Chapter 34 #3
A metal arm had flung him off his feet, launching him halfway across the room. He flew through the air. His limbs were limp. His spine bent in a way that couldn’t be right—
He crashed through a table. The surface split apart beneath him, cracking in half. Wood splintered and metal twisted, and he disappeared beneath the broken pieces.
He didn’t reappear.
“Sky!” The scream tore out of me, raw and jagged. Get up. He had to get up. We had to go. We were so close to being out of this, to escaping.
Any minute now…
On autopilot, I started forward.
Just as another of those deadly pink beams exploded from the hallway.
Driving straight through the wreckage where Sky had landed.
The blast rippled out. I staggered back, pain slicing deep, as if that beam had driven into me, too. I couldn’t breathe. A delayed wave of blistering heat rolled over me, followed by slinking cold. Numbness.
The broken table ignited instantly. Red-hot flames burst to life and licked greedily at the wall, climbing up plaster and wood. Metal warped, and plastic melted and dripped. Steam and boiling chemicals hissed like some great beast.
Smoke and fire enveloped everything.
No. No way. I’d just watched him wield lightning. I’d watched him take on an Enil and survive. He’d been a steady, immovable force through all this. He couldn’t be…
He couldn’t be…dead.
But if he’d survived the impact, there was no way he’d survived that.
Hungry flames climbed toward the ceiling. The table was nothing more than a lump of charred, blazing wreckage.
My pulse thudded. I needed to move. I knew that.
But I couldn’t. All I could do was stare at the blackening metal, the rapidly expanding fire. Precious seconds ticked past. Sky didn’t emerge from the destruction.
They’d killed him. Sky was dead.
An Enil lumbered from the sagging hallway’s mouth—no, two.
Tall and spindly, they looked eerily similar except for the slight reddish sheen to one.
Like villainous robot twins on stilts, made of multi-jointed, too-long limbs.
Even their faces were elongated, blank metal plates set with unfeeling green eyes.
I could make out their distorted speech over the roar of flames.
They split up, one going for the melted debris where Sky had landed. The other came for me.
God, was it even worth trying to run?
Flames rippled along the ceiling like orange waves, a tide sweeping closer. Alarms shrieked. Something popped, and water began to fall. Sprinklers, but too late to do much good.
The red-tinted Enil bore down on me. Its steps shook the floor. Water flowed into my eyes, running into my mouth and plastering my hair to my head. I watched it come. My hand’s glow was muted in the fiery light, but it was still there. Still a signal drawing them to me.
Sky had been right. I hadn’t listened. The midterm—it hadn’t been that important. Not worth dying over. Not worth losing him.
Green eyes found mine through the haze. The advancing Enil threw aside a table like it was made of cardboard. The pressure in my chest caved my lungs.
Sky had told me to run. He’d bought me that chance with his life. If I stayed here, if I forfeited now…
Well, then he’d died for nothing.
Even if I didn’t stand a chance, the least I could do was make them work for it.
I turned and ran for the doors, feet sliding. The floor was a mess of waterlogged ash and chunks of plaster. I leapt over a chair, pumping my arms.
The air stirred—the only warning I had.
I threw myself to the side. Claws sliced through the place I’d just been and gouged deep into the floor instead, furrowing tile. Close. Too close.
The Enil were too fast. Too big. I didn’t stand a chance against two. I couldn’t make a dent in that metal armor. My flesh stood no chance against those talon-tipped fingers.
A reddish gleam flashed in my periphery, and I ducked instinctively, staggering sideways.
My spine lit up as my backpack slammed into the wall, bouncing me into a vending machine forehead first. Hard enough that the whole thing swayed, and energy drinks, candy bars, and packs of gum rained down.
Sucking in air through my teeth, I spun around, flattening against the machine’s front.
The Enil towered over me. Joints and gears spun and ground together as it leaned down, like it was getting a closer look at the specimen of helpless humanity.
The green glow of its eyes filled my vision, and twisted, garbled speech spilled out of it.
I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know what it was saying.
I shrank as far back as I could, but it was no use. There was nowhere to go.
Sleek swaths of welded metal and stitched-together parts shifted as it stepped closer.
Close enough for me to smell the engine-grease, fried-electrical scent it gave off.
Alien and somehow also familiar. A flattened, blue Ford logo bent across its chest. Bizarre, seeing something so recognizable forged to the front of this extraterrestrial robotic being.
I braced my palms against the vending machine’s cracked side and slowly tipped my head back. Water stung my eyes, blurring everything. I could see enough, though. Its neon gaze was trained on my hand. My shining, blazing hand. The reason for all this destruction.
For all this death.
My throat closed, and I looked past the bulky creature, to where the molten pile of metal and burning things lay. I could barely make it out from here, through the water and smoke and my streaming eyes. I couldn’t even see Sky’s body.
Hopelessness welled up. There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to go. They’d trapped me. Those multi-jointed arms were too long, those claws too sharp. I could try for the door, but I wouldn’t make it.
Breathing hard, I curled my fingers around the markings, but it was no use. The glow seeped through, anyway, like I’d stolen a star. My throbbing head spun.
I should’ve listened to him. Should’ve stayed away. Stayed safe.
But a small voice said at least this way, it’d be over. I’d be done looking over my shoulder. The Enil would have what they wanted. Maybe they’d even leave Earth. My family, friends—humans in general—would be safe.
It helped a little to know that. Maybe it’d make what would inevitably be a slow, painful death worth it. Make Sky’s death worth it.
My chest squeezed.
I turned my head, a gasped sob escaping.
The water was cold, icy, pouring in sheets off the Enil, pinging on metal that reflected the fire in an orange sheen.
Long talons flexed, twitching, as if the creature couldn’t wait to dig them into me.
As if it was ready to root around in my brain for the information everyone seemed to think was there.
I, for one, hoped it was sorely disappointed.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I cringed against the rattling vending machine and readied myself for the crushing metal grip, the slicing of those scalpel-tipped fingers.
Instead, a warm, hard body flattened to the front of mine, pressing me back.
My eyes sprang open at the same instant a dark form materialized.
A tall, lean form. One I knew—
Sky.
I may have shouted his name, or maybe I only whispered it because I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, because how the hell was he alive?
He slammed both glowing palms into the Enil’s chest plate. The metal dented beneath the blow, and the force of it drew a grunt out of him and shoved his body into mine, squishing me between his back and the vending machine.
But it worked. The robot’s furious roar drowned everything else as it launched away from us, colliding with the wall of windows.
Glass exploded in a shower of crystalline fragments. The metal frame buckled, and the ceiling sagged. I screamed and covered my face as shards and rubble rained down in a glittering storm. My legs felt strange, wobbly.
Light and heat and water. Everything seemed muffled. Maybe I’d hit my head harder than I thought, because when I lifted my face, a hazy grayness gathered at the edges of my vision.
Or maybe it was just that Sky was here, and he was somehow alive.
I stared up at him as he spun and reached for me, pulling me against him. Shielding me. The building, the air—everything—shook and fractured, but somehow, I managed to lift my head from his chest.
He looked down, and his midnight-blue eyes met mine. Blood streaked the side of his face, vivid red against his golden skin. A thin trickle of it ran from the corner of his mouth. He was covered in soot and dust and scrapes.
But he was alive.
Too many emotions clawed their way to the surface, but I couldn’t get out a single word. I clutched handfuls of his shredded shirt, going limp in his grip. My legs were completely numb.
“We have to go,” he said, gripping my waist and tugging, urging me to move. It sounded like he was far away. Fading.
He was so pretty with sparks falling and water slicking his hair. Even frowning. His mouth moved, forming words I didn’t catch. Somewhere, an Enil roared, and Sky looked over his shoulder, tensing against me. Water and smoke swirled and blurred everything.
I’d hit my head, and…
“I think I’m going to faint,” I tried to say.
I didn’t get it out before everything went black.