Good enough.
With drenched socks and freezing cold feet I bolted across the grass. I slid between the ambulance and a van, hit the ground, and rolled under the ambulance.
From my position, I saw a narrow sliver of the lawn. In the far distance, a dozen or so people were moving around the barns. Some walked with determination. Others seemed frantic. No one was running my way; maybe no one had heard the window shatter.
Under other circumstances, that’d have been straight-up impossible. Then again, under other circumstances, I’d never have tried it.
Cold mud soaked into my sweatshirt and pants. Grass tickled at my face. Every second I lay flat and unmoving under this ambulance felt like wasted time.
I needed to wait until the grounds emptied out, though. There were too many people near the rift barn for me to have any shot at freeing Neven.
Nearby movement caught my eye. A group, visible only from the knees down, turned the corner. I squinted, wishing for my glasses. It took far too long to make out their clothing. I counted three agents (their slacks were easy to recognize), Mom (I knew those tan boots), an unfamiliar adult (a researcher?), and three Hazels (their skinny, jean-clad legs and sneakers were a dead giveaway—especially the sneakers I’d given to Alpha earlier). They had to be getting evacuated finally.
The closer they got, the more of their conversation I understood.
“Are we supposed to just trust that Red’s OK?” one Hazel asked. The anger in her voice made me suspect it was Rainbow. “You won’t even let us talk to her!”
“We’re a little distracted at the moment,” an agent responded sourly.
“And that ambulance means Alpha’s still here, right?” she pressed. “Aren’t you evacuating her?”
“We’re waiting for a doctor to accompany her,” the agent said. “Can you give it a rest? Both girls are perfectly safe.”
“Yeah? Because your track record sucks.” I could vividly imagine Rainbow’s glare.
I shifted in the grass and immediately regretted it. Moving made the cold stains on my clothes feel even grosser.
“Once we’re out of here,” Mom snapped, “I want to talk to Director Facet.”
By now, their shoes were only feet away from my face. I instinctively held my breath.
“Noted,” one of the agents said. “Look, I—”
“Code eight!” someone yelled. The voice came from near the medical research barn. “Code eight!”
I could guess what “code eight” meant.
They’d found out Alpha was missing.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Two of the agents ran across the lawn toward the medical barn.
There was a whirlwind of panic near the vans. I caught snippets of shouts and alarmed questions—about trolls, about broken windows, about the evacuation—and saw more sets of feet running toward the barn.
“Get into that black van, all of you,” the agent ordered.
“I heard something about trolls?” Rainbow spoke fast, like she was rushing to get the words out.
“Get into the van!” the agent barked. “We’re evacuating! Now!”
“Trolls?” another Hazel said, alarmed. “Are you sure? I thought we’d gotten rid of them in Damford.”
The direction her voice came from suggested it was Alpha. I was suddenly very grateful I’d filled her in on the events she’d missed.
The Hazels moved away. Within moments, car doors slammed shut, the engine roared, and they were gone.
More agents ran to the medical research barn. Some searched the building, but most fanned out, checking the nearby fence and woods beyond.
They’d expect Alpha to run. They wouldn’t look under the ambulance. Not right away, at least.
For what felt like an eternity, I lay pressed in the grass. Goose bumps covered every inch of my body. I shivered so bad it hurt. Across the lawn, the evacuation had slowed to a trickle, with most vans gone and only a handful of researchers still scurrying between buildings and hauling along bags.
Then, abruptly, the search stopped.
Agents exited the medical research barn, trickled from the woods, and emerged from behind other barns. Fear clenched my heart: Was I too late? Maybe the rift was expanding farther and they’d gotten the call to abandon the search for Alpha.
The agents didn’t seem panicked, though. Harried, yes. I caught scattered conversation as they headed toward the nearby vans.
“—us to search the damn woods?”
“They spotted enough trolls that it couldn’t be a coincidence—”
“—same direction—”
“—kept their distance—”
“—she must’ve run straight into the woods—”
The cold had numbed my brain enough that it took several seconds before I connected the dots. The MGA knew the trolls were linked to Alpha. If anyone in the evacuating cars spotted trolls beelining away from the house, they probably assumed they were following Alpha, which would mean she wasn’t near the grounds.
As long as the evacuation kept moving swiftly, it’d take the MGA a while to realize the trolls weren’t following a lone girl through the woods, but instead were following the van containing Mom and the Hazels.
Three cars took off within moments of one another. The world fell abruptly silent. I scanned my surroundings for signs of life, but the only movement came from researchers across the lawn.
My frozen joints protested as I wriggled out from under the ambulance. Wind blew past my mud-smeared clothes and skin. I wanted to stretch, to wipe myself down, to collapse and cry—but Neven came first. I needed to get her free.
I set off across the lawn at a jog, shifting between barns to stay out of sight of the remaining researchers, until I reached the rift barn. Part of the back wall and roof had been blown out, but most of the barn was intact. I could simply use the main entrance. My knife made quick work of the lock, and then I was inside, the entrance hall of the building cool and dark. Only faint emergency lighting lit the building.
“Neven?” I called. Her name echoed off the walls.
No answer.
I strengthened my voice. “Neven!”
She had to be in here. She had to be—what if I was wasting time I didn’t have—?
I ran through wide, dim halls. Several doors stood open. Offices looked hastily exited. I saw a half-eaten bowl of soup in one room, and in another, a mug full of coffee abandoned under the coffee maker.
I turned another corner. On the right-hand side, a tube of emergency lighting flickered. The other lights had been destroyed. Something had smashed into a wall nearby. Long gouges dragged across the floor, like oversized versions of the claw marks the trolls left behind in Damford.
I sped down the hall. One wall had partially collapsed. I stepped past the rubble and into an observation room of sorts. Thick glass stretched across the entire length and height of one wall. I rested my hands against it, trying to peer through. I had to make do with the glow from the emergency lights in the hall behind me—which wasn’t much.
“Hazel,” a familiar voice said. It sounded muted.
“Neven!” I pressed closer to the window. The faint outline of Neven emerged from the dark: the curve of her belly as she lay on the ground, the thick claws on one extended paw. “Are you all right?”
“Mm.” Something moved—her head, I thought. She slurred, “The rift? I can feel it. It’s not right.”
Her voice seemed to come from above. When I looked up, I spotted the reason—air holes dotted the glass near the ceiling, no larger than pencil erasers.
“It’s getting . . . The world, it’s . . . vibrating.”
“What’d they do to you?”
“Your agents relocated me. So kind.” She coughed. “Earlier, I felt the rift. I worried. Needed to find you. I broke from the other cell. They didn’t appreciate my . . . tantrum.” She sniffed indignantly, which was the first thing that sounded like the Neven I knew.
She must’ve felt the rift e
xpanding—the same thing that made the MGA decide to evacuate. Her escape attempt explained the commotion I’d heard on the grounds. And why it’d taken the agents so long to come looking for me.
“They shot me. With darts. Dragged me here.” Under her breath, Neven added, “Cheating.”
“I’ll get you out,” I said. “Is there a door? How did they put you in here?”
“The walls can lift.”
My gaze dropped to the bottom of the wall. The glass had buried itself a solid foot into the ground. I whirled and checked out the room. My eyes were already adjusting to the dimness. A large touchscreen sat embedded on the right-hand wall, but nothing I did—press, tap, swipe—activated it.
That left one option. I positioned myself in front of the glass wall and held out my knife.
“The wall is thicker than you think,” Neven said.
“What did you sense?” I started carving. The knife sank easily into the glass. “About the rift?”
“It’s starting . . . The fabric is unraveling. It’ll tear open.”
“How soon are we talking about? Hours?”
“Perhaps.” She inhaled deeply, the sound reaching me all the way through those air holes above. “How are the others?”
“I don’t know.” I filled her in on the evacuation, Red’s attempt to investigate, and her subsequent capture. “She found something. Something about the rift. Maybe it’s the key to closing it.” I hesitated. “I was hoping you could help me free her.”
Guilt writhed in my gut. Neven being captured and drugged was my fault. I’d even argued against getting her out—and now that I had decided to help, it was taking far too long. Neven wasn’t wrong about the glass being thick; my knife didn’t go all the way through. I’d need to carve out entire chunks to reach the other side.
I hacked and sweated and grimaced. As smoothly as the knife went into the wall, the glass screeched and whined as it slid past itself. Pieces dropped to the floor, sometimes thudding onto my feet or shins. Carving a hole big enough to let out Neven would take ages.
The question was what came after I cut through the wall, after I freed Neven, after I found Red. This knife wouldn’t magically close the rift, yet it was my one advantage, no matter what Neven had told me in Damford.
You’re the Chosen One. That’s not entirely meaningless.
What on earth did that mean? My being linked to the rift might help the MGA with their research, but the solution couldn’t be to let them prod at me until they found what they needed. This was something I needed to do. That much, the Powers That Be had made clear.
So what method of closing the rift would the MGA researchers be unable to pull off with all their knowledge and equipment, that my Chosen-One-ness could, all by myself?
A solution that required no skill (as I had none), simply drama and bravery (as the Powers demanded), simply the Chosen One’s connection to the rift . . .
My hand holding the knife slowed.
“Neven?” I watched her fractured silhouette through the wall.
“Yes?”
My voice sounded hollow. “When I died, what happened to the rift?”
Neven sat silent and unmoving in her cell. I couldn’t tell whether she’d heard me.
“Did it close?” I asked.
Her head lifted. “Yes.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
My knife dropped. It embedded into the floor next to my foot. Only the hilt remained visible.
“What?” The word took forever to find.
“Not immediately, and not completely,” Neven amended, “but it started to.”
I didn’t answer.
“Before the rift closed fully and cut off the Power’s access to your world, the Power reverted your death. This further weakened the walls of your world, allowing the rift to abruptly triple in size.”
“Oh.” My mind whispered so softly I struggled to make sense of my thoughts. After what felt like an eternity—standing in the dark, my hands empty by my sides, my eyes fixed on Neven, my mouth painfully dry—I managed to ask, “So is that the solution? I need to die?”
“Yes.”
“But that’s not . . .” My legs felt weak. I lowered myself to the floor, never taking my eyes off Neven. A glass chunk I’d cut from the wall pressed painfully into my shin. “The Powers That Be brought me back. I thought they needed me alive.”
I thought I was important.
“They wouldn’t—Why—” I shook my head. “That can’t be the answer.”
“It is.”
“I thought I was supposed to . . . to somehow board up the rift like you talked about, or to use the MGA’s research to close it properly, or . . .”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” The words felt like gravel in my throat. “That I need to die? Or that you knew and didn’t tell me?”
“Both.”
“It’s . . . Oh. Oh.” I tried to swallow. It felt more like choking. “I get why they brought me back. I hadn’t gotten rid of the trolls yet. I’d only just reached Damford. We were about to find Alpha; the Powers still thought I could win. They still thought they could win. That I could kill Alpha and save the world the way they’d intended. Right?”
“Yes.”
I wondered if Neven was so brief because she didn’t know what to say, or wasn’t allowed to say it.
“Why did my death close the rift?” I asked quietly. “You said the rift is linked to me so it can pick up on my, my heroism or something, and so it can follow me around, but my presence doesn’t cause it. Right?”
“Do you remember when I first explained the rift?”
I couldn’t begin to think of what she was aiming at.
“I told you that your birthday was a trigger for the rift to grow. And that completing your destiny—your act of heroism—was a trigger for the rift to close.” She hesitated. “I never said there weren’t other triggers. Other fail-safes.”
“Fail-safe,” I echoed. “Once the Chosen One dies, there’s no need to keep the rift open.”
“Yes.”
“Is this the solution you meant, right before we left Damford? When you said I could still save the world?”
“Yes.”
“You convinced the Power to give me a second chance.”
“Yes.”
“You wanted me to die?”
“Wanted?” Neven said. “No.”
“But it’s what you meant.”
“Yes.”
I looked at the shards of glass around me. I felt like grabbing one of those chunks. I felt like flinging it against the wall. I felt like screaming at Neven.
I felt like crying.
Slowly, slowly, I said: “So, I die. The rift closes. And—as per the deal—the Power sends the others back.”
“Not necessarily.”
My head snapped back to Neven. “There’s another way?”
Her silhouette jerked. “I’m sorry. No. I meant . . . The Power will only send the others back if its hero succeeds.”
“In this case, success means my death.”
“Yes, but—” She cut herself off. “People are coming.”
I watched her, the words not processing, until I heard the tinny sound of footsteps bouncing off the walls. Right as I turned, someone called, “Found her!”
Agents sprinted down the hall toward me. The emergency lighting cast them in a wan glow.
There wasn’t time to free Neven before the agents reached me. I no longer really needed to, though, did I? I no longer needed to get Neven out, no longer needed to find Red, no longer needed to wonder what secret Red had discovered on those MGA computers. The MGA must’ve figured out the same solution I had. It was the logical answer. The only reason it’d taken me so long to find was because I’d already ruled it out.
I’d gotten what I’d wanted. I knew the answer, finally.
I needed to die.
Methodically, I sheathed my knife, then stuck it in a pocket of Alpha’s muddy sweats. I raised m
y hands, palms out, and waited for the agents to reach me.
“Hazel?” Agent Sanghani stepped into the room, her voice and movements cautious.
“It’s OK,” I said. “I won’t run.”
Her eyes flicked to the damaged glass wall behind me.
“Oh, shit,” a second agent muttered. It took me a second to recognize him as Agent Emerson, who’d often been stationed by the gate.
“You all right?” Sanghani asked me. I didn’t know how to answer that question. “Why did you swap places? We’re only trying to keep you safe.”
“It’s OK,” I repeated.
She tugged her head toward the hallway. “Are you going to cooperate with us?”
“There’s no need to evacuate.” My voice sounded far away. “I know.”
“What?”
“I know the solution. It’s OK. You can kill me.”
“What?” She looked aghast.
“My death will close the rift. Your researchers figured it out already. That’s why Red got taken. Right? She found the solution on their computers. I don’t know why no one’s tried it yet. Maybe they weren’t sure. But they’re right. It’ll work.”
The agents gave each other a sidelong glance. Even without my glasses, I could see Sanghani’s eyebrows scrunching together in a frown.
“Do you think that’s what they’re doing?” Emerson asked her.
“Shit,” Sanghani said. “Hazel, how are you so sure?”
Emerson went on: “Does it have to be you, Hazel? Would it work with the other girls?”
“Has to be me.” I sounded numb. My hands dropped to my sides. “Why do you ask? Are the others OK? What do you mean ‘what they’re doing’? Who?”
Both agents hesitated.
Fear slithered in like wind whistling through the cracks. “Are the others OK?” I repeated. “Tell me!”
I’d wondered why, if the MGA knew how to close the rift, they hadn’t tried to kill me yet. Maybe yet was the operative word. Maybe they wanted to try with the others. Maybe this was their plan for Red.
“We don’t know where they are,” Sanghani admitted. “Earlier, when we realized you and Alpha had switched places, we went to find her. A group of agents had just taken her and another one of the girls from the evacuation. Apparently, Director Facet had given them instructions for a last-ditch effort to fix the situation. We didn’t get any details. The other two girls stayed with the evacuation.”
The Art of Saving the World Page 28
