Steel Lily ARC (12 page)

“Heavens, no,” Sari chirped. “We’re supposed to go sit in our rooms until he gives us the all clear, but…”

“But where’s the fun in that?” Jaxon finished. His angelic smile was almost believable. Almost.

And then I remembered that even Lucifer was a beautiful angel once. That explained a lot, if you thought about it.

I swallowed. My throat felt like it was made of sandpaper. “Have you done this before?”

“Oh yeah, loads of times,” Jaxon said lightly.

“And it turns out okay?”

“Usually. Sari broke her arm once and I needed seventeen stitches another, but our medical wing is top-notch. No worries.”

Alice threw up on Sari’s shoes.

Sari shook her left foot rigorously. It didn’t look like she was the least bit grossed out, just annoyed. She took one of Alice’s arms and placed it around her neck to help Alice walk.

“Well, we know who the newbie is. I’ll take her back to the room and meet you outside.”

Jaxon nodded and pulled me toward the grand staircase. “Can’t I go with her?”

“Nope.”

“And why not?”

“Because I believe you’re made of a higher caliber than your Traditional friend.”

He led us past the fountain and straight toward the wall of stairs. As we walked, he rummaged through the bag he’d been wearing on his back.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

“These.”

He pulled an oxygen mask out far enough so I could see what it was, then slipped it back into the bag.

“I didn’t think we needed those here.”

“Better safe than sorry when you’re doing things you’ll probably end up sorry for doing…follow me?” His voice was playful and he didn’t seem the least bit worried about our half-cocked plan.

It did nothing for my confidence in my decision to follow him.

When we reached the stairs, he began to press the silver stars embedded in the granite. His fingers danced deftly across the monolith. When he stepped back, the stars glowed a cyanotic blue. The outline of a door emerged, and the stone slid away.

Jaxon pulled me through the opening. “Hurry up.”

“What did you just do?”

“A magic trick. Follow me.”

We ran up the slippery cement steps. The derelict walls were blanketed in green and yellow mold; its fuzzy growth even overtook the railing. Old rusted cogs that were made of basic metals and not coated in splendor revealed the underbelly of the Academy. They struggled to move under the weight of the kudzu that grew between the teeth in the gears, and turquoise oxidation overtook most of the copper cogs. I ran my hand along a lever, and Jaxon hissed under his breath. “For the love of God, don’t touch anything down here. It’s the only safe place in the Academy. If you start poking, prodding, and leaving a trail, cameras will go up here, too.”

I pulled my hand away and heard the squelch of watery muck under my palm. There was enough light from the intermittent gas lamps to see that my hand was now a breeding ground for God knew what. I went to wipe off my hand, only to be barked at again in the low light.

“Don’t wipe that on your pants,” Jaxon called. “It’ll never stop growing. Wipe it on the wall.” He took two steps at a time, apparently not deterred by the perilous grime on the stairs. I did as he said and grimaced when the mold attached itself to the wall.

I wheezed and struggled to keep up. What sounded like a cannon fired overhead and shook the passageway. Dust and small debris fell from the ceiling as the floor rumbled. An over-patched pipe that ran the length of the ground began to groan, and a bolt sprang loose. Steam hissed and exploded from the hole. Every neuron in my body was on fire with a mixture of adrenaline and fright, but it was a reaction I could understand. This was more like home. I cocked my ear toward the top of the stairs after another blast thundered. “What in the world was that?”

“The warning shot,” Jaxon said. “Next one will be to kill. We’ve got to find the insurgent before Riggs does.”

The blood in my veins ran cold.
Insurgent
? What kind of place was this? I thought we were here of our own free will.

Then it hit me.

Jaxon had taken Alice and me.
Taken
us. We didn’t have a choice. It had been the Polatzi or Jaxon. Part of me wondered if other students came from similar situations.

Another boom sounded overhead, freezing me in my tracks. Try as I might, panic seeped in. Why were we doing this? Who was this person we were trying to save?

Whowhatwherewhy?
Questions rampaged through me. What had I gotten myself into? I longed for the time I simply snuck out and stayed out of the wandering eye of the Polatzi.

Jaxon was there instantly, hands on both of my upper arms.

“Pull it together,” he urged, his eyes full of concern that I’d never seen there before. “We’re this guy’s only hope.”

He turned and moved faster up the stairs. I heard the echo of a doorknob turning and then sunlight streamed down the passageway. Almost to the top.

My muscles ached from speeding up the stairs, but I was desperate to find whomever Mr. Riggs was shooting at before they were killed.

Jaxon grabbed my hand and pushed me through the door into the light. He was right behind me, not wasting a second.

“The shot came from this direction,” he said, taking on the air of a dog in the middle of a hunt. “Riggs’s defenses can’t shoot more than forty yards out. The guy will be close. Come on.”

The holograms were barely visible. Only vestiges of tall, willowy grass remained, and the destruction from the war prevailed. We ran between abandoned cars and remained in shadows. Jaxon’s eyes constantly darted upward, always watching. Twice he held his arm out to his side, stopping me in my tracks. We were never alone.

We rounded the corner of a massive white stone citadel. Jaxon whirled to face me. “Stay here,” he said before disappearing around the corner.

I pressed myself against the stone wall. It was warmed by the sun and would have been comforting, had I not been breaking more rules than I could count and trying to find someone that was shot with a guy I barely knew. I sucked in a deep breath to steady myself and drown my fears. How I had managed to have a crappy situation in Dome Four turn into an even crappier one here in Dome Seven, I’d never know. There couldn’t be a person left alive with worse mojo than me.

“Hey, you okay?” whispered a voice to my right.

I bit my tongue and immediately tasted blood. Sari jumped back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. Have you found them yet?”

Jaxon called from around the corner before I could reply. “Avery, get over here. Help me.”

After another steadying breath, I peered around the corner. Jaxon had a teenage boy over his shoulder. Blood stained Jaxon’s thermal Henley, and his hoodie covered most of the boy’s torso.

Jaxon beckoned me again. “Sari, Avery, come on! I can’t carry him all the way by myself.”

I willed my legs to move. Muscles contracted, but stiffened in refusal. Sari pushed me gently from behind. Step by dizzying step, I made my way to Jaxon.

The boy looked to be about Alice’s age. Dark scarlet stains blossomed on the shoulder of Jaxon’s hoodie, and the sleeve covered most of the boy’s face. The overwhelming scent of rust and metal filled my nostrils.

Blood.

There was no way we could save him. There was too much blood.

My face must have told Jaxon as much, because his features hardened. “I don’t care what you think. We can fix this.”

I glanced down at the still body slung over Jaxon’s shoulder once more, but then Jaxon jerked the boy away from my gaze.

“Time to make an exit,” he said quickly, and turned the opposite direction of which we’d came.

Where was he going? I called out to Jaxon, confused. “Jaxon, the passageway is—”

“I know where the passageway is; I made it,” he said over his shoulder. The poor boy bounced limply on his shoulder with each stride Jaxon took. “But we’ve got more company than I’d planned on!”

I looked over my shoulder.

I knew those uniforms.

Forty or fifty Polatzi were materializing from between cars and out of alleyways.

No time to think.

Time to run.

Sari and Jaxon were ahead of me. I sprinted to keep up with Jaxon’s long, loping strides and Sari’s quick head start. An eardrum-bursting boom exploded not ten feet from us. A massive iron ball crumpled the side of a long-abandoned tank like it was a soda can.

Polatzi bodies flew backward, and screams of agony shattered the air around us. I fell to the ground in fright.

Sari grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet, my sweaty palm slipping against her leather glove. She reached into her pants pocket and produced a contraption I recognized.

My oxygen mask.

“Put it on now,” she ordered as she looked skyward. “You’re going to need it.”

Sari placed an oxygen mask over the injured boy’s face as well. His chest heaved as he struggled to breathe.

Jaxon led us into an abandoned store. The desks still stood with computers and gadgets, as though consumers might return one day. I ran my hands over the banned electronics. I’d never seen a computer before. Jaxon pushed my hand off the device gently. “Don’t touch anything.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’ll know.”

He didn’t tell me who
they
were, but it gave me enough fear to drop my hand by my side.

Jaxon ducked down below the front windows of the store and gingerly sat the boy against the wall. His arm was a stump at the elbow, and blood poured from it. Sari was checking for a pulse. By the thin line of her lips, I worried we were too late.

“There’s a heartbeat, Jax, but barely,” she whispered.

Jaxon pulled off his shirt to reveal his chiseled chest and stomach. He ripped the arms from the stitching at the shoulders of the shirt. Without a word he tied the strip of fabric above the wound, then placed the remainder over the stump. He used the other strip to knot the makeshift tourniquet in place. He worked quickly, as though he’d done it before. “We need to get him back before the carbon dioxide eats at the wound.”

He gave Sari a look and nodded once to the fallen plaster on the ground, then to the back of the store. Sari seemed to know what he meant, because immediately she grabbed a large chunk of plaster, aimed, and threw the mass at the back right corner of the room. Sparks flew and metal fell from its mounting. A camera. Wires dangled and sparked as last surges of electricity pulsed through the now ruined contraption. I wouldn’t have known it was there, had Jaxon not pointed it out.

I took another deep breath as Jaxon’s comment came back to me. “I thought this dome had clean air.”

“It does,” he answered, disgust tinged in his words. “When Riggs wants it to.”

A hissing noise—like a balloon losing its helium—sounded from beyond our hiding place. Sari took a running leap from the back of the store and slid to us on her knees, her arms covering her head as chunks of plaster rained down. I looked outside to see a Polatzi running toward us, clutching his throat as blood made his already red lips even brighter. I skittered backward and screamed.

“It’s fine,” Jaxon said, “he won’t make it here.”

As if on cue, the Polatzi coughed and spewed blood all over the front of his tan shirt. Blood ran from his nose and ears, and the man crumpled to the ground.

Dead. Dead as could be.

Dead like my parents might be.

Like I could be soon
.

“That one was quick,” Jaxon muttered. “He probably didn’t feel much.”

I crawled on my hands and knees to Jaxon and the boy. I held my mask tighter against my face. “What happened to him?”

It was Sari who answered. The gas mask covering her mouth made her sound hollow and robotic. Maybe it was a tone of despair. “The oxygen purifiers were cut off.”

I closed my eyes as I tried to imagine dying by suffocation. It wasn’t a pretty image.

“Pike. Long time no see,” a new voice sounded. A voice I knew.

No one called me Pike. No one but…

I squeaked in shock. “Legs?”

“The one and only,” he coughed behind his mask, then lifted momentarily it to spit out blood. “Did you miss me?”

Excitement and shock coursed through me.
It was Legs! Alice and I weren’t alone!
“What the hell, Legs? How’d you end up here? Where’s your sister?”

Another shot resonated in my bones before Legs could respond. It was from farther away, but it still shook merchandise off the walls.

Jaxon cursed under his breath. He hiked Legs back on his shoulder and took off toward the back of the store. “No time for reunions. Come on, before any cannon fire finds us by accident, or worse, on purpose.”

He led us through dirty alleyways and between cramped, towering buildings. Cannon fire sounded in the distance from where we’d came. Cries of pain reverberated off the buildings. I’d never been part of the war, but this must have been what it felt like.

We continued our steady run, our feet pounding against the broken concrete. It felt as though we’d run miles and miles. Shock and fear coursed through my body. This was
not
like home. As downtrodden as our dome might be, no one was murdered or feared attack. My ears rang from the shots and cries of people I’d never met. What had they done to deserve this? I didn’t even realize it when we reached the white stone tower.

Sari ran her hands along the stone in search of the passageway I assumed. “I can’t find the stupid latch, Jaxon. We need to get inside before anyone notices we’re gone.”

“Avery, listen to me,” Jaxon whispered, “take him for a second. I need to open the door.”

Legs coughed as he leaned against me and I tried to manage his weight. “You were always there to keep me out of trouble,” he said through the mask, his voice garbled. “I shoulda known you’d save me, and it wouldn’t be the other way around.”

“Yeah well, you saved my ass enough to make up for it.”

Legs laughed weakly. “I always liked your ass.”

Jaxon stepped in and slung Legs over his shoulder before heading into the tunnel. “Come on, he’s becoming delusional.”

“There’s nothing delusional about liking Avery’s ass,” Legs argued, sounding more out of it by the minute. “Come on, man, don’t tell me you haven’t checked it out.”