“You would’ve been. We got lucky.” Alpha studied the agents with narrowed eyes, as though planning. But there was little any of us—even Alpha—could do against three armed agents. Agents who thought they were saving the world. They wouldn’t simply back down.
“On the way here, Alpha figured out what they were planning,” Four said shakily. “Then the rift sent out a swarm of . . . something. The helicopter made an emergency landing and we ran.”
Valk and her agents formed a half circle around us from a few feet away. One agent had his gun out, pointed loosely in our direction. Torrance was shuffling closer to them, her steps cautious.
“I’m doing my job,” Valk told Facet. “Our first priority is to protect the world from the rift.”
“I decide what your job is,” he said flatly. “Mine is protecting the world. Yours is protecting the girl. Killing children isn’t the solution—particularly when those children themselves might be the solution.”
“They might survive being put through the rift,” Valk said. “If removing them from this dimension weakens the rift, we’ll know what to do with the other Hazels. Putting our own through might not even be necessary.”
“It’s too big a risk.” Facet jutted his chin toward Alpha. “We’re taking them to safety.”
“Risk?” the redheaded agent said, his voice pitchy. “The sky is literally tearing open! What’s left to risk? They’ll die anyway. We all will.” He shook his gun at us. “All three of you. Move. Start moving!”
The third agent swallowed visibly. “Do as he says. Please. We’re only trying to save lives.”
“It won’t work,” I said. “You have to—”
“You truly think we have nothing to lose?” Facet said. “As dangerous as the rift is now, it can get far worse. The science is clear. It’ll keep growing and growing and growing. Those girls are our best and only lead. If you’re wrong, we lose our one chance at stopping the rift from destroying the rest of the world.”
“Sir, you’re talking to us about science?” the third agent said. Anger seeped into her voice, which didn’t fit her frame, short and thin and nervous. “Hazel is born, the rift opens. More Hazels appear, the rift expands. Occam’s razor, right? Isn’t that what it’s called?”
“Correlation. Causation,” Facet said. “Google it.”
“The research confirmed a connection between the girls and the rift.” Valk cocked her head. “What do you propose, sir? And you, Torrance? Hazel? Does anyone have ideas beyond twiddling our thumbs and letting this happen?” She swept her free hand at the impossibly white sky behind her. “Open to suggestions. Honest.”
“Better make it fast, though.” The redheaded agent shook his gun in our direction again. “I said, move it!”
“No ideas? Thought so. Send us straight to prison afterward if you want. Execute us. I don’t care.” Valk turned toward us. “Do as we say. I don’t want to hurt you, but trust me: I will.”
She wouldn’t need to. I could give her precisely what she wanted: Me.
“Let the others go,” I said. “If you do, I’ll come with you. I’ll cooperate as long as the others are safe. You’re half right. Your plan will work, but only if you use me and not them—”
“This isn’t a negotiation. None of you are leaving. We might need—Shit!” Valk dashed back and aimed her gun. Before I could move—before I even registered what was happening—two shots went off. Three. The sound exploded around us.
The redheaded agent scrambled to aim his own gun. Not at any of us, I realized with dizzying relief. The agents were aiming to our right, behind the van.
The gunshots didn’t echo off the buildings, as I’d expected. My ears didn’t even ring. The sound died abruptly, leaving only panicky shouts and an irregular rat-tat-tat that sent alarm bells ringing in my brain.
Blurs of gray raced across the asphalt. Bulbous little bodies, rail-thin limbs, nasty stone smiles. I counted six trolls. More were turning the corner.
“Run!” Alpha yanked at my sleeve. She was the only one who didn’t seem surprised. She must’ve felt the trolls coming. “While they’re distracted!”
We couldn’t run toward the van. The agents and trolls were too close. Alpha and Torrance bolted the other way, toward the pavement, dragging Four between them. I followed before I realized it, my socks slapping the road, surrounded by the noise of guns and whizzing bullets and rat-tat-tat claws and grinding screeches and Valk yelling my name.
One of the trolls launched at Torrance. She yelled and kicked it off.
More shots. A bang, the ground trembling, a tile cracking under my foot—a bullet had hit the ground right behind me. I leaped forward.
“Hazel!” Valk stood a dozen feet away. Trolls lay scattered across the street, blown apart by the agents’ weapons. They reconstructed slowly enough that the agents could focus on us.
Behind me, Torrance was protectively holding Four. They’d fallen farther behind than I’d realized. Alpha and I should help—
“Keep running,” Alpha hissed by my ear.
The redheaded agent and Valk stalked toward us. Behind them, a troll stirred to life.
“But Four—” I started.
“Trust me!”
We turned and ran.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Alpha and I bolted down the street. I flinched at the hellish white bricks of a building, like sunlight glinting off snow.
Except I doubted these bricks had ever been white before tonight.
The agents followed. I heard their footsteps, their yells. Heat thumped through my veins.
“Two agents after us,” Alpha said as we ran, “means only one agent left to go after Four. And she’s got Facet and Torrance on her side. She has better odds if we run. And the agents won’t shoot us.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t”—pant, pant—“know Valk.” Though neither did I, apparently.
I frantically scanned the street. I took in buildings, trees, abandoned cars, a ghost city wrapped in white. I recognized none of it. I didn’t have the faintest clue where I was, aside from “downtown Philadelphia.”
“Don’t need to. We’re running”—she gasped for breath—“toward the helicopter. Right where they want us. Shooting would only slow us down.”
“Why do they want us in the helicopter?”
“The rift is too far up from the ground. They need to toss us in from above.”
“You have a plan?” We skidded around a corner, almost slamming into something big and metal. Looked like a crashed aircraft. Rift? Military? We automatically split up and went around it, converging again on the other side.
“Not anymore,” Alpha said. “I thought there’d be more trolls.”
The agents gained on us. Two trained agents were always going to outrun two exhausted teenage girls. Especially if one had just woke from a coma, and the other wasn’t even wearing shoes.
“Hazel!” Valk called.
My every instinct told me to slow down and listen. This was all a big misunderstanding, right? Even now that I’d seen Valk in the flesh, her gun pointed straight at me, the idea of her—of anyone—planning to actually kill me refused to compute.
She wasn’t a troll. Not a mindless, moving heap of dirt. She was a person. Valk had brought me tea during research sessions just last night. She’d been working with the MGA since before I hit puberty. She’d escorted me to mini-golf countless times. She’d even joined every now and again, her immaculate suit starkly out of place amid the miniature Liberty Bell and colorful golf balls.
I barely knew the other agents, but, God, that meant they barely knew me, too, yet they were ready to kill me.
And I needed to let them.
The thought hit me like a hammer, the same way it’d done a hundred times in the car ride here. It still felt as fresh as it had the moment Neven had said the words to me.
I needed to die.
It should’ve been simple. Valk and I wanted the same thing—the rift closed, no matter th
e cost.
But what if I sacrificed myself and the rift took too long to close? What if Valk thought it hadn’t worked and went for Alpha and Four next? I had to know they were safe before I gave myself up. Which meant I needed to buy time for them to escape—and for me to explain. They’d never agree to abandon me otherwise. I knew them well enough to know that.
“I talked to Neven,” I started, “and she, she said . . .” A stitch stabbed my side. I pressed one hand to it. We ran past a church, then past a building heavy with scaffolding and peeling advertisements. The scaffolding ran off into a narrow construction tunnel on one side. The moment I could, I surged off into the tunnel, blocking out the blinding-white world.
The agents were right behind us. Their heavy steps slammed on the floor panels.
I took my knife and slashed through the metal support beams. Some diagonal slices so the beams would slide away, other times slashing twice and cutting out an entire foot from the poles. A horrid metal-on-metal screech cut through the air. Alpha and I rushed away. A noise thundered from above—
The scaffolding tore from the wall. Wooden platforms tumbled down. Metal poles collapsed and clanged and crashed into each other.
I made eye contact with Valk right as the construction clattered down between us.
“Nice.” Alpha took off her glasses. “Here. Your stupid glasses gave me a headache.”
I slipped them on. The world shifted into focus. We stood in a dusty courtyard filled with crates and dead plants, surrounded on all sides by aging buildings. The only ways out were through the buildings or the collapsed path behind us.
Alpha added, “I’m keeping your shoes, though.”
She must’ve said it as a joke, but I couldn’t imagine joking right now. I was panting. My legs trembled from exertion. “You need to get away.”
“We’re working on that.”
“Not we. You.” I licked my lips. “I found the secret to saving the world. My big destiny. Neven confirmed it: I need to die. Me. Not you or Four. You two should get out of here while you can, and I’ll—”
“Um,” Alpha interrupted. “Bullshit?”
“What?”
“You’re saying you can save the world?” She gestured at the sky, white and fragile. Like someone had taken an eraser to it. “Forget Valk’s nonsense. We fight, and we run.”
“It’s not only Valk saying it,” I stressed. “It’s the Powers That Be and Neven. It’s the truth.”
Alpha gripped my hand. “In Damford, I was willing to die to stop the trolls. I know what you’re feeling. But trolls are one thing; I knew how they worked. This rift—how could any of us fix that?”
“You were willing to die?”
“Of course.”
“But you fought when you realized what the Powers wanted.”
“No: The trolls fought. Just because I knew it was the right thing didn’t mean that part of me wasn’t begging for another option. That part of me wasn’t terrified. The trolls picked up on that.”
My voice was brittle. “I’m terrified, too.” This was the one thing that would fix all my failures, and I couldn’t run from it. “Please, for me, please, just escape while you can.”
“We can’t save the world. OK? We can only save ourselves.” Alpha yanked at my arm. Frustrated tears glinted in her eyes. “Come on!” Her hair glared white in the light, a blot devoid of texture. My stomach turned.
The rift was getting worse.
“If I do this,” I whispered, “you can go home.”
Alpha froze. “Home?”
“Just hide. Then I can draw away the agents.”
She was still staring, uncomprehending.
We didn’t have time. The agents had to be trying to reach us. I tugged my arm free, already turning toward the doors to our left. “Please,” I tried, one last time. Then I burst through the doors. A hazy glow hung in the air, painting the inside of the building in muted grays. A restaurant, based on the scattered tables and the bar along one wall. Where was the exit to the street—There, maybe around the corner—?
I slammed into Valk, then scrambled away. She made a grab for me. Fingers yanked at the back of my sweatshirt. She hauled me in with such force I almost fell.
“Get the other one,” Valk told the redheaded agent.
“No!” I yelled. “You have me. Just take me and go! I’m Prime—not Alpha—we swapped at the farm. Take me!”
The agent went around us, deeper into the restaurant—
Alpha stepped around the corner, gripping a dining chair with both hands. It slammed into his chest.
The agent grunted, stumbled.
She lifted the chair and hit him again, this time on the shoulders. He crashed sideways onto the ground. The gun in his hand dropped. A fraction of a second later, Alpha kicked it out of reach.
The agent tried to push himself upright.
The chair hit him on the back of his head. He dropped back to the floor, his body limp.
“Let her go,” Alpha growled at Valk.
Valk looked from Alpha to the agent on the floor. Her grip shifted, pinning my arms behind my back so tightly it was like I’d been cuffed. When she stepped back, I got pulled with her. “You’re being selfish,” she said, seething. “I’m trying to save people. I thought you understood.”
“Run,” I told Alpha. “Let her take me. This needs to happen.”
Alpha’s lips pressed together in grim determination. She stalked toward Valk and me, slipping in between chairs and around tables.
“Stay there!” Valk warned. She fumbled with her gun one-handed, still gripping me tight with the other, and aimed.
Alpha didn’t slow.
Valk fired. My shoulders snapped up to my ears. The sound bounced around my skull.
The bullet slammed into a table in front of Alpha. The surface cracked into splinters. For a moment Alpha froze, staring at the table as though letting her brain catch up.
Then her lips twisted in a sneer. She forged ahead, her gaze fixed on Valk, her hands around the chair flexing as though she were itching to slam it into someone else.
“Run,” I begged. “Please.”
“Cute,” Alpha said. “But no.”
She kept coming, lifting the chair higher. She’d nearly gotten shot and, somehow, she wasn’t scared.
Somehow, she wasn’t sc—
The second shot sent her blood spraying.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
If Alpha cried out, I didn’t hear it. My own shriek cut through every other sound.
The chair fell from Alpha’s hands. She crashed into the table behind her. It dragged across the floor with a metallic screech. She almost slid to the ground, but managed to keep herself propped up, one arm on the surface of the table. The other hand groped for her side. She pressed against the wound. Bright wet blood glimmered on her clothes and hand. She breathed fast, shallowly.
“Hn.” Pain flashed over her face. “Hnnn. Could be worse.”
“Are you— How bad is it?” I asked. Worry churned in my stomach. If she could talk, if she wasn’t panicking . . . Maybe it was just a scrape like in the movies. Alpha had to be OK. I’d come all this way to save her so she could finally go home, finally see her father and her Tara again—I couldn’t lose her now to a stupid bullet, that wasn’t fair—
It was supposed to be me.
Alpha fixed a glare at Valk.
“Don’t. Don’t!” I called. “Just leave!”
Alpha stepped away from the table. Her legs wobbled, then gave out underneath her. She collapsed to the floor, doubling over, her hand pressing the wound.
“Let her go,” she told Valk, panting.
Valk turned away. She pulled me through the restaurant, sidestepping tables. The exit was right ahead of us. White light spilled inside. “The helicopter is two blocks away,” she said, her voice close to my ear. “You’re not going to give me any trouble. Understand?”
“Understood,” I whispered.
Anything, as long as
she left Alpha behind.
Anything, as long as it meant closing the rift.
Valk pulled me out of the restaurant.
A shot fired. I jolted at the noise.
Valk screamed. She crashed into me. I tugged free and nearly tripped on the uneven pavement. Valk fell to her knees, groaning.
Blood drenched her calf. She was on all fours, her hands pressed to the ground, still holding her weapon.
“No,” Valk said, gasping. She seemed to be talking to herself more than to me. “No. No. Please.”
I looked over my shoulder. Alpha was still inside the restaurant, leaning heavily against a table, her breathing ragged. One hand held a gun. Had to be the agent’s gun she’d kicked away earlier.
“Hazel,” Valk said. “Don’t be . . . don’t be selfish.”
I didn’t know what to do. I’d thought that once Alpha and Four were safe, the agents would grab me and I’d let them finish it. Finish me.
How was this sacrifice supposed to work if I had to do it myself? Should I say something to Alpha before I . . . before I tried to . . .
A scream.
Distant, muffled. The cry cut off straightaway. I still recognized the voice. How could I not?
“Four?” Alpha said behind me.
The sound had come from at least a block away, from the same direction we’d been running toward. The helicopter?
“Go!” Alpha yelled. “I’m fine. Trolls are coming. Go!”
I was running before I realized it.
I sprinted past the restaurant and across the street. I let the voices behind me blur into unintelligibility as I focused on the blocks ahead, trying to make out any yells or voices, any hint of what was happening. All I heard was my own labored breathing, the thumps reverberating through my body whenever my feet hit the ground.
Twice, I had to leap over cracks in the asphalt. All around me were traces of the rift: molten streetlights, mounds of rock dropped in the middle of the street, chunks torn from the huge office buildings around me. Items had crashed to the ground—everything from twisted car engines to deep-sea coral. A carcass with too many legs. A silver-blue cloud hung over the sidewalk.
The strangeness went past the tangible. The world looked overexposed. A badly edited photo. It didn’t look or feel like winter. No wind. No cold. No temperature at all. I couldn’t even smell anything—and in a place like this I should’ve been smelling fumes or trash or metal or something.
The Art of Saving the World Page 30
