by Sarah Cross
“Enough. I have a mess to clean up.” Cherchette’s voice is cold, sharp. “It is hard on you now, but one day you will understand that I act only out of necessity—to protect our family from those who wish to hurt us.”
“Cherchette, wait,” I say.
“It is time for you to rest.” She shuts the door solidly behind her and locks it. I thump my fists against the observation window, try to get her attention as she’s walking away—“Wait! Let’s talk about this!”—but she ignores me. I know what she’s doing—and I can’t just sit here while she masterminds my friends’ deaths.
Using the walls for balance, I shove my way over to the desk where she keeps her medical equipment, searching for a misplaced key or a phone that makes outgoing calls. If I can at least contact Darla and Sophie, I can tell them Cherchette’s expecting them: ABORT! ABORT!
I’m busy trying to break into the desk—an act that would’ve taken me two seconds back before Cherchette pumped my veins full of phosphorescent poison—when an explosion rocks the whole headquarters. I whip around, the sudden spin making me dizzy, and see a cloud of brick dust and debris fill the pool room as the outer wall crumbles. A huge, boxy, shadowed figure appears in the opening—like in those old Kool-Aid commercials where Kool-Aid man busts through a wall to save kids from their own thirstiness, yelling: Ohhhh yeah!
Only it’s not Kool-Aid man. It’s a giant purple robot with Sophie stuck to its shoulder. She’s in skimpy, bright blue neoprene, armed with the massive pink gun from Darla’s workshop.
Darla’s voice explodes from the robot’s loudspeaker, all garbled and metallic but still Darla enough to be recognizable: “It’s ON like Donkey Kong, Ice Queen! You’re going DOWN!”
The robot crashes through the rubble next to the Olympic-size swimming pool—then jerks forward a few steps too many and plunges into the shallow end, sinking in up to its knees. I rattle the doorknob of my prison, a fresh wave of sweat pouring down—
But I can’t budge the lock.
I ram the door with my shoulder—but it’s like I’ve got nothing to give. I collapse against it, slide down in slow motion before I realize what’s happening and pull myself up. I give it another shot: I visualize my leg thrusting forward, boot slamming the door at its center, cracking it in half. But when I throw my first kick, it’s with zero force. Just lifting my leg off the ground seems like too much effort; I have to grip the bed to keep from falling down.
The robot reverses and sloshes backward, awkwardly trying to mount the pool stairs before it short-circuits. Sophie leaps off its shoulder and lands poolside, rolling across the cement to break her fall. “Shut it down!” she cries.
“No one told me there was a pool here! Who puts a pool in their evil lair?!” Robotic limbs punch and thrash in all directions as Darla tries to navigate her creation out of the water.
Water that is quickly turning to ice.
Silver frost races across the water like the pool’s been touched by a magic wand, freezing the surface first and then sinking deeper, transforming the entire pool into a massive ice cube, trapping Darla’s robot in place. Spidery cracks split the cement around the pool, glittering frost filling them as soon as they form.
I press my face to the observation window, determined to focus whatever strength I have left—so that when I go to use it, it’ll count. I have to get out of here.
Cherchette makes her grand entrance like an actress taking the stage, dressed for the part of villainess in a white fur cape, boots, and sleek white bodysuit—only her face and hands are bare. Blue light bounces off the ice, lending her skin a ghostly pallor, like all the humanity drained out of her a long time ago.
“Intruders,” she says. “Allow me to welcome you properly!”
Cold air rushes through the corridors, blowing under my door and clutching my heart like an icy fist. Poolside, Sophie’s breath heaves out of her like smoke. She’s crouched, mostly bare skin flushing pink from the assault. She flips a switch on her oversize pink gun and fires, sending an almost colorless beam shooting forth.
Darla’s dynamic pain cannon.
Cherchette screams when it hits her, convulses like every one of her nerves is on fire; but when it’s over, instead of collapsing in defeat, she straightens to her full height, angrier than ever.
“Why is she still conscious?” Darla shouts via loudspeaker.
“I don’t know! I set it on stun!”
“Impossible! If you’d set it on stun she’d be—”
Before she can finish, Cherchette cracks Darla’s robot open like a crab, wedging a huge ice spike into its back. Darla hits her emergency eject button and goes flying, an inflatable sled opening beneath her just in time to cushion the impact as she shoots across the pool-turned-ice-rink—spandex-clad and wearing aviator goggles, shrieking the whole way.
“Plan B!” Darla shouts. “Plan Beeeeeeee!”
Sophie takes cover behind the gutted robot and charges up the pain cannon for a second shot.
I hear the crash of glass shattering and see a chair go flying through the window next door, followed by the bat-wing flap of a trench coat as Nicholas climbs out. Catherine kicks through next, one chewed-up strap still dangling from her wrist. I pound on my own window—then duck as Nicholas picks up the chair and hurls it through.
Glass rains down all around me, piercing my skin. Tiny cuts fill with blood. But I don’t have much time to think about that. Catherine and Nicholas reach through the broken window and haul me out.
Nicholas’s eyes are glowing like two eerie spotlights— so blue it blocks out the whites of his eyes. He’s shaking, not even close to the calm, sedated Nicholas we saw earlier. Catherine seems to be ordering him around, keeping him somewhat stable, but once we enter the war zone, there’s no way that’s going to last.
“You’re shivering like a Chihuahua,” Catherine says, throwing my arm around her shoulders for support.
I nod, teeth chattering—can’t argue with that. “Where’s Jacques? Do you think he could displace some of the cold, so I can f-function?”
“No idea. He left with Cherchette when she moved you to another room. We haven’t seen him since.”
Inside the pool room, Darla and Sophie are getting their asses handed to them. Darla must have been counting on the invincibility of her robot, because she doesn’t have a weapon—and Cherchette is taking full advantage of that fact. Right now a spider made of animated ice is chasing her around the room, brittle legs tinkling across the pool, leaving traces of frost wherever they touch down. Sophie’s smacking her gun against the floor and cursing it, grappling with the frozen dial. The barrel and the controls are clogged with ice, and her right hand is frozen to the grip like a deformed claw.
“We need to get in there!” I say.
“The doors are iced shut,” Catherine says. “I can claw through but it’ll take a while.” She bites her lip, dissatisfied. “It has to be sooner than that. Those two don’t have a chance by themselves.”
“I think I can be of assistance.”
I turn around, shocked to see Jacques standing behind me. Not just because he’s here, but because he’s so messed up: the skin around one eye is swollen black and purple; the corner of his mouth is torn and his shirt collar is stained with blood.
Jacques ignores my stare and lifts his hand, focusing his energy on the ice seal, whittling it down until the floor is littered with ice crystals and the door opens easily.
“Before we go in there,” Catherine says. “Jacques, are you any match for your mom?”
A bitter smile forms on his face. “Not even close. And I’m guessing you are not either.”
Catherine bristles but doesn’t deny it—probably remembering the fight that brought her here. She rakes her claws down the wall, agitated. “Okay then. Last resort: Avery, tell me you’re all better now and you’re ready to save the day. This whole weak-delirious thing is part of your act. Please?”
“I’ll pull my weight,” I say. I lean over, ch
eeks bulging with sudden pressure, and—
I spew a stream of blue, blood-spattered liquid onto the floor. Like some kind of alien vomit. Holy hell, Batman. My throat burns like I choked up a razor blade. My eyes are dying to roll back in my skull. Jacques and Catherine collide, swooping toward me to boost me up.
“You’re staying here,” Catherine orders.
“No, no, I’m good. I always puke before a match.” Blatant lie. “I’m ready now. Bring it.”
Catherine glares at me and shoves through the door to the pool room, Jacques at her heels. I grab Nicholas and drag him in after them. He’s verging on catatonic: eyes glazed with light, limbs statue-rigid—and I’m about as robust as a zombie. But our friends are in trouble. Either we make it through this—all of us—or we go down together.
Entering the pool room is like stepping into an industrial-size freezer that wants to kill you. Hailstones rain down amid the blinding snow like an arctic air strike. Frost clings to Darla and Sophie like fur; a monstrous ice spider lunges at Darla with its pincered mouth. And in the center of the storm: Cherchette. The mad conductor of her own icy symphony, cloaked in mink and mania and completely beyond reason. The potential of Stage Two, live and in the flesh. More power than we ever dreamed of.
And not one of us can get near her.
Instead we’re dodging every deadly creation she throws at us.
Catherine launches herself at the ice spider, amputates a leg with twin claw-slashes before her momentum sends her skidding across the surface of the pool. Seven more legs to go. Darla batters the spider’s face with her sled, doing her damnedest to keep it at bay.
Sophie’s busy chipping away at the ice clogging her gun, using a jagged metal lever that she snapped off Darla’s robot, fighting to bring the pain cannon back into commission. Cherchette’s been bombarding her with hail for a while now: her flushed legs and arms are showing golf-ball-size welts; her knees are knocking together and the tool she’s using keeps missing its target. But when Jacques rushes to help her, Cherchette switches gears.
The hailstorm abruptly ceases. Sophie looks up, dazed—just in time to see a cage of ice imprison Jacques, ice spikes slicing the air mere inches from his face.
“You’ve betrayed me for the last time!” Cherchette’s chest heaves, her fists clenching and unclenching rhythmically, bloodless white nails digging into her flesh.
Jacques works at thawing the cage, but Cherchette builds the walls back up before he can break them down. As the bars grow thicker, the cage gets narrower, until it’s pressing Jacques from all sides like a torture device, crushing the air out of his lungs.
Sophie rips the black boomerang off her utility belt and wings it at Jacques’s cage; then dives out of the way as it explodes, blowing a gorilla-size hole in the ice. My heart’s thumping in time with my tremors, fast and frantic; I feel like a plague victim but this deep-rooted desire’s kicking in. This is still who I am. I grab Jacques by the shirt and wrench him out.
Watching my friends, I see everyone’s giving it their all. Working their adrenaline for whatever it’s worth.
And it’s not enough. We’re going down, fast.
A gale-force icy wind slams Sophie against the wall; she sticks like a fly that’s been swatted, head lolling forward.
Nicholas is the last remaining source of heat in the room. His eyes are swirling milky-blue neon; his body’s vibrating like it’s been electrified.
Catherine’s managed to saw three more legs off the ice spider, felling it like a chopped-down tree. It lies on its bulbous side, spindly legs twitching uselessly. But Cherchette has moved on to the next line of attack: hypothermia. Catherine’s a fighter—but the cold is wearing her down. Darla’s huddling in the shadow of the giant robot, shivering so hard she can barely move, let alone strategize. And Sophie’s glued to the wall; Jacques is struggling to catch his breath; the wind around Nicholas is whipping wildly, tornado-style—
Nicholas . . .
Cold steamrollers us, battering us down, forcing us to our knees. First numbness, then unconsciousness—and once we’re unconscious, we’ll be at her mercy. Cherchette’s desperate to protect her twisted dream, and there’s no room for forgiveness. She’ll crush anyone who tries to take it away from her.
I can’t say that what I’m about to do is right. That I expect it to ever be okay. But I know who I care about. I know how far I’m willing to go to protect them.
“Catherine!” I shout. I stow Jacques behind the giant robot and hurry toward her. “Fastball special at twelve o’clock!”
She gapes at me in disbelief, but I know she knows what I’m talking about. It’s a classic superhero move—any girl who drops obscure Batman references has to know what it is. I stumble toward her, eyes narrowed against the icy wind. We meet on the slick surface of the pool, twenty feet behind Nicholas. Draw a line straight from us to Cherchette and he’d be the center point.
The wintry wind howls all around us. I cup my hands around my mouth and speak directly into Catherine’s ear, setting up my plan in as few words as possible.
“Hold on tight,” I finish. “Dig your claws in! Whatever you have to do! Ready?”
Catherine climbs into my waiting arms, body poised in a tight crouch. Her eyes are narrowed to slits, frost ringing her lids. “Let’s do this!”
I channel it all: the strength I do have, the strength I used to have; the desire that makes it possible, that makes me more than what everyone thinks I am, more than a reckless daredevil, a destroyer of property and trust and friendships and . . .
And I throw Catherine with everything I’ve got, her feline-girl body soaring through the storm like a tightly wound spring, ready to uncurl, pounce, and stir it up. She lands perfectly on Nicholas’s back, shreds his trench coat open in a single fierce motion, claws ripping through it, exposing his vortex to the air.
Catherine plunges her claws into his shoulders and the vortex roars, expands until it’s almost encompassing Nicholas’s entire torso, and parts of his face are vanishing in the blackness. Snow and ice crystals and wind and hail are drawn into the vortex. The suction snags me and pulls me forward, my feet can’t get a grip on the slippery floor; Jacques and Darla are sliding toward it, scrabbling wildly on the ice . . .
But the black void is aimed directly at Cherchette. Her eyes stretch in horror and she fumbles to create a handhold, to root herself to the ground with ice—but every weapon at her disposal is being devoured by the vortex. Her fur cape begins to pleat; her model-severe features distort, lose dimension. She flattens, shrinks—
And then she’s gone.
25
I CICLES WASTE AWAY to needle-thin slivers, and the air fills with the musical drip, drip, drip of ice melting, tinkling, teardropping to the ground. As the room thaws, the reality of what I’ve done dawns on me:
I killed Cherchette.
Nicholas is on his knees, blood trickling down the shoulders of his trench coat, when Leilani bursts in and starts pummeling him, anywhere and everywhere she can. “What the hell have you done? Bring her back!” Her face contorts, becoming more like Cherchette’s until Catherine grabs her and shoves her. But Leilani grips back and they both go down, splashing into a puddle of water on the chipped poolside cement. Leilani kicks at Catherine with her sharp heels, scrambles away, and lunges at me next.
“You’ve frigging betrayed her like everyone else!” Leilani shouts. “She believed in you, she would have helped you to become anything you wanted! You would have been part of our family! We trusted you, and you destroyed everything!”
“Leilani, I’m sorry,” I say as the rest of the group joins us. “No one wanted this. But she didn’t leave me a choice.”
Leilani’s smacking fat tears off her cheeks as soon as they fall. “You forced her hand. You treated her like a criminal, like some creature to be gunned down, and she didn’t have a choice. Can’t you see that?”
She turns on Jacques. “And you—you should be ashamed. Your own mother! Do yo
u know how lucky you are? And you just go and throw it away like that, like she’s nothing to you!”
“I won’t discuss this with you,” Jacques says. “You don’t know anything about her.” He’s still staring at the place where Cherchette was last standing, like he expects her to appear again.
“This is hard on all of us,” Sophie says. “Yelling at each other isn’t going to make it easier.”
“Oh, shut up! You pathetic parasite! As if you’re not thrilled to be a part of something so big. You never should have survived Stage One, let alone—”
A plate of ice clamps her lips together before she can finish. “That’s enough,” Jacques says. He’s trembling. Sophie buries her head in his chest and hugs him. Stage One? It’s all Greek to her. She and Darla still don’t know the truth. Right now is about comforting Jacques, because . . . maybe Cherchette was messed up, but she was his mom. His only family, as far as we know.
And it’s my fault that he lost her.
This is the one thing I’ve done that can’t be fixed. That won’t heal or improve with the passage of time. I cost Jacques his mother; Leilani lost her mentor, the person she loved more than anyone; and I forced Nicholas to do the one thing he didn’t ever want to do—destroy a human life.
Can that ever be justified? Could I have done anything else?
Catherine digs a claw into my sleeve and drags me away from the others.
“Stop it,” she says.
“What?”
“Stop tearing yourself up over this. We did what we had to do; you’re not the only one who thought it was a good idea, okay? This woman killed people. Babies—kids who could’ve lived normal, healthy lives if she hadn’t decided to play mad scientist. She could have easily killed all six of us tonight.
