“What’s the matter, Cartwright?” Roman asked. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“You should have stayed dead,” I spat.
“Maybe I am dead. Maybe I’ve come here to haunt you and drag you back to hell with me.”
“You can try.” I clenched my hand into a tight ball and willed my magic to glow brighter than it ever had, filling the entire room with cool, blue light. I raised my closed palm toward Roman, turned it up, and flipped him the middle finger. “Come and fight me, asshole.”
Roman growled, then roared, and a magnificently powerful burst of magic issued from his throat with so much energy behind it that the impact to my chest lifted me off the floor and flung me into a wall. My back struck it hard and pain radiated outward from my spine, causing me to cry out. I fell on the floor, my hands somehow pushing out fast enough to stop my cheek from making contact.
My breathing was shallow and ragged as I fought through the pain. The entire mess hall went up in flames, orange light spreading rapidly in every direction. Roman shielded his face from the flames, and I watched him retreat back into the darkness just as Abel grabbed me by the shoulder and helped me up.
“We need to go,” he said.
I listened, running as fast as I could, but if it weren’t for Abel helping me, I wasn’t sure I would have gotten far. There were voices, Aisha and Abel were speaking to each other, only I couldn’t hear what they were saying thanks to that fucking siren. Or maybe I couldn’t hear them because I was having to concentrate too hard on breathing.
The siren slowly died off to a distant whirr, and then we crossed a secured door into the hangar where the Avenging Ace, our stolen aircraft, sat waiting. I heard Spider’s voice calling from where he stood at the Ace’s door, hurrying us over. I still couldn’t breathe deeply, but I pushed my body as hard as it would go and made it into the back of the aircraft, throwing myself into a seat and fumbling with the straps, but I was losing consciousness. Suffocating.
Jamie came in after me, took one look at me, and his eyes widened with alarm. “Okay,” he said. “Max, I need you to relax. You’ve been hurt bad.”
I wanted to ask how bad, but I couldn’t speak—the muscles wouldn’t work.
“I’m going to help you, but it’s going to hurt, and you need to hold still…”
I almost hadn’t heard him speak. I hadn’t taken a full breath since I was hit, and my vision was starting to darken, but I watched his hands glow that reddish-orange glow of theirs and marveled at the black, inky patterns that wrote themselves into his flesh.
“Hold still,” he repeated.
And before I could nod or show any sign that I had even half-heard what he said, a surge of magic filled me, worked its way through me, searching for the damage to my body and looking to undo it. My crushed ribs corrected themselves in an instant filled with so much pain it felt like they were being crushed all over again. Finally, I took a breath, but it was only so that I could scream.
Then I passed out.
CHAPTER SIX
I was still in the air when I regained consciousness, still sitting in the back of the Avenging Ace, listening to the sound of the whirring turbines and feeling the world around me rumble and shake. I forced myself to take a deep breath, then another, and another. No pain, at least not anymore. Jamie’s magic had worked, and while I had suffered five excruciating seconds of pain for the privilege, I was happy now.
Safety straps crossed over my chest pulled me back as I went to shift in my seat. Someone had sat me upright and strapped me in. Seeing as how Aisha was sitting beside me, I assumed it had been her. She looked the same as always. The scales were gone, as were the spindles and the burning eyes.
“Hey,” she said, reaching for my hand, smiling. “Are you okay?”
“I think so,” I said. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know. Out of the city somewhere.”
“We’re about fifteen miles out of downtown,” Abel said. He was sitting on Aisha’s other side. “Moving to a secondary location.”
“Right… what happened back there? I remember getting hit and…”
Aisha looked at Abel, then at me. “I burned the place down,” she said. It wasn’t until now I noticed her voice was a little hoarse.
“You… what?”
“I had no choice. That guy…I saw what he did to you and knew he would be too strong for you to take on, so I just… I did what I could to make sure we could get away.”
“And Roman?” I asked, this time to Abel. “Did we get him?”
Abel shook his head. “We got out as quick as we could, so I don’t know, but it’s unlikely that he’s dead.”
“That son of a bitch. He was definitely unchipped.”
“Try not to think about it now,” Aisha said. “We did some damage before we got out. They’ll think twice about coming after us.”
“Yeah, they’ll remember we have a dragon-fae on our side. We played our ace.”
“An ace we never knew we had. No one was expecting that,” Abel said.
“I couldn’t help it. You were in trouble,” Aisha added.
“You did nothing wrong,” I said, “but you’re gonna have to lay low from now on. They’ll expect you to fight with us, and I can’t risk that fucker getting his hands on you.”
Aisha nodded. “I’m okay with that. I want to help. I want to be a part of the Order.”
Jamie, who must have heard us speaking, turned around in the co-pilot seat. He stuck his thumb up. “How are you feeling?” he asked, yelling over the whine of the engines.
“I think I’m good,” I yelled. “Thank you.”
“No problem. We’re about to land.”
I leaned back into my seat, and for the first time since we took off, I looked outside. We were in the clouds. Streaks of rain and condensation trickled along the window. Distantly, the heavens lit up in shades of blue that rolled along the sky in shifting patterns that seemed to rush toward us as we began to descend. When the clouds cleared, I saw us hovering over a wet, gray-green countryside near the beach. Only, the ocean landscape in the distance shimmered and stuttered, like a computer image trying to correct itself after a glitch.
That was the mirage, the edge of the shield, far enough away from the city that no mage would ever notice it unless they got right up to it.
We passed over fields and small hills until I spotted a patch of land which was opening up. Spider took us closer, and then brought the Avenging Ace in through the hole in the ground to land on a platform underground, touching down with a shudder. The engines began to wind down while above us the large bulkhead closed, choking the light from the real world out and plunging us into darkness until several floodlights turned on around us.
“That’s it, folks,” Spider said. “We’ve arrived at our final destination. Please remember to keep all of your personal belongings with you as you disembark, and thank you for flying Spider Airlines.”
I undid the straps around me and pushed myself off my seat, crouching and sticking my head into the cockpit. Spider turned around and looked at me, an amused expression on his face. “Well, well,” he said, “look who decided to wake up.”
I grabbed the back of his head, tipped his forehead toward me, and kissed it gently. “You’re a fucking angel,” I said.
His pale cheeks reddened, and for an instant he looked much younger than he actually was. Spider had short, platinum blond hair cut to just above his eye line, and he always had a cleanly shaven face—or at least, that was what he would say. Maybe he just didn’t grow much facial hair at all. “What was that for?”
“Not leaving without us.”
“C’mon, like I’d ever.”
I tapped his face and smiled at him, then disembarked out of the side door to a little motion sickness. I stuck my hand out and held onto the Ace’s metal frame for support. Abel came up to help me, but I put my other hand out and stopped him from getting too close, then shut my eyes to get through the moment.
Abel nodded. “Alright,” he said, standing down.
“Do you know if Charles is here?”
“We received word while we were in the air—Charles and his group made it safely. We’re going to speak with him now.”
“And the others?”
“We’re still waiting to hear on some of the others, but most of our people are safe.”
“What about the ones that aren’t back yet?”
Abel sighed slightly. “We’ll hear from them, or we won’t.”
I started walking alongside him when I felt like I could. “If we lost even one person today, it’ll be a fucking tragedy.”
“The Faction knew where we were, but they didn’t know the layout of our facility. That’s why they killed the power. They wanted to try and even the playing field, and everything happened very fast… they knew what they were doing. Anyway, there’s no point thinking it over until we hear from the other groups. We’ll give them an hour, then make headcount.”
We were in a military base of some kind; it looked and smelled old, stale, and it was packed. This secondary base was nothing like HQ. People were sitting in corridors, carrying whatever few possessions they had been able to bring with them, which wasn’t much; there hadn’t been any time. There were kids present, too. Entire families of people had been displaced from the one home they thought was truly safe. I couldn’t help but feel partly responsible for what had happened, even though I knew I couldn’t blame myself.
This had been the Faction’s doing, not mine.
Spider had given Abel a map downloaded through the Avenging Ace’s computers, so I followed him down a short series of concrete corridors until we finally arrived at a large, metal bulkhead that looked like it belonged on a ship. Abel knocked, then turned the wheel on the front of the door. He pushed it open and let himself in, crouching as he went through. Once inside, I shut the vault-like door and heard the heavy-duty locks automatically slot back into place.
Charles was standing by a desk covered with papers. He had a clipboard in his hand and was checking things off a list, but his hands were dirty, his sleeves were rolled up, and he was sweating from everywhere he could sweat. There were no fancy computers here, no bookshelves, no ornaments—hell, not even decent lighting. This place was dark, and humid, but it seemed safe as all heck, and for that I was glad.
“Max,” he said, “thank the gods you made it out.”
“I’m glad I did too,” I said. “What is the situation here?”
“It’s chaos. I’ve been doing what I can around here, helping to unload supplies, making sure everyone gets a place to hang their hat. I really appreciate what you did for us back there. We all do.”
I nodded. “It made sense for us to try and hold them off.”
“Agreed. Still, I wanted to make sure you—and Abel, Jamie, and Aisha—knew you had the gratitude of the entire Order of Prometheus. Thanks to you, many of us made it out.”
“Everyone, hopefully.”
“Yes.” Charles sighed. “I had a lot of time to think on the way here, and the more I thought about it, the more I believe you’re right.”
“About?”
“We have to leave New Seattle. The Order is no longer safe as long as we exist in a place where the Faction can easily get to us.”
“HQ was well protected,” Abel said. “The Faction only got to us because they were somehow able to track us down as we returned to base. It wasn’t easy for them.”
“I understand,” Charles said, “but that isn’t what I mean. What I mean is, if we were to base ourselves outside of the shield surrounding the city, the Faction would have to expend more resources trying to find us.”
“At the same time,” Abel added, “it would be costlier for us to mount offensives against the Faction.”
“That is a valid point,” Charles said, “But the Order doesn’t want to launch offensives against the Faction. We are here to liberate and awaken those who are in shackles or asleep. We can do that from the outside far more effectively than they can hunt us down.”
“There are risks… trying to get out won’t be easy. I’d say it’s almost impossible unless you have the right clearance.”
“Do you know much about the shield?” I asked.
“Some,” Abel said.
“Why am I not surprised your division knew more about the shield than mine did?”
“We didn’t. I only know because I made it a point of knowing as much as I could about the outside. I like to be prepared.”
“And?”
Abel looked at me, then at Charles. “There is only one way in and out of the shield that I know of. A checkpoint sitting at the edge of the shield about thirty miles south of the city. Vehicles come in and out of the shield that way, heading to and coming from other cities around the continent, but it’s heavily guarded by mages and troops. Today I recognized the markings on the people who attacked our base as the same markings I’ve seen on the sides of the trucks that go in and out of the city, and on the people that guard and pilot them.”
“You’re telling me the Faction has some kind of private army?”
“That’s right. They’re never seen because they’re used almost explicitly to guard the checkpoint. They must have known they couldn’t just send rookie hunters to the Order’s HQ as part of a full-on assault, so they sent their troops instead.”
“Tell me more about the checkpoint,” Charles said. “Anything you can.”
Abel exhaled. “I’ve never gotten close,” he said. “No one except those with the highest clearance are allowed within five miles of it, so I couldn’t tell you much about patrols or shifts, let alone any access codes to get in and out.”
“Alright… give it to me straight; based on what you’ve seen about this checkpoint, do you think it’ll be possible for us to leave?”
“A small group, maybe two or three, possibly… the odds are slim, but possibly.”
“What happens to everyone else?” I asked.
“There’s no way we’re smuggling every single person, including children, out through one of those checkpoints.”
“Then we find another way. There has to be another way out.”
“I don’t know that there is,” Abel said. “I’ve never heard of another way out.”
“But that doesn’t mean there isn’t one, and if there is, I bet there will be some written record of it at Faction HQ.”
“That’s insane, even for you.”
“As much as I hate the idea of putting on another one of those fucking magical disguises, if there’s even a chance there’s a way for us to get everyone out and across that barrier—away from this place—then I want to try and find it.” I turned to look at Charles. His head was low, and he had his hands in his hair.
“So, if I understand this,” he said, “you’re suggesting someone infiltrate Faction HQ to try and find another way across the barrier?”
“Not someone—us.”
“You?” Charles asked.
“We know HQ better than anyone else. If anyone’s going to find the information we need, it’s going to be us.”
Charles made a wait gesture with his hand. “This is all speculative,” he said. “Even if I agreed to this plan, there are a lot of things to consider… a lot of variables. I need to think about this, and we all need some rest.”
I took a deep breath and let myself come down from… everything. This had been one hell of a long day. Charles was right. I really did want a comfortable bed to lay my head down on and sleep, but I didn’t think I would be able to sleep. There was just way too much going on in my head, too much noise.
“Think about it,” I said.
Charles looked up at me. “There was a time when I was the one who gave the orders around here.”
“I get that, and I’m not being disrespectful, but you don’t need to take the burden of responsibility all on your own anymore. We’re her
e to help.”
“Thank you. Now, go and get some rest.”
“That’s an order I will gladly follow.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
A tired looking guy holding a tablet gave us our room numbers as we passed him in the hall on the way to the barracks. I was in room seven; Abel was in room eight.
“Looks like we’re neighbors,” I said as we walked along the now quiet halls toward our rooms. People seemed to have cleared out of the main walkways, and I attributed that to the poor guy who had been tasked with making sure everyone had a place to sleep, and quick. I could smell food, too, cooking somewhere nearby. My stomach grumbled, but I ignored it.
“We are,” Abel said. “How is your chest?”
My hand went to my breastbone automatically, as if to check that it was still there, still intact. “Fine,” I said. “I’m starting to remember more of what happened back there.”
“You got cocky.”
“Cocky?”
Abel looked at me as we walked. “You taunted him when you should have been preparing your defenses.”
“And here I thought you were too busy fighting off the Faction to notice me.”
“I was fighting them off and watching you.”
“Well, good for you that you can do both things at the same time. I don’t want a lecture.”
“I wasn’t giving you one, just an observation.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “I wasn’t being cocky,” I persisted.
“If you say so. Next time, remember what he can do.”
“Next time I’ll kick his ass.”
“Maybe, if he doesn’t kick yours first.”
I looked up at him. “Alright, watch it, okay? It’s been a long day, and I’m not in the mood.”
Abel turned his eyes away from me. “None of us are in the mood,” he said. “Least of all for what’s coming next. Going back to Faction HQ isn’t something I want us to do.”
“I’m not exactly looking forward to it either,” I said, allowing my hands to rest at my sides as I walked. “It’s just something we have to do. We need more information, otherwise we’re stuck here, and how long until the Faction finds this place, too?”
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