by Travis Brett
“And then?”
“I’m going to ask for his help.”
“With what?”
“Killing Juliette.” This was what he had to do. Roman was sure of it. “Something tells me he might share my feelings about her.”
Ruby laughed. Honest, genuine laughter. “I thought you would never change. But now you want to ask him for help, to fight Juliette. Are you sure?”
“She lied to me. She killed Tan. She’s a two-faced, lying, cowardly fucker who doesn’t deserve to rule this city. I’m going to throw her off the top of her stupid tower.”
“You’re not going to get to her without killing half the militia first.”
“I know.”
“You’ve always been the one telling us that we need the ministries to survive,” Ruby said. “Now you’re ready to fight them?”
“I don’t care. Not anymore. Maybe I never did.” Roman shrugged. “You were right about me. Juliette was right about me: I was never doing any of this to save Legacy. Not really. This was always about getting even.”
“That’s . . . honest.”
“I’m trying. Tan told me that I needed to be honest with myself, about who I am. Well, this is it. I’m not a hero, I’m not even a good man. I’m just an angry bastard who doesn’t like his friends being killed.”
“So you finally admit it.”
“I think I’ve always known.”
“Everyone else certainly has,” Ruby said. She ran a hand through her hair, stopping when it came to a handful of knots. She frowned. “You think Caleb will agree to all this?”
Roman nodded. “He’ll help because of Sparks.”
“Oh?”
“For reasons I can’t guess, Caleb seems to care about the boy,” Roman said. “So he’ll help because I’m not just going to kill Juliette —I’m going to rescue Sparks. He saved my life, so I’m going to save his. I won’t be in debt to an Adrenalite.”
Ruby grinned. “The kid actually grew on you too, didn’t he?”
“Hell no. I’m just not going to let him be the selfless hero. That’s my job.” Roman offered his hand to Ruby. “Are you coming with me?”
She grabbed his hand and he pulled her to her feet. She didn’t let go. “Always.”
* * *
Back inside, Roman explained his idea to Caleb, who listened while leaning against the wall, arms folded, expression blank. After Roman finished speaking, Caleb stared at the ground for a full minute, not saying a word, until: “I’m in.”
Roman let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Caleb. Seriously.”
“I have one condition.”
“You always do.”
“What do you plan to do with Sparks after you rescue him?”
“Do you want him?”
Caleb shook his head. “I want him to go free.”
“That’s—” Roman stopped himself before he could say impossible. In the end, there wasn’t any other option. “I accept.”
The barest hint of a smile touched Caleb’s face. “Maybe you aren’t a complete asshole then. Also, you owe me something.” Caleb held out his hand.
It took Roman a moment to remember the deal. He pulled his pistol out of his jacket and gave it to Caleb. Next, he took Spencer’s gun, removed three bullets from it, and handed them to Caleb as well.
Caleb grinned like a child with a new toy. “I always wanted myself one of these.”
“You earned it.” Roman turned towards Candle, but hesitated. “I have to know,” he said to Caleb, “why do you care about Sparks?”
“I told you — you wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
Caleb shuffled his feet, looking away. “He’s a good kid.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s all I’m saying. But it’s not my motivations that are surprising. Why are you doing this? You’ve dedicated your life to capturing rogues, now you’re planning to free one.”
“I’ve gone mad, haven’t I?”
“You always have been.”
Roman sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Adrenalites aren’t monsters. Not all of them, at least. Sparks wasn’t.”
Caleb nodded towards Candle. “What about him?”
“Let’s find out.” Roman kicked Candle in the gut, then again. “Wake up. You ugly piece of shit.”
Candle slowly opened his eye that wasn’t red and blistered. He looked up at Roman, then his gaze passed over the room, pausing on Ruby and Caleb in turn. “Where’s Juliette?”
“It’s not her you need to worry about.” Roman crouched in front of Candle, holding Spencer’s pistol — his pistol now. “It’s me.”
“You don’t scare me.”
“I’m hoping to fix that.”
Candle snarled. “You want a real fight? Put down the gun and let’s have a round.”
“We already did that. How’s your face feeling?”
Candle barred his teeth at Roman. “What do you want?”
“I want answers. What was Ashton Spencer working on for Juliette? And why did he help you escape the wind farms?”
“You’re trying to play ignorant with me? Is that how you ease your conscience?”
Roman paused. “What?”
“I’m not an idiot, Roman. And neither are you. We both know I’ve never been to the wind farms.”
Roman searched Candle’s face for a sign he was lying. He found nothing. “What are you talking about?”
Candle’s eyes narrowed. “Wait . . . you actually don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“You brought Juliette dozens of Adrenalites, and you never bothered to find out what she was doing with them?” Candle spat at Roman’s feet. “I guess it didn’t matter to you, as long as you got paid.”
Roman seized Candle by the neck and pressed his pistol against the Adrenalite’s forehead. “Explain. Now.”
“She didn’t take me to wind farms. She doesn’t take any of us there.”
“Of course she does. Where else would—”
Roman froze. He suddenly knew. Reformation Square. There must be a reason Juliette keeps the ministries so well guarded, all the time. It’s not to protect her from attacks. It’s because that’s where she’s holding the rogues. But if that were true . . .
“Then who’s running the wind farms?” he demanded.
“Nobody.” Candle laughed bitterly. “Why would anyone be there? It’s just a bunch of big fucking turbines.”
“You’re lying. Where else would the electricity come from?”
“Why don’t you go and ask Juliette?”
“I’ll ask her, right before I kill her. If you want to live to see that, tell me everything.” Roman cocked back the hammer of his pistol. “Right. Fucking. Now.”
36
They reached Reformation Square.
Sparks twisted his neck to look up at the Security Ministry. The sunlight caught on the huge steel beams that supported it, blinding him. He imagined ripping those beams down and watching the whole damn tower collapse.
Patience, he told himself. Got to find a way to escape first.
He felt dizzy and nauseous. Whether it was from blood loss or being held upside down, he wasn’t sure. Probably both. It made it hard to think clearly. For the last couple of hours he had been trying to slip out of his bonds. So far, the only thing he had achieved was chafing his wrists raw. He kept trying anyway.
During the trip, Sparks had been swapped between different militia like a sack of grain. None of them had spoken, even to each other. At one point Sparks thought he saw a man crying, although he had been trying to hide it. Sparks wondered why, but then he looked around and saw how few militia were left compared to how many had set out. The man was mourning his friends. Sparks grinned. Served the bastards right.
He had counted six other captured Adrenalites. One of them — a young girl — began to thrash wildly as they approached the Security Ministry. A militia struck her in the back of the
head with the flat of his axe. She went still. Sparks understood her terror all too well. I can’t go back there. No way. He redoubled his efforts to escape his bonds. A thin trail of blood ran down his arm as he wore through his skin, but the rope still refused to release him.
Raw fear flooded Sparks as the militia carrying him — a tall, beefy brute with a long machete — entered the Security Ministry. What were they going to do with him? Would they torture him as punishment for joining Candle? Maybe they would maim him before sending him to the wind farms.
Inside the ministry, the desks had been overturned and piled together to form barricades. Loose papers lay scattered over the floor. Behind the makeshift blockades, a dozen women armed with crossbows watched the militia enter. Sparks wondered what would have happened if he had chosen to come here instead of following the militia to the power station. If this was all the defence they had, he would have taken over the tower easily.
But without Sparks, Caleb would have been killed.
Maybe he had been anyway.
The militia carrying Adrenalites all moved to a pair of steel doors on the left side of the hall. The elevator. Sparks remembered it from his last visit, how wrong it had felt as it had risen. The doors opened with a metallic rattle and Sparks was carried inside.
The doors shut. The elevator began to move.
Downwards.
We’re going underground. Why? Sparks kept struggling to twist out of his bonds. More blood dripped from his wrists. That was good. The blood would act as lubricant.
The elevator’s doors opened to reveal a bare, dimly lit corridor. Sparks’ breath came in terrified gasps, muffled by his gag. There was something sinister about this place. Sparks’ caught the eye of another Adrenalite, a boy who looked a couple years older than him, and saw his own fear reflected back at him.
The hallway felt like it went on forever, then they turned left and followed another. It ended in a set of stairs.
A dull rumbling resonated up the stairwell.
For a moment Sparks stopped fighting his bonds, frozen by fear, then he doubled his efforts with newfound determination. Whatever was going on down there, he did not want to find out. He thought he felt the knot around his wrists loosen, just a little.
The rumbling grew louder as they descended. It was so deep Sparks felt it more than he heard it.
Then screaming. A woman. Echoing from below.
Sparks screamed into his gag as he forced his hands apart. Finally, his right hand slipped free.
The militia carrying Sparks halted. “Stop fucking moving you little—”
Sparks twisted his body around and grabbed the militia by the neck, digging into his fingers into the bastard’s windpipe. Gurgling curses, the militia dropped Sparks — and his machete —as his hands whipped to his throat.
Sparks fell, landing hard on his shoulder. He grabbed the fallen machete and cut the rope around his ankles. He leapt to his feet, darted between two militia reaching for him, and fled up the staircase.
His legs were stiff, but he threw himself up the stairs four at a time with reckless abandon. He had to get to the elevator.
A hand grabbed him by the shoulder. Sparks spun and swung the machete down between the militia’s neck and shoulder. The machete wedged itself into flesh and tore out of Sparks’ grip as the militia tumbled down the stairs, screaming. Sparks took off again.
Footsteps behind him. Quickly gaining. He reached the top of the stairs and sprinted down the hallway. Get to the elevator. Take it back up to the ground floor. Run past the militia and get outside. Hide. Never come back here. He turned the corner and saw the elevator doors ahead.
They opened. Three militia stepped out.
Fuck.
A door to Sparks’ right. He threw himself at it. It didn’t budge, and the handle refused to turn. The militia from the elevator charged forward. Cursing through his gag, Sparks moved onto the next door. He threw his shoulder against it and it burst open. He ducked under a lunge from the militia behind him and darted inside.
Now he was trapped. Sparks frantically looked around the room. A steel table stood in the centre, but it was bare. He turned to the shelves — they were covered in tiny knives. Sparks grabbed a small serrated blade.
A club smashed him in the back of the head.
He fell to the ground, vision going dark, knife falling from limp fingers. A boot kicked him in the gut, again, then to his face.
He couldn’t see. His skull felt full of shards of glass. It took all his effort just to raise his arm, then something heavy pinned it down and he couldn’t move at all. Stay conscious, he told himself. Don’t give up. They’ll have to kill me before I let them win.
His head spun. Everything was chaos. He was vaguely aware of being picked up, and someone shouting. Hot bile clawed up his throat. He heard a deep rumbling that gradually became a roar. A girl was screaming. Something was caught in his throat: a tooth. His tooth.
Everything faded to black.
Black. And silence. That was all Sparks knew for what felt like forever.
And then, suddenly, a pounding in his chest, wild and overpowering. His second heart, snapping him back to full consciousness.
I’m activated. How?
He felt the thick chains across his chest, waists, and legs, holding him to the table he lay on. He craned his neck, blue light blinding him.
Sparks screamed.
His chest was open. Cut open. Three black wires protruded from the wound, winding down his body and off the edge of the table. He wasn’t bleeding — at least he didn’t think so, his light made it almost impossible to see.
Another stab of pain ripped through his chest. Sparks thrashed wildly, howling, but the chains held him tight.
The pain lessened for a moment and he was able to think again. He was in a large room. The only light was his own and it wasn’t enough to illuminate the walls, so the only thing Sparks could see was . . . what the hell was that?
At the foot of his table, standing over a dozen feet tall and covered in wires, was a machine, the likes of which Sparks had never seen before. An unsettling, metallic buzzing emanated from it. Was that where the wires in his chest were going? What was—
The pain struck again. Blinding, crushing, total pain. Sparks screamed until his throat was raw.
Then he kept screaming.
37
Candle pointed at the scar running down his chest. “Electricity comes from us. Adrenalites.”
“Bullshit.”
“It hurts like a motherfucker, believe me.”
“It’s impossible.”
Candle scowled at Roman. “Are you an idiot? The power station we just came from, the one that supposedly connects the city to the wind farms, did it look like it was functioning? Just look at the state of it. Now that’s impossible.”
“That’s just . . .” Roman trailed off. Candle was right, there was no way that station was anything but a scrap yard of rusted metal. He realized the answer to why there hadn’t been any signs of a fight from Candle first taking over the station. “You’ve been living there ever since you escaped, haven’t you? It has always been abandoned.”
“It was the perfect hiding spot. Civilians never go there because they think the militia are guarding it, and the militia don’t bother with it since it’s nothing but a pile of junk.”
Roman ground his teeth, conflicted. “How can power come from you?” he asked, letting go of Candle and putting his gun away.
Candle shrugged. “I don’t understand it. Ashton was the one who maintained the machine.”
“Machine?”
“We all called it the metal bitch. Ashton had a bunch of different technical names for it; he always used that science jargon shit.”
“He built it?”
“Hell no. He understood it better than anyone, but even he could barely keep it running.”
“And it’s at the Security Ministry?”
Candle nodded. “Beneath it.”
&nb
sp; “There’s nothing under—”
Shit. Of course there’s something down there. Roman had been beneath the ministry, just yesterday morning, and he had mocked the militia down there for guarding empty hallways. Except they weren’t empty. If I had just gone further . . . Well, he would have stopped me. Or tried to.
“No.” Roman shook his head, reminding himself how insane this was. “Why should I believe you?”
“Go see for yourself.”
“If Spencer didn’t build the machine, who did?”
Candle shrugged again. “Spencer wasn’t sure. I don’t think even Juliette knows.”
“It can’t have been there forever.”
“Spencer guessed it was made just after the Days of Fire, by the last generation of the Ancients, after the first Adrenalites appeared. He also said it could have been built before.”
“Adrenalites didn’t exist before the Days of Fire.”
“He had a theory that mankind destroyed the world because of the Adrenalites. That scientists experimented with radiation mutation and created the first Adrenalites.”
Roman frowned, thinking back over every history book he had read. Information about the days of fire was virtually impossible to find – not surprising, everyone died before they could document it. “There’s no way to be sure, is there?”
“All I know is that the machine exists and that being attached to it is fucking hell.”
“And that’s why you were destroying the fuse boxes at every place you attacked?”
Candle grinned. “A little message for Juliette. A reminder that when I come for her, I’m taking away her power. Literally. That machine needs to be destroyed, and this entire city will go back to using candlelight.”
Roman stood and turned to Ruby. She looked as confused as he felt. “When you were a militia, you didn’t know about this?” he asked.
She shook her head. “We were never told anything about the wind farms, or anything. We just assumed that everything was fine. But . . .” she paused, thinking. “Gavin had a strange theory. He talked about people disappearing at the Ministry, after they got close to Juliette.”
