Poisoned Garden

by Tracy Korn

  I blinked at the snow whipping into my eyes and accidentally closed, then reopened the inbox several times until I tapped my temple for an open line.

  Queue Eve Adams, Crisis Management Director, I thought, hoping I could still access the public directory. My heart almost leapt out of my chest when I saw the spinning arrows and the word connecting. I held my breath, hoping I wouldn't get the same error message I got when I tried to queue Max in the bathroom back at Eden's Bluff.

  Instead, the queue connected, and I heard Eve's voice coming through loud and clear.

  "You've reached Eve Adams, Director of Crisis Management for the Portland area. I'm sorry I can't respond to your queue right now, but please leave a message, and I'll get back to you as soon as possible."

  The disappointment hit me in the chest and made me feel hollow for several seconds, but at least I could leave her a message.

  The tone sounded, and I started babbling.

  "Eve, this is Halsey Rhodes. You tried to warn me when you arrested Jennifer Kwan—you said I was on the radar. I didn't know who you were then or what that meant, but I do now," I said without taking a breath. "Uriel has sent a group of people to kill you. You have to get out of here right now. They're coming tonight. They know your name and your job title. Please just get—" I was cut off by another tone, and promptly disconnected.

  It wasn't enough to leave her a queue message. I had to find her before Leo and the others did. I doubled back, away from The Citadel gate and the horde of Sweeper droids patrolling it. Maybe I could fly over the side, where it was hopefully less populated. I clenched my teeth against the cold and walked backward to try to get a better look, then turned to run when I was sure of where I needed to go. I didn't get three steps before I crashed directly into someone, nearly knocking us both to the ground. Strong hands gripped my arms, steadying me.

  "Whoa, are you OK?" he said, and I stopped breathing.

  I looked up into his blue eyes, which widened, despite the blowing snow, when he saw me. "Halsey?" he whispered.

  Draco and Fate trotted to a stop at either side of him. I beamed my widest smile at each of them, hoping they could feel how grateful I was. Max's eyes glowed a soft blue-green, brightening into a turquoise when I nodded at him.

  "It's me," I said, barely able to get the words out. "I'm back. I'm back and I have so much to tell you, Max."

  Heat radiated through me in spite of the chill all around. It channeled to my shoulders automatically as I'd practiced so many times now, but I didn't stop it this time. I felt the weight of my wings slowly unfurling behind me, and I took a step forward so I wouldn't fall.

  Max let me go and stumbled backward, his bright, glowing eyes dimming.

  "Halsey…?" he whispered, clearly in shock. Draco and Fate moved quickly to him, pushing their heads into his hands. He started absently petting them and dropped to his knees as both dogs wedged under his arms as if to hold him up.

  "Like I said, I have so much to tell you," I tried to laugh, but it came out like a hiccoughed sob.

  "How? Are those...from the bite?" he managed as snow dusted his blond hair.

  "I'll tell you everything I know, but I need you to come with me right now, OK? We need to find Eve Adams. Remember her? She's not who we thought, Max. She's Eve. Like, the Eve from The Garden of Eden. And she's in trouble."

  "What? But that's imposs..." he trailed off and dragged a hand over his face as he studied my wings again.

  I looked at Draco and Fate. "Can you make sure my aunt and uncle are OK? Can you keep them safe?" I asked. Max looked at me like I was insane, then did a double take when both dogs barked in reply and took off running. Max got to his feet and took a few more steps away from me. "OK, listen," I nodded, then moved toward him. "Do you trust me?"

  He gaped at me, but shook his head quickly as if to clear a fog. "Halls, why do you have wings? Why did you just talk to those dogs like people? And why did they listen to you? Is the snow because of you too?"

  "I'll tell you all of that—what? The snow? No," I shook my head to refocus. "Max, do you trust me?"

  His eyes brightened again, and the turquoise light started to glow all around him. "Always," he said, then swallowed hard as he nodded. "I trust you."

  "OK, then hold onto me."

  I wrapped my arms under his and jumped, pushing against the cold air with my wings until the ground fell away.

  "Halsey, shit!"

  "It's OK, just hold on!"

  "Yeah, not gonna be a problem!"

  We rose over the side of The Citadel wall, which seemed about a hundred feet high. A platform around the top held multiple snow-dusted cameras, and I was utterly amazed that the Sweeper droids didn't see us. I focused my eyes and saw several sets of emergency doors at different intervals surrounding the interior city, Sweeper droids stationed at each one just like at the front gates.

  I landed in the shadows on the wide ledge, my arms still wrapped around Max's ribs as I looked up at him.

  "Are you all right?" I asked, his turquoise glow mixing with rays of red now. He moved his fingers over the feathers on my shoulders like he didn't believe they were real, then met my eyes.

  "Yeah," he said, his voice cracking a little. He immediately cleared his throat. "What are we doing again?"

  I smiled at him. "We have to find Eve Adams."

  "Why? She wanted to arrest you. And why do you think she's the Eve?"

  "Let me tell you when you have your feet on the ground, OK?" He opened his mouth to say something, but only wound up blinking at me several times before he shut it again and nodded. I hugged him, resting my head on his chest for a second before I moved another inch. "I missed you so much," I whispered.

  "I missed you more, Halls," he said, then took a deep breath and let it out, slow and controlled as he rested his chin on the top of my head. I looked up at him, and he ran his thumb over my cheek. "I thought you were gone, and I—"

  An ear-splitting alarm sounded, which startled us both off the ledge. We were falling forward toward the interior of The Citadel wall, the glaring lights in every direction making it hard for me to tell which way was up and which was down. I held on tightly to Max and just started flapping my wings, but we'd fallen too far and too fast for me to stop our momentum entirely. We crashed to the ground, but not hard enough to keep us there.

  "I'm OK—are you all right?" I asked between the siren blares, scanning Max for any visible signs of injury.

  "Fine, I'm fine—come on!" he said, nodding to a searchlight that was heading right for us. We started running, and I pulled in my wings because there was no room to extend them between the buildings we were weaving through.

  I could hear the Sweeper droids exchanging communication codes even though none of them were in view. Everything was louder, clearer, and quickly getting closer.

  "We can't stay out in the open like this," I said, finding a series of buildings across the street. One of them looked like a restaurant, or maybe a club. "That place, see where everyone is going in with the big gilded door?"

  "You can see the door details from here?" Max said.

  "Eagle eyes... Comes with the wings."

  "Eagle?" he darted a glance at me. "You turn into an eagle?"

  "Kind of. Come on."

  We walked as casually as we could across the street, and I fit myself under Max's arm so it would look even more normal. We filtered into the crowd of people making their way through the door and quickly slipped into a table near the back. "Shit, they're in here too," I said through my teeth as I spotted the hovering metallic discs floating from table to table.

  "No, wait. Those aren't Sweepers. Watch." He nodded to the one hovering over a table about twenty feet from us as it lowered a pitcher of beer. The arms retracted inside and reappeared with four glasses, one for each person at the table.

  "It's a waiter," I said, amazed. "Those are all waiters."

  Feed display holograms hovered in every corner of the room, most of them showing spor
ts, while the rest showed either emergency weather feeds or the same woman's picture flashing with the caption, Frankie Mason, CPC Researcher, Back from the Dead to Cure Red Fever at the bottom of the display.

  A bunch of shouting from down at the bar pulled my attention away from the feeds. A woman got up and threw a drink in a man's face, then stormed out. He got up to follow her, but his friends held him back, laughing and pushing napkins at him. Half his face flashed the same ghostly-boned monstrosity with bared fangs and glowing red eyes that I'd seen on the streets in The Grind.

  "Halsey, what's wrong?" Max asked, gripping my hand. I turned to him quickly, trying to shake the image from my mind.

  "The man down there, the one who just got a face full of beer... He has Red Fever, Max."

  "How do you know that? The lady is the one who got aggressive."

  "He did something to provoke her," I said, scanning the room to see if there was anyone else in here with demonic half faces glowing inside them.

  There weren't, fortunately. Just different shades of colors, some bright, some muted. Those with darker colors gathered around the ones who glowed in bright pinks and greens, some of whom brightened even more, while others faded until they moved away from the newly gathered crowds. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to imagine the water washing over them, but when I opened my eyes again, the colors were all still there.

  "Halsey, you need to talk to me here," Max said. "What is happening? What's with the wings and superhero vision, and why is it snowing?"

  Chapter 32

  I had my own questions about the snow, but as I started to explain what I could about why I knew the man near the bar had Red Fever, one of the waiter droids hovered over to us. It looked like a floating plate with metallic arms holding two glasses of water underneath it. The arms extended, lowering the glasses to the table.

  "Hello, Maxwell Barrett" it said in a friendly female voice as it scanned a light over Max's face. "Welcome to Ivy's. Welcome to The Citadel Academy." The waiter droid's green light moved over my face, and I froze while it seemed to be thinking. "Hello...Unregistered. To be served, I will need your guest clearance code. Please press your thumb into the imprint disc on the table in front of you."

  Max and I got up at the same time, and I pushed back the prickles running up my arms. "Um, we're good. We're actually late for something else. Thanks anyway," Max babbled to the hovering droid.

  We moved quickly toward the door but were forced to stop and turn around when four live patrols walked through with a Sweeper droid in their wake.

  "Shit!" I said under my breath as they split up and aimed their handheld scanners at everyone they passed.

  The Sweeper droid sent a thin ray of light over the entire room, obviously scanning for whoever set off the perimeter alarms. Max rushed in front of me, moving me quickly into the corner of the shadowy wall.

  "Don't punch me when I do this," he said, moving close to me and slipping his hand into my hair. Before I knew it, a wave of heat rushed through my chest and forced my wings to bump the wall behind me, which pushed me into him. Max blinked at me in surprise, but then tightened his arm around my waist and quickly pressed his lips to mine. It only lasted a few seconds before I broke away from him, afraid my wings would expand beyond the initial fold if I didn't get control of my sudden deluge of emotion. Confused, he frantically searched my face until he glanced over my shoulder at the tops of my wings. "Oh. OK, I'm sorry. I wouldn't have done that, but I thought you'd read the queue I sent right after you left and—"

  "It's OK, it's my fault—wait, what? What did your queue say?" I asked, noticing my hands were still pressed to his chest. I let them drop and imagined the water pushing through my fingertips, then felt my wings slowly receding. Max looked over his shoulder. The live patrols were walking toward the bar, and the Sweeper droid had just hovered down the first set of steps toward the main dining area.

  "It's going to scan again," he said, taking my hand and leading us quickly back out the front door.

  ***

  My head was spinning, and the sudden blast of cold air helped me regain my bearings a little. I didn't have time to process anything that had just happened between Max and me as a Sweeper droid hovered behind a curtain of snow on the curb across the street. Another was rotating a few blocks away to the left, and yet another a few blocks away to the right. There was no way we could go in any direction without one of them seeing us, and subsequently finding out I didn't belong on this side of the wall. Somewhere above, I heard the whining sound of a small motor, and when I searched the shadows of the building, cameras were panning over the sidewalks. Even if I flew straight into the air with Max, the Sweeper droids' lasers would cut us down.

  "There's nowhere to go," he said, apparently observing the same thing. We moved back into the front of the restaurant where a crowd of people had gathered, all trying to get out the door.

  "Where were all the patrols three months ago, huh?" Someone shouted. "Could have used you and your tin cans when we had a Feral ripping people in half in here! But no, you show up during the playoffs!"

  "Halls, you said you could change into an eagle?" Max asked, gripping my shoulders.

  "Yes, but—"

  "Do it. I have my chip, so they won't stop me. I'll keep looking for Eve, but you have to get out of here. They're extra paranoid about outsiders now that there's been a Feral attack behind the wall."

  "But I don't think I can shift, at least not immediately," I said, my mind racing with everything around us and everything that had just happened a few minutes ago. "I've never done it before. The closest I came was..." I trailed off, remembering the beach and the ridges that rose in my arms. I didn't want Max to see me like that. "It just wouldn't work all the way last time."

  "OK, well you have to try again. I'm going to get the attention of these droids. The cameras aren't equipped with lasers, so just go duck between these two buildings after you see the droids following me and change, all right? At least enough to get to the roof and out of sight."

  "But the Sweepers do have lasers. And tasers. You saw them upload Jen's Miranda rights. I'm not letting you risk that."

  "Halsey, damn it... That was in The Grind. I have a Citadel chip now, they won't do that to me here. Please, go!" He darted through the crowd of people and started running toward the droid across the street before I could get out another word. "Help! There's a Feral in there!" he shouted, and as soon as the droid started to move toward him, he ran up the street. The Sweeper droid to the right followed him too, but he was fast and had already made it to the droid a few blocks up. All three of the droids surrounded him as he waved his hands in the air and ranted like a lunatic.

  I darted between the buildings and just let the panic shoot through me without trying to route it or slow it down. I just let it come. My wings extended first, and then my arms began to ridge. Gold and brown feathers covered my hands, shoulders, and throat as my nose and lips began to tingle.

  And then it all stopped.

  "Come on!" I tried to yell, but it came out as a screech.

  The prickling sensation that had moved over my legs had stopped, and I wondered if maybe I needed to be in motion. I flew to the rooftop, but still, the shift would go no further. I tried to yell out again, but again, it just came out as a deafening screech.

  It wasn't working. I knelt on the cold, wet cement and watched the snowflakes melt on impact. I tried to call back the anger I felt when Leo left me at the edge of the tear, which made me feel like my blood was on fire. Even still, nothing else changed. I replayed Max's kiss in my mind, which I hadn't really stop replaying, so I was sure this would trigger the rest of my shift. Another wave of heat actually did rush through me again remembering the feeling of his hand in my hair, on my cheek, the look in his eyes right before his arm wrapped tightly around my waist. I was so distracted by my obsession with getting out of The Grind, with leaving everything about it behind, that I hadn't really understood what was happening with the
one person who meant the most to me.

  Even the crippling regret that washed over me wasn't enough to trigger the rest of my shift, nor was the building anger and frustration I felt as a result.

  I closed my eyes and started to push the shift away, but stopped when I heard the police radio chatter in the distance. I'd heard it play a thousand times at home with my Aunt Alice, but now I could hear it from the live patrol radios and Sweeper units scattered all over The Citadel interior.

  "Crisis Management code fourteen eleven, attention Sweeper units: we have a report of an incident at Ivy's Pub. Live patrols on site, precautionary medical transport en route."

  Crisis Management? That meant Eve would be coming to Ivy's… Max did it! I ran to the edge of the roof, but he and the three Sweeper droids that were just hovering around him were gone. I touched my temple to queue him, but nothing would connect.

  All the breath left my lungs at the idea the network could have gone down. The network inside The Citadel never went down. Shops would close. People would be locked out of their homes. Everything in their infrastructure except their front gate depended on it.

  I tried to listen for more of the police chatter, but even that had fallen silent. People were now scattering through the street, piling into cars and driving away, but I still didn't see Max. Had he been taken to the police station? Did the Sweeper droids just leave him there while they went back into Ivy's?

  I tried again to queue him, but again, the signal wouldn't connect. This had to be Bryce's handiwork. And that meant Leo and the others were here, behind the wall.

  "Hey, kid!" a man called behind me. I turned and saw a dark-haired man with his arm in a sling and a blonde woman coming over the edge of the roof toward me. They only got a few steps off the ladder before they both stop in their tracks. "Whoa..." The man said when my wings extended again, and the light around him shifted from bright red to gray. He held out his hand to me and turned to the woman. "She didn't say anything about a flying kid. I'd have distinctly remembered the words flying kid."