Phoenix stared at the other copters. “Caravites,” he muttered through gritted teeth. “Vern kept his end of the deal.”
I pretended not to catch the last part. Bertha’s helicopter door swung open, and Dove poked his head out, aiming a gun in our direction. I leapt out of the way as he fired. His projectiles hit the ground just below the first rack of shelves. Thin, clear nets with metal prongs rushed across the tiled floor. Phoenix and Mila each grabbed an end and secured them to the racks’ sides. As soon as the prongs were secured, they sprouted small metal legs and crawled along the racks, wrapping them in the clear net like industrial-strength saran wrap.
There was a flash of light around the racks, and then Dove held three fingers to the side of his left eye. Phoenix did the same, and the helicopter pulled away. Dove—or more likely Sparky, remotely—must have deactivated the force fields. The Lost Boys salute was merely the signal to go. The racks of Indigo flew from the building in chunks, the Indigo cargo secured by the clear, crawling net.
The other helicopters repeated the process. Nets were fired, prongs were attached to the racks by Phoenix and Mila, and then a signal was exchanged and the racks were carried away. I watched from the corner as a third of the racks disappeared through the hole we’d blown. It seemed too easy. Where were the Feds? Hadn’t they felt the chandelier fall? Or the gum wrapper explosions? Hadn’t Howey called them?
As Phoenix and Mila clipped the last copter’s net to a shelf, a plane dropped from the clouds and knocked the copter toward the ground, pulling the shelf of Indigo with it. Vaccine cases smashed into the ground, and I wondered how many kids would have to go for weeks without their Indigo as civilian screams echoed from below.
Phoenix turned to Mila. “That went better than I expected.” She nodded.
I felt sick to my stomach. The thought of crumpled bodies burning in the wreckage of the fallen helicopter made me want to puke. I ran to the warehouse’s edge and hurled through the wall’s opening.
“I’m sorry!” I yelled below, hoping my voice would carry down with the wind, but realizing that from ninety-nine stories high it was probably futile.
“No need to apologize,” called a deep voice from within the warehouse. The chancellor stood at its entrance, flanked by two dozen Federal guards. His lips twisted into a sick smile. “After all,” he continued, “we’re the ones who are late.”
Chapter 34
“Hide!” shouted Mila as more guards poured in.
“Find the Lost Boys!” ordered the chancellor. The Feds formed two lines along the front perimeter as I stood there, dumbstruck. I pulled up my cheeseburger socks: it was time to be brave.
Mila hit me hard in the side, knocking me to the ground. “I’m starting to think you’ve got a real death wish.”
“If only I had a magic lamp.”
What good would it do to try and escape? I was dead either way. The Lost Boys wanted to kill me. The chancellor wanted to kill me. With the exception of Kindred, lately everyone seemed like they wanted to kill me. (Kindred probably just wanted to bake me muffins.) There’d be no escape. In all honesty, my odds were probably best with the megalodons. When it came to killing, at least they were indiscriminate.
Mila dragged me behind a case of smashed Indigo and pointed to the ledge where the copters had once loomed. “We’ve gotta jump, Kai, and soon.” She stared at my socks. “You better pull those socks up so damn high you get a wedgie.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” I said.
She yanked them to my thighs. “Today, my friend, it’s going to have to. We’re jumping out and diving down.”
Blue fluid trickled along the floor. Indigo, gallons of wasted Indigo. Vaccines that wouldn’t find their way into the veins of kids who were dying. Outside, the rain poured. The world was crying for the vaccines that were broken and the lives that would now be lost.
The Feds fired a round of projectiles I recognized as Dummy Darts. They hadn’t come here to kill us—if they had, they would’ve brought bullets rather than Dummy Darts. No, they wanted to capture us. Probably put us on trial. I thought about Charlie and her shaved head. Her bright blue eyes, hollowed, and her chopsticks long gone. I thought about jumping from the building. I thought about saving Mom from the Caravites and Charlie from the Feds. If I died, they were both doomed. I shook my head. “I—I dunno if that’s such a great idea…”
On the horizon, a fleet of copters formed lines in the sky. The Feds fired another round. Mila narrowed her eyes. “You’d prefer to stay here?” A Dart clattered to the floor next to us, its pseudo-poison oozing from its syringe in thick droplets. I shook my head. “Then it’s down we go,” she said.
“You don’t have a—er—jetpack? In your pants? Or pockets or something?”
“No.” She winked. “Just a death wish.”
“I guess that’s almost as good.”
Across the warehouse, Phoenix held his fingers up and counted down from five.
“Hold fire, men,” called the chancellor. His voice had a certain silky smoothness to it—characteristic of a used car salesman. He stepped toward the smashed Indigo case Mila and I hid behind. “I think I need a moment with my friends.” His leather shoes clacked against the tiled floor as vaccines cracked beneath his toes.
Phoenix held up a one, then gave us the Lost Boys’ salute—the signal. We ran. I stumbled over Mila’s shoe, knocking the grappling gun she’d used earlier from her belt and to the ground. My legs burned beneath me as it clattered to the floor. We couldn’t turn back. Not now. We had to move. We had to run. The chancellor’s leather shoes clacked louder behind us.
Phoenix bent his knees and threw himself over the edge, snapping his eyes shut as his face fell forward. Mila nodded slightly: we were to do the same. There was no time to be afraid. No time to listen to the screaming in my chest. I had my cheeseburger socks on, after all. I had the power to be brave. I bent my knees and pushed off the building’s ledge as the chancellor yelled behind us.
For a split second, Mila and I were suspended in midair—flying. Just floating as the island of Oahu lay sprawled beneath us, its hospitals and clinics mere specks of sand. My stomach dropped in my chest. I was falling now, and, like Phoenix, I snapped my eyes shut.
Then something clamped around my wrist. I watched as Mila continued falling, and a copter dropped from the clouds. Though its music had stopped, I recognized it as Bertha’s, on its way to save Phoenix and Mila.
My shoulder was nearly yanked from its socket. The clamp around my wrist held me in the air as Mila fell below. I hung there, flat against the side of the Ministry’s marbled tower. The chancellor’s face grinned at me from far above; he held the grappling hook gun I’d knocked from Mila’s belt.
I tried to slide the grapple from my wrist, but the chancellor merely laughed. “Pity about the Indigo, Bradbury,” he shouted over the thunder and rain. “And about your friend.” His lips twisted into a sick smile.
“She’ll be fine,” I yelled, glancing at Mila as the clouds engulfed her. I wondered why I bothered saying anything to the chancellor. Maybe it was his twisted smile, and the swagger in his shoulders when he walked—his smugness evident even in his step. Dad would’ve called him a “real politician.”
“I’m not talking about Vachowski,” yelled the chancellor. “I’m talking about Charlie.”
So—he knew the truth about Charlie. And still he was parading her around as Mila. He knew the jury would execute an innocent girl, and he was willing to let it happen, just to prove a point. He was sick. I slammed my wrist against the tower. The cord attached to the grappling hook gun jerked in his hand.
He smiled again, his lips twisting into a grin like the Cheshire cat’s. “We could help each other, you know.”