15

I stare out the windows of Storm’s car. The streets of Dominion are strange and blank. Blank like me. The hurt in my chest keeps blossoming, unfurling with every block. Absently I rub at the spot in my chest where it feels like my heart has been ripped out. I feel a pinch on my arm, though no hands touch me.

Margot.

I gaze over at my sister. She looks bright as sunshine on the other side of the back seat. Her hair is pulled into a severe ponytail, exposing the high, long line of her neck and the fragile bones of her cheeks. The mirror image of myself. I don’t know what to say. I can’t share without giving away all my secrets. So when my lip starts to quiver, my eyes blinking back rain, I pretend to look terribly interested in the drab morning scene.

It looks like every other day in this dying city.

From the corner of my eye, I spy a Laster on the street. The man puts out a hand to brace himself against a wall. Not long for this world, I reckon. I watch him shake just before he doubles over, an arm slashing over his bloated, empty stomach. I am about to turn away, not able to take a second more of the misery to be found in the streets, when a figure steps out from the shadow.

I would have known what he was even without the long robe flowing down over his long torso. On his face is a stamp: red circles, conjoined in the middle. Not an ordinary preacher man, then. A Watcher. He steps behind the Laster, a hand outstretched, perhaps to comfort the dying man.

“Margot,” I murmur, sitting up straighter. But by then we’ve cruised past the scene, and I will never know what it was the Watcher was going to do. Margot’s eyes are curious as I look over. Watcher. I mouth the word, not sure I want to say it out loud.

Margot’s eyes go wide as she realizes what I’ve said. They’ve been in hiding, or so we thought. So we’ve been told. So what does it mean that the Watchers are on the streets again?

What does it mean that we haven’t been told?

The hair on the back of my neck stands at attention. I receive the double prick of Margot’s, a gnawing knot of anxiety that grips my gut. Within the flicker of an eyelash, Margot and I have made a pact of silence. We’ll wait until we’re alone to discuss this. The car pulls to a stop, and Shane glances at us through the rearview.

“Everything all right, girls?”

“Fine,” we singsong. The door locks open and we pile out, blinking against a gray-white sky.

Shane frowns at us as he steps around. “You know you should wait until I’m door side.”

We know the drill. It’s protocol to let the mercs escort you from the car to the doors of the school. But something is going on today. Not the least, I reckon as I look around, is how far away from the Academy we’ve stopped.

We can see the school through the gaps in the buildings, but it’s still a good three blocks away. Barricades stretch across the necks of streets, fencing us in, each topped with barbed wire.

“What’s going on, Shane?” Margot asks. I can’t swallow past the lump of fear in my throat.

Shane shrugs and sweeps an expert eye at the rooftops. “Bomb threat, I reckon.” He flicks an impatient finger at us, but his face tightens into a scary mask. “Let’s get moving, girls. I don’t like you being out in the open like this.”

Margot bends down and pulls up her right sock. “Coming,” she says. Slowly she stands tall, her eyes casting a hooded look at me.

Something is wrong. We both sense it.

Just one other car has pulled up ahead of ours. It’s too soon to know who will spill out. But we don’t like the eerie quiet of the streets. The blue uniforms of the school’s security blaze behind the barricades. Our heels make funny clackity-clack sounds on the pavement as we scurry toward them, Shane’s heavy tread carrying behind us. Maybe that’s why we don’t hear anything. A long foot emerges from the shadows. Then a leg, a torso. Then a head.

And a gun.

The man stands there as though he’s not got a care in the world. And maybe he doesn’t. His cheeks are heavily pockmarked. That hasn’t stopped him from coloring his face with the insignia of the Watchers, though on this man it looks like he might have drawn it in with red lipstick without a mirror. Part of one circle is smudged, and when he smiles, it stretches back across his cheek. It’s a yellow-toothed smile. One tooth is missing from his lower jaw, so that he looks lopsided and comical as much as terrifying.

“Girls,” Shane barks from behind us. Margot and I pedal to a full stop. “Get behind me.”

The man steps forward. One step, another. His gun butts forward like an eager nose, long and thin. Still, the man says nothing, does nothing. Shane shoves us behind him.

“We’ve no quarrel with you,” he tells the Watcher in his gruffest tones. With one hand he holds us at his back. The other hand raises in peace.

Margot pinches my arm, and I turn. She points to the roof on the building opposite. Sniper.

The shots whistle down around our ears, but they aren’t meant for us, I realize. They’re meant for the blue-clad Academy’s men who run toward us in zigzagging lines, shouting. From the side street, a dozen or so Watchers emerge, all of them as scraggly and worn as the man before us. All are anointed with what looks like fresh war paint on their cheeks.

“Shane,” Margot whimpers. Her voice falls to a whisper as she and I both realize what’s happening.

We’ve just sprung a trap.

…

“Mar.” I hurriedly dig through my bag. “Get your phone. Call Storm.” I try doing the same. My fingers fly over the buttons as more shots are fired between the roof and the school. I look up in time to watch a man crumple to the ground fifty feet ahead. Frantic now, I dial the numbers.

The phone takes an eon to connect the number. Then Alma’s voice comes on the line. “Hello, Lucy.”

“Alma, we’re under—”

That’s all I have time for before an explosion rocks the building the sniper had been standing on and the top corner of it evaporates before our eyes. A massive shelf of mortar and cement slides down from the building with a bone-jarring, earth-trembling crash. Tidal waves of ash and debris close over our heads, and we gasp for air in the deafening roar. Margot’s arms are around me, our faces pressed against each other’s necks to protect each other from the dust.

A rough hand is a talon at my shoulder. It rips me from Margot’s embrace. I lean forward and kick blindly, satisfied when I connect with something hard. The talon softens but doesn’t let go. It aches when I twist, but twist I do, meeting a Watcher face-to-face. The hair prickles on my arms as I stare into crazed eyes, streaked with red and coated with dust. His skin is rubbled and ruined, pocked with blood and ash. I bring my elbow up and dig into the hollow chest. The man grunts and steps back in surprise. It’s enough time for me to yell, “Margot, run!” Then he starts for me again.

Margot coughs. Clouds of dust erupt from her, as though she’s learned to spit smoke. She shakes her head. Reaches out her hand. In a split second, I catch a glimpse of Shane wrestling with two Watchers, though they’re not the kind of preachers’ kin I’ve ever seen before. Their arms are as muscled as a merc’s, their legs long and powerful under their tunics. I can’t see Shane’s face, but the Watchers seem almost amused as he bats at them, swinging fiercely. And there is something comical about the way Shane is holding them off, something exaggerated and strange as he flips one over his back as easily as flipping an egg—

No time. I grab Margot’s hands. We go like bats toward the thickest of the dust clouds, hoping for a bit of cover. The man’s long arm reaches for me again, nicking my shoulder. I thrust my arm up to break his hold. Between that and Margot’s momentum, it’s enough to break us free.

The ground beneath our feet is like a minefield as we skip over chunks of concrete and brick, shattered glass and twisted metal poles. No one shoots at us as we make our way to the mess in the square, but the debris slows us down. Margot chances a look behind us, her lips pursing.

“Almost,” she croaks through a mouthful of dust. They’re behind us then, and closing fast. I sweep the streets for somewhere to hide.

“Black door,” I tell her, pointing with my eyes rather than my finger. No need to give ourselves away. We scramble over a pile of rocks, staying low to the ground. At the top, I pause to take in a scene of chaos. A gun war still blazes between the school and the rooftop snipers, who pick off the Academy’s mercs like so many flies on a wall. I spy the rocket launcher near the Grayguard gates and three men crouching behind splintering riot shields as they load another round.

From our rocky crest I have a better view of Shane, who crouches in a fighter’s pose. The men surrounding him stand looser. Shane stops and glances around. Looking for us, I reckon. I’d call out, but for the moment, at least, Margot and I are invisible in the muck and din of battle. He straightens, his mouth moving. From here I can’t tell what he’s saying, who he’s speaking to. The Watchers who have him cornered look around restlessly, scanning the area for us. My stomach balls into a knot of dread as I realize what’s wrong with the scene.

They aren’t punching. They aren’t fighting.

Setup.

“Mar.” I crouch, pulling my sister down on top of the rubble. “Back around this building instead.”

Margot looks up uneasily at the building behind us. It looks for all the world as though it’s about to fall down on top of us, a thousand pounds of death. My sister just blinks at me, nods.

“Careful,” she says.

We pick our way over a dozen chunks of a former wall before we hear a shout. It’s coming from the roof of the four-story building opposite. I look up; a rifle points down at our heads. A man yells for backup. Seconds later, the roof explodes in a shower of sparks and flames and brick. Margot and I duck and sputter, but then I grab her hand, threading her through the chaos as quickly as I can when we’re both blind and deaf from the roar of the explosion.

Think, think, I order my chaotic mind as a Watcher scrambles onto a pile of rocks not twenty feet from us. What would Jared do?

Rip them to shreds, comes the instant answer. And here I’ve no iron claws.

But thinking of him calms me. Jared would tell me to use my brains. He’d tell me to run and hide and be smart, like a mouse.

And mice go to ground in holes.

“Quick, Mar,” I shout. They’re everywhere, the Watchers. And Shane. Shane. My guts twist in fury. The side of the building we’re near has a huge crack down the brickwork, as though it’s been torn.

Ahead of us is an alley that seems relatively quiet and clear, the rubble confined more to the corner that had been ripped apart. I open my mouth to tell Margot we’re nearly there but snap my jaw shut when the shadows ripple. Out step a dozen or so Watchers, all with the messily painted cheeks of the newly initiated.

Margot and I scramble back. Her fingers are soft and wet with sweat. I hear her labored breathing, a match to my own, the hammer of her heart echoing in my chest. The wall…the wall has a six-foot drawing of their sign. Beside it, someone has taken the time to make the letters huge and straight. Evolve or die.

I have time enough to whip my head around when a rough hand grabs me. I bat at it, kicking and screaming. Margot yips. A Watcher’s guttural warning sounds in my ears as she sinks her teeth into the hand snaking over her mouth.

My sister’s fingers are pried from my grip. My hand suddenly free, I have more room to fight. I swing around, catching the terror on Margot’s face as a Watcher pulls her to his chest. And from the corner of my eye I spy Shane, standing behind the ring of Watchers, hands on his hips, something grim and sinister stamped across his features.

The last coherent thought I have is how glad I am that Jared isn’t with us, as surely he’d get himself killed. Then I think of my lonely, naked fingers, so opposite the weight of Margot’s panic as she struggles like a little bird in their grip. All that before something heavy comes down on my head and knocks me into oblivion.