It happens again, tearing flesh from Dane’s cheek this time. Exposing bone.
I scream. Geoff whirls around, his eyes popping wide at the blood flowing from Dane’s neck as another piece of skin peels off his forehead. I see an object flying toward us and throw myself forward instinctively, knocking Dane to the ground.
The window in the open car door behind us explodes, as though it’s been shot out, but the object I saw was shaped more like a pipe or an arrow. Glass falls from my hair and slices my cheeks and the backs of my hands, stinging, as I push to my feet. Dane struggles to stand up behind me, blood pumping out around the fingers he clamped on his neck as more random objects rain down on us.
Trash. Bottles and newspapers. Rocks and what looks like someone’s cane.
A chunk of skin rips off the back of my hand as though the blood underneath exploded outward like a volcano. It spills, covering the pavement with crimson dots, and the searing pain rips a screech from my lips.
From inside the agony, all this makes sense.
It’s Reaper. Betraying us again. No one but her can rip blood out of people’s veins like this, with so much force it tears flesh off in the process.
Except Reaper is screaming at us to get in the car. Horror paints her face and flecks of blood splatter her skin, which means she got hit by the glass, too.
Why would she hurt herself?
Who else could do this?
I look at Geoff. Think of his telekinesis.
He tugs Dane into the car, and Reaper shoves me in behind them as a lamppost dives through the open restaurant door, leaving a hole the size of a watermelon in its wake.
That could have been my back.
“Why are you doing this?” I shriek at Geoff. “Stop!”
“I’m not doing anything!” he screams back, face white as a ghost’s beside me in the car.
“Drive, goddammit!” Dane shouts at the driver, his whole hand bright red now.
The tires squeal as the driver complies, and frigid air swirls in through the open door. Blood continues to flow between Dane’s fingers as he curses, blanching whiter with every beat of his heart. Instinct tells me the wound is nowhere near deep enough to kill him, but it still gives me an uncomfortable burning sensation in my gut.
“What the hell? There are people following us.” Geoff’s turned around, staring out the back window, his eyes huge. “Get down!”
I obey without a second thought and so does Dane, ducking his head below the window as it shatters. The glass bites into the back of my neck and sticks in my hair. An object thuds into the partition—a piece of a park bench, I think, though the metal is twisted and half-buried, making it hard to identify.
There are people out there who can do what we can do, I think dumbly. Grab on to blood, telekinesis…
“What do we do?” Geoff asks, panic creeping up his face like mercury in an old thermometer. He’s almost screaming, and for some reason, it shatters the wall of hysteria cutting me off from my higher brain function.
“You can do the same thing!” I yell. “Throw shit back!”
My suggestion hits him like a brick in the chest as his eyes widen, and he gets on his knees facing backward, hands facing palms out like he’s surrendering. I know he’s not.
I hear it happening before I see it—the swirl of wind, the screech of metal ripping away from the bolts that secure it, and then cars from the sides of the streets are in the air, hurtling toward the black, government-issue town car racing up behind us. People lean out the windows, hands raised in our direction. More Cavies?
They deflect the cars, which smash into the curbs with the howling protest of twisting metal, but Geoff’s got parking meters and signs flying toward them, too. Their driver has to swerve to miss them. I hold my breath, trying to staunch the flow of blood from the back of my hand for a second before giving up. There are too many cuts and none of them are going to kill me. Instead of doing nothing I reach under the seats and find a first aid kit, tossing the roll of gauze at Dane.
Reaper stares at Geoff for a second, then looks down at her own hands before climbing onto the seat next to him. I want to open my mouth, to tell her she doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to, but something stops me. It could be my anger, or my fear, but maybe we do need her.
I have no idea who’s chasing us. Trying to kill us. I have no idea how they know we’re here or whether we’re kidding ourselves that we can fight back and get away, but the look on Dane Lee’s face suggests he might know the answers to all those questions.
My anger over being led into this situation blind, being kept in the dark, helps me ignore the shame in my gut that’s burning hotter than anything else. While Geoff and Reaper face the threat, try to keep us safe, I’m peering over the backseat like a toddler watching tigers fight in the zoo, totally helpless. Worthless.
Before I can implode, both of the people hanging out the windows of the town car behind us duck back inside in a spray of blood. The windshield is painted with it and the car swerves again, smashing into a city bus and spinning to a stop.
Reaper and Geoff turn, slumping onto their butts. Their faces are pale and sweating, blood-smeared.
“Are they gone?” I ask, voice trembling.
“For now.” Geoff shakes his head, loosing chunks of glass onto the seat and carpet.
“How many were there?” Dane asks. “Just two?”
“I think so.” Suspicion darkens Geoff’s features. I realize that’s become his default. “How did you know that?”
“Lucky guess.”
“They’re not going to be down for long,” Reaper mutters. “Call ahead. Get the plane running. I’ll be able to hold them off for a while, along with the others.”
“What others?” I ask, realizing it might not even be the right question.
“The other Cavy Assets.” She says it like it’s the most obvious, natural response ever and for the first time, I’m forced to really face the fact that she’s one of them.
An Asset. Not my Cavy any longer, and despite her funky attitude when we were alone for a moment at the internet café, she seems comfortable in the role.
Dane nods, looking down at his phone as he sends a text, not seeming to notice that I’m struggling not to throw up. “Fine. But you won’t be able to hold them for long. Figure out an extraction plan.”
Reaper nods. “Mist is here. He can get us out after y’all leave.”
Mist? So the Olders are helping…
Our car screeches to a halt, sending me tumbling face-first into the opposite seat, smashing my nose so hard my eyes tear. Dane throws open the door and Geoff scrambles out, followed by Reaper.
“Norah. Move your ass. Now!” Dane’s shouting, his face calm but his eyes darting.
The sight of the tarmac, of the plane, spurs me into action and I grab his hand, letting him pull me free of the mauled vehicle. My feet hit the asphalt as a second car pulls up. Haint and Pollyanna race out, as white as sheets but looking a heck of a lot better off than the three of us do—no wounds, no banged-up car.
Haint gets halfway to the rollaway steps to the plane before she’s lifted off the ground and thrown at least ten yards.
As though someone shoved her, but there’s no one there.
Or there’s someone invisible.
The people here know about us. They know what we can do and must’ve known where we would be today. I feel betrayed, but I’m not sure by whom.
My feet hustle toward Haint, but when I’m almost there, a calm comes over me. I don’t know why I’m in such a hurry because nothing’s wrong. This is all just fine, I think. We’re with the CIA. They’ll take care of us. Contented, I stop, turning away from Haint as the third car squeals into the parking lot. Its back end bursts into a fireball, flipping it forward and onto its roof.
That’s too bad. But look, Agent Bishop is helping Haint up. Pollyanna’s facing a girl I’ve never seen before—a woman, really. They’re locked in a staring contest, and I wonder who she is. Maybe the Asset that was sent with their group today...
Agent Bishop and Haint’s foreheads smack together, gashes opening up and spewing blood. My face twists up at the sight, my brain starting to insist something’s wrong with the scene around me.
Athena and Goose crawl out of the burning car on their bellies, redirecting my attention. They reach back in for Mole, tugging him free. It’s nice that they’re okay. That we’re all here for one another, us and the older Cavies.
Except me. I’m worthless, just standing here. What would I do to help right now? A big fat nothing because that’s what I am. Nothing.
All the detached calm of the past several minutes leeches away, leaving an empty husk in its place.
All I am is a burden to my friends. If we all become Assets they’ll have to risk their lives to save my worthless one every single day. What kind of person am I, asking them to do that?
Agent Warren rolls out of the burning car covered in soot, coughing until he retches on the pavement. My eyes fill with tears that boil over, the loathing for my failures—my genetic failures—more potent than ever. It’s consuming me, this sick certainty that not only would I be better off dead but that my friends would thank me for doing them that favor, too.
I need to leave them be, to be strong enough to do what they won’t.
My eyes catch sight of a gun lying on the ground near where Haint and Agent Bishop are still battling against an invisible foe. Haint disappears then, too, as though she’s realized what I yelled at Geoff in the car—she can fight that way tit for tat.
I look at the other Cavies…my Cavies. Athena’s hair is on fire, and Mole is throwing balls of flame the direction of the airport entrance, where three more unknown people—Cavies of some kind—march forward, hands outstretched.
I ignore them in favor of the gun that fell from Agent Bishop’s hand. It’s all I can see. My mouth waters with the need to touch it, to feel the weight of it in my hand, the cold steel under my chin. As though it belongs there. As though I’ve never needed anything—not food, not water, not love—more in my life.
Twenty steps. Thirty. I’m there, crouching down, picking it up. The world around me blurs because nothing can match the elation singing in my blood. This is it. This has always been my destiny as a Cavy. To remove myself from a world where I’ve never belonged. Never been good enough. Existed only as a burden to the people who pretend to care but couldn’t possibly miss a horrible failure.
My arm moves on its own, like it’s part of a dream. The gun is heavy, beautiful. The way it breaks out gooseflesh on my skin, the trigger springy in my hands, flushes me with relief so strong my eyes gush tears.
“Norah, stop!”
The sound of my name, spoken in a voice so familiar but completely out of context, gives me pause. Not because I doubt my actions but because I’m confused. I turn and see Jude, horror on his face, running toward me at full speed.
He’s so close I think he must be a vision, a dream—maybe an angel coming to take me away.
I turn away and pull the trigger.