Zack sat on the floor of a long-forsaken restroom, his body in revolt after two days of captivity. His legs were sore. His wrists were chafed. His spine felt like it had been twisted into a pretzel. But these were minor gripes in light of his current predicament. He was trapped in the sky on a runaway hell-saucer, still separated from his people, with no idea if they were alive or dead. For all he knew, his best friend in the world was now the woman in the nearest stall, an erratic young Gotham named Mercurial Lee.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror, then anxiously looked away. “I think we should keep moving.”
“Fuck you.”
Mercy huddled on the toilet in her underwear and socks. She’d been six yards from the restroom when her trauma got the better of her and she puked on her armor. She’d stripped off every piece of it, even the clean ones.
“I knew I shouldn’t have come here,” she said. “I should have listened to my mother. I . . .”
She covered her face with trembling hands. “God. He cut Mink to pieces.”
Zack toyed with a piece of broken floor tile, his heart still pounding from the ordeal on the terrace. Though he was grateful to Mercy for unlocking his chains, his sympathy only went so far. She’d helped Rebel kill six Golds last year, including Zack’s brother. The more he thought about it, the more tempted he was to just leave her here.
“I didn’t know he could talk,” Zack said, out of the blue.
“Who, Mink?”
“Yeah. He screamed something right before he died. I thought he was mute.”
Mercy twisted the skull ring on her middle finger. “It wasn’t an affliction. It was a choice.”
“A choice?”
“We all have to sacrifice something when we turn eighteen. He chose to give up his voice.”
Zack shook his head, scoffing. “You people are so goddamn weird.”
He heard a faint noise outside the restroom door, a scraping sound, like someone dragging their feet.
“I know it won’t mean anything,” Mercy said. “But I’m sorry for—”
“Hold it.”
Zack stood up on watery legs. Mercy peeked at him through the door crack. “What are you doing?”
“Shhhh.”
The bathroom door swung open. Zack’s heart skipped a beat at the tall, skinny redhead who stepped inside. “Holy shit . . .”
Amanda blinked at him dazedly. “Zack?”
He had never seen her this shaken up. Her skin was white. Her eyes were glazed. She walked toward him with a slow, shambling gait, as if she’d just been killed and resurrected.
Zack cupped her face. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I don’t know. I . . .”
Her memories came flooding back, until she could recall every painful minute of the last three days. This whole nightmare had started with her and Zack in the basement. It all began with a kiss.
Zack let out a soft, pained chuckle as Amanda yanked her hand away from him. “It’s all right,” he told her. “You can touch me.”
“Are you sure?”
He nodded his head, his gaze lingering anxiously around his reflection. It felt like a hundred years ago that Semerjean visited him in a mirrored room and expounded on his family’s objections. It was never about sex, you idiot. Amanda has to receive her next lover willingly.
Amanda wrapped Zack in a delirious hug. “God,” she cried. “Oh my God. I never thought I’d see you again.”
Zack returned the embrace, wincing. She felt so good in his arms that he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he was imagining this. Maybe he’d wake up to learn that he’d never left the mirror room. It was just the Pelletiers screwing with him, teasing him.
He looked into the mirror and saw the state of her back. “Holy shit. Amanda!”
Her jacket and shirt had been torn all the way to her bra strap. Her skin was covered in huge purple bruises. Even more disturbing was the two-inch silver disc that had been embedded at the base of her spine.
“What happened?”
Amanda checked her back in the mirror as best she could. “I don’t know. I was standing with Peter when everything went crazy. I don’t know where he is.”
“What about the others?”
“I don’t know.” She fished through her pockets. “I can’t find my phone. It must have . . .”
She turned her head and saw someone looking at her through a crack in a stall door—an almond-shaped eye, slathered in heavy black makeup. That was all Amanda needed to recognize her.
“You!”
Zack grabbed her arm. “Whoa, whoa! Wait!”
“Wait!” Mercy yelled.
Amanda reached for her with a thick white tendril, just as Mercy fired her solis. The tempis vanished like a popped balloon.
Zack held Amanda back. “Stop! Stop! She’s all right.”
“All right? I know her.”
“She’s not with them anymore. She’s done.”
Mercy stepped out of the stall in her faded black skimpies. Amanda studied her through a squint. “You quit the Gothams.”
“I quit the mission,” Mercy clarified.
“And you’re half-naked because . . . ?”
“My clothes are covered in hunkey.”
“What the hell is ‘hunkey’?”
“You’ve been here months. Learn the lingo.”
“How about I just throw you out a window?”
Zack was about to intervene when the bathroom door creaked open again. Peter leaned in and scowled at the trio inside.
“You’re making more noise than the devil in here.”
“Peter!” Amanda hurried toward him. “I was worried about you. Where were you?”
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. The others could see his awful state. His cheek was bruised. His clothes were dusty in some places and shredded in others. A thin trail of blood dribbled down the side of his head.
“Don’t rightly know,” he told Amanda. “I got knocked out in one place and woke up in another.”
He grinned exhaustedly at Zack. “Hello, stranger.”
Zack stared at his feet and wrung his hands despondently. “You guys shouldn’t have come. I tried to warn you.”
“We knew. Didn’t stop us.” Peter took off his windbreaker and offered it to Mercy. “I know you won’t believe me, but I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Eat shit.” She snatched the jacket from him. “Last time I saw you, you put a gun to my head.”
“You think you don’t deserve it?” Amanda asked her.
“I think it doesn’t matter. We’re not getting off this ship alive.”
“Yes we are,” Peter told her. “No one else is dying today.”
Mercy threw on the windbreaker and zipped it up to the top. “Big words from a guy who doesn’t know what’s happening. You don’t even know who’s here.”
“What are you talking about?
“Your son,” Zack said. “He’s up here with us.”
Peter’s arms dropped to his sides. He turned to Mercy, red-faced. “Liam’s here?”
“Wasn’t my idea,” she said. “Ivy wanted leverage against you, so—”
Peter hollered in rage and tore a paper towel dispenser from the wall. Mercy raised her hands defensively. “I was against it! We all were, even Rebel. But Ivy insisted. She swore she’d only use him as a last resort.”
Peter glared at Mercy’s reflection. His voice came out in a guttural rasp. “Where is he?”
“Last I knew, down in the kitchen.”
“Then that’s where we’re going.”
Mercy recoiled at Peter’s approach. Though his temples still throbbed with angry veins, he stuffed his hands in his back pockets. “It’s all right,” he said. “You’re not the one I’m mad at. In fact, I owe you an apology.”
“For what? The gun thing?”
“That,” Peter said. “And this.”
He drew a stun chaser from his pocket and fired it at her. Mercy convulsed on her feet for five long seconds before collapsing to the floor.
Zack gaped at Peter. “Why the hell did you do that?”
“Had to.”
“She switched sides!”
“And she could have just as easily switched back,” Peter told him. “She’s called Mercurial for a reason.”
Amanda crouched to the floor and checked Mercy’s vitals. “He’s right, Zack. We can’t trust her.”
“If we leave her here, she’ll die.”
“We won’t.”
Peter scooped her up and slung her over his back. Though his expression had cooled, his wrath was clearly still bubbling beneath the surface. He had Mercy on his shoulder but murder in his eyes.
“Let’s go.”
—
Contrary to public belief, most aerstraunts didn’t have a traditional cockpit. There were no uniformed pilots, no navigators, no captains barking orders at a fast-moving crew. The ships were so self-sufficient that all they required was a capable technician. The “bridge” was simply a small, windowed room with a chair and a computer, and even that was unnecessary. Flight conductors could control the saucer from any part of the ship, even the bathroom. They only needed a laptop with the right peripherals, software, and access keys.
The command computer for the Absence was currently located in the kitchen, according to Semerjean. David had little reason to doubt his intel. There was, however, an unexpected problem.
He stood outside the kitchen door, his fingers pressed against tempis. The Gothams had erected a portable barrier, one strong enough to stop an elephant. “It won’t budge. We’re going to need Amanda.”
Hannah paced the corridor, her eyes darting back and forth in thought. She and Mia were both still distracted from their encounter with Semerjean, and David could hardly blame them. Everything about the man had seemed cosmically surreal, as if a curtain had parted to reveal a secret force of the universe, a backstage helper who was never meant to be seen.
But that was a concern for another day. The Absence was only getting higher. It was just a matter of time before a crucial system froze and the ship fell to earth like a meteor.
“Hannah . . .”
She stopped in her tracks and threw her arms up. “We can’t reach Amanda. The phones are dead.”
“Then maybe you and Mia should go look for her while I try to find another way in.”
“No,” said Hannah.
“No,” said Mia. She snapped out of her daze and eyed David sternly. “We’ve split up enough. Either we all go together or we don’t go at all.”
David was about to object when the tempic barrier flickered out of existence. A tall man faced him from the other side of the doorway, an unplugged power cord in his hands.
Hannah rushed over and hugged him. “Jonathan! Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I was starting to worry about you guys, though. I couldn’t find anyone.”
“How’d you get in?” David asked him.
“Door on the other side was open.”
Jonathan saw their sullen faces, the bleeding cut on David’s hand. “Okay. What did I miss?”
“We’ll tell you later,” Hannah said. “We need to find a laptop.”
“A laptop?”
While Hannah explained, David glanced around the kitchen and scanned its recent past. The Gothams had been here just minutes ago, at least some of them. He watched Rebel in retrospect as he fired his revolver at a nearby bank of monitors. It was easy to see what he was angry about.
Mia saw a faint smile bloom on David’s face. “What?”
“Three of the Gothams are down. One of them fled. And from everything I can tell, Zack’s still alive.”
Hannah sighed in hot relief. “Oh, thank God.”
“What about Amanda and Peter?” Jonathan asked.
David pursed his lips. When Rebel shot the monitor, he shorted out the whole array. Shame. A camera system would have been very useful right now.
He looked to his right and saw another bullet-cracked screen, a laptop at the far end of the kitchen. “Oh no . . .”
Hannah followed him to the computer. “Wait. Is that it?”
David viewed its final minutes in hindsight. “It was.” He pushed the device to the floor. “Damn it! That woman’s lost her mind.”
“Who?”
“Ivy,” David said. “She’s on a suicide run and she plans to take us with her.”
Hannah looked around the kitchen. “There has to be something. An escape pod. I don’t know.”
Mia turned to Jonathan. “Did you find anything in the manager’s office?”
He shook a finger at her. “Yeah. I’ve been waiting to talk to you about that. Your future self has a weird sense of humor.”
“What do you mean?”
Jonathan led her to a countertop and showed her the fruits of his search: a fifty-foot cord of nylon rope and a peculiar black device the size of a bread box. The machine was like nothing any of them had ever seen. It had leather straps on one side, as if it was meant to be worn as a backpack. The other side was smooth, white, and utterly featureless.
Hannah furrowed her brow at the mysterious contraption. “This is the big solution you were talking about?”
“Don’t ask me,” Mia said defensively. “I’m just the messenger.”
“But what is it?”
“I don’t know.” Mia turned it over and found a manufacturer code on the side. “If we had Eaglenet access, I could look it up.”
David tapped his arm, agitated. “Whatever it is, it won’t help us. We need to locate the others and find a way off the ship.”
Mia turned her head and did a double-take at a device near Gemma’s workstation. “Huh.”
“What?” Hannah asked. “You find something?”
“I’ve seen that thing on the news. Deps use it to jam phone signals.”
The others followed her gaze to a box on the floor, a portable machine with seven short antennas. A yellow sticker on the top warned people that this signal duffer was for federal law enforcement purposes. Any other use was prohibited by law and punishable by up to two years in prison.
David squeezed Mia’s arm. “You’re brilliant.”
He located the duffer’s power switch. The antennas retracted and the device stopped vibrating.
Mia was the first to check her handphone screen. “Signal’s back!”
“So’s mine,” Jonathan said. “But it’s weak as shit.”
Hannah opened her phone and was stunned to see that she had twelve new voice mails, all from the same unidentified caller. She played the newest message.
“Goddamn it . . . nah. Call me . . . is number as soon as you . . . this. You’re running out . . . time!”
“Who is that?” Mia asked her.
Though the connection was faint and cracking with static, Hannah easily recognized Theo’s voice. She pressed the callback button and listened intently. It only rang for a second before he picked up. “Jesus! Finally!”
“Theo! Are you okay?”
“Holy . . . it! I’ve been . . . to reach you forever!”
Hannah covered her free ear, struggling to understand him. In addition to the connection issues, his voice was curiously muffled, as if he was speaking through a mask.
“I can barely hear you,” she said. “Where are you?”
“Right . . . side.”
“What?”
“I said I’m right outside!”
Baffled, Hannah looked through the kitchen door, across the hall, and out the window of an employee lounge. A small black object briefly dotted the sky before fluttering out of view.
“What the hell . . . ?”
The others followed Hannah as she hurried into the lounge. Now they could all see it: a sleek black aerovan thirty yards in the distance. It rose in jittery tandem with the Absence. The wind knocked it around hard enough to make Mia queasy.
Hannah stared at the vehicle, stupefied. It seemed completely insane, yet entirely appropriate, that Theo had found his way up here. Today was Easter Sunday, a day for saviors to rise.
“What are you doing here?”
Jonathan squinted at the shadowy figures inside. “Is that Heath?”
“Is Heath with you?”
“Heath’s with me,” Theo said. “He’s fine. You’re the ones . . . trouble.”
Mia pressed against the glass and took a closer look at Theo’s ride. She could see two silhouettes in the front seat and one in the middle row. “Who’s flying that thing?”
“No idea.” Hannah spoke into the phone again. “Theo—”
“I’ll explain every . . . later! We have to get you out of there!”
David suddenly caught a glimpse of the driver’s silhouette, a slender woman with dreadlocked hair. “You’re kidding me.”
“What?” Jonathan asked.
“That’s Melissa Masaad.”
“Who?”
Hannah’s mouth dropped open. “Theo, is that Melissa?”
Theo traded an uneasy look with the driver, his newfound partner-in-crime. Even if he had the time to explain their new arrangement, he didn’t have the words for it.
“Just trust me,” he said. “She’s on our side.”