I remembered the way he’d looked, pretending to be shocked by Regan’s arrival, deflated by her revelations and incensed by Hunter’s betrayal. It was a slam-dunk performance. He should just thank the Academy already. “You wanted that showdown so Regan would get Hunter out of the way once and for all.”
Warren huffed unapologetically and picked up the pace. “Now you’re beginning to think like the Kairos.”
“What about the troop, Warren? We’re weaker without Hunter.”
“That’s why I put the lock back on. Now we can fill his star sign and the role of the weapons master, since he clearly isn’t coming back.”
I thought of Hunter in Midheaven, dying of thirst. I had to remind myself he’d been there before, that I had an entire conversation with him as Jacks, and that he went back willingly. For Solange. Guess she really was worth all that.
There’s nothing wrong with you.
But this wasn’t about me, and wasn’t even about Hunter. This was about Warren. Was it really that simple for him? He just dropped agents when he no longer considered them strong, like Kimber, or useful, like me, or loyal enough, like Hunter? He erased his entire troop’s collective memory if that served his purposes?
Warren wasn’t looking at me, but I know he felt, and probably smelled, my judgment. I was doing nothing to hide it. “Don’t you think I would have done things differently if possible?”
I don’t know, I wanted to say. Suddenly I didn’t have a clue what he’d do. “It hurts, Warren. I was hurt over there, and Hunter will be too.”
He laughed then, a bitter cackle that resonated in the pipeline like it was made of copper instead of concrete. “Well, what doesn’t kill you makes us all stronger, right?”
I stopped, and feeling it, he did as well. He turned, and for the longest time I stared into the face of the man who’d introduced me into this world, who’d risked his life for mine, only to risk mine again, and all for reasons I couldn’t see. He didn’t want to make me stronger for my own sake. I knew that now. He would benefit from any strength I received, so essentially he wanted me for the same reason the Tulpa did. Power. He held me in the troop like an Uzi or a grenade launcher or a rocket propeller.
I’m a person.
You’re a weapon.
I nodded slowly, not in agreement, but because my neck felt heavy under the weight of all this new knowledge. Of the knowledge, I knew, that was still to come.
He turned again without another word, and with the next curve, we found the exit. The darkness of the sky outside was as complete as it was in the tunnels, but this close to open air I could hear and feel the vibration of thunder, like the sky had a bellyache it couldn’t settle. There was no way that energized webbing would hold much longer.
Even strong things, powerful things, I thought, shaking my head as I followed him from the pipeline, could only take so much.
It was the morning of my twenty-sixth birthday, but you’d never know it by looking at the rumbling, midnight black sky. I was looking at my feet, so preoccupied with all of the other things that had kept me in the dark that I didn’t realize how quiet it was until Warren’s surprised gasp rose beside me. The horror in it, which was a prayer and curse and a realization all at once, made me want to duck for cover. Instead, I looked up.
And saw my former doppelgänger hanging naked like a Norse god, draped above as though pinned to the World Tree. Skamar wasn’t just hanging, of course. Certainly not voluntarily. The physical body she’d attained only a month ago, the one she’d so aptly and ably used to battle the Tulpa, had been crucified. It was an old torment for a new being-torture using one’s own flesh.
The blue jet and heat lightning of the failing sky showed flashes of cramped muscles, knotted into partial paralysis. Her limbs were overextended, bent at odd angles so that she hung like a broken doll. Wrought-iron nail heads had severed the new bones of her wrists, the arches of her feet folded together and fastened in the same way, though room for movement had been allowed. It was more painful that way; the smallest correction would shoot searing pain through her limbs and spine, all the way up into her brain. But perhaps worst of all, the abuse had caused the capillaries just beneath the skin to burst, and she was now sweating out blood along with her body’s water. Obviously weak and clearly in shock-eyes rolled far into her head, breathing strained and sporadic-she was also still alive.
And once all the power, that’d accumulated over weeks of fighting between the two tulpas, was finally released from the bulging bowels of that iron-hot sky, she’d be more than that. She’d be a living conduit. A funnel for that energy via the pointed metal rising from her back into the sky.
And the power, palpable as tin foil clenched between the teeth, would rain down on the only tulpa left alive. He was, I realized, on the verge of gaining all. A city of rubble and Shadows. Skamar’s death. Limitless power. That’s why he was smiling so broadly as he appeared from behind Skamar’s tortured form. My eyes darted to the steep banks of the storm drain, and I felt Warren doing the same, but I didn’t see anyone else.
“My dear girl,” the Tulpa said, dapper in a black trench and gloves, matching scarf tied around his neck, a jet umbrella blocking the rain from his oiled hair. He reminded me of a Big Band crooner, all slick presentation and dreamy good looks. I swallowed hard and made sure the toggles on my mask were well secured. “Someone is going to have to talk to you about your temper.”
Someone once had. I looked back at Skamar, tears welling. She’d been tethered to the makeshift lightning rod for some time-her wrists were tearing, blood clotting-but it was my anger at Warren that had brought her to this location. The Tulpa had felt it, and now she would die at the entrance to the world where she’d been birthed.
My guess was that’s why he was alone. He’d flown there with Skamar as soon as he’d felt my anger. But his troop would find him soon, gladly gathering to watch Warren and Skamar and me all burn down to singed husks in this glorified ditch. I swallowed hard, willing my pulse and thoughts to calm as the sky brewed and belched overhead. They should hurry, I thought, swallowing hard. It wouldn’t be long now.
The Tulpa shoved a hand in his pocket as he walked toward us, just like a normal man, though his skeleton popped like a black X ray every time the sky above us flashed. Rain peppered his umbrella, but the wind we saw knocking about debris twenty feet above, along the drain’s perimeter, didn’t touch any of us. The Tulpa was at the core of that stillness too. I felt it, taking up the slack as he drew closer.
The moment elongated like a rubber band stretched to its max, and I knew that when it snapped, the sky overhead would snap with it. The city would lie in ruins, and all that tethered power would funnel into the too-still man before me.
“Regan is dead,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Before she was ever birthed,” I said coldly.
“Then she made an awful lot of noise for a corpse.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“We were a bit rushed the last time I saw you. I didn’t get to ask how you are, what you’ve been doing…if you’d prefer a fast death or slow…”
“You don’t want me dead.”
“Not now,” he admitted, then smiled again. “But soon.”
Because after the sky fell, after the power from the tulpas’ accumulated battles entered his body, he’d no longer need to keep me or Jasmine alive. Which meant Jasmine, wherever he’d stashed her, was still alive now.
“In the meantime, we’ll pass the time with a little story.” He sauntered forward, straddling the runoff flowing between his wide stance. Red sprite lightning joined the fray to sear the storm clouds overhead, and I shuddered. It was all I could do to keep my eyes from darting to the banks of the ditch. I could run, but I wouldn’t get far, so I decided to keep him talking until I figured out something better. My sarcasm was an excellent stall tactic.