Ari
In the next few hours, several things will happen at once, and all of them will someday determine the fate of Angel City. But Ari doesn’t know this yet. No one does.
After Sam failed to show last night, he’d been moved to a new location without explanation, and he doesn’t know what happened, whether they learned of Sam’s plans, whether Sam is alive, or whether he will ever see her again.
He has received no food or water since Sam last visited him.
His stomach feels as if it has been hollowed out; his lips are cracked, cutting his tongue when he runs it across.
He hasn’t taken sand in days, and the withdrawal makes his hands tremble, fogs his mind, and makes him feel sore and distracted, his usual charisma dulled.
Sam.
They must have figured out her plan. But how?
Is she on the run now? Have they captured her?
Is she alive? Is she alive? Is she alive?
The questions whirl in his mind until he wants to scream.
How could he have not been there for her, when she must have needed him? How can he be so helpless in here?
Through the blur of his vision, he sees the door open.
Two of the guards step in. It’s time, he guesses.
Lumines must have agreed to the exchange, and Grand Central is going to kill him before they can ever get him back.
One of the men reaches him and pulls him roughly to his feet.
Stars explode across his eyes, and the sudden lightheadedness makes him sway.
A second guard comes to steady him. Ari closes his eyes and feels their hands on his arms, guiding him forward.
His feet drag against the wood. How far will they have to walk?
He isn’t sure he can hold himself up, but somehow they are beyond the door now and in a hallway, and then they are beyond that, stepping outside into a blazing sunset of an evening, and miraculously, he is still moving.
At last, he can see where he is. They are at the top of the Red City’s hill, standing in a round pathway that leads back to the Confession Rooms in one direction and a round building behind the property’s stone walls in the other.
The smell of fresh earth and roses is heavy on the air, the climbing vines thick and impenetrable.
He can see the cityscape clearly from here—especially tonight, everything tinted red with sunset, a never-ending stretch of metal and grid.
Above it all loom the Winged Towers, red eyes blinking from their top floors.
At the center of the pathway he spots Diamond Taylor and Will, along with their polemist Sebastian and a dozen of their highly ranked crewmen.
The other Lumines prisoners are already here too.
Isla’s wrists are bound behind her back, her hands covered.
The bandages around her gunshot wound are stained with patches of red.
She doesn’t have her glasses, and he realizes she must still be suffering the side effects of her last sand dose, because she keeps furrowing her brows in pain, as if a migraine has flared to life.
Her eyes have trouble focusing on her surroundings.
At last, when he’s close enough, her gaze shifts to him.
She looks pale, dark circles prominent under her half-blind eyes, but her expression is one that he knows well. She is looking for an opening. A fight.
Is Grand Central going to kill her too?
As they draw near and the other side of the circle comes into view, he sees Alexander Reed with Rudra, alongside Lumines crewmen and a line of Grand Central hostages. No one is moving or speaking, but the air is thick with tension, ready to be lit aflame.
Sam is nowhere to be seen.
His gaze darts about for her but finds nothing.
Sam, Sam. She isn’t here.
She should be standing to the left of Diamond. But she isn’t, which can only mean that his worst fear has come true. They’ve discovered her plot.
And finally, the terrible thought that he can’t bear hits him all at once.
Sam is dead. They have killed her.
She is gone.
She is gone, and everything is over.
Ari’s eyes well with sudden tears. He blinks them back, but under the waning light, he knows the shine in his eyes must be obvious.
The stone in his chest sinks deeper. Sam, her wide eyes turning toward him in class, the surprised smile on her mouth, whispering Hi to him.
Sam, standing in the silver moonlight, face turned up to his.
Sam, leaning over him, pressing a butterfly’s kiss against his lips, each of them silently yearning for a future that will never be.
If Sam is gone, then nothing matters. Will the police still show up tonight, as Sam had arranged? Will he die? What difference will it make? What would he do with his life, anyway, without her in it?
When Ari reaches the circle, his guards position him next to Isla. Even though she can’t see well right now, she still turns slightly in his direction, as if checking to make sure he’s able to stand on his own.
Reed shakes his head at Ari’s unkempt hair, his wan, sweaty skin, the bags under his eyes.
“He looks like shit,” Reed says to Will.
“He’s alive,” Will says, then nods at their captive crewmen. “You want him or not?”
“Shakespeare first,” Reed says.
Diamond shakes her head. “No,” she says calmly. “Plato.”
Reed glares at her, his eyes swiveling shrewdly from her to Ari. At last, he nods at one of his men, and they prod the alchemist named Plato forward. She takes two steps.
Will nods his approval—not to Ari’s guards, but to Isla’s.
Isla hesitates, closing her eyes, and steps forward, following the shadows of her guards to Lumines’s side before turning back around. Rudra undoes her bonds, and she lowers her arms to her sides and flexes her fingers. On the other side, the freed alchemists look poised to move.
Everything feels like a nightmare, shimmering and unreal.
Ari can already feel the wrongness of the exchange in the pit of his stomach.
He can smell the blood in the air. He stares at the silhouette of the city on the horizon, mesmerized by the blinking red lights.
He looks at Rudra and remembers the way the man pierced his neck with thorns.
He sees Reed and remembers the photos of his family.
He searches and searches for Sam and finds nothing, only darkness and empty air.
The devastation in his chest begins to give way. Slowly, surely. Gives way to anger.
Diamond nods for her second captive crewman. He steps stiffly forward and makes it to Grand Central’s side.
Ari is thinking of Sam. Sam, who is gone now.
But before she kissed him, she painted in his mind a vision of what could be.
A path forward, instead of one stuck in an endless maze.
A world where they can walk down a street together and talk about each other’s lives.
Where they can sit together in a café and laugh until their stomachs hurt.
Where they can sit under the stars at the beach and point out the constellations.
Ari glances toward the trees. Something caught his eye. A flicker, as if from a flashlight.
“Last one,” Rudra says with a nod, sending the final Grand Central captive across the line.
All eyes are on Ari now. He waits for Will to nod in his direction.
But Will stays silent and still.
Diamond lifts her chin. Ari tenses, knowing his end is about to come.
Then she nods at her men. They lift their guns and point them directly across the line, right at the Lumines captives they had just freed. They fire.
The first captive rocks violently backward. He collapses immediately, his brains sprayed across the ground in a bloody cone.
Isla moves faster—she jerks to the right, barely managing to dodge the hit.
Rudra lets out a snarl and pulls out his own weapons. Will lunges forward.
A third gun points to Ari.
He braces himself.
More gunfire splits the air—
—he flinches, expecting the fiery pain of a bullet in his chest—
But the shot doesn’t come from the gun pointed at him.
His gaze jerks to the side door right as it rockets open with a bang.
Suddenly, armed men in black gear are flooding into the space, rifles raised, eyes hidden behind visors.
There are shouts everywhere. Bright, searing lights.
“Hands in the air! Hands in the air!”
Ari squints and doesn’t know where he is for a moment. The other crewmen whirl around to face the police streaming in.
In the dancing light, Ari catches a glimpse of Diamond’s face. And for the first time he can remember, she looks surprised.
Shots ring out in the night. Ari glances over his shoulder. He sees more police flooding into the estate from the other side of the compound—Grand Central has scattered into position and he can see sparks from their guns in the darkness.
When he turns back around, Diamond and Will are nowhere to be seen.
Ari fixates on the open door. As he does, he catches sight of Reed right behind him.
He doesn’t even have time to shout. One second, Reed is standing there—the next, the man’s head rocks backward, blood spraying, body collapsing.
Ari ducks to the ground, heart pounding furiously.
Reed’s splayed on the grass, unmoving, dead.
Ari looks over his shoulder, expecting to see the police—but it isn’t an officer who fired the fatal shot.
It’s Rudra, eyes dark and wild, an expression of grim satisfaction on his face.
He exchanges a brief look with Ari. And for a moment, Ari thinks he can see a hint of understanding on the man’s face—as if, once upon a time, perhaps Rudra had lost just as much as Ari had, that perhaps he had sacrificed as deeply.
Then the moment’s gone, and Rudra turns, melting into the night, shouting for the others to get out.
One of Lumines’s men hits an officer in the neck with a bullet—the man snaps back and collapses to the ground.
Another crewman—Ari can’t even tell which syndicate, in this chaos—lunges at another officer and the man screams, shaking, as the alchemist transmutes his helmet into his skin until the two are fused.
There is gunfire everywhere. Ari turns toward the gate in the distance. The police are closing in now—this is the end.
He’s about to sprint when a figure darts before him and yanks him into the bushes.
That’s when he hears her voice.
“We can’t go this way. Follow me.”
It’s Sam.
It’s Sam.
They lock eyes for a moment and Ari thinks he’s dreaming. She’s been hurt—her cheeks look bruised from a beating, and there are bandages around her wrists that are stained crimson with blood.
But she is alive.
By sheer will or wit or madness, she has somehow survived.
“Follow me,” she says, and grabs his hand.
Everywhere they look, there is fire and blood and the sound of rage. There is no winning this—they can clearly see the ring of police closing in, their ranks thickening.
Ari and Sam make their way along the wall until they come through a thicket of bushes farther down the hill, where a complex of buildings comes into view.
“This is the Observatory,” Sam tells him breathlessly. “Where the alchemists train. Under the floors is a tunnel. Every building has one.”
“Where does it lead?” he asks.
“Out to the back street,” she replies. “It’s the alley that runs behind the estate.”
He nods, taking her hand in his. She winces, but clutches him tightly. They don’t have much time left.
Behind them, the battle rages on. They disappear into the thickets of ivy blanketing the complex’s gates, then make their way through a building and out into a courtyard.
For a moment, Ari slows down and takes in the space.
Evening lights illuminate the base of the oak trees, and in the center of the courtyard, he sees a vast mosaic of tiles, each a different element.
In the shadows near the edge of the courtyard, Sam bends down and searches for a specific stone tile.
There, she presses her hand against it—and transmutes the slab of concrete into a smooth slab of brass, her hand on the knob that opens it.
When she pulls up, it reveals not solid ground but a tunnel yawning down into blackness.
She pushes herself to her feet and looks at Ari. But Ari is no longer looking at her. He’s staring at a shape that has materialized behind her out of the shadows of the oaks, his figure turned directly toward them.
It is Will.