EMBER
I blink once, twice.
My head swims as a flood of memories crashes over me. I can hear my heart pounding in my chest. Alexei kneels in front of me, looking as paralyzed as I am. His eyes are wide, and his mouth is closed in a tight grimace. He opens it and calls out. Not my name, but another name. I can’t hear the sound escape his lips, but I can read the familiar shape of it as he speaks it. Something inside me snaps into place. He reaches out, offering me his hand. I reach to take it, but before our fingers connect, the crack of a lash stings past my face, catching him in the arm.
The smell of burning flesh sets me into motion. I jump to my feet, putting the boy behind me, and scream for Ethan. My eyes find him, but he and Flynn are busy grappling with the tall boy. Catherine has the smaller girl pinned into a corner and is slashing away at her. The lash moves through the air like red lightning. The look on Catherine’s face is pure rage. She will kill the girl, I’m sure of it.
I don’t make the decision to step in—my body just moves of its own accord now. I run at Catherine, shoving her into the wall. She hits her head hard and slides down, leaving a streak of blood on the copper wall. Ethan sees me and freezes. Flynn presses forward and slams the boy into the shelves, knocking a pile of scrap parts to the floor with a clatter. I turn, and the recognition is like a punch in the gut, sudden and painful. I know who he is. He’s mine. My little brother. Only he’s not so little anymore.
“Alexei?” My voice is a whisper. I’m not sure where the name comes from, but it is smooth and familiar on my tongue. With his back to me, Flynn freezes.
“Anya?” Alexei asks back. I nod even though it’s not my name anymore.
With a quick shove, he knocks Flynn out of the way, rushes forward, and wraps his arms around me. Tears well up until they are spilling down my face as I squeeze him back. He was dead, I was sure of it. The fire. I left him behind. I left my brother behind to die.
“I thought you were dead,” I say, my heart heavy with guilt.
He pulls back, and I can see the scars on his neck are masked by a beautiful tattoo. He’s older too, closer to my age probably. He’s a man, an enemy, and a warrior. And he looks so much like our father.
“I thought you were dead, too.”
A boy in a grimy surgeon’s mask clears his throat. “I hate to interrupt, but we need to go, Lex. Now.”
I open my mouth to protest, but as I do, a swarm of Peacekeepers falls from the air vents Ethan and I had come through earlier.
Alexei curses. “Gear Heads. Quick, rift out now.” He grabs my hand, “Come on, Anya.”
I pull my hand away. “You can’t rift. You don’t have a Tether.”
“A what?” he asks, confused. “Look, all you need is this.”
He reaches over to where his friend is cradling the little redhead in his arms, pulling a green pill from her pocket. As soon as he hands it to me, one of the Peacekeepers leaps into the air and claws it out of my fingers, splitting the pill in half. The green liquid inside drips onto my leg.
The tiny creatures are quickly filling the room. I kick at one as it saws at my boot. I scream. Before I know it, they are crawling up my legs. For a minute, I’m stunned. Peacekeepers aren’t supposed to hurt us—they’re programmed to only attack Hollows. I glance up and see the Hollows under siege by the deadly robots. It’s like being inside a beehive, only instead of stinging us, the Peacekeepers are sawing at us with tiny chainsaw legs. Ethan is trying to get to me. I can see him out the corner of my eye with his arms outstretched, but the swarm is between us, cutting him off from me.
Crying out, I try to shake them off. The others aren’t faring any better. As a matter of fact, the Peacekeepers are attacking them even more ferociously. That’s when I notice Alexei’s leg. It’s a prosthetic steam machine. I’m too distracted fighting off the Peacekeepers to ask any questions, but just seeing him like that hurts. And now I remember why.
I was supposed to protect him. Papa told me to find Alexei and take care of him. The realization hits me like a brick. I stumble back, barely keeping myself from falling. I’ve failed. Whatever this is, whatever he’s become, it’s my fault. And if he doesn’t get out of here soon, the Peacekeepers will kill him.
The emotions override me, like being in the middle of a typhoon. I am being pulled this way and that. The brand on my arm burns as I remember the last order Tesla gave me. His voice floats through my head. “Let the boy die.” Inside me, the fighting ends in a snap as the decision is made.
There is no way I am going to let my brother die.
Not again.
“Alexei, do you have what you came here for?” I scream over the chaos.
He holds up what looks like a large, oval lightbulb.
“Then you have to go, now!”
He shakes his head. “Not without you.”
I rush at him, throwing my arms around his neck. He smells like sweat, grease, and something underneath that I can’t put my finger on. “I can’t go with you,” I whisper, pushing myself away. His face hardens.
Another wave of Peacekeepers charges us, pulling him away from me. They slice at his arms and face.
“Make sure it’s turned off,” I yell. He nods, tucking the lightbulb under his arm.
I’m bleeding from where the machines are sawing at my legs, but the pain is nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to what I feel inside right now. Alexei screams something and they all pull out their pills, ready to swallow them.
Pulling the EMP grenade out of my pocket, I look at my little brother as he fights off the metal monsters before putting his own pill on his tongue.
And it’s my fault.
If guilt could kill, I’d already be dead on the floor. Pain rolls in my stomach, threatening to force the contents up my throat and out my mouth. Tears roll down my cheeks and into my mouth. They’re like bitter saltwater on my tongue. I blink, searching for my brother’s face like a lifeline in a storm.
I look at him, catch his eye one last time, and mouth, “I love you.”
Flipping the EMP over in my palm, I close my eyes and press the button. A bright light flashes, and then everything goes black.
Tesla Journal Entry: December 12 1892
We have located two more royal descendants capable of traveling. The first, a young man by the name of Articus Flynn, is a butcher who, thanks to large gambling debts, was quite pleased to participate for the right price. The other is a seamstress by the name of Catherine Crabapple. I doubt that to be her true name, but she is pliable enough. I have asked the doctor to look her over and be sure she is in good health. I have given them both room and board in the hotel Mt. Claire, and they seem only too pleased to be there. Again, the initial experiment seems to have left them quite void of their memories. Although I was hoping this to be an isolated occurrence, I see now that it is part of the process. I can only speculate as to why this occurs, though I imagine the first piercing of this veil of time must be something so traumatic that the mind somehow puts up a wall to protect itself.
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