Seasons of Chaos

by Elle Cosimano

  Her twisted scowl is full of contempt. “Then how about you go first?”

  Her flame roars as she advances toward us. The other Guards follow, one wielding a lance of ice, the other a sphere of churning water. Julio, Amber, and Chill take up positions beside me. There’s a hiss of fire, a crackle of ice, and a rush of water as they prepare to counter the attack.

  Suddenly, the ground shakes, throwing Lixue to her knees. We all reach to steady ourselves as the tremor takes hold. Plaster splinters, falling in chunks from the ceiling. A crack splits the marble floor with a deafening snap.

  Lixue backs away from it, touching her transmitter.

  “Chronos, do you read me?” she shouts. A squawk. Chatter over the radio. A Guard’s voice is broken by static, the words too garbled to catch. “Chronos and the Spring . . . up top . . . not answering his . . .”

  A torch rattles and falls from its sconce, throwing sparks over the floor. A wall ruptures beside us. We shield ourselves as a pipe bursts, spraying water into the hall.

  Lixue’s eyes leap to mine. Doug’s already up top. If he evacuated, he must know this place is ready to implode.

  “It’s Doug,” I shout across the gap. “He can’t stop this. The more power he takes on, the less control he has. Forget the freed Seasons. They chose their own fates. And they’re safer out there on their own than the ones you’re holding prisoner down here!” I wait for her to hurl fire at me. But she just looks at us, her fists clenching and unclenching at her sides as the walls shake. “If you don’t let us fix it, we’re all going to die. I know how to stop this.”

  “I can’t let you go!” She shakes her head as if she’s trying to convince herself.

  “Then at least let them go!” I point toward the dormitories above us. There must be hundreds of Seasons trapped in their rooms. “There’s still time to save them.”

  Lixue gnaws her lip as the Guards wait for her command. They duck as a chunk of ceiling collapses behind them. The auxiliary power flashes and dies. Alarms blast and sprinklers explode to life, raining over our heads.

  She shields herself with an arm. “There are too many of them! We’ll never be able to get them all out!”

  “Is there a way to disable the locks to all the dormitories from the Control Room?” Chill asks.

  Lixue nods.

  “Do it,” I tell her. “There’s an emergency tunnel at the cardinal point of each wing. They lead out through the catacombs.” I take Lyon’s map from my pocket and tear it into four sections, one for each wing. I give Winter to Chill and Poppy, Autumn to Amber and Marie, and Summer to Julio. They tuck the pieces under their shirts. I hold out the last piece of the map to Lixue. She hesitates.

  “Take it,” I say, shoving it into her hand. “Evacuate everyone from the east wing. Tell them all to find a partner, or better yet, a group of Seasons, as soon as they reach the surface. Tell them to lie low until the quake stops. We’ll find a way to broadcast a message when it’s safe to come back.”

  Lixue and the Guards give me one last look as they turn to leave, dodging debris as they race toward the Crux.

  50

  A Crash of Wood

  FLEUR

  Doug adjusts the rearview mirror, angling it away from him. He looks ridiculous in the driver’s seat of the tiny Volkswagen Golf, with his blond hair nearly brushing the roof and his legs bent to fit so his thighs touch the steering wheel.

  “Where are we going?”

  Doug ignores me, flipping through station after station of static.

  I hunch into Gaia’s sopping coat, crammed against the passenger-side door of the boy’s car, as far from Doug as possible. The shiver fighting its way to my surface has nothing to do with the cold. Remnants of Gaia’s magic are still warm inside me, like embers waiting to die. Like they could reignite and burn me alive if they’re allowed enough air, and I hate myself for it.

  What Doug did to that boy—and the small part I played in it—was nothing Gaia would ever have done. She would never have taken an innocent life. Would never have forced anyone’s hand. Live or die—she always gave us the choice.

  And I took that boy’s choice. Because Doug had taken mine.

  The crackle of static breaks. . . . wind speeds more than one hundred fifty kilometers per hour off the Isle of Wight . . . Man died in Hampshire when a tree fell on his car . . . Several critically injured after lightning strikes in Winchester . . . Flights now also grounded at Gatwick and Heathrow . . . More than four hundred thousand without power . . .

  I reach and switch off the radio.

  “You didn’t have to steal his car,” I snap, angry that there’s no punishment I can inflict on Doug without suffering it myself. Maybe I deserve it. “His family might have needed it.”

  He looks over at me, his mouth twisted with disgust. “Don’t be such a hypocrite, Fleur. Since when have you or your friends ever cared about taking things that don’t belong to you?”

  “That’s not the same thing.”

  “You’re right. It’s not. I gave the kid a transmitter and sent him home. Which is more than I can say about you.” A fleeting image of Denver darts through his thoughts, and I turn toward the window. Doug turns south, taking us back toward the park.

  “If we’re going back to the Observatory, we could have walked,” I argue. “We didn’t need a car.”

  “You’re cold and wet and tired. You and I have a lot of work to do, and you’re no good to me if you’re passed out.” He switches on the heater, manhandling the dials and shoving the fins on the vents so they’re pointed toward me. But I don’t need his charity. Or his attitude. I don’t want to think about what kind of work Doug means. I just want to get back down to the Observatory. Back to Jack.

  The car slows. Doug eases to a stop along the brick perimeter fence around Greenwich Park. The wipers slap back and forth, ticking off seconds as we sit in the middle of the empty road, rain and sleet bouncing off the hood. I glance up, eyes narrowed through the windshield to see why we’ve stopped.

  A couple runs through the park, hands locked together, their pace too quick, their faces drawn. They don’t bother to slow as they step into the crosswalk. She glances back over her shoulders as he pulls her across the street. Even from a distance, I can see their fear.

  Doug cracks his window, his crystal eye trained on them as he draws in a breath. I smell it too.

  A Summer. An Autumn. Running together.

  Doug revs the engine. The couple looks up, their eyes widening as Doug slams the car into gear. His foot comes down hard on the accelerator and the car lurches under me. I grip the door, one hand braced on the dashboard as the car squeals toward them.

  “What are you doing?” The car straddles the center lines as the couple nears the middle of the road, directly in our path.

  “Teaching a lesson,” he says, upshifting as the engine screams.

  The boy pulls the girl by the hand and they sprint for a side street.

  The tires throw up plumes of sleet and water as we fishtail on the icy road. Doug shifts, turns, and suddenly we’re right behind them. Chasing them down.

  “Stop it!” Gripping the door, I press back into my seat. “You’re going to kill them!”

  “You’re catching on quick.” He jerks the wheel, turning sharply as they double back down the next street, back toward the park. It’s their only chance of outrunning us.

  “Don’t do this,” I plead with him. “It’s only the two of them. There’s no harm in letting them live their own lives. Let them go!”

  “And then what?” His bumper is dangerously tight on their heels. “Who takes the regions they’ve abandoned? Who keeps everything from spiraling out of control? You?” He darts a sharp look at my face, returning his gaze to the road—to his target—as the car’s tires smack into a pothole. “When hundreds of others start getting the same idea, are you going to come with me and find new Seasons to replace them? Are you going to help me turn them? Train them? Hope they all don’t defect an
d abandon their posts?” His laugh is scornful when I don’t answer. “I didn’t think so.”

  The car skids again, chasing them through a turn as they sprint hand in hand for the brick wall, toward the entrance to the park. We’re too close. Moving too fast. There’s no way they’ll make it.

  “These two can serve as a lesson to the others. Trust me,” Doug says, leaning into the accelerator. “It’s better this way.”

  The car surges, feet from the couple’s legs. I reach across Doug and grab the wheel, twisting it hard with both hands. Doug slams on the brakes. The car careens off the road, the girl’s sweater a bright blue blur in the passenger-side window as we glide past her toward the bricks.

  There’s a metallic crunch and the splintering of glass as my body’s thrown forward. A splitting pain pierces my forehead as the seat belt digs into my neck. I lift my head, blinking through the dizziness, catching a splash of blue through the opening in the gate, before my head falls limp against my chest.

  51

  To Perish Twice

  JACK

  We all take off at a sprint for the Crux, following Lixue and her team up a locked stairwell normally restricted to the Guards. When we reach the dormitory level, I stick close to Julio as we break off into groups. Lixue raises her voice over the ringing alarms and falling debris, shouting orders into her transmitter.

  “I said open the doors in every wing! All of them!” She looks back once over her shoulder as she whips out her key card. But the one Fleur gave me is already in my hand. I give the one I stole from the Guard outside Doug’s apartment to Julio, and we both get busy opening the other ports as Lixue and her team disappear behind the ivy-shrouded gate into the east wing.

  Amber and Marie shout a quick “good luck” as they race through the Autumn port.

  My feet root in place as I watch Chill and Poppy dash into the Winter wing.

  I’m pretty sure your guard dog—and your magic—just turned up in a stasis chamber in the gymnasium in the north wing.

  Julio pauses, waiting for me at the Summer port. “Come on, Sommers! Let’s go before this whole place caves in.”

  Before this whole place caves in, burying the eye with it. Without it, our whole plan to save Fleur, stop Doug, and avoid a global catastrophe goes up in smoke.

  I start toward the north gate.

  “Jack!” Julio shouts across the Crux.

  I turn, jogging backward toward the plexiglass port. “Get everyone in the south wing to the mouth of the tunnel. If I’m not there in forty minutes, then get to the surface and find the others.”

  “But Fleur . . .” Julio’s eyes say everything. Our plan to extract her through the ley lines is no longer an option. The reserve power systems are already starting to fail, and every stasis chamber in this place will be buried under thirty stories of rubble within the next few hours. But I know what she’d say. Behind Julio, through the steamy plexiglass port, Summers pour out of their dorms. Handlers with panicked faces carry their sleeping Seasons on their shoulders. Others rush from room to room, helping to evacuate those too weak to save themselves.

  “She’d tell us to help them. No matter the cost. Go,” I tell him. “Get them out and find the others.”

  Julio nods once, a tight snap of his head, as if there are words he’s holding back. He darts through the port and starts shouting out orders. A moment later, a train of Summers follow him down the hall and out of sight.

  I jog through the north gate. Chill’s already got the Winters organized, forming a line into the passage in the closet, the one Kai and I used to sneak up from the catacombs. As I rush past him toward the gymnasium, he calls out to me, “Jack, where the hell are you going?”

  “I’m going after the eye.”

  The low rumble grows louder, as if the earth is preparing to scream. As if the entire place is ready to devour itself. I cut through the back halls of the Winter wing, dodging debris and shielding my face from the sparks that shower from dangling wires.

  I round the last turn to the gym. The doors are jammed shut, and I shoulder them open, wedging myself inside. The air is thick with fumes. The gymnasium is filled with rows of stasis chambers on wheeled platforms, their lids open and dark, the room already evacuated. A generator sputters on the far side of the room, low on fuel. A single domed lid is still closed in the far corner, bright inside, the ventilator humming.

  I weave through the rows of stasis chambers toward it, spotting Kai’s crown of short, dark spikes through the fogged glass. Her face is peaceful behind a layer of frost. The Guards evacuated everyone but Kai—the deserter, Lixue called her. They probably deemed her unworthy of rescuing.

  “Come on, come on, come on!” Frantic, I push buttons on the display, but the lid won’t open. I fall as another tremor rocks the room, huddling under Kai’s chamber as a chunk of ceiling collapses. When I look up, the red emergency release lever is right in front of me. I flip it. The lid of the dome rises with a rush of fog, exposing Kai’s naked body. Her right hand’s clenched in a fist. I pry the eye free and zip it into my pocket.

  Torn, I stand beside her chamber. She tried to kill me. She tried to kill Amber. Still, I can’t leave her here to die.

  I shrug off my jacket and wrap it around her. A stitch tears in my shoulder as I grab her arm and pull her upright. With a groan, I sling her over my good shoulder and haul her to the exit.

  “Just so we’re clear, we’re even after this,” I mutter, wondering if part of her can hear me. If any part of her will wake up and remember this.

  “Not that it matters, but I was actually starting not to hate you.” Emergency sprinklers flare to life above my head, dousing us as I head for the maintenance closet. The shelves are still pulled away from the wall, the vent we crawled through still hanging open.

  “And I’m sorry.” I pant as I descend into the tunnels. The stone walls mute the shriek of the alarms. “You’re right, I should’ve said something sooner, but I knew you’d be pissed, and I was afraid you wouldn’t give me time to explain,” I say through a wheeze as we reach the bottom. I snap my lighter on and wave the flame in front of us, blinking away dust. “I tried to talk to Névé. Tried to get her to listen or just let us walk away, but Chronos was offering a bounty for our deaths, and Névé wanted the prize. Fleur tried to hold her back, but when Névé went for the kill, Amber had no choice but to defend herself. Névé’s death was an accident. But taking her magic to save Amber, Julio, and Fleur . . . that was my decision, and I take full responsibility for that.” It feels better, like a burden’s been lifted, to say it out loud, even if she can’t hear me. “So there you have it,” I say, adjusting her weight as I carry her deeper into the catacombs. “I’m an asshole for not telling you before, and I’m sorry.”

  A crow swoops over my head and I follow it, almost certain I’m headed south. The bird flaps hard, darting back and forth across the blocked tunnel ahead, its wings beating in a blind panic.

  I hold the lighter higher, illuminating an impassable wall of fallen rocks.

  “No!” Sweat drips in my eyes as I strain under Kai’s weight. A cave-in.

  A smaze tumbles back and forth, searching for an opening before disappearing through a paper-thin gap between two fallen stones. There has to be another way out.

  I turn around, careful not to hit Kai’s head on the narrow walls as a tremor shakes the tunnel. Stones fall from the ceiling, pelting Kai’s back and my shoulder. I duck, dropping the lighter as a shower of rock crashes down in front of us. The tunnel goes black, the air thick with dust.

  Easing Kai to the dirt, I feel around me for the lighter.

  My hand closes over it, and with a snick, the cave warms with dusty light. The flame stays steady, not a single waver, as I hold it aloft. My stomach turns as I realize why.

  No air.

  The tunnel is completely blocked on both sides of us.

  “Oh, shit,” I murmur.

  The rumbling quiets, giving way to a soft trickling sound. I ang
le the light one way and then the other, my heart climbing higher in my throat as I trace the sound to its source. Water pours from a crack in the stone, spilling down the wall and spreading over the floor, the soles of my shoes slowly disappearing under the shimmering black surface of it.

  The water rushes under Kai’s outstretched legs, lapping at her cheek where it lies against the tunnel floor. I take her shoulders and prop her upright against the wall. By the time I get her steady, the water’s already up to my ankles.

  I sluice through it toward the blocked opening, tearing at the fallen stones with one hand and holding the lighter high with the other. The stones plunk down, one by one. But for every rock I manage to move, another’s waiting behind it.

  This is it. We’re going to drown down here. Maybe it’s karma. Nature balancing out my fate for the shitty things I’ve done.

  Another rock splashes free. The water’s so cold I can hardly feel my legs anymore. My fingers bleed, nails breaking as I scrape at the edges of the stones.

  When I turn to check on Kai, the water’s reached her chest. I wade through it, my shoulder burning as I haul her over it once more and carry her back to the wall.

  “I guess this is Ananke’s idea of poetic justice,” I mutter as the water laps at my waist. “My punishment for trying to drown you in my damn infinity pool.” I hold Kai around her waist as I kick at a stone, desperate to loosen a path for the water to escape through, but the pressure’s too strong. “What I wouldn’t pay to be a Summer right now.”

  “Exactly how much are you willing to part with?” comes a muffled voice through the stone.

  “Julio?” I yelp with joy. “How the hell did you find me?”

  “You haven’t showered in a week, asshole. How do you think?”

  “A little help here?” I shout back.

  For a moment, there’s only silence from the other side of the wall. I rock forward, tightening my grip on Kai as the water pulls at my ankles. It rushes backward over my legs, the water level falling, exposing the pile of stones in front of us. Behind us, a wall of water roils and froths, held back by some invisible barrier.