Chapter 21
They’re here.
My pulse thunders in my ears and my fingers feel abruptly too cold.
“How far?” I ask.
I swallow. I knew this was coming, but I can’t tamp down my rising fear. “Wait, are all the crew inside apartments right now?”
“Yes,” he says.
I sprint into the entryway, unlock the front door, and pluck Edgar from the doorframe. For a wild moment, I consider grabbing the others and running. But Vale and her crew could emerge at any moment. There’s no guarantee we will escape.
I hurry back into the living room. “Okay,” I say, “Vale and her crew are searching this floor.”
Eames takes two steps toward the front door. “We need to run. Right now.”
“There’s no safe place,” I say. “Not so long as Vale controls the building. After she’s done searching an apartment, she can just lock it again and move … on…”
My brain snags on a half-formed thought.
After she searches an apartment, she moves on.
I hurry into the kitchen, gazing hard at the farthest wall—the wall that separates apartment 310 from 309. A vent is high up on the wall. Too small for any human. But plenty big for an insect.
I pluck Edgar from my shoulder. “Go to my apartment rental,” I say. “Through that vent. Tell me the moment that Vale and her crew have finished searching it, all right?”
Edgar sounds bewildered but agreeable. “All right. I can’t fly, though.”
“Go as fast as you can on foot.” I reach up on the tips of my toes, placing my fingers against the vent. Edgar’s fuzzy body tickles my fingers as he climbs up my knuckles and into the vent.
“What,” Nonna begins to say, but there’s no time.
“I’ll explain in a moment,” I reply, hurrying out of the kitchen. Eames is tightening his shoelaces while Consul speaks to him. “I’ll find you after,” she is saying, but I cut her off.
“New plan,” I say. “Better plan.”
They all look at me. Consul’s expression is irritated; Eames is wary; Piper looks hopeful.
“Vale and her people are searching from that direction.” I point to my apartment. “Which means they’re going to search 310 before they search this place. So that apartment, my weekend rental place, is going to be empty—and soon.”
“But the moment they finish searching it, they’ll be coming here,” says Piper.
I nod. “We’ll only have a window of a few seconds. In that time, we’ll make the balcony jump again. Then we’ll be safe.”
“We’ll all be trapped on the balcony,” says Consul. “None of the doors open.”
“I—uh,” I say, “might have shattered my sliding glass door. I’m probably going to be paying some repair fees on that rental if we all survive.
I sent my spybot into the other apartment.
When he gives the go-ahead, we jump. Then we hide.
” I meet the eyes of everyone in the room, one by one. “This is our best chance.”
Eames is the first to nod. “Okay,” he says.
Consul shoots him an incredulous look. “You can’t be serious.”
“We don’t have any time,” he snaps. “Any second now, they’ll be here. We can make that jump, we did it before.”
“I can’t.”
For a moment, I don’t realize who has spoken. Then Nonna comes up behind me. She puts one hand on the doorframe as though to steady herself. “I’m not going,” she says. “I can’t jump that far, and I will slow you down.”
I turn to her, ready to protest.
“No, Ms. Pine,” says Nonna. It’s a shock to hear her speak my new name. “You are very kind to include me in this. But that’s not your job. Besides, I live here. And I won’t have some terrorist search my place without me in it.” She lifts her chin defiantly.
That’s my grandmother.
I know I can’t sway her.
I force myself to take a steadying breath. “All right,” I say. “Don’t give them any reason to hurt you. Cooperate with them, all right?”
Nonna nods.
“Come on,” I say, with a glance at Eames. “We’ll have to time this exactly right.”
I pick up my backpack and heave it over my shoulders. Then I pull open the sliding glass door, and waves of late afternoon heat roll into the living room. I wonder if Prefect can see me from below, but I’m not looking down to find out.
“I don’t like this plan,” says Consul. “Why do you think it’ll work? And who gave you a spybot?”
“Questions later, escape now,” I call over my shoulder. After the many times my wraith handler has kept me in the dark, turnabout’s fair play.
Four people on the balcony is a squeeze, but we manage.
Nonna steps up to the door, giving us a look of mingled worry and determination. “You look after each other, all right?”
It’s my turn to nod. “Thank you,” I say, the words slipping out before I can bite them back. “For everything.”
For summers since I was six. For teaching me how to swim, even if I’m terrified of water now.
For taking me to farmers markets and showing me how to find the best tomatoes.
For listening to me ramble about my childhood interests.
For being the one to read my emails after I died.
And for not turning me away when I came back as a wholly different person.
I can’t tell her I love her. But I hope she knows.
The glass door slides shut between us. She leaves it open just the barest inch.
I take that as a good sign.
I turn toward the other balcony. I can do this. I did it before. But the animal part of me, the part that still remembers the car crash, begins to tremble.
“There are people down below,” Piper whispers. She, unlike me, doesn’t fear looking down. “I see a bunch of cops and vans and stuff.”
“I’m sure ISD is pulling out all the stops,” I say.
If it takes Vale and her crew about five minutes to search each apartment, they’ll be moving along at any moment. I swallow, trying to calm my breathing. There is nothing we can do but await Edgar’s signal.
“Well?” Eames murmurs. He’s closer than I realized—his mouth a few scant inches from my ear.
“Not yet,” I whisper back. “We have to—”
And then we all hear the loud thudding from Nonna’s front door.
It isn’t so much a knock as a thunder of fists.
“Open up!” comes a familiar male voice. Corey.
They’re here. They’re right outside.
Piper makes a quiet noise of fear, pressing herself to Eames’s side. He pulls her closer, shooting me a confused and terrified look.
It’s too soon. There’s been no word from Edgar, no communication at all. Something went wrong. Maybe he got stuck in the vents and never made it.
I tap a finger to my visor, hoping the short-wave signal will reach through walls. “Edgar?” I whisper. “Edgar, are you in the other apartment?”
The only answer is silence.
Nonna stands in the living room, glancing between the balcony and her front door. Her face is a clear question: What do I do?
She can’t delay. Not too long. Not without putting herself in danger.
“Shit.” The curse comes out in a quiet snarl. This wasn’t the way my plan was supposed to go. But that’s the story of my life.
Consul pulls the gun from her waistband.
No. I can’t afford to let a gunfight break out in my grandmother’s apartment. There’s simply too much to lose.
I reach for Eames. “We jump now.”
Eames gives me a wary look. “How do we know the other apartment is empty?”
“We don’t,” I admit. “But if we stay here, they’ll definitely find us.”
And they’ll know that Nonna was involved.
The railing is a searing kiss against my palm as I take hold of it. I don’t look down. I can’t look down. If I look down, the world will tilt sideways and my fingers will squeeze and never let go.
I think of those times when I was a kid, playing on the swings with my sisters.
I remember swinging as high as we could go, then leaping from the rubber swings: the arcing path we would take through the air, then the slam of feet into bark dust and dirt.
This is just another leap. Something I used to do for fun.
I jump.
Hot summer air tugs at my hair and clothes. For a moment, I am weightless—and then the arc of my jump reaches its pinnacle and I begin to fall. The railing of the other balcony comes within reach and my palms slam into it.
I manage to drag myself up and over. Glass crunches beneath me and I feel something slice down my leg.
I stagger to my feet and wave my hand to beckon the others over.
Eames is halfway over the balcony before I’ve finished the gesture. Piper is on his back, arms around his neck. His eyes sweep downward for the barest moment. He regards the fall not with fear but with defiance.
Consul comes last. She shoves her gun back into the waistband of her jeans—a terrible idea, but I’m not going to lecture her on gun safety—and then makes the leap and lands easily.
We hurry inside the apartment. Eames carries Piper over the broken glass and I close the curtains behind us.
This apartment rental is a mess. It’s been torn apart—furniture upended, dishes on the floor, everything askew.
Eames looks at me, clearly wondering what we’re supposed to do now. I gesture for silence, then point at the VA. “Wait,” I mouth.
I walk over to the small dining area and drag a chair to the shelf where the virtual assistant sits. I climb the chair, reach up, and unplug that infuriating machine.
I heft the VA into my arms, stagger into the kitchen, and set it in the sink. Then, for good measure, I turn on the sink until the entire device is underwater.
Even if the VA has an internal battery, I’d like to see it survive being drowned.
“What are you doing?” asks Piper.
“Wozniak would’ve thrown it out a window,” I say. “But that might draw attention.”
Eames looks around the ruined apartment. He reaches out to automatically straighten a coffee table. “Are you sure we’re safe here?”
“For the moment.”
I step toward the front door, intending to peer through the peep hole. But something crunches under my right foot. Maybe some glass from the door?
But when I squat down, I see the glimmering opalescence of an insect wing.
“No,” I breathe. I reach out, my fingers tracing the fibers of the carpet.
It’s there that I find him.
The crushed remains of a robotic bumblebee.