65. Vesper
VESPER
Hundreds of people pour into the Harrow from this Harrow Gate.
Women, men, and children. The first people to come stumbling through is a family of four, two women and their children.
The children can’t be older than twelve, but each of them makes it through gasping and clinging to their mothers.
The second group comes through swinging, two men that immediately get swallowed by the crowd as they fight.
My eyes are wide. “Why didn’t Cipher drop us into New Babel?” I ask Havoc. “Why Verdant Nexus?”
“Because New Babel is more dangerous than the Verdant Nexus,” Havoc replies, watching it unfold. “It looks less threatening because of the city, but all this gold hides the evil underbelly. Many of these people won’t make it past the first day.”
I clench my hands. “We have to move fast if Dox comes through. She’s blonde-haired and blue-eyed, complete opposite of me.”
We all push our way forward, trying to cut through the crowd, shoving people out of the way. At first, we don’t make any progress, the crowd too thick. It isn’t until Stevie takes the lead that we start to make any headway, but we’re still a block away from the actual Gate. We’re way too far back.
I watch the clock tick down, halfway past by the time we’ve cut two third’s of our way through the crowd.
“Watch it!” A player growls and draws a knife. Before he can so much as stab me for stepping on his toes, Stryker has his hands around his head, his teeth flashing as he snaps his neck.
“Stryker!” I gasp, staring at the man as he drops him into the crowd to be trampled on.
“What?” Stryker asks, taking up space on my left. “He was about to stab you.”
“I don’t need your protection,” I grunt.
“I’m aware,” he muses, shoving more people away from me. “But it does not benefit me if someone kills the one person capable of removing my collar. No one else would dare remove it.”
Well, it would benefit him to kill me because then he could remove it himself, but for whatever reason, he hasn’t attempted.
Perhaps, he meant it when he said he wanted me, to the extent where he’ll wait for a better opportunity, and me being dead doesn’t give him what he wants.
Either way, I’m incredibly aware of his presence at my side as we push through the crowd.
While the crowd moves for Stevie, they don’t exactly leave enough room for our entire group.
Despite our aggression, they don’t move until we physically move them, and then plenty of them try to fight us as we go.
“I don’t see her yet!” I shout to be heard over the crowd as the timer ticks down.
“There’s still ten minutes,” Locke reassures me. “Don’t worry. She’s coming.”
But Havoc and Locke’s eyes meet, trading some silent conversation that I choose to ignore.
“She has to come through,” I whisper to myself. “Dox, you have to.”
Finally, with only five minutes left to go, we make it to the front and immediately have to fend off people when they start to press us against the platform, threatening to smash us into it.
“Back off!” Havoc snarls, swinging his sword and forcing them back. “I’ll gut every one of you.”
Stryker surprisingly takes up space beside him, forcing them back with his sharp claws, giving us room.
I drag myself up onto the platform and stare at the swirling portal, waiting, begging Cipher to come through for me.
“Please,” I whisper, my fingers digging into my trousers. “Please. Dox, you got this.”
More people come out and stumble when they see me standing there, but none of them are familiar. None of them are Dox. They leap off the platform into the crowd, joining the game, becoming players, but I only care about one. I only need one person to step through this fucking gate.
The timer ticks down. Three minutes to go. Then two minutes.
“Come on!” I start to scream. “Please!”
The crowd watches me closely, feeling the unhinged energy rolling off me in waves. What am I going to do if she doesn’t come through? What am I going to do without her? I can’t keep going through the Harrow without her by my side.
“Please!” I choke, my eyes welling. “Fuck!”
One minute. Forty-five seconds.
Another man. Another woman. Three more men.
Thirty seconds.
A young boy. Alone.
Twenty seconds.
Two girls barely old enough to lift a weapon. Also alone.
Ten seconds.
A couple, both clinging to each other desperately, the woman coughing as she brings through the remnants of her Black Lung.
Five seconds.
A man who barely looks around before he leaps off the stage.
Four.
Three.
A single woman.
Two.
One.
The timer stops counting down. The blue swirling portal shimmers and continues to spin. I stare at it, my heart in my throat.
“Come on,” I whisper. “Please, Dox. Please.”
The portal shimmers again and a leg steps through. A body follows, arms, torso, and then a face.
A familiar face.
My shoulders ease for about two seconds before they tense again.
Blue eyes look around and find me, her blonde hair dirty, her face covered in grime.
There are bruises on her cheek, on her arms, on every part of her body I can see.
She’s skinnier than she was when I left, and she was already lean.
Her collarbones stand out in sharp relief against her dirty skin.
She finds me, and relief flickers in her eyes seconds before panic does.
“Run,” she chokes out. “V, run!”
The portal shimmers again and another man steps through, also familiar. One of the players who’d stepped through before them throws something up to the man who grabs Dox roughly, one of the projectile weapons we’d seen in the Shatterlands.
Orion grins and points the weapon at my chest.
“Hey, baby,” he purrs, his eyes bright with malice. “Did you miss me?”
Pure, animalistic rage rises in my throat. I bare my teeth . . .
. . . he pulls the trigger . . .