61
“Rook!” I cry out and run over, slamming my fists against the thick glass, but he doesn’t react. He hangs, suspended, with his arms outstretched and his hair floating around his head like a funeral wreath. His eyes are closed, and his face is soft, almost as if he’s really just asleep.
I spin around. “Get him out!” I shout.
Navy and Justin are staring up at their brother, their faces pale and their eyes slightly glazed. I storm over to Mowry and point at the tank.
“Is he dead?” I ask. “How do we get him out?”
“He’s being added to the network,” Mowry says, gesturing to the wires running from the tank and stretching to the roof.
“What the fuck does that mean?” I ask, my voice pitching into hysterics.
I’m so angry I can barely think. Hardly breathe. It feels like someone has wedged a tight knot of gum down my throat. Red bleeds across my vision, and my hands shake.
“Can we get him out?!”
Mowry shakes his head, wiping his eyes with the back of a hand. “She only wanted to protect everyone. She had good intentions.”
“I don’t give a fuck what her intentions are. I want him out!”
Mowry’s gaze shifts between me, Justin, and Navy.
Justin holds up his gun and points it at the doctor. “If you don’t get him out this instant, I won’t hesitate to make you suffer.”
Mowry scoffs. “You think I want to live with this?” he asks.
“The guilt. It’s eaten away at me for decades.
I see their faces. The fear when they realize what’s about to happen.
They can’t scream. They can’t do anything, but I see it in their haunted eyes.
Every time we cure them, the horror begins all over again. ”
Mowry drops to his knees, curling into himself, and he sobs and sobs.
“We won’t kill you,” Navy says, striding over and dropping to her haunches. “We have much more colorful ways of making you suffer.”
Mowry barely registers her growled threat as he continues crying. Skies, he’s a wretched sight. Calliope comes next. She stomps over and hauls him up by the back of his shirt.
“You want out of this city? You want to escape this shame? Redeem yourself. Fix this,” she says, getting in his face. “Get. Him. Out.”
Her expression is hard and cold, unforgiving. After a moment of hesitation, he slowly nods.
“Good,” she says, dragging him to his feet. “And while you’re at it, show us where the cure is stored.”
Mowry stumbles a few steps toward a bank of computers on the far wall. “Here,” he says, pointing to a black rectangle flashing with blue and red lights. “If your friend’s drive works, this is where you can download the information.”
Henry approaches, drawing out the data drive from Edward.
“Can you see us?” Henry asks into his headset, scanning the room for security cameras.
“You won’t find any surveillance in here,” Mowry says while Henry listens to Edward. “But I swear to you this is the right one.”
“Good?” Henry asks into his headset again, pausing to listen, then finds the slot and inserts it into the computer. “Edward says ten minutes. Enough time to get Rook out.”
Mowry crosses the room, approaching another panel nailed to the wall. With shaking hands, he begins pressing buttons, whimpering to himself.
A light flashes red, and a buzz sounds, almost like an error.
Mowry frowns.
“What’s happening?” Justin asks, clutching his weapon.
Mowry shakes his head and repeats the sequence. “It seems she’s changed the access codes.” Again, he presses several buttons and receives another error.
“Get him out,” Justin demands. “Now!”
Mowry shuffles to a third panel farther down the wall. Again, he begins pressing buttons and knobs, talking to himself as he receives error after error. “It isn’t working!”
“You better not be lying to us,” Fisher hisses. “If this is another ploy . . .”
“I swear to you it isn’t! I’ve told you everything. Laid myself bare. I want to end this!” Mowry has gone paler than ever. He tugs on his restraints, his body quivering with fear and stress and the guilt of his lies. He slides to the floor again, covering his head with his arms as he sobs.
“Enough of this shit,” I say, and I pick up a chair, lifting it over my head. Without hesitating, I swing, smashing it against Rook’s glass tank with every ounce of strength I can muster. It connects with a crack, glancing off the surface without leaving a scratch.
“Fuck!” I scream. Then I swing again, harder this time. The impact vibrates up my arms as the chair shatters in my hands, dropping to the floor like useless twigs. I scan the room, my chest heaving, as I search for a blunt, heavy object.
Justin picks up another chair and follows suit, slamming it against the glass until it finally chips. Everyone begins searching for random objects, picking up anything they can lift—computers, monitors, medical equipment—throwing it all against the thick glass.
“Rook!” I’m shouting, terrified he can’t be woken up. It’s only been a few days since they captured him. Are we too late?
Rage blisters through my veins, red-hot and searing.
“Stand back,” Justin says, holding up his gun.
“No! What if you hit him?” Navy says. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I won’t,” he says. “Move away.”
We all do as he asks, shuffling aside as he aims for the side of the tank.
He pulls the trigger, the explosion echoing in my ears.
The bullet strikes the glass, glancing off and embedding itself into the far wall.
But the impact has formed a web of hairline cracks.
“Yes!” I scream. “Again!”
Justin takes careful aim a second time, then fires another shot, and the cracks expand and spread.
“Stop!” booms a voice, and we all turn around to find General Sol surrounded by the four members of her Circle Guard. She looks strangely normal. Nothing like the picture of the woman Mowry painted, nearly on the brink of losing it all.
Except maybe that isn’t the truth. Her skin is pale, her eyes bloodshot and ringed by dark circles. She’s thinner than when I last saw her, too. Maybe a better person would feel some pity for all she’s had to endure, but right now, I am not that person.
I want her to burn.
“You lied to us!” I yell. “Tricked us! How could you do this!”
“Arrest them!” she says to her Guards, ignoring me. “How did you find this place?”
She scans the room, her gaze landing on Mowry where he cowers in the corner, and she goes entirely still. Several emotions pass over her expression. Pain. Regret. Sadness. Betrayal.
Her Guards advance, but I back away.
“Don’t touch me!” I scream as I pick up a lamp and start hammering at Rook’s tank, working on the weak spot Justin created.
Everyone closes in around me, clashing with the Circle Guard.
Thankfully, they’re outnumbered, and we’re definitely angrier.
“Get him out!” Justin shouts to me. “Just get him out!”
My dad appears a moment later, holding what looks like an oxygen tank.
“Move,” he says. Then he lifts his arms over his head and smashes the heavy metal tube against the glass. More cracks form, and the first drips of water leak down the side of the tank.
“Again!” I say, jumping up and down.
Another swing. More cracks. More water.
“You cannot have him!” General Sol calls over the fighting. “If it’s not the Solitude, then it will be you, Poet Graves.”
“Just try to take her!” my father screams, turning around to face her, his skin flushed and his eyes wild. “Just fucking try!”
My father swings at the glass again.
“Philip, how could you!” Sol shrieks at Mowry. “Why would you do this to me?”
“I had to,” he says, finally looking up from where he’s huddled on the floor. “I couldn’t live with the guilt any longer.”
“The city will be left in ruins,” she says. “We will have nothing left!”
“If a city’s vitality depends on this suffering, then it doesn’t deserve to stand,” he hisses, finally finding his fucking backbone. “New Manhattan has always been a cancer. It has never deserved anything.”
General Sol steps back like she’s been slapped. “You said that you supported me. That you wanted this.”
“I wanted to help you, but I never wanted this.”
He’s different now. Not the blubbering mess he’s been since we dragged him down here. Now his voice is cold, fused with the certainty that this might be the end for him, but at least he got the truth out while he still could.
I watch it all in a kind of haze, only distantly aware of the fighting and the pounding of metal against glass.
I watch Rook’s lifeless face as he gently bobs in the tank.
I watch Henry and Navy and Justin.
These people who’ve all come to mean so much to me during the last few months.
This family I found when my own rejected me.
These people who offered me a safe haven when I had to run for my life.
I’ve made a lot of terrible decisions in the past year, yet I can’t help but understand how lucky I’ve been to be surrounded by such strong, brave, remarkable people.
Even if I don’t survive this, I can die knowing that.
Then . . . a moment later, the room explodes.