by Lola Dodge
While our serum-smuggling captain tied off the boat, Knight ran through his end of the plan, but I was having trouble focusing on his voice over the constant drumming in my head.
“—and we’ll get to you. Got it?” Knight asked.
“Sure.” This was the “we’ll rescue you” part of his chat, and I’d heard that one before. I still didn’t plan on calling anyone into danger.
“Got it,” Devan said.
At least she’d been paying attention. I was definitely going to need her help to get through this day.
A knock sounded on the cabin door. The raggedy captain poked his head in. “Now or never, kiddos.”
I let out a breath. We had as solid a plan as we could at this point. Follow the smuggler man to his secret entrance. Use Devan’s powers to stay hidden. Check out our three target buildings.
All we needed was one lead, and this would be worth it. Just one little thing to confirm where Tair was or where Kiri and Aliya were.
Devan and I had reached a silent agreement not to consider any other possibilities. They were being held, and we just had to find them. Easy as that.
Right? Right.
All I had to do was ignore the dark futures getting more and more likely wherever I looked.
“We’ll be monitoring coms,” Knight said.
“Okay.” I put my hands in my pockets, not sure what else to do. I definitely wasn’t saying any goodbyes. Instead, I turned to Devan. “Ready?”
She nodded. “Let’s go.”
I glanced back as I left the hold. Knight and Dex both looked wary, but they always had a sort of tense soldier vibe. This was normal dangerous business to them. Cipher chewed at her lip ring, but I couldn’t tell how much of her paleness was nerves and how much was seasickness. Either way, she didn’t look happy with how this was going down.
I wasn’t happy about it. Still, I had to keep moving.
The captain was the only one with a bounce in his step as he led us through the harbor. We were paying him so much he’d probably retire after this. At least his movement gave me something to focus on.
The sights and sounds and smells of the harbor mixed in with the bluish layers of the past and present until I wasn’t sure what was where or when. It made my head pound. I’d caved and taken a painkiller on the trip, but either it wasn’t working or I was getting worse. Even a fresh serum patch didn’t help. Everything spun a little, and I wondered if puking into the harbor might make me feel better.
I bit down. My head was what it was, and I couldn’t get distracted by it now.
The captain led Devan and I behind one of the squat buildings that lined the edge of the harbor, built right against a solid section of the city wall. He pulled another man aside, credits and a few leers were exchanged, and then we were on our way down into a dark, creepy basement.
“All yours.” The captain pushed the wall, and a concrete-looking panel slid away to show the crawlspace that would get us into Theta.
I nudged Devan ahead of me. “You first, sunflower.” I needed her to be our flashlight.
Her nostrils flared, but then she crouched down and started crawling. I followed.
Nerves wormed down my back when the panel slid shut. We’re really doing this.
I focused on crawling. Dirt ground into my hands and knees, and I tried to connect with the sensation, ignoring the haze of ghosts crawling the tunnel elsewhere in time.
Focus was key. I had to stay present. The soft glow of Devan’s powers lit the narrow space.
After way too long, she finally stopped. “Door.”
I swallowed my nerves. “Let’s go.”
Light shimmered as Devan’s powers flared brighter. We crawled into a basement piled with boxes and cabinets, but either the owner wasn’t home or they’d been paid off. A lot of people had to be getting paid off for this sneak route to exist—but apparently serum smuggling was big business. It worked.
My nerves jangled as we headed up and out of the building to ground level. We’d considered having Devan make us invisible—which she could apparently do—but it would’ve drained her, and the Seligo had thermal cams that would spot us anyway. Cipher had already taken care of any facial recognition data they had on us, so as long as we didn’t do anything suspicious, the plan was to walk around like we belonged.
Easier said than done.
A massive swarm of timeghosts hovered, just waiting for my focus to slip. Their pressure was crushing, and I was afraid I knew what was going to happen when they finally overwhelmed me.
Can’t think about it.
We went through a rusty door to the street. Skyscrapers towered overhead, blocking out the light, and there wasn’t one person in sight unless I craned my neck to find the skybridges. Nobody used the ground level, and barely any buildings even had doors down here. We hurried into the closest lift and my stomach swooped as it climbed. We were in.
Too bad that wasn’t the hard part.
Timeghosts simmered as we stepped onto a skybridge. This was the hard part. We had three buildings to check, and I couldn’t do anything that made the two of us stand out.
I took a second to grip a handrail and compose myself. A few Helixes walked past, minding their own business. They all wore short sleeves that bared their forearm tattoos.
Devan and I wore long sleeves to hide our bare skin. We had no way to fake tats, and the higher the sun rose, the more we’d look out of place sweating and covering our lack of arm helixes. We didn’t have time to waste.
But still, I stood clutching the rail and trying to get the world to stop spinning.
“Let’s go.” Devan spoke through her teeth.
“We’re going.” I used the rail to wrench myself forward. The first building was in walking distance. Then we’d take pods to two and three and hurry back to our escape tunnel if we couldn’t turn up any leads.
But we’d better turn up leads.
Straining to keep back the press of timeghosts, I followed Devan. We wound through a maze of skybridges and lifts. Everything was white and glittery and made me that much more headachy.
We cut across a garden terrace as we neared the target. The crowd thickened, and my vision swam as the chatter and static of the present twisted up with all the pasts and futures. The building was a tower of seamless glass—or something else that looked like glass. Either way, the outside didn’t give any hints what might be inside. I scanned the crowd while I could. A lot of Green Helixes were walking around.
A research facility? If so, it was exactly what we were looking for.
“Anything?” Devan whispered.
“Hold on.” I had to let down my mental walls before I could be sure. Bracing myself against the pain, I opened to the hazy blue layers of the past.
Greens flow in and out of the building; a crowd cheers for the musician playing guitar on the terrace; two women sit on a bench, talking and eating from containers. One woman waves her fork as she speaks. “Now he’s so pissed he won’t let us requisition supplies”; the building wobbles as a quake rumbles through the ground; “Smallpox?” A man in a lab coat sighs in disgust. “I didn’t go to school for that. I want chronic diseases or—”
“Hey.” Devan stepped on my toe. “Anything, or can we move?”
The timeghosts pressed in harder, wanting to show me more now that they had my attention, but I winced past stabbing pain to lift my walls again. “We’re moving.” The people here might be studying diseases and stuff, but the few images I’d seen were too innocent. Badness always jumped to the front of my mental queue, and two ladies complaining over lunch wasn’t exactly a tragedy.
Tair wasn’t here. If nothing else, I was positive I’d see his ghosts. We weren’t genetically paired for nothing.
Devan used Knight’s com to navigate us to the nearest pod station. A white two-seater pod coasted to meet us as we stepped toward the hanging track. Its door slid open.
So easy it was terrifying.
If there was any way to
walk, I would’ve, but Theta was massive, and we needed to cover ground. I just had to cross my fingers we wouldn’t get caught mid-ride, because we’d be locked in and helpless.
But there was no other choice.
We sat facing each other in the narrow space. Devan tapped through the touchscreen panel to set our destination. As the doors suctioned closed, my sweat went clammy in the air-conditioning.
I held my breath. I didn’t see a future where the pod navigated us straight to Seligo R&D, but if I was being real with myself, I didn’t see any nice futures right now. Just a big blue blob of destabilization doom.
When the pod coasted into motion and no alarms sounded, I let myself relax enough to sit back in the seat. Devan and I kept silent as the pod moved between skyscrapers, sliding up and down and auto-switching tracks to avoid traffic. Nerves made me tap my toes, but I stopped myself from bumping Devan’s knees.
She glared out the window, but the tension in her jaw read more as anger than fear. For now, I was too wired and worried for Tair to be angry at the Seligo.
Eventually, the pod slowed into our station, halfway up the base of a scraper. An artificial voice announced our arrival in a few languages, but I only needed to understand the one. “New Millennium Building. Please mind the gap.”
“Hurry.” I hopped out first.
We were so close.
Chapter Thirty-Four
ALTAIR
The clone’s heels clacked down the hallway while dread churned inside me. “Where are we going?”
“Told you you’d see.” She stopped in front of a reinforced door flanked by guards. The door slid open as soon as she set her hand on the scan pad.
Hundreds of banks of comps filled the dim room. Green Helixes bustled, and data and images flashed back and forth across thousands of screens. None of the staff members turned to look as the clone pulled me deeper and deeper into the cavernous space.
One woman stood at the center of the room, just below the largest wall of projected images. The clone beelined to her. “Ming! I have something.”
Ming’s cold-eyed gaze slid past the clone. She focused on me, folding her arms and pressing her lips together in telegraphed disapproval. “Where?”
“That skyscraper with the zigzag steel. Near the harbor.”
“In the Citadel?” Ming whirled back to the screen. “Bring up the New Millennium building.”
Keystrokes sounded from the Greens following her orders. Dozens of cam views popped up, showing different angles of the same scene I’d glimpsed in the holo room. A glittering glass skyscraper with a zigzag pattern to its beams.
I scanned through the cams. What was interesting about this?
“That one.” The clone pointed with a coral-tipped fingernail.
“Zoom in on November Mike Bravo thirty,” Ming ordered.
One video feed expanded.
My heart dropped to the floor.
Quanta.
She walked beside Devan Coda.
They had to be here for me. I braced myself against a desk.
Why? Why risk it? I wanted to scream through the cam.
“Where’s my audio drone?” Ming asked.
My gaze stayed locked on the vid. They had a plan or they wouldn’t be here. They have to have a plan.
“They’re muffling the audio,” a tech said.
That was a start. They’d anticipated the surveillance. But how did they plan to escape once they were seen?
“Get me lip-reads on screen.” Ming’s voice hardened. “And where are their IDs?”
“Files are corrupted,” another tech said. “They’re not registering on facial scanners.”
The clone stepped closer to Ming’s side. “The second one is Devan Coda.”
My thoughts plowed headlong. There had to be a way out of this. Some way to save them.
Disable the computers. Take down Ming. Send a message to the Ravens.
There were only impossible solutions.
“Lock down the harbor and scramble security. I want to know how they got in,” Ming said. “And prep squads to take down two triple-A targets. Orders are kill on sight.”
“Kill—” I choked on the word. “Their value as specimens—”
“Kill,” Ming repeated. “Doctor Nagi’s orders.”
As my vision wavered, the clone moved to my side. “It’s all right, Altair. It has to be this way.”
“It doesn’t.” And she could still stop it from happening. Suppressing the urge to shudder, I pulled her close. “Don’t make yourself into a killer. Save them instead.”
“I…” She tugged at my shirt.
I was getting to her. I let the truth bleed into my voice as I told her exactly what I would’ve told the real Quanta. “Please. If they’re dangerous, then have them captured. You don’t need their deaths on your conscience.”
“Doctor Nagi said—” She jerked and shoved me away. Her eyes flickered rapidly. Was she seeing a different version of the truth? Finally, she glared at me. “My conscience? All you’re thinking about is trying to leave me.”
My blood ran cold. I’d made another mistake. Quanta might’ve been swayed by her conscience, but the clone…
She stared at me, defiant.
She thought she was doing the right thing. No conscience involved.
“Pursue!” Ming’s voice was sharp with urgency. My gaze snapped back to the vid feeds.
Black Helixes streamed from their guard stations and beelined for the skyscraper with the zigzagging steel beams. Quanta and Devan turned toward the commotion.
Run.
Run, Quanta.
I knew she couldn’t hear me, but I kept screaming the words in my head. Reality crushed my heart.
RUN.
Chapter Thirty-Five
QUANTA
I gripped the handrail as I gazed up at the New Millennium Building. It was a hive of Yellow Helixes—lawmakers and paper pushers. I would’ve written the place off, but I’d spent however many years hidden under the Senate building; the stuff above ground here could definitely be the front for a lab underneath.
I had to dig. Letting out a breath, I braced to let down my walls.
“Quanta.” Devan’s voice lifted the hairs on my arms.
I turned.
Shouts sounded as columns of Black Helixes pushed through the crowd. Their boots tramped across skybridge.
Our clock had just run out.
“Run.” I dashed and Devan followed. I snatched the com from her as we ran. I had to get a message to the others. I managed to punch in Knight’s contact mid-run. “We’re caught. Check the third building next time. Get out now.”
Cipher answered. “Quanta? We’re on—”
I cut off the call and chucked the com over the skybridge. The fall would destroy it and keep the Seligo from finding them. I hoped.
As the guards started shouting and people dodged away from us, inevitability clamped down around me. Every time I spotted a door that might give us somewhere to hide, it opened, pouring out more guards. Our feet smacked the ground as we sprinted, but breathing already ached, and we were running out of places to go.
We’re going to get caught.
If we could just make it to the end of this bridge—
But men in black body armor appeared at the end, blocking the only escape. I slid and almost toppled. We were twenty stories from the ground.
No surviving a jump.
Nowhere left to run.
Drones hovered into place above us as the guards closed in from both sides. A voice rang out from a mid-air speaker. “Stay where you are.”
Panic made my vision blur, and my mental walls quaked. One last bluish scene slipped through, and its lines were deadly solid.
Bullets fly—no darts this time—and Devan and I fall. But light explodes from both of us in a blue and yellow supernova.
Helixes fall in the pool of blinding green light that spreads and spreads.
And spreads.
My hea
rt ached. So that was how it was going to be?
Just in case, I reached for the past. I couldn’t rewind on my own, but I had to keep trying. If I was ever going to pull a new power out of my hat, I needed to do it now.
But my mental reach whiffed again and again until my head was splitting. I could barely see straight. Gripping my temples, I tried to find Devan. I wished I could’ve saved her from this.
I wish I could see Tair again.
It was what it was. And if we were dying, we were taking a chunk of the Citadel down with us. “Last stand?”
Devan let out a shaking breath. Sunlight spread from her fingertips, and she set her shoulders straight. “Last stand.”
We stood back-to-back as the Black Helixes closed in.
Ghostly blue shapes leaked from my hands as my vision fractured. Pain stabbed down like knives behind my eyes, and I fell to my knees just like the visions had been warning me.
Lightning flashed at the corner of my eye.
Cipher’s blue lightning. It boomed from somewhere too far away to help us now.
Another wedge drove between the broken halves of my heart. Everyone.
All of us were dead this time.
Pain sliced deeper, and I might have screamed, but as Devan lit up like an exploding star, bluish ghosts spilled out of me. Riding the pain, I let down my walls and hurled the timeghosts outward.
Seligo be damned.
Regret fell heavy on my shoulders as the gunshots fired.
It’s not supposed to end like this.
Fire stabbed my body.
The world exploded.
Chapter Thirty-Six
ALTAIR
I swayed in horror at the images unfolding on the vidscreen.
In the harbor, Cipher, Marquez, and Dex traded fire with the Seligo naval forces. They had cover in the cabin, but their boat smoked, dead in the water.
Drones maneuvered closer, showing the three of them cowering. The Seligo were maneuvering automated machine guns into place.
Gunfire shot off relentlessly, spraying water and piercing the hull.
The scene inside the Citadel was worse.
