I cast around frantically for a better place to hide. In the distance, at the far end of the large Nutrition Center, I could just make out the broadcast building, but there was nothing but open road between where I was and where I needed to be.
“Look, there’s no point in running,” Walter called once more. “I know where you are, and I’m ready this time. I’m going to make sure you don’t escape.”
Trying to decide if I was crazy enough to run for it anyway, I glanced under the car to see Walter’s feet. He had stopped walking, and suddenly his gun clanked to the ground.
“I want to do it with my bare hands,” he said.
My heart thumping wildly, I jumped to my feet and ran as fast I had ever run in my life. My pulse thudded in my ears as my boots pounded the pavement, but I could hear him running after me. I pumped my arms harder, but his legs—his long, glutty legs—were longer than my long, glutty legs, and it was only seconds before he caught up.
With a grunt, Walter threw himself forward, his arms hooking around my knees as we both tumbled to the floor. I aimed a kick at his head before scrambling to my feet, noticing that he was no longer wearing a sling before he reached out and tried to trip me again.
“Get back here, you filthy little—”
As he lumbered to his feet, I brought my knee up, slamming into the bottom of his chin, positioning my arms to fight back. He rolled away with a howl, and his terrible grey eyes were filled with loathing when he turned back to face me.
“You’re going to pay for that,” he snarled.
Letting him get to his feet, I waited, posed for attack, not thinking about anything but the moves and countermoves I had learned from Serge.
He swung at me with his huge right fist; I deflected the punch with my left arm, jabbing at his stomach with a swift right uppercut. Grunting, he swung again, this time hitting me in the bicep, and my arm erupted in flames.
He was so much stronger than I remembered.
Numbness flowed to my fingertips as I tried to regain my footing, but he was fast, too, and soon he had knocked the wind out of me. Gasping for breath, I swung my right arm, and then my left, but he swatted me away like a mosquito.
“Not bad, Smart,” he chuckled, hitting me one more time.
It was enough; my legs collapsed under me, and I tumbled to the ground.
“But I’m stronger.” He dropped to one knee, staring at me with a twisted grin on his face. “You know, this blow was never meant for her,” he said, shifting his gaze to his fist almost lovingly. “It was always meant for you. After all this time, I understand that. And that’s bad. Very bad.”
I gasped as he grabbed my jacket, pulling me up to him until our faces were only inches apart.
“Knowledge is evil. And after I dispose of you, I’ll never be plagued with understanding again.”
He let go of me, and I fell back to the asphalt as he lifted his fist into the air.
“Stop,” I mumbled. “Please.” I didn’t know what else to do. This couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be the end. As though we had become suspended in water, his motions seemed slow, his arm pulling back, his fist flying forward, his eyes glinting with bloodlust—
Clamping my eyes shut, I threw my hands up to protect me head, just as a loud shot echoed through the air.
My eyes flew open again, only to see that Walter’s face had changed; he looked at his chest with wonder, where a red flower blossomed right over his heart, and then he tumbled forward. Slowly at first, then gathering speed—
I had just enough time to roll out of the way before his heavy body collapsed onto the ground.
Pushing myself to my knees, I wiped the blood away from my lip as I searched for my savior.
And then I saw him.
Gun still raised, breathing heavily, eyes like the man he had just killed—
Victor.
“What are you doing here?” I gasped.
“He’s not there anymore.”
“What?”
“Gideon.” He lowered the weapon, staring fixedly at Walter’s body. “He’s not at the broadcasting center anymore.”
I followed his gaze to Walter’s corpse, suddenly feeling a vortex of complex emotions. Had Victor ever intentionally shot a man before? Surely not. And where was Gideon now? I had to get to him. But Walter—could I just leave him in the street? The blood seeping from his wound seemed to call to me, but I resisted, unsure of what to do. I couldn’t just leave him. But why? Reaching out, I took his shoulder and rolled him over, his cold grey eyes now empty and staring at nothing.
“I have to go,” Victor said, his words slicing through my thoughts and pulling me back.
“Wait, no!” I scrambled to my feet, my conflicting feelings flowing out of me as though they, too, were affected by gravity. “Victor, you have to tell me where Gideon is!”
But he didn’t answer. Instead, he turned and ran toward the Orchard.
“Victor, wait!” I sprinted after him.
As my body moved, my brain reeled. Victor—my friend, my suitor, my enemy—had just saved my life. But he had killed Michael. Killed Gideon. Betrayed me to the Doctors, and was a part of the adversary. I realized, though, that none of that made a difference—or was even true, for that matter. Despite everything we had been through together, despite everything we had done to each other, Victor was my family. My real family. He, Meghan, and Michael were the only ones who truly understood who I was and were I came from. They had been in my life for longer than they had been out of it, and the bonds we had all formed would always bring us back together, whether we wanted them to or not.
He started to slow as he reached the front of the Orchard, and I finally caught up to him, marveling at this new discovery.
Putting his hands on his knees, he bent over, puffing, trying to get his breath back before he finally spoke to me again. “Gideon . . .” he panted, “Gideon is at . . . the clinic.”
“Okay,” I said, breathing hard, too, but walking straight to the door of the Orchard.
“What . . . are you doing?”
“I know exactly where Meghan is.”
Glancing over my shoulder, I saw him gaping at me, so I turned to face him with a sigh. His eyes were wide and his forehead shone with sweat. His dark skin flushed with exercise and his mouth hung open slightly, but he stood up without breaking eye contact with me.
“Why?” he asked.
Without thinking, I closed the distance between us and threw myself into his arms. He didn’t immediately respond, but after a few moments of hesitation, he squeezed me back, and I felt a tiny smile spread across my face.
“Because you’re my brother,” I said, pulling away after another second or two. “I hate you and you’re stupid and you make the worst decisions, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re family.”
He looked at me with eyes that didn’t seem to bother me anymore, blinking slowly. “I’m sorry.”
I shook my head, feeling the urgency creep back into my muscles. “We’ll talk about that later,” I responded, turning back for the door. “Right now, we have things to do.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Victor! Jade!”
The Orchard appeared empty, all except Meghan, who ran at us from fifty feet away as soon as we stepped inside.
“Alexander told us what happened. Everyone’s gone.”
Without a word, Victor ran to meet her, and they slammed together in an embarrassingly tight embrace as he plastered his lips all over hers.
Blood rushed to my cheeks as I dropped my eyes, suddenly feeling like a kid who had walked in on her parents making Love. Unfortunately, my sight wasn’t the only sense assaulted by this reunion, and after a few seconds of deafening smacking and slurping, I cleared my throat.
Thank Adam they pulled apart.
“Oh, sorry,” Victor said, but he sounded more sheepish than properly ashamed.
“You said everyone’s gone?” I asked, looking past the two of them at the appl
e trees in the distance.
“Well, almost everyone,” Meghan replied, and the two of them walked back to me. “My mother and another Third refused to leave the storage room. They think it’s safer there, and they don’t want to get involved.”
“And what about you?” I asked, moving my eyes, but only to stare at my feet. “Are you two involved? In trying to hurt the Doctors, I mean.”
“They told us we couldn’t be together,” Meghan shrugged.
“And I called them on their bullroke.”
The obscenity rang in the air above our heads like a sparkling, warm mist, and my eyes widened. Meghan and Victor looked at each other. And then we all laughed.
“Okay, Crazy,” I said, turning back toward the exit. “You said something about the clinic?”
Despite everything that had just happened, my stomach turned again. Was he still there? Would I really be able to see him? Was he really still alive?
And as though to remind everyone of the bigger picture, an explosion somewhere nearby rocked the earth.
“Yes,” Victor said, his face turning dark and serious as Meghan ducked closer to him for protection. “Yes, we should hurry. Mata said there was something we needed to see. Something that would change everything.”
“Mata?” I asked, a purple storm cloud invading my brain, but he simply grabbed Meghan’s hand and ran out the door.
“Come on,” he called over his shoulder.
A feeling of suspicion sat in the pit of my stomach, but I followed, mostly because I had no other choice. Besides, I had escaped Mata once, I would do it again—if it came to that. Anyway, after my last encounter with her, I wasn’t sure what to expect anymore.
As we neared the clinic, which was in the opposite direction of the broadcasting center, the signs of war became more immediate. Sirens wailed all over Liminis, and the human shouts grew louder, too. Meghan and I followed Victor as he ducked from building to building, and then halfway to our destination, we saw our first battleground.
On each side of the wide street were two large buildings, all of the windows blasted out, with bodies that peppered the no-man’s-land in between. The acidic, metallic smell of fresh blood singed my nostrils, and I pulled back into the shadows
with Victor and Meghan as a fresh ring of gunshots filled the air in quick succession.
“Firsts and police,” Victor said, peering quickly around the corner before pulling back into hiding. “I’m not sure who’s winning, though.”
“Is there another way to the clinic?” I whispered, flinching as I recognized the unique cry that only comes from a man who had just been fatally shot.
“This way,” Meghan said, moving away from the bloody scene in a half-crouch.
“Megs, wait!”
But she didn’t listen, and soon she had disappeared around the corner.
Victor and I exchanged looks before hurrying after her.
There was a small forest that surrounded the clinic—they were the same trees I had hidden in when Gideon’s grave had been robbed—and Meghan moved through it with confidence. As we ducked from trunk to trunk, however, an unpleasant thought occurred to me: What if we couldn’t get into the clinic? What if the Doctors had barricaded themselves inside and Gideon was trapped with them? I shook my head as an emergency vehicle barreled down the nearby road. That was something I could worry about later—first we needed to get there.
Before too long, Meghan had led us to the edge of the graveyard.
“Will they be in there?” I asked.
Victor squatted down and stared at his old workplace. “I don’t think so. I would imagine they are out with the police, trying to get things under control.”
“You don’t think they’d barricade themselves inside? Refuse to give up their territory?”
He looked at me, but not really, his brain clearly working at top speed. “They think all of Liminis is their territory. No, staying put would mean admitting near-defeat, and I don’t think they have it in them to accept something like that. What do you think, Meghan?”
But before she could respond, a truck filled with whooping Firsts came barreling down the street, its wheels mounting the sidewalk as its occupants started shooting into the trees.
“Look out!” I called, seizing Meghan’s hand, and we hit the ground just as the bullets splintered the rough bark above our heads.
“Do you think they saw us?” Her arms were clamped tightly over her head, so her voice was muffled, but I could hear every word.
“No, they kept driving,” Victor answered, jumping to his feet. “Come on.”
He offered his hand to Meghan and helped her up. I stood, too.
“We’re going in?” I asked.
“Of course. Besides, that’s the only way to find out if anyone is inside. We’ll know soon enough.”
I really wanted to ask if any of the Doctors knew about Victor, or if they’d let him in if they saw him, but he was already off, running across the open graveyard toward the back of the clinic, Meghan right behind him.
With an exasperated sigh, I whipped my head around, checking for enemies before I thrust myself into such a vulnerable position. Seeing no one, however, I raced after them.
Beside the back door, there was a single unconscious guard, and Victor was already kneeling, checking for a pulse, when I caught up to them.
“Is he dead?” My heart beat in my neck.
“No,” Victor said. “He’s unresponsive, though.”
Meghan also bent to examine him. “What can we do?”
But the gleaming back door beckoned me, and I jumped over the body and snatched it open.
“Jade, wait—”
“Let her go,” Meghan said.
I disappeared inside, and when the door swung shut behind me, all of the noise outside seemed to abruptly disappear. My heart thudded formidably as the silence rang in my ears, and I took a tentative step forward. “Gideon?” I whispered uncertainly, and my voice bounced weakly off the walls.
I had never been in this section of the clinic before. During our regular visits at Wissen Schule, we would enter through the front, go straight to the examination rooms, and then head right back out. I had no idea where Gideon might be hiding. Or what he was even doing there, for that matter.
Taking another step forward, I called a little more loudly this time: “Gideon?”
Without warning, an image of him falling to his death, hanging from a noose by his broken neck popped into my head, and my stomach twisted with nausea. “Gideon!” I screamed. “Gideon, I know you’re in here!”
I had to see him for myself, so I sprang forward, the sounds of my heavy footfalls clanging haphazardly across the clean, bare walls.
“Gideon?”
“Jade?”
Tears sprung to my eyes as a tiny voice reached me from somewhere deep inside the clinic. “Gideon!”
I ran, slamming through doors, corridor through corridor, following the sound of his answering cry.
“Gideon?”
“Here!”
And then I saw him, standing at the end of a long hallway, his blond hair long and disheveled, his face pale, but a giant smile creasing the corners of his shockingly green eyes.
“Gideon!” I ran at him, and he ran at me, and when we collided, I slammed my fists into his chest.
He looked at me in shock.
“You idiot! What the. Hell. Were you. Thinking!” I shouted, hitting him hard between each pause.
The smile disappeared from his face as he tried to swat me away. “What are you doing? Stop! Stop hitting me!”
He managed to grab my wrists and hold me fast, so I yelled in his face instead. “You were dead! I saw you!”
“It was Victor’s idea!”
“And you went along with it? What the hell were you thinking?”
“We needed a way to hurt the Doctors without hurting anyone else!”
“So you let him kill you?”
Breathing hard, he stared at me, his
eyes narrowing. I glared back, my arms tensed away from his grip, but he didn’t let go.
“You’re hurting me,” I said with quiet fierceness.
His grip loosened slightly.
“Let go.”
His expression didn’t change, but after a moment, he took a gamble. As soon as my hands were free, I smacked him hard across the chest once.
He raised his eyebrows but didn’t seize me again.
And then I was kissing him, tangling my hands in his hair and pulling him so close to me, it hurt. He flinched away from me at first but soon melted back when he realized I was done hitting him. Once I had his attention, I pushed him up against the wall, and he responded by grabbing me around the waist and lifting me up off the floor. My hands slid down his face, feeling the welts in his neck as he set me back down again and then cupped one hand under my ear, twisting his tongue with mine and seizing the fabric at the small of my back as he tightened his grip around me—
The world disappeared in a haze of black, blistering darkness, and I needed to be closer. Needed to fuse his body with mine. Needed to never let him go—
I grabbed his jacket and tried to rip it off of him, barely noticing the small chuckle, but feeling my breath catch as he gently pushed my hands away. He kissed me a few more times, slowing now, before pulling his face away from mine.
A tiny pinprick of disappointment stopped my hunger and then leisurely dissipated it.
“What do you think you’re doing, Ruby?” he asked, smiling slyly at me as he gently touched a strand of no-longer red hair.
The passion inside me curled up contentedly from a raging flame into a smoldering ember—one that would always be there. Gideon was alive. I laughed, wrapping my arms around his waist and leaning my head against his chest; his heart beat rapidly under my cheek as I tried to calm my breathing. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
He forced me away gently, pulling my chin up so he could look into my eyes. “I’m sorry. You’re right. It was too risky.”
“It wasn’t that risky,” a new voice called from down the hallway, and my cheeks flushed as Meghan and Victor appeared, holding hands.
Fallen Firsts Page 20
