Like the world had been put on pause.
To my right, the sidewalk opened up between two identical granite-clad skyscrapers that had to be easily thirty or forty stories high. A square archway stood at the center, the entryway to a large courtyard. A helicopter stood crookedly parked with one of the landing skids on a round ledge and the other on the pavement. Something shimmery and gray had been splattered all over one side, dripping onto the asphalt in thick chunks.
Parked right beside the entryway was a van I immediately recognized as an MGA van. There was movement nearby, people looking faded in the light. I squinted. Two figures were carrying along a third. Long hair swung with every movement. Four hung slumped, held under her shoulders and by her legs.
Had they knocked her out? Or worse? Before I realized it, I was racing across the pavement, my heart thudding and my eyes fixed on Four.
Move. Please, please move.
Alpha and I shouldn’t have run. I’d thought Alpha was right, that Four would be safe with us drawing away most of the agents. But that third agent still had a damn gun. And I hadn’t even stopped to consider there might be more agents I hadn’t seen yet.
I leaped onto the platform, stepping around inactive fountain jets. The figures sharpened the closer I got. Wan color seeped into their clothes and skin. One of them was the agent from before, the small nervous one. She was shuffling toward the helicopter backward. She said something I couldn’t hear. The other person—who’d been holding Four under her arms—looked over her shoulder.
Not an agent. The glasses, the blond hair—
Torrance.
I’d been so focused on Four, I hadn’t even stopped to think . . .
Torrance was helping them.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
“What did you do to her?” I yelled it at the top of my lungs, but my voice sounded frail, as though the air sanded down the edges and thinned the words.
The agent and Torrance had nearly reached the helicopter. I sped up and stumbled to a halt between them and the opening, my knife extended, my breathing heavy. Even up close, I couldn’t tell whether Four was breathing. “Is she—?”
“She’s—she’s sedated,” Torrance said.
“Why?” I didn’t mean the sedation; I meant everything else. But I couldn’t get past that one word. I shook my head. “I thought—You said you’d protect us!”
The agent lowered Four’s legs to the ground. Her hand went to her gun. She gauged the distance between us, her gaze lingering on my knife.
“We have to try this. We have to try something. One Hazel”—Torrance’s voice sounded as shaky as my own—“for all the others. For us. For everyone. I have a kid, Hazel, I just got custody again, I—”
“If we do nothing, we’ll all die anyway.” The agent talked fast. “Honestly? Going through the rift would give the girl a better chance of surviving than any of us have.”
“Valk was right, Hazel,” Torrance said softly. “I didn’t want this. But it’s the right thing to do. The sedation means Four won’t know what’s happening to her.” Even in the white light, I saw a splotch of redness in her face, like she was seconds from crying. Her rimless glasses flashed as she looked up at me. “There could be a world on the other side. If there isn’t, and if she dies, at least it’ll be painless. I don’t want to hurt any of you. You know that, don’t you?”
She sounded desperate, as though she wanted—needed—me to understand. I wanted to argue. I wanted to scream and grab Four and run; I wanted to sob and laugh hysterically.
Instead, I said: “Use me.”
“Hazel . . . No. Not you. You’ve been through enough.”
“Use me,” I repeated. “Leave Four here. You need to take me if you want to close the rift. I’m—I’m not Alpha. I’m Prime. We switched places at the farm. Killing Four, killing any of the other Hazels, won’t close the rift. You need me. I won’t fight.”
Torrance hesitated. “Taking Prime’s glasses is a nice touch. I’d almost believe you. But I know you, Hazel. And I know you’re not her.”
“What?”
“I worked with you for years. You think I can’t tell you apart from the others? Just because you hate me doesn’t mean . . .” She let the words hang there. “I know you’re trying to save Four. It’s brave of you.”
“But taking you risks trouble and trolls,” the agent cut in. “Four’s already sedated. She won’t even know. Step aside.” She aimed her gun. There was a tremble to her hands. “I won’t ask again.”
“I’m not Alpha!”
Torrance hoisted up Four, giving me a pleading look.
The agent swallowed visibly. “You probably don’t care about what happens to you. You’ve dealt with a lifetime of shit in your own world. But you care about what happens to her.” She shifted the gun, pressing it into Four’s temple. Her skin scrunched up. “We want to keep her alive. Honest. But—but I’d rather throw a dead Hazel into the rift than none at all. Back. Off.”
We stared at each other in silence.
Above us, a flash of dark broke the hellish whiteness of the sky. I automatically glanced upward. Just for a fraction of a second.
It was enough.
The agent darted forward. One hand yanked down my knife hand. The other grabbed my shirt. Before I knew what was happening, she’d tossed me to the platform. She planted her foot on my wrist, pressing it against one of the recessed spotlights on the fountain surface.
Behind her, Torrance hauled Four into the helicopter.
The agent scanned her surroundings with narrow, nervous eyes. Probably checking for trolls.
“See?” I said. “There’s no trolls, there’s nothing. I’m not Alph—”
Her foot moved from my wrist to my torso. She brought down her heel into my stomach. Pain lanced through my gut. I rolled to my side. Doubled over. I sucked in sharp, shallow gasps.
“No!” Torrance called from the helicopter. Her voice caught. “Don’t hurt her!”
“Stay down,” the agent hissed. “If you try anything else—if that damn dragon even comes near us—the girl dies.”
Her footsteps faded. There was a thump. Voices. A fierce gust of wind yanked at my hair. A swoop-swoop-swoop sound filled the air, louder by the second.
“Don’t . . . Don’t go.” I mumbled the words. Pain fogged up my mind so bad I realized only belatedly I should’ve yelled. Not that it’d have made any difference.
By the time I managed to sit shakily upright, the helicopter was a few feet from the ground and rising fast. My hair whipped around my face, stinging my skin. The wind from the rotors rushed into me so aggressively I could barely keep my eyes open.
I’d lost.
The thought came as a second kick to the gut. I imagined Four inside the helicopter as an unmoving heap, that agent shoving her out, her body limp as it fell . . . The images played on repeat in my mind.
Even if I died—even if the rift closed—
I’d still have lost Four.
I’d still have lost.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Voices called my name.
A shadow glided over the courtyard. Those movements . . .
“Neven?” I said, dumbfounded. Glistening scales. The beating of wings. Two ghostlike girls clutched her back like their lives depended on it.
Neven had to be that dark flash I’d seen in the sky. I’d thought it was something from the rift. Why would Neven come here, why would she bring the others, how had she even found them—?
A dozen feet away, Neven’s heavy body thumped onto one of the planters flanking the fountain.
“Prime!” Rainbow slid off Neven’s back and came running. She peered up mid-run. The helicopter was passing over the building behind the courtyard. “What happened? What’s with the helicopter?” Rainbow had to speak loudly to be heard over the sound of the rotors. “Wait, is this Commerce Square? I barely recognized it—What’s that light—?”
“Are you OK?” Red sounded worried. “Where are th
e others?”
“They have Four.” I watched the helicopter disappear behind the skyscraper. Tears pressed at my eyes. “She’s in there. They’re going to—They’re—”
Rainbow helped drag me upright. Pain shot through my torso. She looked over her shoulder at Neven. “We have to go get her.”
“No!” I blurted out. The agent had warned me about taking Neven up to the helicopter.
What was the alternative? Letting Four fall?
Rainbow was right. God help me, I needed to take the risk. I shook my head, fighting off the tears. “I’ll go.” I gestured. “Alpha is two blocks that way. Near a restaurant. Facet is around somewhere, too.”
I picked up my knife and sprinted toward Neven. With every movement, pain radiated from where the agent had kicked me. By the time I reached Neven, I was limping more than running.
“You’re here.” I panted. “We—we have to—”
She was already crouching, flattening the plants below her. “That helicopter, yes?”
My belly ached. My legs were exhausted. My socks slid off Neven’s scales twice as I climbed onto her back; it took her tail acting as support before I managed. She instantly stood. “But stay at a distance,” I called at her. “They’ll kill Four if they see us.”
Neven took off at a trot, then leaped, taking us up farther with every beat of her massive wings. “They won’t see us.”
“How can you know?” I pressed myself to her back.
“I’ve tussled with these helicopters before. These models don’t have rearview mirrors, and their equipment can’t detect me.”
The helicopter couldn’t be far; I could still hear the rotors. Underneath that noise, a hiss filled the air, like the first sputtering squeals of a teapot. Ripples of goose bumps washed over me. The rift. I was hearing the rift.
The ground dissipated below us. The higher we climbed, the more it faded into whiteness, like I imagined ships growing fainter at the horizon or a landscape disappearing into fog.
We swerved into the street. The helicopter was a fuzzy gray shape at the end of the block. Just past it, the world was splitting in two.
I’d last seen the rift that afternoon. I knew it’d grown, but . . .
The rift stretched from a dozen feet off the ground to the top of one of the two skyscrapers boxing in the courtyard. Once, the rift had been a diagonal slash, its edges fizzling and sharp. Now it looked like a deep, Y-shaped gash. Its edges smudged into the world around it. The air pulsed and trembled and shimmered. A white sky turned turquoise; gray concrete shifted into an ugly shade of yellow. The deeper into the core of the rift I looked, the more reality blurred and distorted. A wisp of starry sky unfurled and then faded. Antler-like tendrils snaked from the center of the rift toward the ground, groping around eagerly before getting yanked back into the rift and twisted up with a stretch of coiling water.
Fine sand whirled from the top of the rift into the air. A chunk of rock the size of a small building spat from the rift and smashed into the ground. Cracks burst open in the asphalt, stretching onward for another two blocks. Car alarms wailed. A newsstand collapsed. The facade of a building came crumbling down; another building groaned dangerously.
I gripped Neven tighter. Wind fluttered past us in erratic bursts. Sometimes it pulled, sometimes it pushed. A gust caught hold of a nearby tree, stripping it bare. Leaves and branches tumbled up into the air and into the rift.
Even as I watched, the rift grew. It bled into the world inch by inch, foot by foot. Windows cracked where it spread, the glass shards caught up in whirlwinds before violently spraying outward.
How long would it take for the city to be swallowed up? The state?
I might not have much more time to stop the rift.
But Four—
The ripped-off wing of an airplane flung from the rift. It missed the helicopter by a few feet, spinning in the air over a parking garage and slamming into a nearby building, where it took out the entire top floor.
The helicopter struggled to right itself. I pictured the agent inside frantically trying to steer closer to the rift, even as they swayed and tilted wildly.
The helicopter ended up rising straight up—high enough to escape the worst of the rift’s effects—before slowly continuing its approach. This time, they went unscathed.
“Hazel?” Neven said calmly. “Tell me what you want to do.”
My gaze shifted frenetically from the helicopter to the rift.
If we attacked the helicopter, they’d kill Four. Our best chance—our only chance—was to catch Four after they threw her out.
“Can you get closer? But stay out of sight.”
Neven obeyed without question. Wind yanked at my hair as we flew straight through a cloud of fluttering pink insects, right past a tree that was careening through the air on its way to crashing into what looked like railroad tracks—
The helicopter hovered directly above the rift now. It wobbled precariously. Neven slowed, angling her body toward the skyscraper. Her claws grabbed on to the granite wall to keep in place.
Behind us came the rumbling sound of something collapsing. I focused on the helicopter hovering over the city, a lonely blot on a stretch of sky so white it burned my eyes.
The door on the side of the helicopter opened.
“Get ready,” I whispered.
For several agonizing seconds, nothing happened. My heart stuck in my throat, making it hard to breathe. Maybe they changed their minds, maybe—
A body came tumbling from the helicopter.
“Go!” My voice was an unrecognizable shriek, instantly swallowed by the wind.
Neven pushed off from the building. She shot up, her wings tight by her side. I couldn’t look away from Four. She dropped headfirst. Her body turned as she fell: her back arching, her limbs fluttering lifelessly—
She fell so fast, God, we weren’t going to make it—
We came closer, closer, so close I could see Four’s hair lashing around her head, her lips parting, her eyes closed and her face slack. Below us, the rift twisted and pulsated. A vortex of color twitched at its center.
Even as I watched, a bus got sucked in and swallowed whole. I felt the rift tug at us, like gravity pulling us in—
A jerk. Neven veered sideways, away from the rift.
“Do you have her?” I clutched Neven’s neck, stretching as far left as I could and desperately scanning for any sign of Four. A gust of wind almost yanked me off.
“I have her.” Neven sounded tense.
I finally glimpsed Four’s rag doll body dangling from Neven’s claws. Her arms and legs swung limply back and forth.
“Is she—?”
“She’s breathing.”
I closed my eyes in relief, my arms tight around Neven. Her scales scraped against my skin. For a moment, nothing else existed: not the rift, not the yells from the helicopter above, not the streets tearing open below, not the knowledge that these were my last minutes on this planet. Four was alive. The others were safe on the ground. Whatever happened next, I knew Neven could get them to safety, and that I could stop the rift before it expanded farther, and—
The sound of a gunshot exploded behind us. Instinctively, I pressed myself flat to Neven. She swerved instantly, her wings close. We narrowly evaded a second shot. The bullet whizzed past us, mere feet away.
A third shot fired.
Neven shrieked.
A spasm went through her. She dropped like something had swatted her from the sky. One of my hands slipped from her neck. I lunged closer to hold on, but for a second, my arm was the only thing holding on to her, the rest of me weightless and flailing. The roof of the granite skyscraper flashed nearly a dozen feet below. A glimpse of Neven’s tail, part of the scales stripped off, the flesh beneath open and red. Splashes of blood glittered in midair.
“No! No!” Neven howled. A flap of her wings. With a heavy groan, she straightened herself. I thumped back onto her neck. She whirled and dove straight down, maybe
to avoid another bullet, maybe to—
Oh.
By the time I realized what I was seeing, Four had already slammed onto the roof.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Thump.
The sound was brief. Muted. I barely heard it over the noise of the helicopter or the chaos below.
It was still enough to turn my stomach.
Four lay facedown on the stone surface. We had to get down there. We had to—
A bullet zoomed past us. It hit the roof a couple of feet from where Four lay. Stone spat in all directions. My head snapped up. The helicopter hovered close by. The barrel of a rifle stuck out from the open door.
Everything inside me screamed to get to Four. Even if she were alive, though, that wouldn’t last if they kept shooting at her.
“Neven! You have to fly closer!”
“But—Four—” Neven’s voice hitched.
I’d never heard her panic. It only lasted a second. Then she tensed up beneath me. She shifted course, shooting toward the helicopter.
“Plan?” she asked.
“Distract,” I called back. “Then fly right underneath.”
Neven’s turns were slow and jerky. Every now and then, a shudder rippled through her. She kept her tail rigidly behind her.
She still flung herself at the helicopter without hesitation. She dragged claws over the cockpit glass and spun to dodge shots, fast as lightning.
Gratitude washed over me, twisting itself up with fear over Four and rage at that helicopter.
Ten seconds of taunting were enough to draw attention away from Four. Torrance and the agent had their hands full maneuvering the helicopter out of the way.
Good enough. I gave Neven’s neck two quick squeezes. She picked up on the signal immediately and approached the helicopter diagonally from behind, out of reach from the gunfire.
I had my knife ready. My arm stood straight upright, pointing the blade in the air. Neven brought me close enough to reach the hull. The knife tore smoothly into the metal, the handle scraping across.
The Art of Saving the World Page 31
