Chaos (5 page)

Our driver yanked the steering wheel sharply as he started to pull around the now-stopped vehicle. Right before we passed the cab of the truck, I felt a breeze and heard the lightest of footfalls on the road behind us, and I knew Ana had jumped. The women around us grew silent; I was sure they were watching her. I closed my eyes and hoped against hope they wouldn’t alert our driver to her escape. But as the seconds ticked by and they stayed quiet, I realized they weren’t going to betray us.

It was in that moment I understood how many people must be trapped in this city. How many good people who didn’t deserve this hellish fate. I’d known it before, but only at a brain kind of level. Now I felt it in my gut—the agony, the suffering, the sweat and blood in the air. The horror rolled over me, sending a chill up my spine despite the sweltering heat. I’d come to rescue Malachi. Ana had come for Takeshi. No one would ever come for the others.

Our vehicle picked up speed as we passed the enormous truck, and I made one last frantic twist of the knife—
click
. The shackle at my wrist fell open. Feeling victorious, I pulled my left hand free.

And saw that we were now going at least twenty miles an hour.

Well, shit.

Staying low, I held on to the edge of the cart and threw my leg over the back, then clung to the closed tailgate as the buildings zipped by. The hot wind blew my hair around my face, leaving strands of it sticking in the sweat on my forehead and neck.
Let go,
I coached myself.
You have to let go.

Then I made the mistake of looking down. When I saw the road passing under me in a blur of rocky asphalt, my fingers wouldn’t obey me. The woman I’d been chained next to turned her head. Her startling blue eyes met mine, full of pleading—and hope. She knew I was different. She wondered if I would help her. She nodded at me, urging me to go on.

My fingers straightened, and I let go.

My boots hit the blacktop, and I pitched forward into a roll as the air was driven out of my lungs. My shoulders and hips cracked against the uneven pavement. Sick-hot agony zapped along my bones as I came to a stop along the side of the road. The vehicle was disappearing into the distance, but that woman’s eyes were still clear in my mind. Hands closed around my arms and tugged at me. “Get up,” Ana said. “We have to get off the street.”

With her help, I staggered to my feet. Though every part of me hurt, no part of me seemed broken, miraculously. I pulled my hood over my head and followed Ana into the nearest alley. She whirled around to face me, her eyes bright and intense.

“Hey, I’m okay,” I said to her, eager to show her that I could hold my own, that she could be my Captain and not my babysitter.

She shook her head dismissively. My welfare wasn’t what was on her mind. “You have to see this,” she said, grabbing my sleeve and pulling me back along the alley that ran parallel to the main road. The buildings sheltered us from the brutal sunlight as our boots squelched through sludgy garbage.

“I can’t believe it,” Ana muttered as she finally came to a halt at the mouth of an alley. “You won’t believe it.” She threw her arm in front of me to keep me from blundering onto another road that ran off at an angle to the city wall. “Look.” She pointed across the street.

In front of us, riveted to the side of a concrete building, was a metal billboard. Painted across its surface was the face of a man. Below it were words, in all different languages. My eyes searched for ones I could understand and found them in the bottom row. Wanted, it said, for crimes against the true citizens.

My eyes traveled back up to the man’s face. It was crudely rendered, but I was almost sure I knew who it was, because I’d seen a painting of him before. One glance at Ana told me I was right. She stared at that picture like it was her salvation.

Takeshi.

FIVE

“I
GUESS THAT’S OUR
confirmation that he’s here,” I said.

Ana smiled, blinking away tears. “Yeah.” She swiped her sleeve over her cheeks and cleared her throat. “Sorry. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen his face.”

“It’s all right. It looks pretty recent, doesn’t it?” The paint was shiny, not chipped or cracked. Compared with the other signs I’d seen so far in the city, this one was much newer. “What do you think it means?”

Her look was all grim satisfaction. “I think it means he’s on the loose, and they’re not happy about it.”

“When we were on that cart, I heard the others talking about some sort of resistance movement. Do you think—?”

“I think, if there actually is one, he’d be at the heart of it.” Ana was still staring hungrily at his face, at the rough sweeps of paint forming high cheekbones, a wide forehead, sharp brown eyes, and a shock of black hair. “He would never be satisfied with hiding out. He’d want to destroy the Mazikin.” The pride in her voice was evident—as was the hope.

And it was contagious. “Do you thin
k . . .
do you think maybe Malachi could get away from them too?”

She gave me a smile that was meant to be reassuring but didn’t reach her eyes. “Maybe. Takeshi taught him well.”

Wishing hard, I imagined Malachi’s face on a billboard like this, his defiant, angular features rendered in shades of brown and tan, his dark eyes almost as black as his hair. If anyone could get away, it would be him. And we would find each other, and find a way out of here. I couldn’t contemplate any other alternative.

I peered up the street. The glare of the sun was blinding, warping the air with heat. “I don’t blame the Mazikin for hating the sun. I’m starting to hate it, too. But it gives us a chance to get deeper into the city.”

The quiet, garbage-strewn streets were bounded by dark-gray buildings, stolid cubes of thick concrete squatting beneath the dome, sheltering the monsters. The only sound was the distant crash of machinery. Factory noises. Not everyone was sleeping.

“Which direction should we go?” I asked.

Ana reluctantly tore her eyes from the Takeshi billboard and pointed up the road that would lead us away from the wall and straight to the center of the Mazikin realm. “We have to find the Queen. If we find her, we find the portal.”

“How are we going to find Malachi and Takeshi, though?”

“It won’t matter if we can’t complete our mission.” She glanced back at the rendering of Takeshi’s face. “Come on.” We pulled our hoods over our heads and walked up the road, looking for danger. Thick poles were sunk into the roadside every twenty feet or so, a few feet from every building, holding up bare wires that glinted in the sunlight.

“There’s more technology here than I thought there would be.”

“That’s for sure,” said Ana. “I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, but it wasn’t trucks and roads. I mean, I saw the smokestack
s . . .
”

“They have oil. Gas. Metal. Electricity. Raphael said they were only given what they needed to survive.”

“Yeah, but think about how many bodies they’ve possessed, and how much knowledge they’ve stolen. The people who knew all that stuff are also here in the city. Somewhere along the way, the Mazikin must have learned how to mine for what they need. And the more people they possessed, the more free labor they had.”

We reached an intersection where a mechanized cart had crashed into the side of a building, leaving a pile of twisted metal. Wisps of black smoke still rose from the engine, like the wreck had happened pretty recently. A smear of red against the concrete wall told me the driver probably hadn’t walked away, but there were no bodies in sight. Ana and I peeked into the building it had collided with, which looked the same as every other we’d seen so far. Even though there was electricity in the city, the insides of the buildings were dark, like maybe it was turned off during the day. There were no doors on the buildings, only wide openings, letting us see the empty spaces inside. No furniture, no people, no Mazikin. The living creatures were all tucked below or above, leaving the street level deserted as the sun beat down.

After a few blocks, we passed another Takeshi sign, this one older and faded. Ana smiled. “He’s been free for a while.”

I smiled, too, and rubbed at the ache in my chest. Where was Malachi—was he free as well? Could he have escaped the Mazikin’s control? “If there’s a resistance movement within this city, we’re going to want to find those people. Maybe they can help us destroy the portal and take care of the Queen.”

“Maybe.” Ana nodded toward the flutter of a dark cloak disappearing around a corner up ahead. “And they may have already found us.”

We picked up our pace, our leather soles nearly silent on the concrete. Everything in the city was fashioned from cement and metal. Like the dark city, nothing green seemed able to survive in this dome, but ugliness flourished. Only here, it was sharper. Harsher. Cruel.

We reached the corner we’d seen the dark figure disappear around, but as we looked the streets up and down, they appeared deserted. “You think they’re watching us?” I asked quietly, wiping my hand over my sweaty face and tucking my hair behind my ear. It lay like a thick, wet blanket over the back of my neck.

“I don’t know,” said Ana. “The only thing we can do is keep going. It’s damn tempting to hide out in one of these buildings until the sun calls it quits, but we have to take advantage of the empty streets.”

I was melting inside my cloak, but I had a feeling that I’d be blistered and charred without it. The heat was nearly unbearable, but—“You got it, Captain.”

Our heads snapped up at the sound of a low moan. A man lay crumpled in the road about a block ahead. Blood oozed from a gash across his forehead. Ana and I locked eyes, then crept toward the man, sticking close to the shelter of the nearest building. Ana reached him first and knelt at his side. The back of his neck was blistered and raw from lying in the sun, as were the backs of his hands. He wore a stained and torn leather smock, similar to the ones Raphael had given us. His lips were a startling color, redder than the most chapped lips I’d ever seen. He groaned as Ana touched his shoulder. “Hey,” she said to him. “You need some help?”

The man said something in a language I didn’t understand. I turned to Ana, who spoke several languages, but she looked as lost as I felt. “Let’s at least get him off the street,” she said. “He’s roasting alive.”

We grasped the guy under his arms and lifted him off the road. His blistered fingers clutched at our cloaks, and he licked at his crimson lips with his tongue, which was an equally violent shade of red. Though I wanted to help him, revulsion made my throat tighten.

“It’s all right,” Ana soothed as we dragged him toward the nearest building. Both of us sighed with relief as we entered the shaded, dank space. It was at least twenty degrees cooler than the street and felt downright awesome. We set him on the floor and began to rise, but our wounded companion grabbed our cloaks, speaking urgent words we couldn’t decipher.

I squatted next to him, trying to get him to look at me, to see we didn’t mean him any harm. Next to me, Ana stood up abruptly.

“What should we do for him?” I asked her.

“Nothing,” she whispered. “I think he’s served his purpose.”

Then I heard the growl, deep and vicious. It rolled like a wave up my spine, raising goose bumps. The bleeding man let go of my cloak, shot to his feet, and scrambled across the space to press himself against the wall. I looked over my shoulder. Ana stood between me and the threat. She’d already drawn her knives. “He was a decoy,” she muttered.

I looked over at the man, whose eyes were fixed on something just beyond Ana. My hand traveled to my thigh, drawing a knife of my own as I rose.

The Mazikin, standing on his hind legs, his claws flexing by his sides, grunted at us, rhythmic and guttural.

“They want to know who our master is,” Ana said.

“They?” I stepped to the side—we were completely surrounded. Four Mazikin had emerged from the shadows. All on two legs, their black eyes shining like oil slicks, their mouths snarling.

I let out my breath slowly, focusing. “Orders?”

“Hold your own and let me do the heavy lifting.”

As soon as she said it, the knives flew from her hands, and the room erupted in chaos. Two of the Mazikin let out choked shrieks as the knives hit home with muffled thumps, but the other pair moved before Ana could draw again. They leaped at us, and we only had time to get our arms up to shield our faces from their claws. My shoulders hit the wall behind me, but I kept a grip on my knives, even as a Mazikin closed its jaws around my forearm. It felt like my bones were being crushed in a vise, but its teeth didn’t penetrate the sleeve of my leather smock, and its claws scraped down the side of my cloak without tearing it.

Ana cried out and rolled to the side, entangled with her opponent. I threw my weight forward and twisted as my own attacker held on tight, its eyes squeezed shut as it shook its head side to side, trying to rip my arm off. I rammed my steel-shot-coated fist into its body over and over again as it clawed at me, searching for vulnerable flesh within the folds of my cloak. Finally, it let out a whine as I drove my fist into its ribs, and its mouth opened wide enough to allow me to tug my arm from its jaws. With a fierce growl of my own, I grabbed the Mazikin by the ear with my newly freed hand and slammed my knife straight down, burying it in the Mazikin’s eye socket. It let out a soft whimper and fell limp to the ground.

I stumbled away from it to see Ana wrestling on the floor with the other Mazikin; it had both of her arms pinned and was going for her throat. I dove forward, planning to bury my blade in its side, but before I reached it, it jumped to its feet with a snarl. It grabbed my raised arm and twisted, filling the echoing space with a sick popping sound. Lightning strikes of agony jolted through my shoulder, and my knife clattered to the floor. With a strangled scream, I landed on my back, waves of nausea crashing over me. My tunic had flown up to expose my belly, but I managed to get my feet up to shove the Mazikin away from me before it could tear my stomach open with its outstretched claws. It disappeared from my line of sight, but the shuffling feet and growls told me Ana was up and had taken it on.

I rolled to my side, cradling my limp right arm. I tried to rise to help Ana, but then I heard a gurgling whine, followed by the splatter of blood hitting cement, and I knew that she could take care of herself. She appeared by my side a second later, breathing hard. “Thanks for having my back,” she said, looking at my limp arm. “Can you move it?”

I tried and then doubled over, retching with the pain. I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead to the cool concrete, trying not to faint. “Is it broken?” I gasped out. My whole arm was limp, and there was an odd bump on the front of my shoulder.

“Dislocated.” Ana hunched over me. “We’re going to have to—”

She froze. And over the uneven sound of our breaths, I heard it. Claws, clacking together.

Yet another Mazikin stepped from the shadows. It had a cloak pulled low over its head, so all I could see was its ugly snout and half-open mouth. And its clawed hands, slapping together in a muffled slow clap that reeked of amusement. Ana cursed. A second later, her knives were flying.

They clattered against the concrete walls as the Mazikin moved with a speed I couldn’t even track. The dark blur ducked and dodged, able to anticipate Ana’s every movement. A deep, guttural laughter rumbled from the shadows far across the room.

“I think this is the last one,” said Ana in a low voice, her attention on the black corner where the Mazikin lurked. “But it’s faster than the others. Can you get up?”

I shoved myself up with my good hand but couldn’t stop the gasp of agony at the dead weight of my right arm pulling on the socket. I wrenched myself to my feet, then grabbed my dangling limb and pressed it against my stomach, my breath whistling from my throat.

“Get against the wall. You’re useless,” she said, but her voice was gentle, protective.

I took a few steps back at the same time the cloaked Mazikin emerged from the shadows. I couldn’t see its eyes, but somehow I knew it was focused on Ana—the only other dangerous predator in the room. It grunted at her as it stalked forward, more like a tiger than a hyena. She stepped to the side, drawing its attention away from me as I withdrew into a corner and noticed the wounded man was gone. Had he been a victim forced to be bait, or a willing collaborator in this trap set for anyone strong enough to show mercy?

As Ana and the last Mazikin circled each other, my gaze darted to the bodies of the ones we’d killed. All of them wore dark leather cloaks with a black triangle sewn onto the back. I wondered if they were part of the Mazikin guard, some kind of enforcement squad. I looked at the Mazikin squaring off with Ana. His cloak, too, had a black triangle. I suddenly wished I was better at throwing; I would have loved to bury my blade in that thing’s back. But as I shifted my weight and considered trying, my knees buckled with another shock of pain.

I sank to the floor and watched helplessly as the Mazikin leaped at Ana. She lunged with her knife, but it caught her wrist in its clawed hand and spun her around. She jabbed her knee into its belly, but it arched back and received only a glancing blow. Ana’s face was alight with frustration as she pressed her attack and the Mazikin knocked away her punches and knife jabs with relative ease. It was playing with her.

Her eyes glinted with the same realization. She glared at the beast, searching for its vulnerability. Without letting her gaze waver from her enemy, she shed her cloak to give her more freedom of movement. Her black hair was so long that it fell over her shoulders from the ponytail high on her head.

The Mazikin made the oddest sound, this faint, hungry sigh, and its arms dropped to its sides. I watched Ana, expecting her to take advantage of the Mazikin’s loss of concentration, but instead, her eyes went round and filled with tears. “It’s you, isn’t it?” she whispered.