I wondered what Gwendolyn had done. What was the Lottery? How were children being killed? Nothing made sense. The more questions that were answered, the more confused I became. Gwendolyn mentioned something about diagnostic tests and lung capacity—she must’ve meant the results of our annual Federal physicals.
Mila’s voice turned soft. “Maybe you will, Gwendolyn.”
The woman’s head lolled to her side, and Dr. Howey felt her wrist for a pulse.
My mind still raced with thoughts, trying to process what Gwendolyn and Mila had said: the Ministry of Health put the data from our physicals into a system. Maybe they used it to track the nation’s health over time, or determine how to allocate vaccines. Maybe there was a way to figure out which children were more susceptible to the Carcinogens, and who could make a recovery with the help of medication. Maybe Gwendolyn had pulled Sarah’s name from the system and prevented her from getting the medication she’d needed.
I’d never heard of any medications, other than Indigo, that could fight the Carcinogens, but based on their conversation, it seemed like such medications might exist.
Dr. Howey rubbed Gwendolyn’s cheek. “Dead,” he confirmed. “Goodbye, my friend.”
I felt a pang in my chest. The woman with the phoenix fan was gone—the only other person in the room who’d known Charlie.
Howey pulled another syringe from his suit pocket and jabbed it into his own vein, laughing as he did so. Phoenix ran toward him. “What the hell are doing, Howey?”
The room’s door slammed open. A squadron of guards stood in formation on the other side, their guns aimed in our direction.
Phoenix stared at Howey and shook his head. “You double-crossed us.”
“It had to be done,” he said. “Indigo had to be saved. It’s my life’s work.” He gave a signal, and the guards stepped forward.
I scanned the room for a place to hide, but there were none. It was just vaulted ceilings, a brilliant chandelier, and us.
Phoenix shook his head. “This could have been your life’s work. What we’re trying to do right here, right now. You read the Indigo Report—it could have been your legacy. ”
“Oh, it will be,” Dr. Howey said, laughing. “I’ll be forever remembered in textbooks for catching Phoenix McGann and the other Lost Boys. Neutralizing the greatest threat to national security in all of history. You, Phoenix, are my legacy.”
“But Gwendolyn—”
“Is dead,” Howey finished coldly. “And she was a confused woman. The Indigo Report went to her head in her last months. She was always a numbers person. Ideas weren’t good for her head. Our system is perfect. The world is in order. There will be no war.”
“Then you’ll burn with us,” shouted Phoenix. “You’ve already betrayed your country enough. Mila snagged your badge in the closet. We have what we need to continue. And I assure you, we’ll get what we came for. You’ll not be remembered as a hero. Not by anyone. The people will want to forget your name.”
Dr. Howey’s eyes fluttered as the euthanasia medicine coursed through his veins. “The people will want no such thing.” The syringe fell from his hand. “I’ll be d-dead. In a m-minute. And so will y-you, Ph-Phoenix McGann.” He gave the guards a final signal as he collapsed to the floor.
Like torrential rain, the bullets poured over our heads.
Chapter 33
Phoenix knocked me to the floor as he fired at the ceiling, the bullets from his gun joining the fray. Federal bullets raced past my ears as I slammed against the tiled floor, and overhead, I watched Phoenix’s bullets slam into the chandelier’s crystals. The fixture rocked in the air. One by one, the crystals the bullets hit fell from the air, raining brilliant light as they broke on the ground.
“MOVE, MEELS,” Phoenix yelled. Mila rolled from Gwendolyn’s chair, pulling something from Howey’s pocket before rolling again to the room’s edge. The chandelier shook as Phoenix fired at it again. I crawled to the room’s corner, and prayed that the brilliant light pouring from the raining crystals would blind the guards. More crystals fell, and I watched the guards stare, dumbstruck, at the rain.
Mila joined me in the room’s corner. “What is this place?” I asked.
“Royal euthanization room,” she said. She pointed to the ceiling. “Mostly for government officials, hence the fancy chandelier.”
Phoenix fired again, and the chandelier moaned. Above us, the ceiling cracked, and the guards stepped back in the doorway. Phoenix fired a final time before joining us. The walls shook as crystals poured from the fixture, covering Gwendolyn’s body in streams of light.
Phoenix pointed to the doorway. “Five seconds,” he said, pushing us forward. “Move.”
My legs burned as we ran. Adrenaline coursed through my veins—Phoenix had saved my life once again. The Feds had tried to end it, but Phoenix had saved it. Why? What fate did he have in store for me? Or was he just raising a lamb for the slaughter?
He aimed his gun at the guards as we charged. The men stared at the ceiling with lowered weapons, dazzled by the brilliance of the falling chandelier. Behind us, I smelled smoke rise and thunder echo as the ceiling’s cracks snaked down the walls. The great chandelier was falling. Its light and rubble would erase Gwendolyn’s and Dr. Howey’s corpses forever.
I heard a loud snap as the chandelier’s cords broke and it plummeted from the ceiling. “JUMP!” yelled Phoenix, and Mila and I obeyed without hesitation. The ground shook as the chandelier smashed into a million pieces, and we hurtled past the guards who fell in the wake of the chandelier’s shockwaves. Jumping from the ground had saved us from a similar fall.
“Elevator?” I asked, only slightly hopeful, as we ran.
Phoenix shook his head and pointed to a doorway at the hall’s end. “Stairs,” he said. “Safer that way. Fewer people will see us going to the top.”
I braced myself for ninety stories of stairs.
As we ran, I felt a pang in my chest: I missed Gwendolyn. It was hard to believe she was gone. Only a few minutes ago we’d been talking to one another and laughing. She made me think of my own mom. I think it was the chili. Mom always made chili when it was cold outside. Then I felt another ache in my chest: I missed Mom. But I breathed deeply and shook it off—I couldn’t think about Mom now. I had to keep running, keep moving with the Lost Boys. That was my only chance of finding her, wherever she was.
We pushed into the stairwell, and stood at the edge of a column of stairs that wrapped around the building’s corner. A hollow column stretched high in its center, running from the building’s first floor to its top. Mila pulled something that looked like a gun from her pocket. Bertha’s invention: the Grappling Gun. She leaned against the railing and fired it toward the highest set of stairs she could see. A grappling hook affixed to a cord launched from its end in lieu of bullets, and a clink echoed as it attached itself to a railing high above. Mila pulled hard on its cord, checking that it was secure. I searched my pockets, thinking I might’ve been given a similar weapon, but I felt only bundles of paper like lint. I was the only one who hadn’t been given a gun for the mission. If I wanted to survive, I was at their mercy.
“Grab on,” ordered Mila. I wrapped my arms around the curve of her waist as Phoenix wrapped his arms around her shoulders. Mila pulled her weapon’s trigger again, and we shot through the stairwell’s hollow center, racing past landings as we rose.
The gun jerked to a stop, and we pulled ourselves over the railing to safety. A placard on the wall read, “Floor 31.” Mila fired the gun again, and again I wrapped my arms around her waist. We repeated the process twice more in total. By the end of it, my arms felt sore in their sockets.