Authors: Heather Anastasiu
We were all going to die.
A jolt rocked involuntarily through my body. I must be hit. They must have fired in the instant I’d taken to blink. But I was shocked when I realized it was the Regulators who were blown backward, not me. They landed heavily on their backs halfway across the lab, bloodied chunks of alloy flying from their chests and arms as they went. I felt my eyes widen as I looked down at my outstretched arms in shock. My power. It had worked.
Adrien was on his feet. He pulled Milton up again just as one of the Regulators stirred.
“Go back!” Adrien shouted. He pulled a gun from his hip and let out several bright red blasts.
Milton and I raced back down the hallway. I looked over my shoulder. All three of the Regs were getting up now. Two of them were bloodied and one looked like he was missing an arm. But still, I knew I hadn’t done enough damage. I’d only slowed them down for a moment. Regulators never stopped, no matter what.
Adrien kept firing behind us, but I didn’t pause to look again. I was too slow already. The hallway was long and straight. The Regs would have a clear shot at us as soon as they were on their feet. We’d never make it if we kept going forward. My mind raced as we passed several numbered doors down the hallway. I thought about the schematics of the lab I’d memorized. These were research rooms. If we went into one of them, we’d only get ourselves trapped. Unless …
Two more doors down, I paused and slammed my gloved hand on the door release pad. Milton kept going.
“In here,” I shouted. Adrien ran a few steps past me and grabbed Milton, yanking him through the doorway right as a quick stream of red burned into the wall where we’d been standing only moments before.
Adrien closed the door behind us. The door was made of reinforced steel, meant to seal shut in case of any pathogen leaks or disruptions to the ventilation system. But even though it shut with a satisfyingly heavy clang, I knew it wouldn’t stop the Regulators for long.
“What now?” Adrien asked, clicking the button for the lock mechanism.
“The waste chute,” I said, nodding toward the wall where a small door was embedded in the wall. We were eight stories underground, and the lab had a separate waste-disposal system for the hazardous materials they dealt with.
This was the central disposal room. Bottles of thick liquids lined the walls, full of acids to break down organic matter before it was loaded into disposal barrels and sent up the chute. The whole place smelled like antiseptic and lye. “Milton, can you get it open?”
Milton’s whole body shook, his face pale. He gave a quick nod and went to the control panel beside the small door. His fingers tapped quickly on the interface. Adrien slid another energy tube into the bottom of his gun handle and aimed it at the door to the hallway. He didn’t have to wait long.
A sizzling noise sounded as a bright molten line appeared from the Regs’ laser weapons, firing from the other side.
“Hurry,” I said to Milton, who was still typing furiously.
“Got it!” He let out a triumphant whoop as the chute door slid sideways into the wall. My eyes were on the chute—it was a rounded chamber three feet in diameter, meant for sending barrels of waste up to the trash room by the loading bay.
“You two first,” Adrien said, walking backward across the room toward us, his weapon still trained at the door. He pushed me toward the opening.
Then the door to the hallway blew inward and the Regs charged into the room one after another.
Adrien fired, blasting one straight in the chest. The laser round knocked the Reg backward, but he got back to his feet with only a singe on the front of his metal breastplate.
The other Reg lunged toward Milton and me. I stumbled backward, tripping over the heavy suit and landing half in the chute. I pulled my legs inside.
“Come on, Milton!” I screamed. But when I looked up again, the Regulator had clapped his hands on both sides of Milton’s head. In an instant, he crushed Milton’s skull like an overripe watermelon. I stared in shock as Milton slumped to the floor.
A shriek of grief and terror ripped its way out of me, and suddenly all the bottles lining the wall started vibrating. Adrien dropped to the ground and rolled behind several barrels stacked beside the counter as the bottles exploded. The acid spray from the broken containers hit the three Regulators straight in the face.
They stumbled blindly, one falling into the other until they tumbled into a heap. Adrien took the moment of confusion and launched past them. He pushed me to my feet and squeezed into the chute with me. The chute door closed right as a Regulator climbed to his knees and aimed his weapon.
Adrien wrapped his arms around me as a deafening rush of air surrounded us, and then we were sucked upward with nauseating speed. But the chute was meant for barrels, not people. Adrien and I bounced painfully back and forth between the walls. Within a few heartbeats, another chute door opened and we tumbled out into a trash container half-filled with barrels labeled H
AZARDOUS
W
ASTE
. The back of Adrien’s tunic was ripped up and the skin underneath looked scraped raw. He got to his feet as if he didn’t feel it and hurried over to me.
“Oh god, Zoe, your suit.”
I looked down dazedly and saw that part of my suit hung in shredded ribbons off my arm. Adrien grabbed my left arm to check the diagnostic readout, his face a mask of fear. After a moment he let out the breath he’d been holding. “Only two layers were breached. You’re okay. Come on.”
“We’ve got to go back,” I said, finally finding my voice. “We need to get Milton to a medic—”
Adrien shook his head, his jaw tensed. “He’s dead, Zo. But the Regs aren’t, and they’ll stop at nothing. We’ve gotta go.”
“But—”
He took my shoulders and forced me to look him in the eye. “It’s how we survive in the Rez. The living matter, not the dead.”
It made me sick to my stomach, but I knew he was right. My mind seemed to finally catch up with what was happening. Milton was dead, and every second I didn’t get moving, I was only putting our lives in danger.
I nodded and followed Adrien as he scrambled over the piles of trash barrels spread haphazardly between us and the exit. My boots weighed so much I could barely lift my legs high enough to step over some of them. I stumbled once, but caught myself before I fell, while Adrien punched the button to open the door. The large bay door rolled slowly into the ceiling, groaning as it went. We bent down and scooted under as soon as it was high enough.
The sunlight was blinding. I’d spent three months in a room with only a dim light cell, and the intensity of the daylight seared through my eyes to the back of my skull. There was no time to adjust, so I squeezed my eyes closed except for a tiny crack and let Adrien pull me ahead.
“We’re on the east end of the building, right?” Adrien asked.
“Yeah.”
“Good.” He sounded relieved. “That means my duo-rider is around the corner.”
I had no idea what a duo-rider was, but I just focused on running as fast as I could and watching the concrete under my feet so I didn’t trip.
“There!”
I looked up and saw a small egg-shaped vehicle by the wall. The engine was already running and it hovered a few feet off the ground, though I didn’t quite know how. There weren’t any of the fuel-burning propulsion modules roaring along the bottom like I’d seen in other flying transports. The engine was just quietly whirring. The top half of the vehicle was made of one solid oval window. Adrien raised his hand and clicked a small hand-held device. The window lifted up and backward to reveal two seats, one behind the other, and a small stepladder dropped down the side.
I tried to step up with my thick, booted foot, but it didn’t fit into the ladder rung.
“Come on,” I said to myself, as I tried again and managed to get my boot tip wedged in enough to hike myself up. I heaved my body over the side and into the narrow backseat, looking up just in time to see a Reg burst out of the backside of the building.
“Adrien, get in!”
His wiry body moved faster than I’d ever seen as he leapt into the front seat and sealed the window shut in the same motion. The Regulator ran straight at us.
“Why isn’t he shooting?” My voice was near hysterical. We were a clear target out in the open like this.
Adrien grabbed the steering controls. “He’s the one missing his firing arm.” We lifted off the ground.
I sat back and buckled myself in. After another moment, I breathed out in relief as the vehicle rose higher and higher into the air.
We were safe.
Then the vehicle rocked forward suddenly, making me lurch in my seat. I looked ahead and saw a metal hand clamped on the small hood of the duo, inches away from the window. We were almost twenty feet in the air now, but the Reg had still managed to launch himself high enough to grab hold.
He pulled himself up over the front edge with his one arm. The flesh portions of his face were blistered from the acid, parts of his nose and his bionic eye missing entirely. Even the metal on part of his face had melted and partially slid off, revealing the bone underneath. But none of it stopped him. He pulled himself higher up the hood of the duo with single-minded determination.
Adrien fought with the steering, veering wildly left then right in an attempt to shake him, but the Reg had gotten an iron grip on the lip of the front windshield.
I closed my eyes and tried to focus. I needed to use my telek. I could easily dislodge him.
Nothing happened.
With a giant crack, the Reg smashed his head against the window. It was reinforced plastic, so it only cracked and dented inward, but a couple more hits like that, and he’d make it through and get to Adrien. The image of Milton’s crushed skull flashed in my mind.
There was no more time to try accessing my power. I reached over to the front seat and grabbed the weapon holstered at Adrien’s hip.
“Open the top,” I yelled. Adrien didn’t look my way, but he reached forward and clicked a switch. The window started lifting up and backward, creating a crazy rush of air that almost knocked the weapon out of my hand. I managed to keep a grip and pushed the trigger. A burst of red light flared straight into the Reg’s face with enough momentum that he was blown backward. He didn’t release the metal shell as he tumbled down. The duo’s hood peeled off with him, leaving the engine underneath exposed.
Still the Reg held on.
Adrien flipped the switch so the roof sealed shut again, then swung the steering stick back and forth in a zigzag. We could only see the Reg’s hand, gripping the shredded metal of the hood, but the rest of his body bobbed below, his weight still throwing us off balance. He wasn’t letting go, no matter how much we swerved and twisted.
“Hold on to something,” Adrien said. I was already nauseated from the movement, but I gripped the armrests.
Adrien jerked the stick full backward, and we headed straight up into the sky. My head knocked against the back of my helmet at the sudden movement. Then he rammed it back down and sent us in a spiraling freefall. My stomach dropped and I clung to the armrests, trying to contain the terrified scream that rose in my throat at the sight of the rapidly approaching ground. As we spun, the centrifugal force pushed the flap of hood metal outward. The Reg flew out with it away from the body of the duo, but he still held on. His added weight threw us into an even more intense spin.
After a few more dizzy, chaotic seconds, the piece of hood the Reg gripped so tightly ripped off with a screeching tear, and he was flung off into the air.
The vehicle rocked heavily as the Reg fell free, and Adrien’s knuckles were white on the steering stick as he attempted to right us. But we still spiraled downward and the ground was so close that I could begin to make out the leaves on trees.
“Adrien!” I shouted, bracing my hands against the back of his seat.
He strained with his whole body to pull the stick backward.
My heart lodged in my throat as I waited for the impact, but finally we pulled up out of the spin, and after another few moments we were flying straight again.
It was suddenly bizarrely quiet.
“We made it,” I finally whispered, barely believing it.
But Adrien shook his head. “We’ve only just begun.”
Chapter 3
ADRIEN’S BACK WAS RIGID
as we flew. The only hint that he was rattled at all was a slight tremble in his hand as he punched through an interface cube that rose as a projection from the duo’s console.
I looked behind us. The lab was only a square dot now with the outline of city buildings jutting up behind it in the far distance. No one was following us.
I looked back at Adrien. I could see in the small mirror that his face was taut with focus and his thick hair was matted around his forehead. I’d never really seen him like this. I’d known Adrien as the quiet voice talking to me late at night in my room about beauty and the human soul, not as Adrien the soldier. I’d known vaguely that he used to run missions like this all the time. He’d lived on the run and then joined up with the Rez when he was fourteen. But seeing him in action was something totally different.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He pressed his lips together tighter. He looked almost angry. For a second, I thought he wasn’t going to answer me, but he finally said, “I should have been there earlier. I was so stupid. I should have found a way to get an encoded message out. I could have warned Milton not to come into work today and gotten you out another way. Now he’s gone, and I almost lost you—” He stopped and clenched his jaw like he was physically holding words back. “I should have done things differently.”
“It’s not your fault, Adrien.” I tried to reach out to touch his shoulder, but my strap held me back.
“I can see the future,” he said, his voice hard. “Whose fault is it but mine?”
“Without you that Inspector would have captured me. You saved me.”
His jaw stayed just as tight. I couldn’t tell if he believed me.
“We’re not safe yet,” he finally said. “Those Regs will be calling for an armada to find us,” he said. “The duo’s cloaking mechanism isn’t built for long runs, but the beta site’s nearby. I should be able to get us there before it wears off.” His voice dropped. “At least I can do this one thing right.”