Rough hands grabbed her around the waist and pulled her upright. She lurched to her feet and threw up. The bile was acid and foul and seared her already aching throat. Distantly, through the whining in her ears, she heard a voice urging her to hurry. She didn’t recognize it, but she did her best to obey, fleeing the fire.
The street was transformed. Where Jesse’s home had been was now a shattered, skeletal frame issuing thick black gouts of smoke. There was almost nothing left. The apartments on either side were burning too, along with the gardens and trees lining the sidewalk. Broken glass crunched underfoot. There was debris everywhere. Bits of Jesse’s life. Bits of his dad, too, probably.
That made Clair feel sick again, but this time she kept her gorge down.
Clair blinked grit from her eyes and discovered that the hands tugging her away from the blast zone belonged to a solid woman with close-cut brown curls. She was wearing a dark-purple sweater and black jeans that, like everything around them, were now gray with ash. Her eyes were noticeably out of alignment, giving her face a lopsided cast.
Clair could see the woman’s mouth moving, but her words were indistinct. “Take your own weight. I can’t carry you.”
Clair felt light-headed, but she found the strength to stand on her own. The four of them—Clair, Zep, Jesse, and the woman who had pulled them from the blast site—staggered to the nearest corner. Clair felt bruised all over, as though she had been hit by a giant fist. The woman urged them to go faster, but Zep was falling back, limping, his face contorted in pain. Blood flowed in a steady stream from his right thigh. Clair took Zep’s right arm and put it over her shoulder in order to bear as much of his weight as she could.
Jesse trailed them, looking stunned. The right sleeve of his orange T-shirt was burned black. His jeans were filthy. Multiple tear tracks carved lighter lines down the dust on his face, and he kept glancing behind him as though to check the veracity of what had happened. The columns of belching black smoke left little doubt of anything.
Through her shock, Clair noticed a couple of drones swooping in from the north, smoke swirling like translucent wings around them as the woman hurried Clair and the others down another side street. The effects of the blast were minimal there, just a light rain of ash settling on the roofs and grass. People were issuing from their houses in ones and twos, some of them heading to the blast scene, most standing about uneasily, uncertain of what they should do. Someone offered help. The mystery woman waved them away.
The fog Clair had been operating under began to lift, and it occurred to her to wonder what was going on.
“Wait,” she said. Her voice echoed in her ears as though it came from the bottom of a very deep well. “Who are you? Where are you taking us?”
“I’m a friend of Jesse’s,” the woman said. “We have to get off the streets.”
“Why?” asked Zep through gritted teeth.
“You’re injured, for one.”
Jesse didn’t say anything. He didn’t seem to be hearing or seeing anything at all.
“What happened back there?” Clair pressed. “Who did this?”
“Later. Come on.”
She pulled Jesse up the path to a simple single-story house behind a stand of drooping palms. Clair, unsure of her options, followed. Blood continued to flow from the wound on Zep’s leg, and even through the ringing in her ears she could hear him gasp with every step. Whoever she was, the woman leading them seemed to know what she was doing.
The door opened before they reached it, and two men urged Clair and her bedraggled entourage inside.
“Get that door shut,” said the woman to the smaller of the two men, who was wiry, flat faced, bald, with ears like jug handles. “Go on in, you three.”
“Did anyone see you?” The second man followed them up the hallway. He was long and overstrung like a fencing wire, a head taller than Zep.
“Just drones, and they were focused on the house. We got past them okay.”
Clair wondered why that was necessary. Any disturbances the drones spotted drew PKs to the scene like red blood cells to a cut—and that was a good thing, right?
They entered a boxy sitting room, lit only by what natural light came through the loose-shuttered windows. The walls were uniformly cream-colored, the floors carpeted in flecked gray. The woman led Zep to a low couch, and he fell awkwardly onto it, crying out with pain.
“Easy,” she said, crouching down to inspect the source of the blood. A small cross swung from a silver chain around her neck, and she tucked it down into her sweater, out of the way. “You’ve taken some shrapnel, but it can’t be too serious or you wouldn’t be here to complain. Jesse?”
Jesse was still in shock, staring at nothing in the real world.
“Jesse, listen to me.”
The bark of command in the woman’s voice snapped him out of it. “Gemma?”
“What were you doing back there? You’re supposed to be at school.”
“We came . . . we came to talk to . . .” He stopped, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Dad stirred up something serious this time.”
“He did. I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen.” Her uneven eyes were watching Clair. “You’re the girl from the video.”
“And you’re Abstainers,” Clair said, beginning to piece it together. “Like Jesse.”
“Congratulations.” Jesse had called the woman Gemma. “You win a prize. How about you tell me what you’re doing here?”
“She wanted to ask Dad about the data,” Jesse said. “Where he got it from . . . what it means . . . if it’s real.”
“Of course it’s real,” Gemma said. “You really know someone who’s had a problem with Improvement?”
“Maybe,” said Clair. “My best friend.”
Zep groaned again. Gemma had found a rip in Zep’s track pants and torn it wider. His leg was slick with red. Something was sticking out of his thigh. Something metal, like a shuriken. Gemma wiped the blood away, revealing one of the metal cogs from Dylan Linwood’s workshop.
Jesse turned even paler under the ash and grime.
“All right,” Gemma said. “Jesse, take her to see Dancer, in back. I need to deal with this. Ray.” The tall man looked up. “Get me the med kit. Watch the door. Tell me if anyone comes.”
20
THE TWO MEN jumped at Gemma’s command. Clair did too, because it was only beginning to sink in that they had just seen someone die. Dylan Linwood had been standing in front of her one second, gone the next. How was that possible?
Jesse took her arm and guided her through the house. After the sitting room was a flight of stairs leading down to a cellar shrouded in gloom. There was an old-fashioned wall telephone anchored to one wall, then a dining room and a Stainer kitchen, complete with stovetop and sink and cupboards for preparing the ingredients that would become actual food. The air smelled stale, though.
“In here,” called a voice from the kitchen. “Come clean yourself up and let me take a look at you.”
Silhouetted against the rear window was a figure in an electric wheelchair. A woman in her seventies with a halo of gray hair, spine straight not slumped, wearing a comfortable pantsuit in peach. Her hands were long boned and thickly veined, and her nails neatly trimmed. She was watching them with keen attention.
“Aunt Arabelle?” said Jesse in a cracked voice.
She nodded. “Wash your hands in the sink. There’s a towel for your faces. Then come and sit with me.”
Jesse nodded and used the tap first. While she waited, Clair felt the bright gaze of the old woman studying her closely.