“I have an idea,” I say.
“Oh joy,” Shannon mutters. “Here we go.”
“Turk,” I say. “Do you have your TouchMe?”
He pulls the silver device out of his back pocket. “Yup. Why?”
“Can you set it up to film me?” I ask. “I want to record something and then have it leaked to the media. I bet you anything they’ll play it everywhere.”
“Great idea!” Ryah says. “But what are you going to say?”
“The truth,” I reply.
“To the people of Manhattan:
“You’ve seen me on your television screens, but this is the first time you are truly hearing from me. Some of you may think what I’ve done is heroic, while others, I’m sure, believe I am a large part of the reason you have lost friends and family to this war.
“There are others in this city, including my parents, my brother, and the Foster family, who would gladly see many of you perish if it meant extending their hold on Manhattan once more.
“But I do not share their beliefs. Since I witnessed a mystic draining firsthand and spent time here in the Depths, I have not believed that mystics should be drained—any more than I or any other human should be drained against our will of our own blood. And while I have left my family and the Aeries to live in the Depths with Hunter Brooks, I can no longer stand by and watch as he continues to fight this war as aggressively as my family does.
“Hunter Brooks is a good man, but he is not perfect. His family has a long legacy of fighting for mystic equality here in Manhattan. He believes that what he is doing is for the best, and perhaps many of you agree with him.
“But I no longer support his course of action.
“Hunter Brooks and his followers are planning to detonate a bomb today near the Empire State Building. The bomb will affect every nonmystic within a quarter-mile radius—maybe more. I am going to attempt to stop him, but if you are watching this, please evacuate the area for your own safety.”
I pause. “Hunter Brooks is desperate to end this war. We all are. I urge you all not to hold this against him once everything is resolved. I believe that things will be resolved, as peacefully and amicably as possible. I still believe we can reach a truce. And I hope you believe in me.”
I give a tiny nod, and Turk stops recording.
“Wow,” he says. “That was intense.”
“Intense good or intense bad?”
“Good,” he says. “Very good. And very brave.”
“No.” I wave him off. “I’m not brave. All I did was sit in front of a camera and speak. It’s the people out there, in the Depths, living this war … those are the brave ones.”
Turk pockets his TouchMe and tilts his head, staring directly at me. Warmth radiates from his eyes. One of the images tattooed on his left bicep—a fire-breathing woman—seems to dance.
“What?” I say.
“You’re something else, Aria,” he says.
I know he means this as a compliment, but I’m full of mixed emotions. Recording the message was the right thing to do. My father told me once that Manhattan is my city. Well, if that’s true, I can’t let innocent people get hurt here when there’s something I can do to help. But there’s no going back now. Hunter will never forgive me. Ever.
This message may save thousands of people in the Depths, but it will surely destroy us.
Do I care?
Of course I do. But what other option did I have?
“Ahem.” Landon clears his throat. He, Ryah, and Shannon have been sitting on the leather sofa at the far end of the room this entire time. I practically forgot they’re here. “What now?”
“It should only take me a few minutes to upload the footage,” Turk says. “I know someone with contacts to the people who monitor the Grid—they should be able to link this to every JumboTron in the city.”
“Good.” I glance at the clock on the wall. It’s around four a.m., and I feel like I’ve been up for the past twenty-four hours without any sleep. “The summit is in eight hours.”
“So before then,” Shannon says, “we have to track down Jarek. And the heart.”
“Exactly,” I say.
Shannon stands and heads past the kitchen, toward the armory room. “Well, what’s everybody waiting for?”
“A nap?” Landon says, rolling back his head.
“No time for napping.” Shannon opens the door to the armory and grabs a pistol off the nearest shelf. “We’ll sleep when we’re dead.”
We’re huddled inside the armory.
I stare at the weapons, hundreds of them in a room no larger than our bedroom upstairs.
Suited up, I’m carrying a collapsible wire kendo stick and have a loaded pistol strapped to my waist. Not that I really know how to use it. Shannon’s training hasn’t included firearms. I’m wearing the platinum-blond wig for good luck.
“You look ridiculous in that,” Shannon says, zipping a lightweight silver jacket halfway up her chest. She passes a pistol to Landon, who straps it to his thigh, and another to Ryah.
“Well, you look ridiculous in general,” I say.
“Grow up, Aria,” Shannon says, turning away from me and tucking a knife into her belt.
“So, not to be a total downer,” Ryah says, “but how are we going to track down Jarek?” She grabs a knife from one of the shelves and a ninja star with a serrated edge, tucking them both into a leather sheath.
“Easy,” I say. “He has my locket.”
Turk raises an eyebrow. “Hmm?”
“Jarek helped me figure a way out of the town house when Hunter looped the exits,” I say to the group. “He came into my room after Turk refused to help me.… He must have seen me place the locket in the sweatshirt pocket.”
Turk scratches his chin. “But why would he have taken your locket?” The black fabric of his fight gear is tight across his broad shoulders, accenting the muscles in his chest. He looks completely revived—you’d never know he was at death’s door not even an hour ago.
“How is some old locket going to help us find Jarek?” Shannon twists her ponytail into a tight bun, pinning it back behind her head. “I don’t get it.”
“The locket has a mystic trace on it,” I say.
“It does?” Turk says. “Why?”
“Because that mystic trace used to be on me.”
“You had a trace on you?” Ryah says. “How could that be?”
Turk shakes his head. “Hunter checked you. He said you were clean.”
“Well, he was wrong,” I say. “I visited a mystic I know, and she discovered the trace. She removed it from me and transferred it to the locket. It was meant to keep me safe. Since the hideout is off the Grid, as long as the locket stayed inside … Supposedly, no one could find me.”
“But somebody did find you,” Landon says. He slips on his sneakers, which are bright purple and match his T-shirt. “At the black market.”
“Exactly,” I say. “My brother.”
“So Kyle is the one who put the trace on you?” Ryah asks.
“When Jarek handed me my sweatshirt in the Depths, the locket was missing,” I say. “I didn’t know what happened to it—I thought maybe it had fallen out or gotten lost somewhere, but Jarek could have found it and pocketed it. That’s how Kyle must’ve known where we were.”
“But if Jarek knew there was a trace on the locket, why would he have kept it?” Landon asks. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
I think about this for a second. “He must not know, then. Maybe he just thought the locket was worth money, something he could sell.… Who cares? The point is that more likely than not, he has it—and we can use the locket to find him.”
I turn to Shannon. “You can do that, right?”
Shannon’s purses her lips. “Your locket? I’m not sure I even know what it looks like.”
“A tarnished silver heart,” I say, placing my hand just beneath my collarbone. “I wore it every day.”
“Yes,” Shannon say
s, “but I can barely recall it seeing it. I don’t have a strong enough connection to it.” She shakes her head. “It’s not going to work.”
“You touched it once,” I say. “Back at the compound.”
A flicker of memory ignites in Shannon’s eyes.
“Try,” Ryah says. “Please, Shannon.”
Shannon turns away from us. She glances at Turk, clearly wanting his encouragement. He gives her a nod. “Fine,” she says. “But I make no guarantees.”
Shannon steps out of the armory, into the hallway. “Describe the locket to me.”
“Silver,” I say. “Though nearly blackened now. Mostly smooth, with tiny grooves in a sort of swirling pattern. No hinge. It’s completely solid.”
We stand around her as she closes her eyes, pressing her hands to her breastbone. She is still for a moment, and then I hear a small vibration—a low buzz—coming from the center of her body.
Her hands begin to glow with the familiar green mystic energy, the color growing more intense with every passing second. Her fingertips begin to flutter, moving faster than hummingbird wings. The iridescent green rushes up her arms and seeps into her chest, illuminating her neck and cheeks with a radiant glow.
She tilts back her head, and out of her mouth flies a thin green ray of energy, looking surprisingly delicate coming from a warrior like Shannon. It shoots down the hallway and disappears from view.
Shannon is statue-still. Then she drops her arms to her sides and opens her eyes.
Her mouth is closed, but the line of energy projecting from it is still there, so thin it’s barely visible.
“Are you all right?” Turk asks.
Shannon blinks. “Let’s go,” she says. “I have a hold on the locket. Who knows how long it will last.”
We follow Shannon’s lead, heading down from Harlem and across the Depths toward the West Side.
Since Jarek has stolen Turk’s bike, we flag two gondolas: Ryah, Shannon, and Landon in the first, me and Turk in the second.
The bright green line of energy acts like a sort of mystic homing device; Shannon barks out orders to the gondolier, following the trail left and right, under stone bridges and down canals.
To our gondolier—a man with black shaggy hair and ragged tweed pants—Turk simply says, “Follow them.”
Turk sits directly in front of the gondolier, staring past me at the city as we creep forward along the waterways. The boat is too narrow for us to sit side by side, so I crouch on the tiny wooden seat facing Turk, my knees pressed tightly together.
We approach a stone archway; a chipped gargoyle ornament stares down at us as we pass underneath. Turk’s face is expressionless, his dark eyes focused on the canal. The fuzz on top of his head seems to have grown a bit thicker, though perhaps it’s merely the shadows. The sun is trapped behind thick clouds, only a trickle of yellow light piercing the smog. Everything else is gray.
There’s a light drizzle on my skin. I glance overhead at the swollen rain clouds. I hope it’s not about to pour.
“What are you thinking?” I ask Turk. It’s not like him to be so silent.
“I’m thinking,” he says, “this ain’t good.”
“Of course it’s not,” I say. “We all liked Jarek. He was our friend—”
“No.” Turk shakes his head. “I mean, it’s not good that we’re going this far west. We’re way past Times Square, at least two canals over.” I glance around—the area is growing more and more deserted.
There are few buildings here, and the ones that haven’t been knocked down seem oversized and very industrial. “What do you think it means?” I ask.
Turk rubs his temples. “This is where your brother has taken up.”
“Kyle?”
Turk nods. “I noticed last night that his interrogation room was extremely far west—practically right over the Hudson.”
I hadn’t noticed that at all.
“He wouldn’t take up in an Aeries building unless he was also controlling the bottom of it,” Turk continues, “in the Depths, which worries me.”
“It means Jarek must be working for him,” I say. “In some way.”
Turk scrunches his forehead—he’s clearly frustrated.
“Maybe we’re wrong,” I suggest.
His lips tighten into a frown. “Unfortunately, I don’t believe we are.”
“You can trust me,” I say. “I promise.”
“I know,” Turk says. He holds out his pinky finger. “And you can trust me. No matter what.”
I link my pinky with his. “Deal,” I say.
“Duck!” Turk shouts, pushing my head down as the gondola shoots underneath a particularly low bridge.
The gondolier lets out a whistle. “Sorry.” We turn left, onto a smaller canal, following Shannon and the others.
And then it starts to rain in earnest. The drops sprinkle across my nose and cheeks and wet my hair. In a way, it’s a blessed relief from the blistering heat.
“We’re close!” Ryah yells back to us from the other gondola. Ahead, I can see the green line of energy extending from Shannon’s mouth into the darkness ahead.
The buildings thin out here. They’re incredibly long, taking up whole city blocks, and they all look abandoned, as though no one has inhabited them in years.
The gondola in front weaves onto a narrow canal to the left, and suddenly we’re in front of an old warehouse on the edge of the city. It’s a wide, gigantic structure; empty, from the looks of it. The building itself is only a few stories high; it doesn’t extend up to the Aeries. Nearly half of it has completely caved in.
The canal runs past the warehouse, filtering into the Hudson River. The gondolier pulls up to a rickety wooden dock and loops a rope around one of the poles sticking up out of the water. Turk pays him and we leave the boat, stepping onto land.
“Whoa,” I say. From here, I can see partially behind the warehouse to a graveyard of old ships half swallowed by the water. There are gaping openings in the hulls, which are reddish brown with rust and spotted with algae and brown seaweed.
“What is this place?” I whisper.
“It’s spooky, that’s what,” Turk says. He tugs on my sleeve. “Ready?”
I nod. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
We meet up with Ryah and Landon, who are standing outside the warehouse a few steps behind Shannon. The wispy line of energy is still trailing from her mouth, snaking through an open window.
“Eew.” Ryah turns up her nose. “This place stinks.”
I have to agree. The salty water mixed with the stench of the Depths makes for a very unpleasant smell. I wonder if it will be any better inside.
“This way,” Shannon says quietly, waving us forward. I grip the pistol that’s strapped to my side—just in case.
It seems too obvious to enter the front of the warehouse, so we sneak around the back. Forming a single line, we press ourselves as close to the wall as possible, moving stealthily around the bits of crumbled stone and twisted metal scattered on the ground.
Shannon disappears around the corner, and Landon and Ryah quickly follow. Turk and I are next, and we see the three of them waiting for us in front of a hole twice my height. It’s jagged around the edges, like it was made by a wrecking ball.
“Come on,” Landon says. “Quiet now.”
I glance behind me at Turk, who gives me a thumbs-up, and we all follow Shannon through the hole. The inside of the building is pitch-black.
“Stop, please.” Ryah creates a muted green light with her energy, holding her hand up near her head so we can see. It casts a chilling glow over us; I feel a jolt of nervous energy that makes me shiver even though the air is warm.
“Let’s go,” Ryah says.
I step carefully; there are unexpected breaches in the cement every five steps or so, and I don’t want to accidentally twist my ankle—or worse.
I can’t see much except Ryah and, in front of us, the line of energy emitting from Shannon’s mouth. Shannon ma
kes a sharp right. We follow her, and my foot sinks into something wet. There’s about an inch of water covering the ground.
“Careful,” Turk whispers. “If there’s water here, then there must be a leak somewhere in the building.”
We continue forward, the water growing deeper with each step. Shannon leads us left, then right. The water begins to taper off.
Ahead, something white pierces the darkness of the hallway. It looks like a tiny glowing ball that seems to be beckoning us. With each step, the ball glows brighter—until we reach a room filled with light.
Ryah shakes the energy from her hand, and I look around in awe.
It’s a large loft space, two stories high. A set of metal stairs leads to a catwalk that lines all four walls and overlooks the room, extending halfway into the open space. The walls here are intact, made of gray cement. Exposed copper pipes run along the ceiling.
In the middle of the space is Jarek.
Bound and gagged.
His huge body hanging off a thick chain that dangles from a giant hook in the middle of the ceiling.
The ball of white light is coming from a fixture in the ceiling, illuminating the entire space.
When Jarek sees us, he begins to struggle, though he’s wrapped in so many heavy chains that he can barely move a finger. His weight begins to swing the chain like a pendulum.
On the floor beneath his feet is the cooler.
Landon lets out an audible sigh. “What the—”
“Shh,” Turk instructs, stepping out from behind me. I glance up at Jarek. His eyes are wide over the gag.
He’s terrified.
The trail of energy from Shannon’s mouth is wrapped around Jarek’s ankle. She closes her lips and bites into the ray, severing her connection to it. It whips across the floor and untangles from Jarek’s leg—then it bursts into nothingness.
Turk takes a step into the room.
Jarek shakes his head violently. Who tied him up like that? It must have taken someone powerful to subdue him. And is whoever did it still here?
There’s a zip in the air and a burst of green light.
Toxic Heart Page 23
