Van, his hair slicked back with the Manga oil, screams for guards. A half dozen men pile through the door leading into this open cave. They stand like soldiers around Van and Mrs. Reese. It doesn't seem to matter how big they are or that Van's standing over me with a foot ready to launch or that I'm a girl about to get my spleen kicked into my nose. They just stand there with their rifles, watching Van--their greasy, Manga-oiled Mastermind--like a pack of German Shepherds, waiting for their next command.
Van winds back, aiming his shoe right for my gut. My field explodes. It still won't be enough, except that I'm wearing the Move Suit. And Garrett is bound to me. And Mrs. Reese is here. The whole thing falls into place like cards shuffled into a winning hand.
I see Van's shoe coming.
Garrett gives the binding cable a heave.
I shoot backward.
Van misses by millimeters.
He jumps forward to try again, but this time, he aims for Garrett.
I pull, but there is too much slack in the cable to get Garrett out of the way. But Mrs. Reese gives her own binding cord a tug-o-war yank. Van's foot grazes past Garrett's tucked head, only moving his hair with the rush of motion. Van stumbles backward, his veins stretched tight in his neck.
"Enough!" Mrs. Reese shouts.
"You're going to defend them? These traitors?"
"They are my children!" Mrs. Reese thunders. "I asked them to come! To see my husband rise to greatness!"
It puts Van on pause, but I can see that even he isn't buying it. He glances at the smashed tunnel overhead, then at our Move Suits. Mrs. Reese steps between the destroyed wall and Van. She runs her fingers down the side of his face.
"I want my whole family here," she whispers. "To see this. If you hurt them, you hurt me, and Van," her voice switches to angry-mother tone, "I cannot love a man who would think of hurting me."
Van melts. His shoulders sag, hands loosen up, his brows opens around his eyes like a drawbridge rising for a boat. If he had ears, they would be drooping. He puts his hands on Mrs. Reese's shoulders and licks his lips.
"You love me and I won't hurt them," he says. "But they're spies, Miranda, don't you see it? They came through tunnels--tunnels the Veritas have kept hidden from me!"
"They did come through tunnels," she tells him, guiding his eyes back to hers with a stroke of his jaw. "But they aren't spies. Just mischievous children. That's all."
He bites his lip and turns back to Garrett and I.
"Well, if they came to see me rise to greatness, then I will show them how great I truly am."
"Give me the loud speaker," Van growls. He throws a hand out behind him, to the guards against the wall. One of the men shifts his rifle to hand Van a megaphone.
I try to measure my odds of overtaking them. There are six of them, plus Van, and only three of us if I include Mrs. Reese, but the bindings are going to put us at a disadvantage. I still think Garrett and I could pull it off, but then Garrett makes a tiny uh uh sound in his throat. I honor it.
Van goes to the mouth of the mountain, holding Mrs. Reese's hand. But as he puts the megaphone to his lips, Mrs. Reese surges forward, along with one of the armed guards. As if he knew what she was planning. The guard grabs Mrs. Reese, but she still manages to shove Van hard and he stumbles on the rough edge.
But she underestimated how solid a footing he has. The guard pulls her back and Van comes with her, the sickening slide of the binding box chewing on its leash between them.
Once he's safe from the edge, Van gapes at her.
"Let her go," he tells the guard. The guy dumps Mrs. Reese and Van drags her toward him with a snap of the binding. Garrett shifts his weight and two guards crowd in on us. Around them, I watch as Mrs. Reese gazes at Van with sorrowful, doe eyes.
He winds back one arm and lets it fly like a thick tree branch, right across her face. Or, at least he tries. Mrs. Reese blocks the hit by throwing up an arm. Van tries again and she blocks again.
"You want to kill me, Miranda?" he says, but his questions crumbles like a boy who can't hold it together. He takes a knife offered from the guard that saved him a moment ago. "Or do you want to fight me for power? Which one is it? Tell me now."
She doesn't give him anything. Just her innocent stare.
"TELL ME NOW!" Van shouts. "You're not in love with me at all."
He saws the binding cord between them as the guard raises his gun, the barrel trained on Mrs. Reese. Free of Van, the box and most of the binding cord dangles from Mrs. Reese's wrist like long fringe. She turns to Garrett and I.
"No fear, you understand? I have none." Her voice doesn't even waver. "NONE."
The last word echoes as Van gives the signal and the guard fires a shot right through Mrs. Reese's stomach.
Garrett's mom grips her stomach. The shock on her face goes blank with a heavy, pained breath. She stumbles backward off the same edge Van was just saved from.
It's so fast.
So horribly fast.
She is gone without another sound. Without a chance to do anything but watch her disappear.
Garrett and I fall together, against each other, spiraling down to the ground as if we are hanging onto the wing of a moving jet. The shock plugs any attack from pouring out of us, but The Fury guards surround Garrett and I, muzzles poking near our temples, searching for an opportunity.
But Mrs. Reese's echo moves through my mind like a beautiful, live fish.
No fear. None.
I can stop it from echoing until I project the same words at Garrett. His slumped head nudges upward.
No fear. None. I say. She said, none.
I don't let go of the echo. Instead, I keep it bouncing around inside my head and pipelining it to Garrett. His own mother's words, caught and replayed in my memory, I hope he is listening to her say them. It's as if she still is.
No fear. None.
None.
None.
When Garrett finally lifts his head, I meet his eyes square. I project a whole new thought.
We're going to kill him. I promise. We are going to kill him slow.
Van stands at the mouth of this open cave, shouting through his megaphone, the short end of the severed binding cord still dangling at his wrist. He never even looks down.
"Send up the 13th Cura!" he shouts down.
As I look out at the neighboring mountains and the tops of trees, celebratory arrows soar up and then drop like dead birds. One lands in the opening. Van picks it up, shaking it in the air as he puts his mouth to the megaphone again.
"Keep the arrows down!" he shouts, but what rises up is the excited static of all the voices on the ground, along with a few more arrows. Van growls, but backs away from the opening, nearly tripping on the small, upraised circular stone there. As The Fury loosen up around us, I take a good look around.
Dirt and rock walls, it reminds me a lot of the Veritas homes underground, except that this one is way up high and missing a whole wall. The floor is an orange dirt, the walls only a little darker. The Capstone platform is near the outer opening and the other six platforms are aligned like a grin behind it, just like Nok said. Besides that, there's not a whole lot of anything in the mouth of the mountain.
Garrett pulls his legs up close, folds his arms over his knees and drops his head between his elbows. He doesn't let the sobs shake him. He holds himself tight.
When I reach out my free arm, to loop it around Garrett's shoulders, rifles click and shuffle, pointing down at me instantly. I don't stop. Instead, I stare up at our enemies, meeting their eyes, as I enclose Garrett in my embrace, pulling him closer to me.
"This one cries like a baby," one of the guards taunts. "Missing your dead mama, baby boy?"
But Garrett doesn't have a chance to hear any of that garbage. I drown it out with projections of his mother's echo, No fear. None.
None.
His body melts against mine, soft and forgiving and safe.
As lava.
As we wait, Van orders us to remove our Move Suits. The moment we peel them off, Van snatches them up. He inspects the walls, knocking to see if he can distinguish where they are hollow, but it isn't that simple. He orders one of his muscle heads to climb into the tunnel that Garrett and I were in, but without a move suit on, the guy is stuck in seconds. Van summons another handful of guards to extract the guard.
"Put this on him," Van says, holding up one of the Move Suits. But Garrett and I just stare at him. Yeah right, I think to Garrett and he returns a tiny smirk of agreement, undetectable enough that neither of us gets the butt of a gun slammed into our foreheads.
"I said," Van begins again, but an army of footfalls advance toward the door leading into the cave and Van drops the whole request. The grin, which he aims in the direction of the door, would scare a Navy Seal.
"It's time," he says. The people we love are kicked and shoved and pushed, Iris coming in first, falling and crying. Sean glares at Van as he swoops down and scoops Iris onto her feet, Grace gurgling in his opposite arm. Zane and Mark and Brandon are shoved in, linked together like a chain gang, their faces so bloodied I can't recognize them besides their clothes. Mark looks particularly pale and his field is down. Robin's not with them. Zane wouldn't leave her. Milo and Deeta stumble in next, still bound, Nok pushed in after them and then Graize. The very last person to enter is the one I'd feared seeing most: the Addo.
Addo's eyes rove around the room, brows steepling at the sight of Garrett and I, and maybe at the absence of Mrs. Reese. He grins when he sees us, an expression more sad than hopeful. As he takes a place against the wall, one of the Fury guards gives him a shove and Addo groans with it. It's then that I know for sure, there are no plans up his sleeve. The Addo isn't going to be able to save us.
Milo and Addo in one room, held at gun point, my instincts kick in and I try to push myself to my feet. One of The Fury swings his rifle up, aiming the butt of it at my face, but I grab it before he can bring it down on my cheek. I know him. He was one of the men from Wojtek's Cura. He was one of the good guys, once.
"Don't you remember who you are?" I snarl as I push the gun away.
"And who do you think you are, Princess?" the guard snarls back as two more guards surround us, guns aimed. "Jesus Christ?"
Garrett pulls me back down beside him. Iris sobs across the cave, hanging onto her brother's leg. They're only feet from where Mrs. Reese disappeared. I want to shout to him, to move back, to keep away from the edge, but Sean tries to scoot back all on his own, as more arrows fly up from below.
"Ready?" Van shouts through his megaphone. A dull cheer floats up.
Another guard steps inside the mouth, holding out a cardboard shoebox to Van. Van takes it, dancing between platforms, distributing the Cura's Cornerstones on the circular stone platforms. Something so valuable as our future is in those stones, and Van's been keeping them in a cardboard shoebox.
When Van pauses over one of the platforms, I focus too. The platforms aren't actually circles. They have jagged sides, as if they are lined with teeth. As if they are gears.
Gears. I glance at Garrett and I know instantly from the nod that he sees it too, but I have no idea what it means. From Garrett's puzzled expression, he doesn't know either.
Van continues to arrange all the Cornerstones as if he's a photographer, fussing and repositioning until he's happy with them. He places the 13th Cornerstone last, approaching the Capstone at the front of the cave as if it is a wedding altar. Arrows are stuck in the ground all around the lip of the cave, like lightning rods. Van approaches carefully, staying behind the line of the arrows reach. He glances back at the arrangement of semi-circle platforms around the Capstone one more time and then flits to the side, as if a laser beam will blast off the other platforms and converge to hit the Capstone.
Shoot, maybe it will.
I hold my breath, hoping for a laser beam, as he dangles the 13th Cura's Cornerstone over the Capstone. I recognize it immediately, remember the feeling of it in my hand through both of my Impressionings. It's hard not to think of it as mine, for all I've been through with it.
It takes him forever to place the stone, his grin spreading until he is a quarter inch away from touching the Cornerstone to the Capstone. Finally, he drops the stone and jumps backward as he does it, as if it's going to explode in his face.
I wish.
Nothing happens.
Van waits a moment, rubbing his jaw, inspecting the placement of the other stones. He steps up and removes the Capstone, re-arranges the fifth and first stones. Then he replaces the 13th Cornerstone on the Capstone, dropping it down the same way he did the first time, and hopping away just as fast.
And nothing happens. Again.
Van motions sharply to the guard beside Nok, twitching two fingers so the guard grabs Nok and hauls him forward.
"What's wrong here?" Van asks. As if Nok's going to tell him.
"Shoulda stuck to being a principal," Zane shouts from the back and two of the guards leap on him, one cracking him in the temple and one punching the handle of their rifle into his gut. Zane goes down with a groan, spitting on the floor.
"What is wrong here?" Van demands, rubbing his chin as if this is some social visit. Nok rubs his chin as if he's thinking too. He rubs until Van shouts, "SPEAK!"
Nok doesn't break his cool. He shuffles to the side, followed closely by a guard, but Nok ignores everything except the stones. He studies them. And he shrugs.
"Not time."
Wrong answer. Van smashes Nok with a sucker punch from the side. Nok drops like a bucket of cement. Garrett and I, Mark and Brandon, and even Zane, from his place on the ground, shift to fight. Guns cock in response.
"If you'd like to die now, just say so," Van purrs, spiraling to look at all of us.
"Why not?" Addo says. He chuckles. "Why not fling us off the cliff right now? What's the point of keeping us alive anyway?"
"Exactly," Van says, crossing the room to go nose-to-nose with Addo. "What is to be gained? Let me answer that for you, Larry. The gain is one of you is my key. One of you will hold that stone and deceive your whole community, whether you like it or not. The gain is my satisfaction. Watching all of you lose, that's what I'll gain.
"I want you to see how useless you are in my world. I want to hear every one of you tell me that I was right, that The Fury's way is the best way of living, and you will. You will, when it is the only way you can live and all you have left. You'll see that it is the best choice and that all you've done to work, work, work...all of this...for nothing. You will enjoy your lives for once. I will give you that. No one else can."
"You want to remove our achievement, our success, our knowledge that we have done good for the sake of doing it."
"Sure," Van smirks. "You won't have to be ashamed to get what you want anymore. You should appreciate that, Larry. There'll be cookies. As many as you can eat."
"That would be odd, but I'm game," the Addo says. "Don't let me interfere. Do your magic."
"You can thank me first."
"Alright. Thank you."
"On your knees, you fat waste."
"Lovely," Addo says. I send a thought to Addo: Shut up before they pound you again!
Shutting up, Addo answers. His voice in my head is the only calming thing I have left to hang on to.
Graize causes a panic as she slides down to sit on the ground, folding up her chubby body like we did in grade school. Criss-cross applesauce. Her long braid trails over her shoulder. None of The Fury seem to know what to do with her. She's sitting before they can shoot her. They look to Van, but he only turns back to Nok.
"Last chance," Van says to Nok. "Tell me why the stones aren't working!"
Nok shrugs and before he can speak, Van picks him up like a doll. He strides to the edge of the mountain and hurls the tiny Veritas off the edge.
My muscles surge, then lock, before I get to my feet. Garrett too. Across the room, Zane and Mark and Brandon do the same, paralyzed in their places.
Graize doesn't move an inch. Her expression doesn't change. She closes her eyes. That's all. She closes her eyes, as if praying is going to do us any good now.
Iris bawls and Van crosses the room to her. Sean tries to keep her close and shove Van away, but Van clamps onto Iris's arm and drags her off, two of the guards blocking Sean. My muscles are still frozen. Garrett only flinches and one of the guards laughs and stomps on his fingers. Garrett lets loose a tight groan.
"It's always a kid, isn't it?" Van says. "Isn't the answer always the innocent child? Well, lets try this one, shall we?"
He drags Iris to the Capstone and dumps her, still bawling, on top. He pushes the Cornerstone into her hands and she drops it. He grabs her cheeks, squeezing them together so hard that she stops crying a moment and starts screaming through his fish-lip clench job instead.
"Oh oh oh!" she shrieks. Arrows slice through the sky outside, but a few drop into the opening, only feet from Iris.
"Listen to me," Van says, crushing his face close to hers. "Stand here and hold this stone, you brat, or I'm going to do to you exactly what I did to your Mommy."
He thrusts the stone back into Iris's hands and this time, she grasps it as she continues to howl.
But nothing happens.
Van drags Iris off the Capstone. She hiccups between sobs as he pushes her back at Sean.
"Give me the baby," Van says. Sean tightens his grip. Van flicks a finger toward the baby and a guard repositions his gun at Grace. "Give her, or I'll shoot her and blow off your arm at the same time."
"Please," Sean begs. "It's too close to the edge. She could roll off or an arrow could hit her. Let me hold her."
But as Sean takes a step forward, the guards jump at him. They rip Grace from his hands and he lets go only when it's obvious the guards will tear her to pieces if he doesn't. Once they have her, Sean dives for her but the guards pummel him, landing blows on Sean's stomach and shoulders, until he is choking and curled in pain on the floor of the cave. Grace shrieks as one of the guards tosses her to Van.
"This should do it," Van sneers. He wraps the Cornerstone in Grace's blanket, binding it around her little body. He dumps the wailing baby on the Capstone.
From the corner of my eye, I see a tiny wisp float up over Graize's head. Prayers. And it all just seems too late.
"For God's sake!" Van shouts when, still, nothing happens. He turns from Grace, slapping his palm to his forehead as he stares at the other stones, eyes bulging, as he tries to figure out what is wrong, what is out of place. The baby rolls off the platform. Sean screams, trying to get to his feet as the guard standing over him knocks him down. The guard holds him down with a foot between Sean's shoulder blades. Grace rolls closer to the edge of the opening, small rocks raining off the cliff beneath her.
And a thought bursts into my head--Garrett's voice in my head--he shouts NOW.
I don't think. I go on faith and trust and instinct, my muscles unlock as I lunge up at the guard above me, plowing my uppercut into the tender triangle beneath his jaw. I throw my elbow back, crashing into another guard's nose. The last one in my way drops as Garrett plows into him with a sideways tackle.
"Who cares about the baby!" Van shouts as a guard makes for Grace. "Subdue the Contego!"
The whole cave erupts in chaos as Garrett and I race for the baby. Arrows from the foot of the mountain fly up and soar down, sticking in the dirt near the opening, only inches from Grace.
The guns cock behind us. The triggers pull back. The distinct crack of their release cuts through the air. The bullets rush all around me, moving the air.
But something has happened. They aren't hitting me. Or I don't feel them.
We reach Grace and I lean down, scooping her up as she tumbles from the edge. The moment she's in my arms, Garrett throws both of his arms around us, and we go over the edge of the cliff.
The eruption of light nearly blinds me.