Chapter 71
Conin
Matt finds me at the end of the hall after my shift. He smiles big and bright like he usually does—I can see what Ambrosia loves about him so much. He’s a great, cheerful guy. The two pair so well together.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to Ezra’s performance.”
“It’s alright. I’m sure Ambrosia told you all about it,” I say.
“That she did,” he chuckles.
Matt follows me down the hall to the exit, past Barbara behind the front desk.
The sun beats down on us immediately. It’s a hot day in August, but kids run along the road in hordes—Angelics chat and mingle, go about their jobs like they genuinely love the work that they do.
It feels nice to be an active part of a community like this.
“I was going to stop by the Shop for some supplies,” I tell Matt as I veer in that direction.
“I’ll come with,” he says. “I need to pick up some tomatoes for dinner tonight anyways.”
“You better praise them. Ezra and Atlas have been working so hard.”
We feed off each other’s laughter while we make for it down the road, spilling onto Sacramento.
In the near distance, the cluster of pop-up canopies await in what was once the parking lot of the Dunsmuir train station.
Matt nudges me and points off to something in the far distance when the heat of the sun increases a hundredfold.
He and I stop in our tracks, collectively peering up at the sky.
I shade my eyes with my hand, noticing that something is amiss.
The glisten of Proctus’s protective barrier is gone.
I can no longer spot its hexagonal pattern.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
“I—” He fails miserably at a warm smile.
Rachel, a member of the Angelic Guard, materializes from around a bend.
She acknowledges me with a curt nod, but beelines it to Matt and starts conversing with him in hushed tones.
I overhear something about Benji, that he’s gone missing or something.
I’m not sure. But my attention is pulled from them and to a fracas that’s erupted down the street near the gate.
“There’s only one reason the dome would disappear,” I catch Matt saying.
“. . . he must be dead—”
In a chain of events too swift for us to comprehend, Proctus’s gate comes crashing down.
We freeze in tandem. Nondescript, pitch-black vehicles are waiting on the other side.
At least a hundred men stand beside them, carrying machine guns, dotting the road that stretches through the wastelands ahead.
I hold my breath. A dead, eerie silence drapes over us like a crushing, weighted blanket.
I hear an eagle’s cry from far away. And that’s when the gunfire begins.
I move, but my body protests and I’m falling to the asphalt, where I scrape my forearms. I try to get up, try to get moving, to get the hell out of here, and watch as bullets tear through Rachel’s chest. She slumps to the ground.
Matt barely has time to cry out when an outlier shoots clear through his forehead.
Blood drains from the entry wound. The life leave his eyes, his mouth open in a perpetual state of horror.
He falls to the road next to Rachel, his skull cracking from impact.
I can’t scream.
But I need to move or else I’ll face a fate as terrible as theirs.
At the front of the fray is Levi Finch and Mara Barclay, followed by a platoon of men.
I thought they . . . I thought they had been apprehended?
Mara sends bolts of lightning ricocheting off walls, targeting stray Angelics as they attempt to get away.
Meanwhile, Levi sets nearby trees and buildings on fire, watching as they burn with sadistic glee.
They’re yards away and I’m a dead man if I stay here any longer.
Finally mustering enough strength to run, I bolt back up the road Matt and I came down only minutes earlier. I need to find my boys. I need to.
A bullet makes impact with my skin.