21 #3
He galloped across the track, heading for the terrain.
Asta saw the tiny forms in the observation deck of the Needle scatter.
Underling leapt for the fence that separated the outer track from the terrain, but his dangling spike caught on a rail, and he twisted against the jerk of it.
He fell hard on his long neck. Asta didn’t know if she actually heard the crack from where she stood, but she seemed to feel it in her body.
Among the many fresh screams that tore through the crowd, Asta realized, was her own voice.
Underling was motionless now. Pikki’s body hung limp by the tethers.
The marshals made it to the dragon and rider in a matter of seconds. One of them held Pikki while another unfastened the tethers from her belt. On the screen, Asta could see that her suit was singed and black.
Underling began to writhe on the ground, and the attendants at the scene jumped back from the flames that burst at random from his mouth and nose.
A veterinarian in a flame suit ran forward and, after a few misses, caught the dragon’s head by the bridle.
He placed a bolt pistol against Underling’s skull and pulled the trigger.
Again, a shriek rose from the spectators.
Felix made a sound like he was the one who’d just had a bolt run through his brain. The dragon lay still.
The track went silent then. On the screen, medics bent over Pikki’s body, working fast and yet somehow not seeming to do anything at all.
All that Asta could see of her were her legs and boots emerging from the cluster of medical personnel.
Between the burnt places on her suit, the colors of the house she raced for – pine green and rose – shone brilliant in the sun that had finally found its way to the bottom of the raceway.
And then one of her boots moved. A rush of breath passed over the crowd. A moment later, the other boot wobbled. And then one of the medics was sitting Pikki up while others drew back to give her space.
Pikki took off her own helmet and looked up to the stands. Her neck was dark with soot, but her visor had been down during the explosion, and her face was unmarred. The cameras came in close on her, and she lifted her hand up to the people weakly.
The gesture released a deafening cheer. Asta cheered with the rest of the spectators and grabbed Felix in a hug.
‘She’s not dead,’ he said, stunned. ‘She’s alive. She’s alive.’ It was like he needed to reassure himself that this was true.
‘She’s alive,’ Asta repeated back to him as she released him from the hug. He seemed numb to her hand still on his arm. His eyes were fixed on the screens.
Pikki was trying to get to her feet, but she sank back to the ground and shook her head at the medics. A stretcher was called in, and she was carried off to raucous applause, swell after swell.
The screens now showed a race marshal, his face sober and drawn.
He addressed the camera. ‘The remaining teams will be held in the pits while any additional hazards are removed from the vicinity of the race. Teams will be released from the pits in the order in which they arrived, delayed according to their entry time.’
Already, Horizons Raceway staff were jogging to various points around the perimeter of the track.
One by one, they removed the unexploded fireworks that had been planted there in anticipation of the victory celebration and carried them quickly but gingerly to waiting carts that whisked them off the track.
Felix slumped down on the closest set of bleachers, and Asta sat beside him.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Felix said at last. ‘Pikki Lowell almost died right in front of us.’ He looked at Asta, bewildered. Then his face hardened. ‘Asta. What was in the jar?’
Asta went cold. It was irritant. It had to be. But she was haunted by the thought of Pikki trying to leave the disciplinary hearing yesterday, Hummer blocking her way.
‘It was just irritant,’ she said. ‘I swear it, Felix. That’s all it was.’
‘Are you sure?’ His voice was as hard and pointed as a dragon’s horn.
‘That’s all it was.’ It had to be true.
‘They did this, didn’t they,’ he said. It was not a question. The way he was looking at her terrified her. He must see what a weak and stupid person she was. She had let herself get sucked into the Bruces’ cruel games, and this was the price.
Asta nodded slowly.
‘We have to tell someone, Asta.’
‘What? No! We can’t!’
‘We have to.’
Asta recoiled, her stomach turning. It was all so simple in his eyes.
The Bruces had hurt someone he cared about, and now he wanted them to pay.
All he had to do, he thought, was tell his friends in the boardroom about his suspicions, and they would take care of everything.
Felix got what Felix wanted. Those were the rules of his reality.
Well, guess what, Asta wanted to say, your reality doesn’t mean anything anymore. We play by Hummer’s rules or we lose by them.
Asta put her hands on her knees to steady herself.
‘No, you don’t understand. There won’t be any evidence.
They would just come after us next.’ Was it too late for that?
Felix had been the one who’d told Pikki what Nat had said.
But Pikki was nobody. It would be harder to target a Seraphin and get away with it, evidence or no evidence.
Felix’s reality would protect him, just like it always did.
‘So what? We just do nothing?’ He was growing antsy.
Asta closed her eyes tight. ‘Just let me think.’
‘We can’t let them get away with it, not when Pikki almost . . .’ He jutted his jaw forward, and his eyes drifted to the track below.
‘They’re dangerous, Felix.’ Asta couldn’t deny it anymore.
The Bruces weren’t just misfits or mavericks.
Their abuses weren’t games. They were bad people.
Whatever Asta had gained from her association with them, it wasn’t worth it.
She wished she could go back to that day outside of Gem’s apartment and tell Hummer no, even if it meant she never got to Silverscale.