The Art of Saving the World

by Corinne Duyvis

  I slashed, taking out misshapen chunks and cutting wide gashes. Metal rained around us.

  The helicopter tilted, whirling from its path. I heard alarmed yells as they attempted to bring it back on course. They veered sharply away, downward, spinning and tilting further, struggling to reach a low rooftop a block farther down.

  Neven flew out of the way in time to avoid getting caught in their descent.

  I hoped the helicopter would reach the building safely.

  But I wouldn’t stay to make sure.

  Within moments, Neven landed on the rooftop where she’d dropped Four. I climbed off, stumbling and coming to a sliding landing by Four. She still lay facedown, unmoving. The sight of blood near her head made my heart freeze, but then I saw where it came from—her shoulder. However nasty or big that injury might be, it wouldn’t be lethal. I thought. I hoped.

  I pressed a shaky hand to her neck. For an agonizing second, I felt nothing.

  Then: a heartbeat.

  Another beat.

  Another.

  She was breathing, too. I could see the faint flare of her nose, pressed against the ground.

  “She’s alive,” I told Neven. “What do I do? Turn her over like Dad?”

  “No. If she’s bleeding heavily, try to stanch it. Otherwise, there’s nothing you can do. She needs medical help.”

  “And you? Can you fly all right?”

  “‘All right’ is the correct term, yes. I will be fine.”

  “Then, can you take Four out of here?” I looked up, pleading. “And the others?”

  Even if I managed to close the rift, I didn’t know how long the Power would take to send the Hazels home. It could even renege on our deal entirely. If anything went wrong, I wanted a backup plan. Four needed medical help whether in her world or ours.

  “I’ll get the others first,” Neven said, “then come back for Four. The less she’s jostled, the better.”

  I nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Hazel . . .?”

  “Go,” I said. I didn’t need an audience for what I was about to do. I swallowed. “Please.”

  She hesitated. “You deserved better than this, you know. So much better.” Then she glided off the roof, her wings outstretched and her tail still.

  I tried not to jostle Four as I scanned her for any bleeding I might’ve missed. A thick cut on her forehead. A scrape on her cheek with dirt embedded. I flicked off what I could, but didn’t dare dig around. Her arm looked oddly twisted, and I gently tried to position it in a more natural way. You were supposed to do that with broken bones, right? God, I didn’t know. I definitely didn’t know how to handle a concussion or internal bleeding. She’d dropped at least one story, maybe two—how bad was that? What were her odds?

  I needed to go. I needed . . .

  I brushed hair from Four’s face. She was breathing normally, rhythmically. “Guess what?” I whispered. “I finally cut up a helicopter.”

  No response.

  I swallowed. “You’re going home. All right? You’ll see Mom and Dad and Caro again. You’ll be OK.”

  As long as I did what I needed to do.

  I tore myself away from her side. My movements were mechanical. Step by step, I approached the edge of the roof. I peered down over the narrow ledge.

  Directly below me, the rift filled half the street. I could no longer keep track of what went in and out or what was spiraling endlessly, restlessly in its center. A flash of something blue shot from the rift straight upward. I couldn’t even identify it—it didn’t look like water, didn’t look like anything tangible. It only looked like blue.

  The city throbbed with life. Whites alternated with flickers of too-vibrant colors—trees with poison-green leaves and electric-orange trunks; cars with radiant shades of aqua and fluorescent pink. The air smelled of earth and fresh-cut grass.

  I’d been so sure about what I needed to do, back at the farm and in the car and running down those Philadelphia streets. I hadn’t doubted it once. I’d been looking for the answer for days—for my whole life—and once I’d received that answer, I embraced it.

  I could help. It was all I’d ever wanted.

  But now, standing here, I couldn’t get my body to listen.

  Coward, I thought quietly, and did not move.

  A sound behind me. I turned. Through a haze, through endless white cotton, I saw Neven land near Four. The others climbed off.

  “Facet’s with the van,” Rainbow told me. “He has the agents tied up in the back.”

  She crouched by Four’s side. Alpha did the same. Neither seemed surprised; Neven must’ve filled them in.

  Only Red hesitated. “You should get away from that ledge,” she said to me, her voice full of concern. “The rift is too close.”

  She wasn’t wrong.

  I watched the rift, mesmerized. A small climb, a tiny push forward, and I’d be tumbling down into it. An easy death. A fitting one. Perhaps a painless one.

  “Four’s not waking up,” Alpha said.

  “She’s sedated.” My voice was distant. My hands were on the ledge.

  “Why?”

  “So she wouldn’t struggle. So it wouldn’t hurt if the rift meant her death.”

  “What are we doing?” Red craned her neck up and took in the white of the world. “It’s . . . It’s too late to do anything, isn’t it?”

  It wasn’t. Not yet.

  I simply had to jump.

  So why hadn’t I already? It’d be even harder with the others watching me. If I’d jumped sooner, maybe they’d never have needed to know what happened to me—they’d just have found themselves transported home and thought each of us lived a happy ending.

  I wished the agents had taken my offer. They could’ve sedated me like they had Four. If I had to die, I at least wanted it to be painless. I wanted a slight jab in my arm. I wanted my eyelids to flutter as I saw my last glimpses of life, then drift off and never know what happened next.

  “Prime?” Red said. “We need to go. Four needs help.”

  “That rift isn’t getting any smaller,” Alpha added.

  Maybe I should ask Neven to take me to Torrance and the agent on that other rooftop. Surely they’d help me, surely they’d be grateful I offered myself up, right? They’d do the hard part. And—

  And that wouldn’t be enough, I realized.

  Neven had told me. She’d told me, right when I’d freed her back at the barns.

  “Success requires more than my death,” I said aloud. I waited for Neven to confirm, tuning out the others’ gasps.

  “What? No—”

  “You’re not—”

  “Listen, if Valk—She didn’t have all the information—”

  I closed my eyes to block them out. “My death would save the world. But for the Power, success means its Chosen One saving the world . . .” A memory came to me; Neven’s words from when she’d explained the rift to us. “Through an act of heroism.”

  Neven nodded silently.

  I turned my head away. My breathing came hard and shallow and painful.

  My death would close the rift no matter what. But for the Power to see it as a satisfying conclusion to our deal, for it to send the others home . . .

  “Not all deaths count,” I whispered. “It needs me to do it myself.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  “No way. No!” Rainbow vigorously shook her head. “That’s not the solution!”

  “Why you?” Alpha demanded. “How can you be sure?”

  I stared at the rift below. “The rift is linked to me. My death will trigger it to close. A fail-safe.”

  “If you’re connected, we might be, too,” Rainbow said. It sounded like her, at least. “It doesn’t have to be you. It might not even work.”

  “It will. It already did back in Damford. I died. Remember? It worked then.” I looked over my shoulder. Realization dawned on their faces. “It has to be me. Your connection isn’t as strong as mine.”

  I wouldn’t
let you do this even if it was.

  “But . . .” Red didn’t finish.

  “I’m sorry,” Neven said.

  “Yeah?” My voice was thick. “You’re the one who suggested it. You and the Power, making us think we could be heroes.” The word sounded so silly now, so immature and childish that I wanted to shake my old self by the shoulders and tell her she should’ve known better.

  I could only be important by being a tool.

  By dying.

  Someone like me couldn’t do it any other way.

  “What else could I have done?” Neven asked.

  I hadn’t realized how angry I was until now. It was this heavy coil in my chest, fighting its way out. I wanted to tell Neven a dozen things she could’ve done—stand up to the Powers That Be; make them board up the world; tell me instead of letting me search and panic and hope—

  But it wasn’t Neven I was angry at. Without her, the Power would’ve taken its leave already.

  If she’d stood up to the Power, it might not have agreed to her proposal at all.

  If she’d told me the solution, the Power wouldn’t have counted it, wouldn’t have agreed to send the others home. It’d wanted me to come to the realization myself.

  “OK. OK. Fine. Fine. Fine.” I wasn’t sure what I was saying, all panicked garbled words. “Fine.” I peered over the ledge. Why wasn’t I jumping?

  I could use my knife instead. I took it out. Its bright white shine melted into the background. The Power would probably give points for style; it seemed like the type.

  “This can’t be it!” Rainbow shouted. “Neven, you have to stop this. The Power, it—it wants a happy ending! It wants her to win! This can’t be it!”

  Neven sounded neutral. “The Power never wanted a happy ending. It wanted a good one.”

  “This isn’t fair.” Red’s voice hitched.

  “No. It isn’t.”

  “There’s got to be another way.”

  “Stop,” I said. “You’re making it harder. If I do this, you’ll all get to go home. I can fix everything.”

  The knife wasn’t long. It’d be long enough to do the job, though. Would it be fast? Painless? Maybe I should ask Red to look it up online. A sobbing laugh escaped me.

  I should just step off the roof.

  That’d be simplest.

  I climbed onto the ledge.

  “Stop!” Red screamed. “This isn’t fair! Why are we even here? We’re supposed to help! Let us help!”

  “Don’t do this.” Alpha’s voice was tight. “Don’t.”

  I crouched on the ledge, my hands clinging to the stone to steady me against the wind. I resisted the urge to turn. I needed to keep my focus. I’d made the decision, just like Rainbow had said. Tiny decisions, tiny steps. I could be exactly the kind of person I wanted to be. The kind of person who saved her friends and family and everyone else.

  All I needed was to let go.

  The world below was so vibrant, and the world above so white. I could barely make out the buildings around us. They were faded, overexposed lines and angles. The air felt charged. It crackled on my skin. The hairs on my arms and neck pricked upright. I heard the air, too.

  Rumbling. Humming.

  We were close, now. I should have stepped off this ledge already.

  I wondered whether the Power was watching.

  I wondered whether Mom and Dad and Caro—

  No, I couldn’t think about them. They’d make me step back instead of forward.

  “Not fair,” one of the others slurred. “You coulda let Torrance . . . me . . .”

  I looked back.

  Four was awake. She lay in the same pose as before, her face twisted in pain.

  Red immediately crouched by her side. Four didn’t lose eye contact with me.

  “No,” I said quietly. “You deserve better.”

  I should have stepped off this ledge already.

  “If we deserve better, then so do you.” I didn’t know which one of them said it.

  I squinted my eyes shut, trapping tears between my eyelashes. At least I knew that Four had told me the truth in the hospital: The others didn’t blame me. Even knowing that if I jumped, they’d get to go home, they were still trying to stop me—and I understood, I did. I would do the same for them.

  I had done the same for them. I’d spared Alpha even when killing her seemed the only option. I’d pleaded to trade my life for Four’s.

  Even now—preparing to take my last step—I was doing the same for them. They deserved to go home and kiss their girlfriends and attend their classmates’ birthday parties like I never could—

  —I never would—

  I should have stepped off this ledge already.

  If the Power was watching, I hoped it realized . . .

  “Are you watching?” I asked.

  I lifted my chin at the glare of the world.

  “You’re here. Aren’t you?”

  Nothing.

  It didn’t want to spoil the moment, I bet. It was watching, rooting for me to move forward, to meet my fate.

  I stepped off the ledge.

  Backward.

  Back onto the roof.

  Behind me, I heard a relieved sob. I stood still, catching my breath, not yet turning to face them.

  “Neven,” I asked, “can we still escape the rift if we leave now?”

  “Our odds are decent. I can take you to the airport the agents were evacuating you to. Hazel, what . . .?”

  “Power? I want to talk to you.” I strengthened my voice even as the white seemed to steal it from my lungs. “I want to talk to you about my fate.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  The world thinned around us.

  I waited. I pictured myself climbing onto that ledge again, leaping before it was too late—

  I was wasting my one chance—

  I waited.

  The Power appeared on the ledge. It still looked like me, but it no longer glowed. Instead, it looked transparent—faded. I suspected that if I turned, the others would look the same. I probably looked the same.

  “This is highly unorthodox,” the Power said crankily.

  “You need me to do this.”

  It looked down at me balefully.

  “You,” I repeated, “need me.”

  “I can mold your world with a snap of my fingers. While you’re a child whose biggest talent is to seriously disappoint me.”

  I flinched. “Yes. And you need me.”

  It glared.

  “I don’t know if what you’re doing is a higher calling, a bet, a job, or a game. But I know you want to succeed. And I know you’re not supposed to cheat.” I waited for an answer, then realized that I didn’t need one. “No one said anything about me cheating.”

  “You can’t cheat the rift,” the Power snapped. “Just throw yourself off this rooftop so we can all move on.”

  “I don’t mean cheating the rift, either.” I swallowed, my mouth dry, my body brittle.

  I had to hurry, or I wouldn’t be here to cheat anyone. The rift would kill me and snap itself shut in the process. Forget bringing the others home; I’d have killed them myself.

  “You need me,” I said as the Power threw up its hands in frustration, “to win.”

  “I’m beginning to think losing would be worth it to watch your pathetic world wrecked.”

  “That’ll happen any minute now. The rift will flood into the streets and swallow up the city. If I try to stop it and can’t, I’m a failed hero. That’s fine, right? You already accepted that back in Damford. All this was simply a last-ditch effort to turn things around. No harm, no foul.”

  It fell silent, perhaps waiting to see where I was going with this.

  “But what if I don’t even try? What if I sit safely on Neven’s back and watch it from afar?” I was shaking. I couldn’t tell if I was scared or angry, or whether the rift was weakening me the same way it weakened the world. “Then I won’t be the one failing. You will be. Try explai
ning that at home.”

  The Power hadn’t moved much before, but now it froze like a still frame in a movie.

  I hadn’t been sure.

  Now I was.

  “Jumping off a Philadelphia skyscraper isn’t my fate. It’s not the only way. It’s not inescapable! It’s not my decision, it’s yours! It’s just what you think would be cool to see. And I’m not playing along. It’s not fair. It’s not. You don’t get to ruin my life and end it before, before . . .” Before I get to live in the same house as my sister again, I get to tap my own frozen yogurt, I get to kiss a girl, I get to eat at a restaurant other than Franny’s, I get to see the midseason finales of my favorite shows, I get to thank Aunt Lina for her clothes, I get to graduate, I get to wear the purple gloves I got for my birthday—

  The Power’s edges shook, as if someone was plucking at them. For a moment I feared the same was happening to me—to all of us—but when I looked down, my hands looked normal.

  Still trembling, still bone-white, but normal.

  “Board up the world,” I said. “I don’t care if the other Powers rip into you for it. I don’t care if it’s drastic. I don’t care if it means you lose access to our world forever—hell, that sounds like a plus to me. Do it. Send the other Hazels back safely—making sure Four survives—then do it. Or I swear I’ll watch Philadelphia die, and after that, Alpha and I will gather every troll we can find and set them loose. I won’t lift a finger to stop them.”

  “You’re bluffing.” The Power’s voice was high, dipping low near the end.

  “Am I?” I said shrilly. “After all this, do you think I’d rather throw myself off a rooftop than choose to live and screw you over in the process?”

  “You wouldn’t risk hurting other people.”

  “I’m standing here alive, aren’t I? I’m taking that risk already.”

  “Hazel,” Neven said, her tone a warning.

  The Power’s face shifted, jittered. For a moment, I swore that I saw Torrance in its features—then Caro’s, and then it bulged out and took a shape like Neven’s before drawing back in and shifting into Facet, back into me, into Valk—