will hold them?”
Alastair laughed. “It was built to contain someone like you. I think it can handle a couple of regular people. I thought they might have tried something by now, but clearly they’ve noticed the walls are made of arxium. They’re sensible enough to know that any conjurations they throw around will rebound back on them.”
“I want to talk to them,” Ridley said immediately. “I want to know they’re alive, and that this isn’t some recording you’re showing me.”
“Of course. We’ll be heading down there soon, since the containment chamber will become your new home once they’re out. You and I just need to get a few details ironed out first.”
“No. I want to speak to them first. You must have set things up so you can communicate with people in the chamber.”
Alastair frowned. “You’re not in a position to make demands, Ridley. You don’t have the upper hand here. Stray from our agreement, and your father and grandfather will pay for it with their lives.”
Ridley pressed her lips together, considering what to say next. “I believe you. And can you imagine the devastation my broken-hearted elemental self will wreak upon this place before you manage to restrain me? That’s if you can restrain me. You might save your city by getting rid of me, but you won’t be around to see it. You’ll be dead too.”
Alastair appeared to consider this. Then he approached the long, blank screen that ran the length of the wall beneath all the other screens. He touched it. It lit up, displaying numerous buttons and dials. He tapped one and said, “Maverick, I have someone here who’d like to speak to you.”
Ridley’s eyes shot immediately to the screen that showed Dad and Grandpa. Dad turned on the spot, looking up and around. “Who?” he asked, his voice issuing from somewhere above the screens.
Though Ridley’s insides remained tightly wound, a weight lifted from her shoulders. Dad and Grandpa were okay. They would get out of here. They would survive. “It’s me, Dad,” she said, stepping closer.
On the screen, she watched Dad ball his hands into fists. “Ridley, dammit, you’re not supposed to be here. What are you thinking? You should be—”
“Dad, I trust you,” Ridley interrupted. “I trust you and Grandpa to take care of yourselves. You have to trust me too.”
“I can’t if you’re—”
Alastair tapped the control screen again, cutting Dad off mid-sentence. “Well, there you have it. They’re alive. Now, let’s get a few things clear. If you haven’t already told your elemental friends that Lumina City is not to be harmed, you’ll have to get back out there and do that.”
As Alastair detailed the time frame in which Ridley would need to make this happen, she looked down and did her best to block his voice out. Her fingers spread out at her sides. She didn’t push her own magic outward—the minions would probably tackle her in an instant if she did—but she tried to sense the magic that existed in the air in this room. In the materials in between all the arxium in the walls. It didn’t have to carry
her message far. It just needed to be able to slip through the gaps beneath doors and around windows and get outside.
Send the signal now, she told magic. So bright and big they can’t possibly miss it.
“What are you doing?” Alastair asked. “If you—”
“Nothing.” Ridley relaxed her hands and looked up. Two of the screens—the one showing the entrance area and the one showing the wasteland side of the wall—flashed for a moment. A second later, thunder boomed overhead.
Alastair narrowed his eyes. “What did you do?”
“Me?” Ridley asked innocently. “You’re aware there’s still bad weather out there because of the panels over the city, right? Lightning and thunder are normal around here.”
Alastair crossed his arms. “Have you told the rest of your accomplices that Lumina City is off limits?”
“Do you really think any of this is going to work?” Ridley asked. “So what if you lock me up and manage to keep my friends from attacking your wall? It’s too late now. Cities are already being freed. Archer has told the world the truth. At some point, even if I’m not the one to do it, Lumina City will be free.”
“That isn’t going to make any difference,” Alastair scoffed. “People don’t want to know the truth, Ridley. It’s too … inconvenient. They’ve become used to the way we live now. They don’t want to change.”
“People like you, perhaps. The rest of us are certainly not happy with the way things are.”
“And a small city here and there?” Alastair continued as if she hadn’t interjected. “Ha. That means nothing. We’ll get our arxium protection back in place soon enough, and the world will return to the way it should be. If not, then I suppose a particularly nasty storm or two might just have to wipe out those cities that no longer have any arxium protection. It’ll be a good demonstration for the rest of the world. Show them Archer Davenport is a deluded brat and it’s not safe out there after all. We have mobile arxium machines, so it won’t be too hard to bring a number of them together and arrange a magical lashing out of the elements the likes of which have not been seen since the early days following the Cataclysm.”
Elemental Heir (Ridley Kayne Chronicles Book 3) Page 21