CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

MY SKIN CRAWLED with heat as a swirling gust surrounded us.

“Take twelve to three. I’m your nine.” Marisol crouched, stripping a section of her sleeve and tying it around her mouth and nose.

I quickly did the same, already suppressing a cough as the burning smoke grew thicker. The agitated voices of security guards peppered the air behind us.

“Lockdown the lab! No one in or out. Don’t shoot each other!” Marisol barked the order before slipping quietly to my side. “I’m getting you out of here.”

“But—”

“But nothing. I’m making them choose. You or the lab. I rigged my EM rifle to the elevator. They override the lock, they override the weapon, creating one big microwave oven.” She nudged me. “Toward the tube. Maybe they thought you’d already be at Park Lane station.”

I started down the gentle slope, my skin on fire. “I’m cooking.”

“It’s not real. Focus, Buck.”

I pictured Evie and me picnicking at Enchanted Rock, our first excursion after moving to Texicas—a happier time. Locking on the memory, I assigned it to my background mind. Evie and I. That was real.

A crack preceded a rushing sound until the tip of a three-story conifer, thrown like a spear, appeared through the smoke.

“Down!”

I hit the ground, being bounced and swept by snapping branches as they raked over my back. “Is this real!?” The tree passed and I rolled up onto my knees, Marisol gone from sight. An earthquake shook the ground beneath me, clumps of turf pulling away and shooting skyward.

The impulse to run overwhelmed me, but the smoke removed all directionality. There was nowhere to run. “Marisol.” I choked on the smoke. The sound of distant thunder rumbled from my six. The sound worked as a firing pistol, sending me toward my twelve at a sprint.

A brick hurled past my ear before lodging in the ground in front of me. Then another and another. Good Lord, they were pulling the buildings apart. “Marisol!” One of the twitchers, a bulwark rising in the smoke, emerged directly in front of me. The rippling earth beneath my feet flung me toward him. The pistol still in my hand, I raised it.

The twitcher shook his head, arresting my entire body and holding it inches from his own. Stepping forward, he gripped me around the neck. As he pressed down at the base of my skull, lightning flashed throughout my body. Lights swirled in my vision. The grey smoke turned tan. Sand swirled about me, the wind slapping my face with the tattered remains of my shirt.

“It is time to come home, Little Buck.”

Evie. I could see Evie sitting on the blanket, surrounded by sand. My vision narrowed, the peripheral turning black. Then an explosion.

I dropped to my knees and rolled, my vision returning to a shroud of grey smoke. Another explosion. Gunfire. Marisol emerged from the shadow of the teetering twitcher. She scooped me up with her arm while sweeping the 12 gauge pistol to deliver another round, this time at the twitcher’s face.

The weapon ignited, but I couldn’t see the result. We were already hurtling down the slope toward the tube. Little Buck. The diminutive label echoed in my brain, eroding the banks of my subconscious. No one had used my father’s pet name for me since his death when I was twelve—his disappearance in the Arabian Oil Zone, the Rub’ al Khali. My body jerked, causing me to stumble.

“Buck, you okay?” Marisol stabilized me. “Can you make it to the tube?”

We hit pavement, only yards from the entrance to the campus vactrain station. “I’m good.” The smoke cleared as I tucked the pistol inside the lab coat I’d salvaged from my office.

“I’ll meet you inside.”

Like that she was gone. “Marisol?” With a final lunge I caught the door and flung it open. A huddle of scared students had gathered at the base of the stairs, wishing they hadn’t decided to stay late on a Friday afternoon riddled with heightened security threat levels. “Just a grass fire, folks. It’s under control. All the same I suggest we catch this next car.”

A dozen heads nodded. No doubt they’d already made the same decision on their own. I hoped Marisol would be taking the ride with us. The readout above the platform indicated less than a minute until the next car arrived. Turning toward the stairs leading up to the external entrance, I squeezed the pistol grip. Wisps of dispersing smoke gave way intermittently to patches of red-orange sky until suddenly eclipsed by the silhouette of a figure.