Phoenix grabbed her arm. “What the hell are you doing?”
Sage felt sleepy. She shook her head. “We both know there are no guards outside. This has to be done.” She’d failed Charlie once already, when they’d tried to escape. She wouldn’t do it again.
She’d lived a decent life. She’d had her share of sorrow, sure, but she’d also had joy and—now—hope. That was something that Charlie had helped her to see. It was all right, now, if this was how she spent the rest of her life. Sage was prepared to save her friend; perhaps because she knew her friend had already saved her.
Phoenix took her hand and pressed it to his head, holding two of her fingers and her thumb spread against the side of his face, her wrist turned outward, not inward like the federal salute. This was something different—something good.
“The Lost Boys’ salute,” he told her. “Open eyes, ears, and heart. I salute you, Sage.”
She smiled. A tingling sensation rushed up the length of her arm and filled her insides. She felt warm, the way she’d felt the first time she met Charlie. When she knew she’d made a new friend.
Miranda had never known Sage at all. Sage wasn’t dumb. She was brave.
And she had friends.
This was enough. This was more than anything she’d known in a long, long time. Her body was tingly and warm as the ConSynth’s drugs washed over her like a wave. It felt like she was being lifted in the air. Like she was basking in the sun’s warmth on a Kauai beach. Like Charlie was touching her hand against Sage’s cheek. Her whole body radiated warmth. There was a splintering moment of joy.
Rapture.
And then, nothing.
Chapter 44
Phoenix slid the metal nodes over Charlie’s temples, and I watched as her body convulsed and Sage’s went limp. Charlie’s head rolled back and her mouth foamed, her whole body shaking.
Mila pressed my face to her shoulder. “Look at me,” she said. “Don’t think about anything else. Just look at me.”
What were they doing to Charlie? Oh, god, what were they doing to her? We were inside, but somehow it felt like it was raining. Everything in my world was falling down, like concrete chunks from the tunnel’s ceiling. I’d missed my one chance to kiss Charlie, and I’d never get it again. Soon, she’d be gone—if she wasn’t already.
A guttural moan escaped her lips and her chest lurched. She quivered and shook, then fell back to the ground, her skin cold and gray. Mila squeezed me tight against her shoulder. I reached for Charlie’s wrist. There was no pulse.
She was dead.
It felt like the floor had fallen out from under us. My heart plummeted in my chest. Miranda should have killed me. I guessed she sort of did. The glass orb glowed red next to Sage’s limp body. Swirls danced beneath its rounded glass.
The word CALIBRATING flashed across the sphere. A clock appeared amid its swirls, and it blinked 72:00. I watched Phoenix peel the metal nodes from Charlie’s forehead.
“What—what did you do to her?” The words caught in my throat and I fought hard to swallow tears.
Phoenix lifted Sage’s body in his arms. “Sage saved her. Charlie’s going to be all right.”
The heat had gone out from the room. I looked at Charlie’s body: cold, lifeless. I pressed my hand against her cheek, caressed bones that stood out so easily. Her eyes were shut tight and her face looked peaceful, as if she’d merely dozed off for a brief nap. I’d never see her Charlie-blue eyes again.
Phoenix grabbed my arm. “We’ve got to get out of here, Kai. The others are meeting us at the top.”
I couldn’t stop staring at Charlie. Phoenix put his hand on my shoulder. “She’ll be okay,” he said. “She’s in here now.” I rubbed the red glass orb and stared at its blinking clock. “You’ve got to trust me, Kai.”
I nodded and tried to ignore the weight that settled on my shoulders like an iron coat.
“Check the desk,” said Phoenix to Mila. “Do you see anything?”
“Phoenix—we don’t—there’s no time.”
She, too, had been rattled by Charlie’s death. I glanced at Sage’s body, hanging limp in Phoenix’s arms. Her cheeks were rosy, her lips parted in a brief smile.
“Check the desk,” said Phoenix again.
Mila flipped through stacks of paper. “Memo, memo, magazine, memo, analytics report, oh god—” She held up a familiar book that was now bound together by brass rings. “The Indigo Report.”
Phoenix nodded. “Take it with us.”
I glanced one last time at Charlie’s body and stroked her hand with mine. Her spirit was no longer there; only her physical body remained. And Charlie had always been so much more than just a body. I had to trust Phoenix. She was okay. Somehow, she was okay.
Together, we ran through empty halls toward the elevators. Phoenix carried Sage’s limp body, her chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. I gripped the red orb, the ConSynth, between my hands, the red swirls spinning around my fingertips in shapes that looked like hearts.
The elevator chimed when we reached the twentieth floor.
“Get down,” I said to Phoenix and Mila. We all threw ourselves against the sides and dropped to the floor. Bullets pounded the elevator’s back wall the minute the doors opened. I slid Mila a gun across the tiled floor, and she threw a hand out and fired into the fray.
Her gun froze and she showed me her cartridge. “Shit,” she muttered. “Outta bullets.”
Through the open doors, I saw the row of guards shift their guns toward another elevator as it, too, chimed. They fired several round in its direction.
Who was in there? Kindred? Sparky? Bertha? Dove? Did they know to duck? Were they hit? I glanced at Sage’s limp body. When was this all going to be over?
A voice thundered a poor rendition of the mariachi classic: “DAW-DUH-DUH, DAW-DUH-DUH, DAW-DUH-DUH! DAW-DUH-DUH, DAW-DUH-DUH, DAW-DUH-DUH! DAW-DUH-DUH! DAW-DUH-DUH, DAW-DUH-DUH! DUH-DAW-DUH-DAW-DUH-DUH-DUH-DAW!”
Big Bertha was here.
She fired back at the guards, knocking them one by one to the ground. Her bullets made a piercing sound, unlike normal bullets, when they struck flesh. She must’ve rigged something from old weapons she’d found in the basement.
The guards stared at the doors, stunned, while she reloaded.
“DAMN IT, CRAIG!” shouted an injured guard curled on the floor. “MY OTHER SHOULDER!”
We ran past the group as they continued to stare, dumbstruck, at Bertha’s elevator. Glancing around, I noticed this floor was different than the others. Like the Indigo Reserve at the Ministry of Health, it was more of a warehouse than anything else, equipped with massively high vaulted ceilings that reminded me of airplane hangar. Racks of supply-filled shelves lined one side of the room, rows of helicopters the other. Hordes of men were piling into the copters. The chancellor and Miranda had to be among them.
“Anyone see Sparky?” said Phoenix as we ran toward the safety of the shelves. There were at least two hundred guards in the room. Even without working radios, they flocked to this floor like bees to a hive.
“Not yet,” said Mila. “How much time do we have?”
Phoenix shook his head. “Don’t have a watch.”
I reached down into my shirt and pulled out the glowing watch. “Five minutes,” I said, and we ducked behind a row of shelves.
Phoenix admired the watch’s white glow. “Where’d you get that from?”
“Skelewick neighborhood.”
His lips turned up in a small smile. “You used the tunnel.” I nodded. “I thought you might have—it was the sort of crazy thing I would’ve tried.”
Mila pulled cardboard boxes off the shelves. “Bullets,” she said, reloading her gun.