by Trisha Leigh
“How?” Lucas’s strangled voice hurts my stomach.
“Broke their necks out in the street, then dumped them in a rider that took their bodies away.”
“Guess we’re not getting a reprieve just because they’re here,” I say softly.
It had been silly of me to think we might, that the Prime would allow his focus to be distracted by this ritual while we’re still on the loose and, at the very least, irritating him by continuing to live.
“Why didn’t the Goblert come?” I wonder out loud.
“Maybe he went to the university,” Lucas suggests.
It doesn’t matter, I guess, except it means we don’t know who the four people were this morning. Who we’ve lost.
“They’re in,” Pax says, his voice tight as he peers through the black oblong glasses.
“All of them?” I ask.
“Looks like it, but they’re spreading out. We won’t be able to watch them all.”
It will be okay, I tell myself. Even if the Others know who our friends are because of their disappearance from the Sanctioned Cities, there’s a big crowd down there and the grounds are expansive. They’ll be able to blend in. No one will look twice at them.
We’ve got at least an hour to kill, and I realize suddenly that we haven’t kept our promise to Deshi. “Now’s our last chance to talk about how we’re going to get rid of the Others, if this works. It’s time to stop avoiding the discussion.”
No one answers me. Lucas tugs on an ear while Pax continues to survey the ground. Leah watches Deshi closely but without judgment. I’m not sure what to say; I’m no more decided than I was in the stairwell when Pax confronted me.
It’s Deshi who speaks up quietly, as though he’s afraid none of us are really listening. “I have an idea. You may not like it, and I’ll go along with whatever we all decide. I only ask that you consider what I’m saying.”
Lucas and I nod, and Pax puts down the glasses, turning toward us. Leah takes the glasses and watches our friends.
“We can make a synthetic, and we can show them how. If we make them leave, they don’t have to search for planets with sufficient amounts of the base element anymore. They could live on their transport until they find somewhere uninhabited they could settle.” Deshi searches our faces, a tinge of desperation coloring his golden skin.
Pax says nothing, but he doesn’t say no. Lucas tugs on his ear, and I let the suggestion sift through my mind until it traps the potential issues. I open my mouth to voice an objection, but Lucas beats me. “How do we know they’ll use the synthetic? They could still control and eliminate another population because they decide they want that specific planet.”
“Right. I was going to say the same thing. The Prime hasn’t shown much inclination to live and let live. He takes what he needs and does what he wants.” Despite my promise to hear Deshi out, my teeth clench at the thought of all the people who have been needlessly murdered the past couple of days.
The Prime and his family have no problem squashing any being they deem insignificant and enslaving the ones they think may be useful. Even if it began as a quest for survival, it has devolved into a rampant abuse of power.
“They’re not all like that,” Deshi argues. His eyes cut toward me as though he heard my thoughts. “I’m not talking about Zak or Kenda or their father. The power… it’s gone to their heads. But some of the Wardens, like Nat, and a few of the Refreshers, more here and there—they don’t like what their people have become. They’d do it. Start over somewhere, if we gave them the tools. I know it.”
“If we can subdue them without killing them, if some of the Wardens and Others surrender… I think we should consider it, you guys.” I make Pax look at me. “Deshi’s one of us. He’s our friend. If he’s sure, we need to trust him.”
Not to mention killing two-hundred-plus Others doesn’t exactly appeal to me.
Pax doesn’t hesitate and claps Deshi on the shoulder. “Agreed. But the Prime and his family can’t leave, and they can’t live. We can’t trust them.”
Deshi looks sick to his stomach but swallows hard and manages a tight nod.
“Lucas? We all need to agree.”
“I agree with you. If Deshi says they’re not all bad, I think we should try to figure out a way to save them. If nothing else, we should do it for Nat. We wouldn’t have killed him, right?”
None of us answer, and the truth is we’ll never know. Even if the Prime and Zakej are dead, how strong is the hive bond? Will someone else simply take over and control them all?
There’s no way to know for sure, but we’ve made a decision, at least. If possible we contain the bulk of the Others and don’t kill them, unless we have no other choice.
***
Pax’s watch, the only working timepiece we’ve been able to find, ticks past eight-thirty, and there hasn’t been any change in the Others policing the Summer Celebration. They’re handing out food, strolling through walkways, threading in and out of the crowd.
We’ve been able to locate most of our friends through the magnifying glasses, and they appear to be fine. But the Others should have started feeling the effects of the praseodymium shots more than an hour ago.
Since it worked at the Harvest Site, we figured it would work here. Now that it hasn’t, we need to regroup, but we didn’t discuss a contingency plan. None of us can go get our friends, obviously, because if the Others glimpse our far-too-familiar faces, the game is over. In the end we send Leah. Her earlier concerns about what could happen if Zakej sees her press fear into my lungs and speed my heart into a racing gallop, but we don’t have another choice.
Leah sneaks out of our hiding place and across the grass and rubble to the back of the Celebration, where the giant screen sits dark and unused. The sun glints off her black curls as she slips into the throng of people, and then I lose her. Pax keeps staring through the glasses, sweat dripping off him and the smell of apples and burning leaves strong enough to singe the back of my throat.
“Pax, tell us what’s going on. This is driving me nuts,” Lucas grunts.
“She’s found three of them—Katie, Jordan, and Phil. They’re headed back this way.” He pauses, watching in silence for several seconds. “Okay, she’s got Sophie… and Christian.”
The next instant, he drops the black contraption on the ground and shoots to his feet. His olive complexion blanches white and he runs for the stairs without a word. Deshi looks between Pax and the two of us, then sprints for the front door.
“I’ll go with him,” he shouts over his shoulder.
Lucas and I look at each other, then I grab the glasses and desperately scan the Celebration below. I see three of our friends making their way out of the area and back toward us. Pax streaks toward them as fast as I’ve ever seen him run, a bag of weapons slung across his back. Deshi struggles to keep up, lagging a few paces behind.
They pass the group headed our way and Pax drops the bag, shouts something, and keeps running. They don’t hesitate. Phil unzips the bag and yanks loose a sword, tossing one to Katie and one to Jordan before closing and shouldering the duffel.
They all turn and hurry after Pax without a backward glance.
“Where are they going?” Lucas asks, the words tight as though they can’t get out from between his clenched teeth.
I follow them, jumping ahead to find Pax again, but a group of Celebration attendees breaks into a circle toward the center of the site, near the rusted metal machines.
In the center stands Zakej. He’s sporting a sick grin and a wild expression, in one of his fancy all-black suits with red accents.
And he’s got an arm wrapped around Leah’s neck.
It’s impossible to tell from here if her bright red face results from a lack of oxygen or her frantic struggle to get loose. “He’s got Leah. Zakej has got Leah. He knows we’re here.”
“If he doesn’t, he will when Pax gets there and starts blowing tents toward the sky,” Lucas replies. “Let’s go. The s
hots didn’t work. We’re going to have to fight, and they need our help.”
He stands up, grabbing a second bag of weapons and hustling for the stairs. “Althea!”
I know we need to go, that our friends need more weapons and our help, but my eyes are glued to the scene playing out below. All of the moisture leaves my mouth and I can’t breathe, waiting to see if Pax will make it in time to save Leah. We don’t know what Zakej will do. Maybe he’ll see Leah as an asset too valuable to kill.
Pax bursts through the confused crowds of veiled humans surrounding the spectacle. Zakej spots Pax, and his grin grows even as Pax raises his hands. There’s no way Pax can blow Zakej away without losing Leah along with him.
My heart pounds against my ribs as the Prime’s horrible son presses a hand to either side of Leah’s head, smashing her curls against her tear-stained face as she twists back and forth, her lips moving in shouted words I’ll never be able to hear.
Then he twists her neck and drops her in a heap.
Chapter 38.
The magnifiers drop from my hand, crashing to the floor. I barely hear them smash or see Lucas kneel before me. After a second my eyes focus, but my heart doesn’t want to beat.
“They killed her. Leah. Zakej killed Leah. She’s dead. Leah’s dead.”
“What about Pax?” Lucas shakes my shoulders, forcing me to snap out of the spiral of panic twirling through me like a tornado. “Is Pax okay?”
I laugh, realizing somewhere inside me that the reaction is insane, and it settles quickly into a sob. “No, I doubt it. He saw the whole thing. He couldn’t stop it.”
The thought pulls me to my feet, banishing my grief to a place I can return to later, if there’s time. “Lucas, he couldn’t stop it. He’s going to lose his mind. He’ll get himself killed if we don’t help him.”
I grab the last bag of weapons and fly down the stairs, Lucas hot on my heels. Scalding tears fall down my cheeks. My heart is gone. Leah. After everything she’s been through, all she’s done for us, she can’t be gone.
My lungs and legs burn by the time we reach the melee of the Summer Celebration. Panicked veiled humans, unsure how to react to the scuffles breaking out around them, bang into one another in an attempt to move to the edges. Pax has stirred up a massive windstorm, and the red-and-white tents rip free from their tethers, bouncing and smacking into other tents, into helpless people.
More debris flies through the air, turning food and games into dangerous projectiles, and a sugary pastry smacks me hard in the cheek before we get two steps in. Lucas and I don’t need swords, but as we spot our friends, we dole out weapons. None of them ask questions, not that we could hear them, anyway. It’s a complete disaster zone, and we pass more than one trampled human in our struggle to the middle.
Wardens with shiny black acid shooters march in from the rear, where they’ve left the riders. I see Laura and short, stocky Ben fighting a group of white-clad Others with their bare hands, managing to get a punch in here and there but taking more than a few in return. Ryan’s under two Wardens who are beating him senseless, his glasses broken and the shards drawing blood from his cheeks. I light his attackers on fire with a quick flick of the wrist. Lucas helps him up and then hands over the duffel bag.
“Go, help! Get them weapons, if you can!” I shout over the howling wind.
He nods and disappears, and a moment later the windstorm dies. It’s so sudden that objects stop in midair and drop like rain, slamming into people and into the ground around us.
A sob tears from my throat. “He’s dead. Pax is dead.”
“No. No, Althea. Look.” Lucas yanks my arm, forcing me to see what’s going on. “Deshi has him.”
It’s true. Deshi has tackled Pax next to the giant rusted wheel. By the time we get to them, the fight seems to have bled out of Pax. Anger and pain twist his features as he fights the guilt he’s always had a harder time handling than the rest of us.
Three booming rounds of shots ring out, followed by the splats that can only be the impact of acid slugs. None of them hit me, or any of the four of us, but they must have hit something. Around us, our friends and the Wardens are struggling. Zakej and the Prime are nowhere to be seen, and I’m guessing Pax sent Zakej flying as soon as Leah dropped from his hands. I don’t see her body and for that, I’m glad.
We have to do something, but if I’ve learned anything these past several months, it’s that our abilities can only get us so far. We need help. “Pax, get up.”
He doesn’t respond, even though Deshi moves off of him. I reach down and grab one of his hands, and Deshi takes the other. We haul him to his feet, and I push my face in front of his until he can’t ignore me. “Pax. Snap out of it. I want to lose it, too. Leah deserves screaming and tears and…” I choke on water, swallow hard. “More than we can give her right now. But if we don’t do something, everyone else is going to die, too.”
I slide my hand into his and yank Lucas to my other side. Deshi takes Lucas’s opposite hand, and then they all wait expectantly for me to tell them what I have in mind.
“Give me as much power as you’ve got.”
They oblige without asking any more questions. I gather short, coherent sentences in my mind, then push them at the masses of humanity standing still in the middle of the battle, undisturbed by the fact that Others are beating and killing teenagers, that slugs made of acid are eating away their skin.
The Others are the enemy. Forget what they’ve told you. Remember how things used to be. Fight them. Fight them now, or we’re all going to die.
There’s so much power flowing through me with the four of us connected that it’s difficult to harness, and the veiled people react immediately. At first they have trouble shaking the confusion. But then it’s like watching hundreds of people awaken from a dream—straight into a nightmare—and the majority of them move sluggishly to assist in the battle.
Some sit in the muddy grass, looking around helplessly. A few run away.
But many of them stay and fight.
It seems the Spritans were right all along. The power it took to unveil them all at once, and to have it mostly work, surged at an incalculably higher potency than it did with me alone.
“Okay, now what?” Lucas asks impatiently. “Do we jump in?”
I shake my head the same time as Pax says, “No.”
“No,” I echo. “Unless we get the Prime and Zakej, we can’t beat them this way. They’ll just keep healing and coming back.”
“Althea!” A shriek rips through the morning, terrified and panicked.
We all turn toward the sound. On the other side of the metal wheel, Greer’s head sticks through a jittery portal. As we stare, her head disappears, but her hands grasp the edges, proving their portals are more corporeal than I ever suspected. Her knuckles whiten, purple fingernails digging into the soap-bubble substance, and then they disappear.
Someone pulled her from the inside.
Lucas is gone, stepping through the open doorway to the Harvest Site before I can yell out, so instead I dive after him, Deshi and Pax on my heels.
On the other side of the portal we find the Prime family in the Harvest Site extraction tent. Zakej has hold of Griffin, and Kendaja has her spindly arms wrapped around Greer’s ankles. Greer is splayed on the floor, struggling against the girl’s inhuman grasp.
When they see us, everyone stops moving, and the Prime steps forward. “What did you do to the Wardens here?”
Despite the raging battle, still audible through the open portal, his voice remains calm. Lazy, even. When none of us answer he flicks a finger toward Zakej, who lifts his hands to the sides of Griffin’s head the way he did with Leah before he killed her.
“No,” Greer gasps from the floor, leaking tears from eyes so angry I think they might be able to kill these Others without any help.
“We poisoned them, but they’re not dead,” I say quickly, anything to save Griffin in this moment. We’ve lost Leah, and after Nat, I don�
��t know if Greer can handle losing her brother, too.
Griffin’s dark purple eyes are calm, searching mine and trying to convey a message I don’t understand. But in the next instant he starts to shift his shape, shrinking out of Zakej’s grasp until he’s on the floor, a yellow mouse scrabbling out the door. Kendaja lets go of Greer with a squeal, giving chase, and the Prime and Zakej race after her.
I help Greer up and the four of us run out of the tent. Griffin leads Kendaja on a merry chase over the ice toward the Prime family’s tent, but instead of going after him like I expect, Greer turns the opposite direction, toward Station One.
“Where are you going?” I pant, trying to keep up and keep myself from freezing to death at the same time.
“Helping you win,” she growls.
She stops in the middle of nowhere, icy tundra stretching out forever, Station One visible in the distance. She squats down, yanking open a hatch in the ice. I recognize it as the same one I shoved Jas out of weeks ago to help her breathe.
Inside waits several scared but determined faces. The woman at the top squints up into the sudden dim light, her dirt-streaked face barely visible. “Is it time to go take it to these bastards, or what?”
Chapter 39.
Greer sticks her hand down and the woman grabs hold. “Get up here.”
Once the people start coming, they don’t stop. Tommy and Jas climb out after the first lady, and I grab them both into a hug before passing Tommy to Pax. Tears run down Pax’s face, and I know they’re for Leah as much as the joy at the moment. Watching his reunion with Tommy almost makes all of this worth it.
Deshi and I lead them back to the portal and help them through, warning them what they’ll find at the Summer Celebration and what to try to avoid. I grab Tommy by the shoulder when he reaches the front, stopping him. “You and Jas don’t fight, Tommy. You got it? You’re in charge of her. There’s a building behind a black tent that has a big white woman made out of rock lying in front of it. Take Jas there and hide, okay?”
