The forest is a war zone, with fallen trees and cracked earth paving a trail of destruction from the front of the lab to wherever Kai must have gotten to.
“Alexia,” The Duke addresses the woman responsible for keeping me afloat, “ensure that Kai waits until we are safely away before demolishing the lab. Give him another dose of the formula, as he’ll need it to pull this off. Marcus,” he says, turning towards the man, “bring my car around. And find Cassie. I have a feeling I’ll be needing her abilities on the way back to London.”
“Wait,” I reach out with my good arm and tug his sleeve. He looks down at my hand as though I’ve tainted him somehow. “What about everyone inside?”
“Save your effort, Curtis. I’ll give your friends a fighting chance to escape, but I won’t help them. They’re as guilty as trying to prevent the greater good as you are.”
“I have to get them out,” I slur, wading futilely through the air and trying to scramble back to the lab. The invisible force that holds me captive doesn’t let up, and I only expend more energy than I have to give.
A man with close-cropped hair, whose arms bulge through his t-shirt, stomps through the wreckage outside and gives the Duke a cursory salute. I’d roll my eyes if I weren’t in so much pain.
“Is the last transport loaded?”
“Yes, your Grace. Ready to go at your order.”
“Very good, Justin. You can tell them to leave now. We’re done here.” The Duke looks down at me and shakes his head. “It’s a shame my ex-wife was too afraid to see the rest of our plan through. And after she waited so long for her reward, as well.” He sighs dramatically and pulls a tiny vial of green liquid out of his breast pocket. My breath hitches in my throat, and it takes all my effort not to make a noise. The cure. It really exists.
He holds it up to the light and shakes his head sadly before pocketing it again. If Tilly were here to see it, she could end this right now. Strangle the Duke. Shoot him. Anything to stop this madness. But she’s not, and I have to hope that she’s at least somewhere helping the others get to safety.
A Range Rover pulls round and stops a few feet from us, then the driver gets out. Alexia opens the rear door and lays me down on the back seat, the cool leather a comfort against my burnt skin.
The Duke barks a few more instructions from outside, and I wonder if I can make a break for it, but just trying to reach the door handle sends fire through my arm and back.
I feel Tilly’s presence before she speaks, wedging herself between the driver’s seat and the back where I lie.
“Let’s go,” she whispers as loud as she dares.
“No!” I say quickly. “No, Tilly, you have to get the others out. All of them. He’s going to demolish the lab,” I choke out the words as quickly as I can.
“I can’t save everyone,” she says frantically.
“Yes, you can. Leave me. I’ll be fine. Jer, Lou, Steve, Marco, David—they’re all in there. I don’t know where Miss Banks and Edward have gotten to—” My instructions are cut off by the driver coming back, and I feel Tilly leave before I can say anything else.
The Duke climbs into the front passenger side and signals Marcus to turn the car around. I prop myself up on my good arm, whimpering with the pain despite myself, and stare out of the rear window for any sign that my friends have escaped.
One or two Augurs appear out of the building but no one I recognise.
Cassie emerges, minus Crossley, and marches towards the car, which pulls over to allow her in.
“Cassie, dear, be sure to control my nephew if he tries to cause any trouble on the way back to London, won’t you?” the Duke requests. Cassie nods and gives me a chilling smile.
I turn back to the lab, which diminishes in size as we drive farther and farther from it, every bump and ditch on the terrain sending shooting pains through my right arm.
Please, Tilly. Get them all out safely.
All those people relied on me, and I’m not even there to help them. I shake my head, but the burns on my neck remind me not to make sudden movements. I stare until my eyes sting and the lab is nothing more than a dot, hidden behind the trees, before it disappears from view.
The collapse of the building is so loud that it reaches us from a mile away. A groaning, creaking sound like the fall of a giant, makes the landscape tremble. An unbearable pain explodes in my chest at the thought of losing them.
“I’ll help you,” Cassie says quietly, seeing my expression and reaching out a hand, pulling off her glove.
“No thanks,” I croak, but with nowhere to run, she insists, placing her palm on a patch of my face that isn’t burnt or bruised.
“Sleep,” she commands, and I do.
CHAPTER 17
When I wake up, we’re back in London, and I’m hallucinating.
Ella stands, arms folded at the end of the room, staring out of the window, with her back turned to me, but her outline is unmistakable.
The sounds of traffic, sirens, and the bustle of the city float through an open window frame and confirm where I am.
The burns on my neck and palms are bandaged over, and the pain has reduced to a dull ache. I can tell I haven’t been healed by an Augur from the amount of agony thudding through my body with every breath.
I turn over on the low cot I’ve been placed in, trying to push myself up. My arm and hand remind me that they’re broken, by sending a stabbing jolt all the way up into my shoulder that makes me suck the air through my teeth.
The hallucination turns around at the sound and walks over to me, placing a finger over her lips and then pointing to her ear. “They’re listening,” she mouths.
I try to speak, but my vocal cords aren’t cooperating, crushed by the Duke’s fingers, no doubt. I cough, and it feels like a porcupine climbed into my throat.
“You’re the biggest idiot I’ve ever met,” the hallucination pretending to be Ella says to me.
“That’s not very nice,” I rasp, wincing at the effort.
“I told you. I bloody told you not to come, and you did anyway.” She scowls, but there’s no anger in it. Her face comes level with mine, and her blue eyes stare straight into mine. She looks pale and tired, but no less beautiful than she always has been.
I reach out to her with my left arm and touch her cheek, surprised to find her face warm beneath my bandaged fingers.
“You’re real?” I say, incredulously.
“Of course I’m real,” she replies softly, putting a hand up to my face. “How hard did you get knocked out?”
I freeze. This is Ella. My Ella. Not some figment of my imagination, or a dream, or something that Cassie has concocted to keep me under control. I can feel her. The tingle on my skin when she touches me, the tiny flecks of green in her eyes that no one notices except me. And the tiniest bump beneath her shirt.
“I thought I lost you,” I reply, my voice cracking against my will. I want to take her in my arms right here and now, kiss her like there’s nothing else more important in the world than her and me and us.
She pulls away, and I feel a little bit of that spark inside me dim.
“You know the truth,” she says loudly, as though to someone outside the room. “You know that I’m working with the Duke now.”
“Ella, I don’t understand,” I start to say, but she holds up a hand to silence me. Play along. Act like we’re fighting, she mimes. She wants whoever overhears us to think we’re at each other’s throats, when all I need to do right now is hold her.
“You shouldn’t have come, Curtis,” she says more genuinely this time, and I know it’s true.
“I didn’t have a choice. He’s mad, you know that, right?”
“He’s going to help Augurs everywhere with his formula and my blood. I won’t have to run any more. Augurs will be able to fend for themselves.” She sounds like she’s trying to justify her actions.
“You were supposed to be better than this,” I say quietly, closing my eyes and wishing I would wake up so
mewhere else, where Ella wasn’t one of the bad guys and where my body didn’t feel like it had been hit by a sledgehammer.
“You know what? I’m sick of people thinking I’m ‘supposed’ to be something,” she snaps. The invisible wall between us is stronger than ever. She may be a few inches away, but even taking her hand doesn’t seem to remove the fact that she’s changed in these past two months.
“It wasn’t fair of me to say that,” I apologise, and her expression softens.
“This was what I always wanted, Curtis. To save my people, remember?”
“What I remember is you wanting to save innocent lives and stop a tyrant. At the time, we were talking about Munday and the Magic Circle, but now that it’s the Duke and the Society it’s all okay, is it?” Whether we’re pretending to fight or not, the anger I feel is genuine, and even my ruined voice won’t stop me from letting her know it.
“We made a promise to each other,” she says, and I hear the bitterness in her voice. “You told me that if I found any kind of chance, I had to get out. I told you that if it got too much, you were supposed to run. But you didn’t, did you?”
“And this is you finding a chance to get out?” I raise my voice as high as it will go.
“This is me finding a way to stop running.”
“You know that he’s responsible for the Facility just as much as Munday? All that stuff about my aunt using their divorce settlement to pay for the research was total bull. He was there, Ella. He experimented on you. On our friends.” Just saying it aloud makes my thoughts jump to Lou and Jer and the others.
“Oh my God, our friends. Do you know if they got out alive?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Out of the lab? The Duke ordered Kai to destroy it, but everyone was still inside, and I was caught. I couldn’t stop it. I need to know if they’re still alive.”
“Who’s everyone, Curtis? Who was there?”
“Jer, Lou, Marco, David... Edward, Crossley, Miss Banks, a group of Augurs that came to help me... Oh my God. If anything’s happened to them...” I can’t finish the sentence, instead leaning back on the cot and holding my broken arm to my chest. If anything has happened to them, I won’t be able to live with myself.
Inadvertent tears run down my face, and I wipe them with my good hand. “I need to know if they’re alive, Ella. I need to know!” I stand up abruptly, my body screaming at the effort.
We’re no longer arguing, but instead there’s an avalanche of pain, both physically and mentally, crashing down on me for completely different reasons.
“Curtis, breathe,” she says, forcing her voice into calm, placing her hands on either side of my face.
I want to ask her how she can be so relaxed having just discovered that our friends might be dead. Just the idea of losing them makes my chest feel cavernous, aching with the promise of more heartbreak.
“You have to focus, Curtis. The only reason I’m here is because the Duke wants me to bring you to him. I think he’s testing me,” she says, removing her hands and looking down. “I wanted to do this without you,” she says almost inaudibly.
“But I’m here now. Broken and beaten, but here. There’s no getting rid of me,” I reply lowly, pushing the fear and worry back down.
“Well, then, you’ll just have to bear witness to the monster I’ve created. As soon as the formula is distributed, I can leave. I’m a free woman,” she says resolutely.
“If you think that the Duke is going to let you leave just like that, you’re mistaken, Ella. He as good as admitted that Munday is dead once this is over. He’ll never stop finding a use for you or your powers. What about the baby?” I say, leaning into her ear so that only she can hear.
Her face drops, shock written all over it. “You know?” she asks, her voice quivering.
I nod in reply, looking meaningfully at the tiny bump that is my child. Our child.
“Are you happy about it?” she whispers, and I get the impression that she’s suddenly afraid to know the answer.
“Over the moon. Or I would be, if my girlfriend hadn’t been kidnapped a few hours before I found out,” I reply.
This was not how I expected this conversation to go. I’d pictured happiness and laughter, ridiculous baby name suggestions and immediately agreeing that Jer and Lou would be the godparents. This wasn’t how this moment was supposed to go. We were supposed to be surrounded by our friends popping champagne and savouring the fact that we made a person, a tiny Ella or maybe, terrifyingly, a mini-me. But at no point did I imagine I would be held captive by my psychotic uncle, with us effectively having broken up, Ella looking terrified as she does now.
But, for the first time since the beginning of our relationship, Ella is afraid, and she won’t let me be there for her. And instead of being upset, I’m pissed off—like someone stole something from me I didn’t even know I wanted.
“Good,” she says out of the blue. “Be angry with me. Use it. Pretend to hate me if you can,” she adds, whispering again. I frown, confused at the mix of messages I’m getting from her.
There’s a loud knock at the door, and we take a step apart, the door opening and Cassie poking her head round. Ella stiffens and the scowl returns, looking from me to Cassie with the same heated look.
“Sorry to interrupt the unhappy reunion, but the Duke wanted you both as soon as Curtis was awake,” she says, not a hint of apology in her voice.
“Right,” Ella replies, stalking out of the room and pushing past Cassie, leaving me to trail behind. Whether she still loves me or not, I really can’t tell, but she puts on an act of indifference that could win her an Oscar. It hurts more than I want it to, more than I have time to fully acknowledge as we leave the small room.
“Where’s Marco? And Crossley?” I ask Cassie, keeping my distance from her so as not to get near her power. She was the last person they were with, so surely, she’ll know if they’re alive?
She narrows her eyes at me, weighing whether or not to answer, then finally shrugs. “I lost them in the earthquake.”
Although she says it casually, my knees tremble. I drop to the ground as a wave of nausea and grief wash over me. Marco. Cross. Not just my friends, but my family. Angry tears sting my eyes. I look up to Cassie with nothing but pure hatred.
“I’ll kill you!” I cry, ignoring the screaming protests from my body and lunging at her with my good fist balled, aimed straight for her pretty face. Although she looks surprised, she reacts quickly, slamming her palm into my stomach while simultaneously slapping her bare hand against my cheek, her power hitting me with more force than the pain in my gut.
“Shh, little Normal baby,” she says soothingly. All the fury I felt from a moment before dissipates, leaving me empty and devoid of emotion. I know I should be angry, but she seems to be sending a message into my entire body that I should be calm and still. My body is rigid, trembling with the effort of trying to keep some semblance of myself from her magic. The effort makes me break out in a sweat. If I could just break contact with her for a second, I think dully, I could strangle her. For Marco. For Crossley.
“You are such a little nuisance,” she says, as if talking to a petulant child. “I think it would be much easier if you were my puppet,” she says, leaning into my ear, her lips brushing my skin. I stiffen even more. The kiss of death, my aunt called it. Losing your mind completely and following her every command, like Crossly.
Her fingers dance around my face, as if savouring what she’s about to do and wanting to memorise the look of horror that I know is plastered there. She leans in, her red-painted lips just an inch away from my own.
“That’s not what the Duke wanted, Cassie,” Ella says sharply. “He wanted Curtis to be fully aware of what’s going on.”
Thank God for Ella, I think, somewhere in the back of my mind.
Cassie pauses, her breath hot on my face. For a moment, I think she’s going to ignore Ella and do it anyway.
“Ugh, fine,” she says, ro
lling her eyes and pulling away, letting me go. I gasp and double over double, panting. “If you try something like that again though, you’re mine, and I will make sure you suffer,” Cassie says, stalking ahead of us.
I shoot a glance at Ella, which I hope shows my gratitude, but the one she gives me in return is guarded, like she wants to say something but won’t risk it.
We walk across the carpeted floor of the building, walled by glass on every side, with vistas of London I’ve only ever seen from the Shard or the Eye, reminding me of something.
A vision of London in flames flashes in my mind.
Agnes’s vision.
I almost stumble from the shock of recognition, but when I look to Ella, her warning look is enough to make me school my face into something acceptable. She remembers too.
“Is there a problem?” Cassie asks.
A problem? I mean, aside from being in the exact spot where my girlfriend’s sister predicted my death? And right on the verge of the hideous plan coming true? But all I say is, “How many floors up are we?”
“Thirty,” Cassie replies, indicating a lift at the end of the corridor and ushering us in. “Don’t get any ideas about trying anything,” she adds, waggling her bare fingers in my face, making me recoil.
My only consolation is that Agnes’s vision was wrong or perhaps just different. But something changed the course of the future as she saw it, so that alone has to give me some comfort. I think.
Cassie pushes a button labelled W at the bottom of the long panel, and I feel the pull of the lift descending, but no one speaks the entire way. Lift etiquette is universal, apparently.
I look at Ella for some sign that she’s in control, that Agnes’s vision isn’t coming true right before our eyes. She gives me a subtle shake of her head in response, which I can’t quite understand.
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