by Scott Wilson
Caden’s blood turned cold. Was it Eleven? He tried to remember how Watson had told him to use his angel weapon, but fear paralyzed him. The taller masked figure made the first move.
“Caden,” he said in an icy voice. “I’ve been waiting for this.”
There was something about watching the cloaked figure raise his hand that made Caden suddenly want to move very much. He couldn’t remember how to use his angel weapon, but he could remember how to run. He burst toward the side of the room and pushed Annika along with him.
And not a second too soon. Just as Caden crashed into Annika, a crunching sound came from Watson. Dents and cracks with wires sticking out erupted all over it, as if a giant invisible hand had wrapped itself around it and squeezed.
“pl-please phrase your q-q-question in the fo-fo-form of a statement,” Watson warbled. Its screen flickered between blue and red then finally gave out as the glass exploded into shards on the floor. No more sounds came from the crumpled metal box.
“Let’s go!” Caden yelled to Annika.
“Where?”
“Out the window!”
It was their only chance. They couldn’t get past the two Apostles to the elevator, and they couldn’t fight them either, not if they had angel weapons like Jadice. Their only shot was to jump for it and hope that Caden could use his weapon to guide them down.
“Are you crazy?” Annika yelled.
“I’ve caught you once and I can do it again! Just go!”
The window wasn’t large. It was just a crudely cut hole in the plastic wall.
“Caden, I can’t do this!” Annika said, panicked. The cold voice of the Apostle came howling from behind them.
“Stop right there, Caden!”
Caden didn’t have a choice. One second of hesitation and they’d be crushed like Watson. Still sprinting, he wrapped his arms around Annika and dove through the window out into the Basement.
Ten stories above the ground.
Annika tried to scream but nothing came out. Her eyes and mouth hung open as the two of them plummeted in free fall through the webs of rope and pulleys in the air straight down toward the concrete ground.
Caden thought he could use his angel weapon to glide them down safely, but the ground was rushing up at them far faster than he’d imagined. He panicked—seven stories left—what was even the name of his weapon again? They snapped through a wire and—five stories left—they were going to smack into the ground any second. Two stories left—time for Plan B!
Caden extended his legs and his feet slammed into the concrete floor with the full weight of two people. The boom of their impact echoed through the Basement. Caden let out a gasp and his eyes felt like they were going to pop out of his head. Sweat dripped down his face, and he collapsed to his knees. It was like a boulder was crushing his legs, grinding and yanking his muscles, snapping them apart. Annika rolled out of his arms unharmed.
“Caden! Can you stand up?” She held onto his wobbling torso and looked him over. Caden could only barely hear her over his ringing ears.
“I … I don’t think so,” he managed to eke out. He tried shuffling his legs. Nothing.
“Oh steel, oh steel,” Annika said frantically. She dashed over to a nearby pile of Iltech and yanked something out of it. It was a rusted metallic version of a wooden tool they’d used quite often at the Home: a wheelbarrow.
Not wasting a second, Annika scooped Caden off the ground and tossed him in. A crowd was gathering around the two of them, people in helmets murmuring and asking questions that Caden couldn’t hear over his pounding head. He tried to look around for Jadice and Clops.
“We need to … find Jadice …” Caden panted.
“No time,” Annika said. She grabbed the wheelbarrow handles and started running. “We’ve got to go. Now. They’re coming after us.”
Suddenly the mountains of Iltech around them started shaking violently. Was there an underground earthquake? Not now, Caden silently pleaded, please not now.
It was no earthquake; it was worse. The piles of vibrating Iltech began hovering above the ground, slowly floating up into the air. Bits of metal and plastic came raining down on top of the helmeted population. Screams rang out as people ran for cover, and Annika wheeled Caden toward the nearest exit as fast as she could.
Then it all came crashing down. The mountains of Iltech crumbled and metallic parts flew across the Basement, banging against walls and buildings, tearing down pulleys and snapping ropes. Glass light bulbs, plastic crates, and rusted scrap metal showered down over the entire Basement. It was pandemonium as lights flickered and sharp clangs and smashes rang out, blending with the cries of people trying to escape.
“They’re trying … to find me,” Caden said, wincing through the pulsating pain in his legs.
“I know! I know!” Annika said, running head-first through a stream of falling dirt and metal filings. “I’m going as fast as I—”
A huge plastic box the size of a shack crashed right in front of the wheelbarrow. Annika veered out of the way just in time. Caden spotted something curved and metallic on the ground behind a shattered television ahead of them. It looked familiar.
“It’s Clops!” Caden said as loud as he could. “I see his magnifying glass! Go over there!”
“Got it.” Annika pummeled full-force straight ahead.
Caden sat up and tried to get a closer look but the pain was excruciating. Still, he gripped the sides of the wheelbarrow and peered over. Maybe Clops had something they could use to fight back. At the very least Caden had to help him get out of here.
“Clops!” Caden yelled. But they were too late.
Clops lay motionless on the ground, his wheel legs and the rest of his body unmoving. His face was a pallid yellow and his lips and one good eye were purple. The Apostles had already gotten to him. Caden turned away and Annika didn’t slow down.
“There’s an exit over there!” she said. “Let’s get out of here!”
Caden shook the image of dead Clops from his mind. They’d be joining him if they didn’t escape. As soon as Annika pushed the wheelbarrow inside the passage, all the lights in the Basement went dark. It was like they were leaving behind a tomb of screaming and metallic scraping as Annika plowed upward through the tunnel of blackness.
The echoes of destruction grew fainter as they pushed farther up. Even if they couldn’t see anything, the yells and crashes turning to whispers in the distance behind them meant they were heading in the right direction. Annika ran full speed ahead through the darkness, pushing Caden along as the wheelbarrow squeaked.
Until she slammed into something with a clang.
“Sorry!” she said.
“It’s okay,” Caden said, shaking off yet another spasm. “I think we just ran into the door out of here.”
Caden grit through the pain to lean forward and hold out his shining red palms. Sure enough, they had reached a door. It wasn’t the same one they’d come in from; this one had a circular metal lock with numbers written on it. There was a spinnable dial in the middle. It looked like you had to know a code to get out. Annika fiddled with it but after a few tries slammed it against the door in frustration.
“I don’t know how to unlock this thing,” she said. Caden tried to think, but all he could feel was throbbing pain in his legs. And he wasn’t sure if he was imagining it or not, but he thought he heard faint footsteps quickly approaching.
“We need to get out of here,” Caden said.
“Yeah. I know. I know.” Annika looked around for anything to use, but all they had was dirt and darkness. Caden was sure he wasn’t imagining the footsteps now. They were getting louder and closer.
“I don’t think … I can do anything about the door,” Caden said. He tried visualizing breaking down the door with whatever power Watson had told him he had, but he couldn’t hold a thought for more than a second before his legs gave him an agonizing reminder that he’d just fallen ten s
tories.
“Don’t worry,” Annika said. “I’ve got this.”
Caden shone his palms on her. She was holding her magnetizer with both hands. It was already powered on and a green light at the end was glowing.
“Let’s see if this thing actually works!” Annika pointed the magnetizer at the metal lock, pressed the button for “five,” and hit enter.
pshew!
The blast that came out felt like it kicked Caden in the side of the head. His ears were ringing, static electricity tingled all over, and dirt crumbled from the ceiling. The metal lock disintegrated into shards on the ground, and the door opened with a creak. Annika nodded in approval.
“Not bad at all,” she said, putting the magnetizer away. “Now let’s go!”
If Annika’s ears were hurting too, she showed no sign of it. She grabbed onto the wheelbarrow and thrust it through the door.
This was definitely not the shack they’d come in from. They were inside someone’s one-room house. An old woman was sitting in her straw bed, reading a book by candlelight, gaping in shock at the two people who had just come wheeling into her room.
“You’re not Ned,” she said.
“Sorry, lady!” Annika piped as she wheeled Caden past the woman. “But I’d get out of here if I were you!”
Annika swung open the door to the dark outside, driving them back into the streets of Salem. No one was out except the Holy Police. The clopping of their horses’ hooves was the only sound throughout the empty town. None of them were patrolling nearby, but the lights of their torches bounced up and down through the cracks between houses on neighboring roads.
The massive statue-church was lit up with candles in windows running all the way from Gotama’s foot to the tip of the human-ant’s antennae. It stood against bright gray Metl and the glow of its menacing X, now filling up a quarter of the night sky.
“We need to get back to the woods,” Annika whispered. “That’s probably where Jadice would expect to meet up with us.”
Caden nodded and tried to push himself out of the wheelbarrow. All it took was one budge to the side for him to be overwhelmed by sharp, blinding pain.
“I don’t think I can walk yet,” he groaned.
“Don’t worry,” Annika said. “I can push you to the slope and then we’ll figure something out.”
Without wasting a second, Annika sprinted down the street with the wheelbarrow.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Caden asked.
“Uh, yeah,” Annika said. “I think so. There’s a few more buildings and roads now since the last time I roamed around here at night, but I think—”
“Get out!” came a raspy screech from behind them. It was the old woman. She was standing outside her house in her nightgown yelling at the darkness. “I’ve had enough of you people coming through my—”
They didn’t get to hear the rest. An explosion and heatwave blasted out of the old woman’s house. Flames burst out of her roof sending smoldering wood up into the sky. Her house wasn’t the only one. Pillars of flames lit up the night all over town. The ground beneath them rumbled, as if there were thunderclouds underground.
“What the steel was that?” Annika yelled. The church bellrock started clanging. Holy Police and residents alike flooded the streets and started dousing the flames with buckets of water.
Caden’s mind raced. Did Eleven do this? Had he caused an underground storm somehow? Caden thought of Deber, Jadice, even Evan and everyone else who lived down in the Basement. He hoped that they were safe, but he knew not all of them could have made it out in time.
The one thing the flames did do was make it easier to see. The town was lit up bright as day as everyone struggled to keep the fires under control. Silhouetted against the blaze, Caden could make out two shadowy figures wearing white masks. As soon as he made eye contact with them, he gasped. They ran toward him and Annika.
“We need to go!” Caden shouted.
“I’m on it!” Annika dashed forward, sweat dripping down her face. If they could just make it to the woods, maybe they’d find help there.
Only a moment into her sprinting, something strange happened to Annika. She froze, as if she’d turned into a human photograph. Her terrified eyes still moved as she struggled against the invisible force holding her, but the rest of her was as petrified as a statue.
Caden tried to ask her what was wrong, but to his horror found that he couldn’t move his lips. He couldn’t move his arms or head or anything. He tried to scream but nothing came out. He and Annika were stuck in place, only able to watch in horror as the two cloaked strangers strolled up to them amid the frenzied inferno in the background.
“Thirteen years …” the taller one hissed. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”
Caden tried to focus on using his angel weapon, but it was useless. He was completely immobilized. The taller figure spoke to the shorter one.
“Do enough for the both of them,” he said. The small one nodded and held up glowing purple Xs in front of Caden and Annika’s faces.
So, this is how it ends, Caden thought to himself as he faded into unconsciousness.
Chapter 13
The Promise
As Caden slowly drifted awake, he felt dizzy. His head was heavy like there was a brick lodged inside, and the world around him bobbed up and down in constant motion. But when he finally pried his eyes open, he realized it wasn’t his brain doing the bobbing. He was on a boat in the ocean.
Or rather he was floating in midair on a boat in the ocean.
It was a large rowboat as long and wide as the Home’s hall. There were a dozen paddles on each side that were somehow automatically rowing through the water as fast as a galloping stallion. Salt water splashed against the sides and sprayed Caden’s face, stinging his eyes and mouth. He resisted the urge to spit it out, remembering that their captors were probably nearby.
It was still nighttime, but it was hard to tell. Metl shone almost as brightly as the sun, reflecting off the ocean all around them as if there was another Metl drifting through the water. Caden tried to figure out how long he’d been asleep. An hour? Two?
Next to Caden hovered Annika, still unconscious in the air with her charge belt on and the magnetizer poking out of her dress pocket. Caden tried to move, expecting to be just as frozen as before, but to his surprise could wiggle his fingers and toes. His legs, which he painfully remembered should be torturing him, felt fine. Caden wasn’t sure if it was his robotic healing at work or if it had something to do with him floating in the air, but either way he wasn’t complaining. He made use of his limited movement to stretch his head back as far as he could and peer toward the front of the boat.
Standing just feet away from him were the two black-robed figures. They were illuminated by an electric lantern hovering in the air. Caden panicked for a moment but forced himself to not make any sudden movements. He remained still, head extended down, trying to hear what they were saying over the sound of crashing waves.
“—really don’t like this, Five,” said the smaller one. Her voice was high-pitched and whiny like a little girl. The taller one replied.
“You just keep them sleeping, Six,” he said coolly. “I’ll take care of the rest.”
“Where are we even going?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“Safe? Nowhere’s going to be safe if Metl hits us.”
They both looked to the sky. Metl was so close Caden could practically feel the heat radiating off the fiery red X.
“I don’t think they’re going to let that happen,” Five said.
The two of them stood in silence as the boat continued through the ocean. Questions burned inside Caden’s head. So the tall one wasn’t the electric-wielding Eleven, he was Five? That meant Eleven was still out there somewhere. Caden wished Jadice were here to help.
“That boy’s angel weapon, is it the same as yours?” Six asked in her squeaky voice.<
br />
Caden hadn’t noticed it before, he’d been too busy running for his life, but Five’s palms glowed gray. It was hard to see, especially since Five’s hands were cupped over one another, but the gray glow was definitely there.
“That robot box said the boy has the same power as you,” Six pressed on. “Does he have telekinesis too?”
Again, no response. Caden almost felt bad for Six, until he remembered she had helped capture them.
“I didn’t think there was more than one of each angel weapon,” she said after yet another silence. That finally elicited a response.
“There isn’t more than one of each,” Five said. Both Six and Caden waited for more, but there was only the sound of lapping waves.
“What should we do about the girl?” Six asked. Silence again. “Should we take care of her first?”
Caden tensed. They were going to kill Annika. Six’s angel weapon was what had knocked them out, and now she was going to crank up the intensity. Five said something to Six, she gave a nod, and then walked back to Annika with her frowning mask on and her purple palms out.
Caden balled his fingers into sweaty fists and concentrated on his human parts, like Watson had taught him. He thought about Annika who had saved him from the Basement, and Clops who had helped them so much and paid the price, and Deber who was just about to get healthy again and was now probably blown to bits with the rest of the underground.
Heat exuded from Caden, not just from what was building up inside of him, but off his skin too. Warm little bits surrounded him, like grains of hot sand clinging to his skin and clothes. Were those what was holding him up in the air? The Planck particles that Watson had mentioned? He couldn’t believe he hadn’t felt them before. They seemed so weak and tiny. How had they held such power over him? He wasn’t going to be controlled by them any longer!
Caden erupted out of his invisible confines with a growl that shook the boat. The warm grains he’d felt clinging to him flew off and he was suddenly standing face to mask with Six. Annika fell to the wooden deck, and Six aimed her purple palms toward Caden.
