by Harper North
And Cho himself stands in front of me. Though short and stout, he hovers over me, black hair combed back and eyes glinting with hunger.
My head erupts like the Monster’s Nest and I dry-heave onto my lap.
“Cho,” I manage, leaning over to dry heave again. When finished, my eyes start to adjust. Rope binds my wrists to the handles of a fold-out chair and my ankles to the legs. They’ve captured me. Tied me here.
Wendy and Charles, too.
Charles has dried blood crusted around his nose, which sits at a crooked angle. Broken. He blinks, stunned, and faces me.
“Fin,” he mouths. His eyes are dull, as if he’s died already.
And Wendy. A large bruise covers half her face, now painted in an ugly portrait of purple, black, and blue.
Why didn’t they kill us?
“Cho,” I force out again. There must be three dozen fighters still in this room. That means the others have gone to fight my people. But there are more than enough in this place to guarantee I have no chance of escape, even if I break free from these ropes. I pull against them, but Cho only smiles. There’s not a hint of joy in it.
There’s no hope. The three of us will never survive. Cho wants us for something, otherwise we’d be dead already, and once he has what he wants, we will be.
“Fin. We might have been trailing you for some time. Might have left you Impures a bit of a present, too. Trust me, you do not want to go back to your new hideout. I was hoping you could help me with a little something.” He approaches me like a predator. As he does, two fighters, guns ready, flank him. Cho’s holding the old instruction manual. “We’ve found lots of interesting old experiments down here, courtesy of the early EHC. It seems this system is important for holding up the entire underground system of the world; built in the early days of the Flip and forgotten until now. It seems this room is a warehouse full of units that, together, form a weapon. But we are not sure how.”
He wants to know how to use the Destabilizer. I look away from Cho only to face a stack of those small black boxes like the one they used to help them execute Betty’s people. My stomach turns at the sight.
“If you want to know how to use these things, I don’t understand how they work,” I tell him.
“But you must if you are trying to stop my men from moving them to certain strategic locations,” Cho says, opening the manual. He throws it down onto my lap.
I struggle not to flinch. He has a good point. Letting out a breath, I try to get my mind to work, but that feels like it’s shutting down, too, despite the throbbing at my temple starting to soften. Physically, I’m healing, but everything else has gone heavy and gray.
This is how it will all end. No one’s coming to bust me and the others out of here.
Let it.
I’ve got no more feeling inside of me.
“Look!” Cho shouts. “Your Impure mind should be able to decipher this!”
He jolts me back to life. I jump and nearly lose the manual. It’s heavy on my lap, open to a sprawling map of the tunnel system and covered in faded pencil scrawl. My mind analyzes the handwriting without trying. The pointed ends of every word point to a male; a driven, intelligent male—possibly Edward Nejem himself.
“I can’t read this,” I say. And it’s true.
“You are going to read this for me. Clearly whomever created these radioactive boxes meant for them to crumble this system. I need to know how it will happen and what it will do to each part of the underground.”
“I told you. I have no idea what this says.”
“Don’t,” Charles manages.
That one word is the last thing I want him or Wendy to say. It implies that I do know.
Cho leans down so close I can smell his rank breath. He’s been enjoying some chewing tobacco during his downtime. His eyes sparkle. “Oh, you will decipher this for me, or your companions here will lose a finger for each time you refuse.”
“What is wrong with you?” Life surges back into my limbs, and I pull against the ropes, but so many bind my wrists that I can barely budge. The rough fiber digs into my flesh, burning. I’m alive again, but that life is fear. “For all we know, this system could kill you, too.”
The chances that Cho will listen to me are far less than one percent. This is the man who blew up the Monster’s Nest and finished what Edward Nejem started. He won’t care about blowing up the underground, too. To Cho, that’s small beans.
“Not if I know how to use it.” His voice lowers to a growl that sends a shudder down my spine. “Now look!”
My heart pounds and I force myself to focus on the manual. The first word has two letters. The second, five. The next, three. My mind works as if betraying me and anyone who might still be alive in the tunnels. The three-letter words have to be the, and the two-letter word has to be in—the way the first line loops tells me how to identify the faded I’s.
And as I stare and Cho stares, the words start to come together.
“So you do know,” Cho says.
“Fin, don’t listen to him,” Wendy says. Her words shudder, as if someone’s shaking them with a tight fist.
“Shut up,” Cho orders her. “Guards. Untie her. If she loses too much blood, we move on to the man.”
“No.” I snap my gaze up from the manual. I can lie and tell Cho that Nejem’s notes aren’t instructing the user on how to cause a complete collapse of this underground system. Or that Edward Nejem smuggled these Destabilizers down here to stop people from moving away from the EHC.
But Cho straightens and faces the guards as they cut through Wendy’s bindings with huge knives. She stays silent as they yank her out of the chair, pulling her in front of me. Both the guards, rough-looking men who look like they were born to be cruel, wrestle Wendy’s arms out to the sides, forcing her to splay her fingers.
I open my mouth to tell Wendy I won’t let them cut her up, but I can promise nothing. Not with Cho now pacing between her and me.
“Fin, what does the manual say?”
Or I can tell the entire truth.
“The weapon will kill us all if you use it while you’re down here. It was meant to be used by the EHC to stop people from coming down here. That includes you and your people.”
Cho sneers. “Lies. The control panel is right here.” Cho pats his belt, and then I see it. He’s wearing a large remote with a small power cell attached.
My stomach drops to my boots.
He’s already got the means to activate these weapons.
Cho whirls on the guards. “Remove her pinky.”
“No!” I shout, pulling against the ropes again, but I sense it would take me minutes, if not an hour, to break out on my own. A guard lifts a blade to Wendy’s finger, and she tries to curl it, but that’s no use.
And neither, a few seconds later, is holding in her scream. It pierces the room, echoing off the walls and the pipes above.
The air fills with the smell of copper and the sounds of seething pain. Other Naturals back away as Cho watches. This is just as much a display for them as it is for me.
Blood drips to the floor to join a small, pale bit of flesh.
Acid rises into my throat. I might throw up.
“Look at what you’ve done,” Cho says, turning back to me with his hands behind his back.
I close my eyes, and the erupting Monster’s Nest fills the space behind my closed eyelids. The black cloud spreads over the world, forever blocking out the sun.
Balling my fists, I force my eyes back open. Wendy’s face has gone pale. Charles has gone silent behind me. We’re all going to die, slowly and painfully. Cho stares me down, expressionless, and that’s somehow worse than him smiling.
This is reality. And there is no hope here.
“Now, what do these weapons do, exactly?” he presses. “How can I program them to target only certain parts of the underground and not others?”
I want to spit on him, make him angry. Maybe he’ll just get mad and order his people t
o shoot us. That’s better than getting cut up. Or finding out that everyone I care about is dead.
“I told you that I don’t know!”
Cho snaps his fingers without facing his guards. “Her other pinky.”
The second guard holds out Wendy’s other hand. She whimpers. I close my eyes and look down at the twisting network in my lap as she seethes, trying to hold in her pain—
Something metal hits the ground. A loud hiss fills the air.
“What the hell?” a man shouts.
And another, and another.
“Open fire!” Cal orders.
I snap my head up. The room fills with white gas—tear gas taken from the Exodus facility—which erupts from seemingly every corner of the room. From a pair of tunnels to the left, fighters in plaid rush inside to confront the three dozen Naturals gathered in the room. People cough and raise their sleeves to their eyes as the air thickens. Shots ring out while other Naturals turn and grip their heads. Eyes redden as some grunt and scream from pure agony. A group of six Naturals on the left side of the room collapse, thrashing.
Lacy. Talen. One of them is fighting.
Cal rushes into the room. He raises an automatic rifle and aims it at the back of a guard’s head, the one still holding Wendy. Blood splatters, and Wendy, wrapping her injured hand in her shirt, jumps down from the platform as Cal aims his fury on the other guard. Both torturers fall. I glimpse Lacy, facing down more guards as a few Originals gun down the ones she hasn’t hit. They’ve regrouped. But where is—
“Fin. It’s me.” Sky appears in front of me, snatching the bloody knife from the floor. His eyes are red from the tear gas, which has thinned to a fog that barely obscures the edges of the room. Tears fill my vision, turning him blurry. “Fin! Wake up!”
I flinch as he slashes at the ropes. “I’m awake!”
He nods at me. “Your arm’s free. I’ll cut the other ropes. What have they done to you?”
We’ll talk later. Sky cuts my other bindings within seconds, moving so smoothly the knife just misses my skin each time. I spring out of the chair and get a face full of fresh tear gas. I gag and cough. Rage pumps through my veins, and I whirl, hunting for Cho.
I find him, running into a tunnel to the right.
“Impures!” he shouts. “They’re destroying the natural order, all of them! Retreat!”
A bunch of Naturals, over a dozen, run after him, stampeding and pushing against each other to get away from Lacy.
And he’s got the Destabilizer remote.
“We can’t let him go!” I shout, fighting against the fumes. But I have no weapon. Going after Cho now will be suicide. I grab the other knife and cut the ropes off Charles. He’s gone to another place, and I have to slap him to bring him back to reality. His pupils narrow at me after the blow.
“Up!” I shout.
Sky grips my arm. “Come on. We can’t breathe in here.” He coughs. “Cia! Where are you?”
“Back!” Cal orders, clearly in charge again. “After me. We have to get out of here!”
The room has gone silent except for the thrum of fleeing feet. I gag and lift my shirt over my nose, but it does little to keep out the irritating gas. Instinct propels me to an exit—any exit—as people gag all around us. I leap over a Natural body—all either dead or retreating at this point—and leave the acrid fumes behind.
“Sky thought you were dead,” Cia says in greeting, waving us down the tracks. Unlike the ones I took, these are intact, with a Destabilizer box positioned underneath a panel far down the tunnel. Some of the weapons made it, then.
“My finger!” Wendy shouts.
“We’ll bandage it,” Charles tells her, helping her forward.
“Keep moving!” Cal orders.
I suck in a breath of fresh air. Sky runs beside me. He’s concerned because he slaps his hand on my shoulder blades as we flee. “What did they do?” he asks, his eyes hard with the want to kill.
“Wendy got it all. Not me,” I say, but I feel as if I’ve been tortured all the same. The dead feeling creeps back in, begging me to stop and give up, even as Sky runs beside me. I feel like there’s nothing left but this tunnel.
“I can see that. Cho’s disgusting,” Sky huffs as he runs. “But we’ll get through this. Most of us survived. We lost the former Naturals, though. They were gunned down, and I couldn’t save them.”
He’s right. We still number about two dozen, and I spot Lacy and Talen taking up the back of the group, holding flashlights. They’ll kill anyone who tries to follow. Cia follows right behind us, along with two lines of Dwellers and Originals. We’re still minus Emma.
And Elias, of course.
I might have to live to see him die after all.
Unless…
The Destabilizers.
“How many did you guys stop?” I ask Sky. “Everyone! Stop!” I whirl and spread my arms, forcing our fighters to a halt.
“What are you doing?” Cal snaps at me.
“How many Destabilizers did you stop from reaching their ports?” I ask, looking back at him.
Cal nods. “Two.”
Two?
“They can collapse all the settlements, and Cho has the remote to activate them. They’re all connected. When one goes off, they’re all going to go off.” I square my shoulders at Cal. Just let him argue. “It was in the instruction manual Cho tried to make me read.”
Cal pales and looks at the Destabilizer waiting down the tunnel. It’s underneath a large metal panel, right where Cho’s people want it to be.
“Push that out!” I shout.
All of us thunder toward the Destabilizer. I cut past Cal and close the distance, but just then, the machine starts to hum from the inside.
“I feel something,” Talen says.
“It’s powering up!” Lacy adds.
The power cell on the side of the machine lights a pale blue. The top panel slides open with a deadly squeal, and the dish inside—black like the insides of a burned corpse—rises from the Destabilizer with a click. The dish grows like a deadly flower toward the panel.
I reach the machine, slapping my hands to the now-hot metal and pushing. Lacy and Talen join me, also pushing, and so does Cia, ramming into my back. The Naturals were right. The device weighs a thousand pounds, at least, and my hands burn. Spots dance in front of my eyes. I might throw up. Radiation. I’ve felt it before.
“Lacy,” Talen shouts, “get away from this!”
“No!” she yells, grimacing beside me.
The cart moves, little by little, but then the dish connects to the stabilization panel with a thump, and all hell breaks loose.
CHAPTER 8
“RETREAT!” CAL SHOUTS, voice ringing off the walls of the tunnel.
The device hums and sickness grips my insides. I back away as Cia coughs, slapping her hand over her mouth.
“Radiation!” I yell. Not everyone can heal from it. Just us enhanced people. “We can’t go this way—back!”
Shouts of panic and pain fill the tunnel. I grab Sky’s sleeve and yank him back. We crash together and merge with the other fighters. Cia, Lacy, and Talen join us as bodies rush back.
The device’s hum reaches a peak that turns to a loud whine. It pierces my eardrum with stabs of pain. Cia throws her hands over her ears in an attempt to block out the sound. This is like the time those dead SNA ops blew up, but worse. Much worse. Like all my past memories are coming back to kill me.
I turn and run.
A deafening crack booms through the tunnel, rippling down the entire length and echoing back again. A few people scream as they bolt, and the sound joins the high whine.
We haven’t even stopped Cho’s plan. Now he’s going to kill all of us, and all we can do is run.
“Keep going!” Cal shouts.
The faint light from the main storage room joins with the wildly bobbing flashlight beams. I cough, but the nausea calms. My body’s recovering.
The cracking stops, leaving just the s
ounds of our footfalls. The whining, now far behind us, fades. I look to Sky. “Maybe it’s over. The devices couldn’t do their jobs all the way, since we—”
But then a small quake rumbles underfoot, throwing my balance off for a second, and my stomach twists in terror. It’s the first quake I’ve felt down here.
No one says anything. The silence is somehow worse than the panic.
But we continue. The tunnel opens back up into the main room, and, for now, things remain still. The bodies of Cho’s people lie scattered around the dimly lit space, and the instruction manual now lies face-down on the platform where they had me tied. We’ve escaped from him for the time being, but for what?
Another faint rumble creeps through the ground.
“Quakes,” Lacy says.
Talen rubs his temples. “Nothing feels right. We have to get you out of here.”
“What am I, two?” Lacy asks him.
Steven steps in front of us and turns, face unreadable.
“Have you ever felt quakes down here before?” I ask, knowing they’ll want me to help them figure out the situation. But nothing makes sense to me.
“No,” Steven says. “Never. The underground has always been calm.”
“What if everything eventually caves in?” a woman fighter near the back asks. “We have to get back to Elysian Beach and make sure they’re okay.”
Cal whirls on me. “We’re going to need a way around those deadly machines. A few are so old they likely never activated, right?”
“Um…” I manage.
“Fin, are you okay?” Sky’s eyes shine. “Stay with us.”
“Yes,” I say at length. “You’re right. There’s a map in this book Cho was making me look at. How many of you stopped the Destabilizers from reaching the panels? Raise your hands and point out the tunnels. Those machines might have never turned on.”
A few people put their hands up, including Lacy. No surprise there.
“We have to try one of those tunnels,” I say, tearing the two pages with the tunnel map out of the book. I leave nothing but small, technical text and a bunch of lines overlapping each other. Finding a way out won’t be easy, even for me. Turning the map, I calculate that one of the tunnels must loop back around to the blast hole. “This way.”