by Dan Krokos
“You shouldn’t have done that.” His eyes blur with tears. “Grace knew you guys were faking. We didn’t believe her.”
I still have blood in my mouth from Grace’s punch, so I spit it at his feet. A helicopter screams by overhead. While I stand here, wondering if I’ll see Peter and Noah and Olive one more time before I die, Joshua continues to pour his energy into the city. I can feel the waves as they pass over me.
If stopping him is the last thing I do, well, there are worse ways to die.
Joshua pulls another knife from behind his back. “I’m sorry. I don’t have a choice.”
22
A figure stands behind Joshua.
Joshua raises the knife. “It was nice meeting you, Miranda.”
The figure moves closer. I don’t look directly at him, for fear of giving him away. But in the unfocused part of my vision, I see Noah, my Noah, press a finger to his lips. I try to grab the knife out of my back, but another bolt of pain freezes me in place. My hand drops back to my side. Blood trickles down my leg, inside my armor.
Without warning, Joshua spins 180 degrees in place, pivoting on the balls of his feet, dropping as his legs twist like a double helix, stabbing out with the knife. But Noah is ready. He sidesteps the thrust and slips past before Joshua can reset. He grabs both sides of Joshua’s head and twists. I don’t look away.
The crack is muted by the blood pounding in my ears. Joshua falls in a heap, utterly limp, no attempt to catch himself. Dead before he hits the ground. I only feel pain. Noah turns, panting. “Are you okay?”
I open my mouth and take a step forward. The ground rushes up at me, or I rush toward it. Probably the second one. Noah catches me and eases me down.
He gasps, and I can guess why. “Oh shit,” he says. “Okay, wait.”
“Not bad, right?”
“No. Not bad at all. I’m going to pull it out, okay?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer. He eases the knife out and I scream, cutting it off by burying my face against the smooth scales on his shoulder. The scream turns to a keen in the back of my throat. Pure black narrows my vision, until all I can see is Noah’s face as he studies my wound. Gradually, the darkness recedes. I don’t pass out.
“I got you,” he says. “Look, see? The armor holds the wound together.” Now that the knife’s out, I feel the armor tighten up. I sit with my back against a telephone pole, next to the van. Joshua is dead a few feet away. Two members of Beta team are left, plus Conlin and whoever her buyers are, assuming they’re in the city to observe. It feels like an hour has passed since my fight with Grace, but it’s only been a few minutes. Still, I’m wasting time with a flesh wound—Peter and Olive are still out there, probably alone.
I need to get up. As long as I don’t bleed to death, we can still find them.
“Miranda?” Noah snaps his fingers in front of my face. “Yeah, I’m fine.” And I think I am. The pain is...receding? He crouches next to me and cups the side of my face. “The armor was breached, but it sealed again. It’ll hold until I can stitch you up. Can you stand?”
“We have to move,” I say.
“I know, I know. Try to stand.”
I brace myself on his shoulder as he helps me up. Dizziness hits me, then fades. I feel strangely good.
Noah smiles. “There you go. The suit has painkillers lining the interior. If you’re injured, it numbs the spot. Pretty cool, right?”
“Very,” I say. My back is numb and tingly. While the pain is muted, I have to remember there’s still a gash in my back that will need attention. Noah stands close to me. I touch his cheek, and he reaches up to hold my hand against his face. “Thank you. You saved me.”
“Nah, you totally had him.” He stares at me an extra moment, cocks his head a little.
“What is it?” I say.
“Nothing, just. Your eyes look different. You feel okay?” “I feel fine.” I know what he means, but I don’t have time to worry about it. Maybe they’re just bloodshot, and he’s not talking about the reddish tint to the irises. I can think about it when I know Peter and Olive are safe. And when the entire city isn’t unraveling around us. Random screams carry on the wind, a vile reminder.
He leaves my grasp with reluctance and walks into the intersection. The jets are back, flying low over the lake. Their passage thrums the windows in the buildings.
He waves me forward, and I find the painkiller numbs me enough to walk without a limp. I join him and look down each street—abandoned vehicles are scattered everywhere. Some with their doors open, empty. Others with smashed front ends, people slumped over the wheel. Blood smeared on the inside of one windshield. A dog trapped in the backseat of another, sniffing at a crack in the window. A van on its side, flames licking at the undercarriage. A downed telephone pole diagonal across the road, live wires sparking and dancing over the street. He points to the east. “Peter is that way, closer than Olive. Time to reunite and escape before they bring in the National Guard.”
“But what about all these people?”
“I don’t know, Mir.”
Stragglers still gather down the street, between us and Peter. They push and smash together, rebounding off the edges of the main group, limbs flailing, only to run back into the shoving match. A man sits outside the river of people, holding his broken arm, shaking. Someone fires a gun three times and the screams rise up, drowning out the echoes of the gunshots. “What if Peter is already somewhere else?” I say, my voice trailing off. It’s hard to believe what I see.
“We’ll take that chance. Come on.” He runs down the street. I tear my eyes from the growing mass to make sure Grace and Joshua are still dead. They are. Then I run after him. I’d take the van, but I’m afraid to sit down again. I stop after a few feet. “Noah!”
He stops and throws up his hands. “What?”
I run back to the van and grab the map with our locations on it. I didn’t give it a very good look the first time. The crumpled paper is in the foot well, near the gas pedal. I open it to check our names again, then see something else, right in the middle of the map. A star with a circle around it, unlabeled. Noah is next to me, breathing hard.
“Show me your map,” I say.
“I, uh.”
He’s blushing. “You uh what?”
“I forgot it. I only looked at it long enough to find you.” Stupid. But it means he came for me first. If he hadn’t, I’d be dead.
I point at the star, memorizing the map while I do. “I think Conlin and her buyers are in the city to witness this firsthand. Right here. Closer than Peter.”
Noah snatches the paper out of my hands. “That’s Public Square.” He folds the map and tucks it under the armor on his neck.
We take off again, and I pause just long enough to snatch up the two knives Joshua carried. I toss one at Noah and it sticks to the armor covering his right shoulder blade. He reaches back, feels it, then smiles.
Together, we race through the nightmare.
23
Public Square is pandemonium.
People run blindly, some in packs. The fear has taken them completely, and it’s even worse up close. Howls surge up from low in their throats. Animal sounds. Animal faces. This is the madness Tycast talked about. Too much exposure.
One man’s face is a sheet of blood. A woman has retained enough motor function to spray mace into the crowd. People moan and claw at their faces, splitting away at random angles, tripping over bodies crushed in the street. The wind has died, and the day is hot and thick. Many of the refugees have fled south, either by car or on foot, taking the highways out of the city.
Noah and I walk against the tide. Pinned-open eyes stare back at me. I try to focus on the source of the wave, but sense nothing. The rose scent is in the air, but it’s subtle, and doesn’t seem to be coming from anywhere in particular. It’s possible these people were hit by waves elsewhere in the city, and are only escaping in this direction.
A man shivers on a park bench. His Windbreaker is open and
he hugs himself inside the jacket. “Sir!” I say. He looks at me. “You can’t stay here! Follow the others!”
He swallows and nods. Stands up and walks stiffly alongside everyone else. It’s strange how the fear affects everyone differently. Some freeze, some run. Some scream. Some shake.
Then I see another body. And another. Then ten more trampled in the street, limbs twisted and broken, clothing shredded, blood-streaked.
A little boy with his ankle twisted, crying on a manhole cover. I lose him in the tide, and when a gap appears, he’s gone.
Before I can think about it, I drop to my knees next to an old man sprawled in front of a bus. He’s barely moving, but his eyes are open. “Sir! We’re going to get you help, just stay calm. Just—” Noah grabs me from behind and pulls me up. “Stop! What are you doing?” I struggle until my knife wound flares with a fresh burst of heat.
“We can’t help him, Mir! The only thing we can do is stop this.”
He’s right, and I hate him for it. I let him pull me along, too weak to look at the old man again.
All this power, all my skills, and I can’t stop the city from tearing itself apart. Another ambulance is wrecked farther up the road. All four tires are on fire. In the Terminal Tower people press their faces against the glass, watching the madness below. They seem unaffected, as if the waves don’t reach higher than the first floor, or the building shields them in some way. It must seem like the world is ending. The glass doors at the bottom are barricaded with furniture from inside the mall. No one is bothering to break in.
Noah grabs my arm and I almost lash out on instinct. “What is it?” I say. He yanks me down behind a pickup truck parked halfway into the street. Someone runs past at a light jog, breathing heavily. “What did you see?”
“Look over the truck. If north is noon, they’re at ten o’clock.”
I shift around to get my feet under me, then slowly rise until my eyes are just above the truck’s roof. Three people stand in a small parking lot across the street, maybe two hundred feet away. Calm postures, unafraid. Two men wear the familiar metal helmets, while the black-haired woman wears a headband. Dr. Conlin. The two soldiers hold video cameras, filming the action, like they’re creating some kind of twisted infomercial. Their body language says they haven’t seen us. “What do you want to do?” Noah says.
“Fight them.”
“Yes, I guessed that much. I was wondering how you wanted to do that.”
“Fists or knives, pick one.” I duck behind the truck’s grille, locking Conlin’s location in my mind. My feet itch with the urge to keep moving. My hands itch with the urge to fight back.
Another mass of people staggers down the road. We sprint across the street before they pass us, using them as cover. I leap over two trampled bodies. Then we’re against the Tower and there’s only a short distance, a line of shrubs, and a fence between us and our enemies. Our feet are silent as we run. No one in the crowd bothers to look at us. At the last possible second, I plant my left foot against the wall and spring off. My toes skim over the bushes and fence. I touch down in the parking lot and roll, silent except the muted ting my knife makes on the blacktop.
I feel Noah behind me. The soldiers are right in front of us, Dr. Conlin just ahead of them, watching the mania wind down as the city empties itself. An explosion rumbles very far away. I veer left and grab the nearest soldier’s helmet, then flip it off his face. In the span of a second, pressure builds and releases behind my eyes. He sucks in a breath and makes a gurgling, terror-choked sound in his throat. Noah does the same thing with soldier two. I pick up the fallen rifle, a stripped-down G36C—a compact assault rifle that feels familiar in my hands. I’ve trained with one, although I’m not sure when. This is when I would normally glare at Noah since he’s the reason I can’t remember, but he did just save my life.
Dr. Conlin turns around. We point our rifles at her chest. Behind her, a nearly naked man wearing only a necktie runs past, limping.
“Making a sales video, Dr. Conlin?” I say.
“Precisely that, Miranda.” She looks down at her panicking men. I expected robots behind the smoked visors, but they’re just men, same as the men who drove me downtown. “Although I see you’ve taken out my cameramen.”
“Where are the buyers?” Noah says.
She sneers at him, which I give her credit for considering the firepower she faces. “Not here, you idiot. They can see your function just fine.” She gestures at the nearly empty street behind her. “The whole world can.”
A quiet has descended over the city, pierced only by the occasional shout, the background noise of multiple helicopters. And the dull roar of jet engines from miles away.
“You all performed as expected,” Conlin says.
“Grace and Joshua are dead,” I say, more to hurt her than anything. If she was anything to them like Tycast was to us, it’ll break her.
And it does. Her brow scrunches for an instant before smoothing again. Her mouth becomes very tight. “I see.”
“You don’t,” Noah says, “not yet.”
“Why are you doing this?” I say. I shift to my left, opening my field of vision behind Conlin. One of the soldiers stands up. I ram my rifle butt into his face and he falls down again.
Conlin says, “If you don’t know, you have much bigger problems.”
“Yeah,” I say. “To sell us. I get it. But why? Why go to the trouble? There are easier ways to make money.”
“Only a cynical person would think all of this was for money. But your ultimate purpose was unimportant to me. Creating you, the perfect weapon, was the real draw. There is no higher calling for a scientist than to see the limits of potential, then break them completely.”
“Holy shit,” Noah says. “A real mad scientist.”
I take a step closer. A slow smile spreads across Conlin’s face. The street behind her is completely empty now. “I don’t buy it,” I say. “We aren’t just experiments.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“Then what are we?” Only a cynical person would think all of this was for money. There’s more to us, I know it. “Tell me!” I shout.
“No one is going to buy you, Miranda.”
“But Tycast...” Tycast thought that was the plan all along; it’s what he fought against, why he died.
“If Tycast knew your true purpose, he would’ve run screaming into the night.”
Our true purpose.
Dr. Conlin reaches into her coat pocket.
“Take your hand out of your pocket!” My finger is on the trigger.
“Good luck, to both of you.” Conlin pulls her hand free, but I don’t shoot because at first I think it’s empty.
It isn’t.
She puts something in her mouth and bites down.
“No!” Noah screams.
Conlin falls, white foam bubbling from her lips. I kneel next to her while Noah covers me. I open her mouth but the poison is already working, sending her into convulsions. They don’t last long. Her eyes are open, staring.
I look up at Noah with no clue how to proceed. Her last words were too vague, offering just enough of a hint to drive me completely insane. If there’s something worse than being forced to terrify and kill on command, I don’t know what it is.
Peter and Olive—plus the remaining two Betas—could be anywhere by now. We’re losing. Or we’ve already lost. The damage is done, and irreversible.
I blink Noah into focus, tears of frustration clouding my vision.
Two figures stand behind him, silhouettes in the sun.
“Noah!” I shout.
Noah spins, but the first one grabs his rifle and removes it with a simple twist. Noah lunges for it. The man elbows Noah in the chest so hard his feet leave the ground. He crashes on his back next to me, breath exploding from him. He rolls to the side, clutching his chest, gasping.
I’m coiled on the ground, ready to leap, but staring down a gun barrel keeps me still. The man holding it is really
just a boy. He has white-blond hair somewhere in between Noah’s shaved look and Peter’s long-and-scruffy. Neatly parted. On his belt are a sword and a silver revolver.
His suit is unmistakable—black scales, skintight. The unfamiliar Rose grins at me. “You gonna come at me or not?”
I give a small shake of my head. Noah sits up, holding his chest.
“Good,” he says. He tosses the rifle back to Noah.
Noah contemplates the rifle in his lap, then looks up at the stranger.
Only now do I take in the figure behind the blond stranger. Black suit, black hair. It’s Olive! Seeing her sends a flood of warmth spreading out to my toes and fingertips.
“Olive, are you okay?” Noah says.
She nods. “As well as I can be, I guess.” Her face is stone. The stranger claps his hands and rubs them together, tearing my attention from Olive. “Now then. There is a pressing issue.”
Noah scratches his head. His cheeks are red, like he’s embarrassed this guy just put him on his ass. “I’m sorry, who are you again?”
The stranger raises his blond eyebrows for a second. “Right, sorry. I’m Rhys.” He hooks a thumb over his shoulder. “You know her, I’m sure.”
Rhys. The rogue. Here in front of us.
And we’re not dead, even though he had the drop on us. He returned Noah’s rifle. I watch Noah to see how he reacts, but he seems to draw the same conclusion.
Which means my attention can return to Olive, who appears lost, like she doesn’t know where to stand, or what to say. “Hey, Olive, are you sure you’re okay?” I say. For some reason I can’t bring myself to say Do you remember me? I finally stand up and give Noah a hand. I check behind me to make sure no fear-crazed citizen is about to jump us, then step over Conlin. A step closer to the rogue.
“I’m fine,” Olive says. “I’d be better if I knew what the hell was going on.” She doesn’t say it like a comment on the situation’s insanity. She says it like she truly doesn’t understand. A cold spike twists in my gut.
“Noah,” I say, reaching out to grab his arm.
