Chapter 47 Moth Girl
Moth Girl
Crow’s plan turns out to be as bananas as one would expect.
First, Shivani disappears into the woods with a pack of power bars from Danny’s glove compartment and returns looking frazzled and wild-haired to announce the army of Darkrats is ready.
Then Danny bosses Andres around to collect Darkpollen allergens.
Tae is cooped up in the back seat of Danny’s car, coordinating with Crow on the hacking side of things.
The poor adults and Ksenya are on reconnaissance, all four of them huddled over a phone, marking the times of the patrol’s comings and goings.
During the whole time, Sascia paces back and forth among them, checking their progress like a busybody. She has a bad, bad feeling about this. For three months, the security detail was stationed outside her home. What called them away from her?
Once the team is ready, Crow’s plan goes into action. They all crouch in their designated spots, ready to spring at Crow’s signal. Sascia kneels next to Ksenya in the thicket of trees, waiting for the first step in the plan.
The guards don’t notice them at first.
They are darting shadows in the night, there and gone again before you can blink.
But eventually the soldiers notice; they begin to yelp small, undignified curses.
The scene erupts with movement. The three figures outside the security booth start hopping from foot to foot.
Another two, farther into the compound, blast beams of nova-light into the ground around them.
A whole wave of Shivani’s Darkrats darts over gravel and concrete, their impossibly long scaled bodies spilling between legs and vehicles like a river of black.
Commands are barked, patrol cars revved up, guards flood out of the buildings.
“Ah, the symphony of chaos,” Crow chirps in Sascia’s earbud. (In lieu of proper army earpieces, they’re using their own earbuds on a group call.) “Such beauty, such grace.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Danny whispers on the other side of the line.
“And you, my dude,” Crow says, “are a mastermind.”
He really is. He and Andres have concocted a cocktail of pollen and Darkmold, ground it to powder, then sprinkled it on the fur of the rodents now rushing through the compound.
It only takes seconds for the highly irritative dust to radiate off their spiky fur.
The soldiers are not truly dying (Aunt Rania made sure of that), but it sure looks like it.
Black gore drips from their nostrils, streams of snot that writhe in the air like liquid shadows.
“My turn,” Ksenya whispers.
She makes to stand, but Sascia reaches out. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I know.” In the darkness, Ksenya’s smile beams with warmth. “I want to.”
She flicks her hood on and sneaks through the woods, crouching low for cover.
A flurry of moths follows in her wake, their Darkprints casting the foliage in eerie neon hues.
Keeping to the shadows, Ksenya flattens herself against the side of the security booth and props open the electrical panel by the door.
With swift, focused movements, she plugs in Crow’s port, which will get the hacker into the facility’s systems.
“Hey, you!” a guard calls.
Ksenya has just enough time to close the panel and make a dash for the entry gate—she’s caught as she’s slipping through. Guards grab her by the elbows, batting the surrounding moths away.
“It’s her!” one of them calls to the others farther inside. “It’s the moth girl!”
Because to them, it is the moth girl.
Sascia and Ksenya have always looked like two sides of the same coin, one sharp-edged, one sunny and golden.
But now, her long hair tucked in the collar of her shirt, wearing Sascia’s black hoodie and telltale Doc Martens, with moths clinging to her like bees to sweet nectar, Ksenya is the spitting image of the so-called moth girl.
Early on, as Crow explained her plan, Danny had interrupted. They’re going to assume it’s Sascia, coming to save her moths.
And that, Crow had answered, is exactly what we want.
Sascia watches, breath held, as the soldiers carry her sister away. The only balm to her rising dread is the assured click-clacks of Crow’s keyboard in her ear.
After a few, endless, minutes, Crow says, “I’m in.”
Sascia looks at Danny through the woods, his wheelchair stationed by the car.
His laptop is propped open on his lap, his fingers paused between furious typing.
He, their parents, and Shivani are staying behind to be their eyes and ears.
Their gazes hold; there was another moment like this, on the precipice of change.
He had held her gaze then, while fire roared toward a nest of helpless larvae.
He holds it now, and says into his phone, “Go get your moths, cuz.”
Sascia runs. Tae and Andres break into a sprint behind her, all three of them keeping to the shadows of the woods.
The northwest security booth lies abandoned, the guards either occupied by the rats or Fake Sascia’s arrest. At Crow’s command, the green dot of the camera stationed at the post blinks off. The door of the fence buzzes open.
Sascia and the boys swoop inside and dart for the wall of the closest building.
While Crow works the security system, Danny whispers directions to them.
Left, right, right again. Every camera they meet momentarily goes dark.
Every door they come across is instantly popped open.
They find their way to the center of the facility and slip into an empty corridor.
The space is brighter here, all white linoleum and fluorescent lights.
It feels exposed in a dangerous kind of way.
“The guards are escorting Ksenya in through the security barracks,” Crow says. “You’ll have fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, to locate the moths before her cover is blown. Sascia, tell me where you need to go and I’ll make sure you don’t run into someone unpleasant.”
Sascia glances down at Mooch, the one moth she didn’t give to Ksenya, sitting daintily on her palm. “Which way, buddy?”
It flies ahead, taking them on a sprint through the facility. They stop only when Danny alerts them that a guard is moving ahead or when a door takes a bit longer for Crow to hack open. Then they turn a corner to find Mooch hovering before a set of double doors.
“Crow?” Sascia asks.
“Done,” the hacker replies.
With a beep, the doors slide open.
It is a sprawling space, wider than a stadium and taller than a twenty-story building.
The top is capped with a metal grate, but above it, the walls spiral up and up—they’re standing inside the old factory silo.
One end of the room is dark, packed with the metal shadows of machinery, but the other is awash with light.
Glass panels of nova-lights of low lumen have been propped up to make three walls and a low ceiling.
In the center of the nova-light structure is a figure. Handcuffs chain their arms to metal posts. Their legs are folded beneath them and their head hangs unnaturally between their shoulders. Plastic tubes are wedged into their back, bulging their flesh; through them runs a river of black.
Sascia is already running. She skids on her knees before them and gingerly cups that face up, pushing their hair away, hoping, hoping, hoping for a sign of breathing, for a heartbeat, for clear, open eyes.
“Nugau?” Her voice echoes across the empty space, as though a beast of fury is unsheathing its fangs and claws. “Nugau, who did this to you?”