Banished (The Ravenmaster Chronicles Book 2), page 21
Kyrk raises his head and tries to raise his hand. His eyes roll back, but this time, they stay open and frozen in place. Before our eyes, the whites of his eyes go flat and gray.
I nudge Kyrk, but he doesn’t respond. Leaning in close, I listen and feel for a breath, but everyone in the world has a finite amount, and he must have just used his last one.
Tallynne starts crying, and Corbin gives her a curious stare. “I thought you barely knew him.”
Tallynne glares at him through watery eyes as if he’s just accused her of something terrible. I don’t get the sense Corbin meant any offense. He certainly sounds innocent enough. I’m sure it’s the accidental social awkwardness that comes with years spent hiding in an attic.
Dove slips in between Tallynne and Corbin. “You don’t have to know someone to be sad at the sight of the end of their soul.”
Corbin hangs his head. “I guess.”
“Caryl was on the fifth basement level,” Simeon reminds us and starts heading toward the exit door on the other side of the blasted-out hospital lobby.
“Wait!” Brohn calls after him. “What if Epic is still here?”
Simeon stops in his tracks. “You’re right. If he’s after an access point to the Lyfelyte, he could think it’s down there.”
“If we’re going to find Caryl, that’s a chance we’re going to have to take.”
“Taking chances isn’t exactly our specialty,” Dove confesses.
They’re right, of course. The Fallen are basically servants, used and discarded at the whim of the Wealthies. Brohn and I are warriors. Charging into danger is our specialty, which is exactly what I tell Dove and the rest of the Fallen as we leave Kryk and his lifeless body behind.
As we start our descent from the main level of the hospital to the first ramp of the five underground levels, the Fallen and I warn Brohn and Corbin to brace themselves. “This can get kind of weird.”
After a pause to suck in a deep breath like I’m about to dive into the deep end of a pool of molten lava, I push the dented steel door open to reveal…a parking garage?
“You have a weird definition of ‘weird,’” Brohn jokes with a long look around. “This is about as normal as it gets.”
“It didn’t look like this before,” I promise.
“She’s right,” Simeon says, looking around the empty, echo-y space. “There were people in here.”
“Sad people,” Tallynne adds. “Crazy people.”
“Soit nous étions fous à l’époque, soit nous sommes fous maintenant.”
“She says you were crazy then, or else you’re crazy now,” Corbin translates.
I mumble my understanding and my agreement as I start walking across the level. “‘Crazy’ does seem to be the common denominator here.”
Passing graffiti-covered concrete columns and piles of rubble and rebar from spots where huge chunks of the roof have fallen in, we wind our way down the curving, litter-strewn ramp to the second level. There are scattered vehicles—old gas cars, mopeds, a few cube trucks, stripped-down delivery vans, and a bunch of mag-cars—all rendered lifeless and unusable by vandalism, drone strikes, and time. Up against one wall and under a dangling “Hospital Staff Only” sign, a cluster of old wheelchairs and half-melted, half-crushed hospital beds have been pushed into a tangled pile nearly high enough to reach the ceiling.
Although there are no people around, there is plenty of evidence of their past presence: old clothes packed down to form sleeping pads, glass bottles, aluminum cans, hypodermic needles, mismatched shoes, backpacks, empty plastic jugs, and countless overlapping footprints in the dust. There’s an old elevator shaft way off to the side. Tallynne suggests maybe we should take it down to the fifth level to find Caryl. “It’s better than walking all the way down,” she insists.
But Brohn tells her to have a closer look. “The shaft is clogged, the pistons are shot, and the guardrails look like they have a bad case of scoliosis.” Tallynne stares over at the elevator’s misaligned doors as Brohn makes a sweeping gesture of invitation with his hand. “Feel free to try it if you want to. It’s your funeral. Literally.”
Her head hanging low in a pouting sulk, Tallynne says she’d rather walk anyway.
Simeon flicks his eyes toward the ceiling to take in what’s left of the old holo-strips. “At least the lights still work. Kind of.”
Brohn has a long look around at the creepy, rakish shadows cast by the struggling overhead lights and tells Simeon, “I almost wish they didn’t.”
With Render flying ahead, we cross the second level and jog down to the third. Our boots thumping out notes like a bass drum, we cross that level and head down the next curving ramp to the fourth level. Still nothing, and Brohn is giving me a look like maybe Méridienne was right: maybe we all just lost our minds. I’m starting to wonder as well. Except for the skeletal remains of a few old vehicles, there’s nothing here. No people. Not even a good hallucination or drug-induced delusion to confirm that what we saw here the last time might have actually happened.
On the fifth level, though, we run into a familiar closed gate.
“This is where we left her,” I tell the others, hoping the words sound more certain in the air than they do in my head.
Simeon clamps his fingers onto the steel mesh and gives it a shake. The gate rattles, but the thick steel links are clearly too strong for any of us to break. Just to be sure, Brohn steps forward and tries as well, but the gate is stubborn and refuses to budge.
Pecking at something over by one of the concrete columns, Render looks up and kraas! to get my attention.
~ See the weakness.
We’re looking for one right now.
But Render tells me that’s not what he means. He sends me the same simple message again, only this time, the word “see”—although it’s more of a feeling than a word—unrolls like a thick carpet runner in my head.
I feel my eyes go black, and the rusted, rattling steel gate begins to radiate with rolling orange and blue waves of heat, light, and a kind electro-chemical glow.
“Not there,” I say to Brohn and Simeon. “Here.”
I direct their attention to a set of thick links just below the bottom-most hinge.
“It looks stronger than the rest,” Simeon points out.
“It’s not. It’s weaker.”
Brohn steps forward and kneels down with his hands on the gate. He calls Simeon over to help. “When her eyes go black like that, it’s best to trust her.”
“You should trust me, anyway,” I pretend-grumble. “No matter what color my eyes are.”
“I shouldn’t need the reminder,” Brohn blushes, “but I appreciate it.”
Shoulder to shoulder, Brohn and Simeon lean in and hook their fingers into the steel grate. With a simultaneous groan, they crack the hinges and the steel rollers running in the grooves of the long, rusted rails. The gate goes crashing in, splashing up a spray of dust and sending a thunderous bang throughout the level.
You were right, I tell Render.
~ And all you had to do was open your eyes.
Together, Brohn and the Fallen and I step into the space and start to fan out. I’m half-afraid we won’t find Caryl, and I’m half-afraid we will.
“Over here!” Tallynne’s tiny voice sounds like a bellow. She waves for us to hurry, and we rush over to where we Caryl is slumped against one of the garage’s cylindrical support columns. Most of her hair has come out of what had once been tight, tidy braids. Her breathing is shallow, but it’s there. Her lips are chapped and cracked, and her once-green eyes are dust-gray and crusted at the corners. Even her velvety, copper-colored skin has lost its life and luster. I have no idea what she’s been eating or drinking, but it hasn’t been much, and it hasn’t been healthy.
With the delicate touch of a mother cat tending to her wounded kitten, Simeon helps Caryl to her feet. We brush her off as best as we can, and I have the vague hope that just getting some of the dirt off her will be enough to pull her back from the brink. She tries to talk, but no words come out.
On the far side of the parking garage, another closed gate—similar to the one Brohn and Simeon just tore down—seems to be calling to me. It’s closed, but I know it leads to the stairs the Fallen and I took to get to the last of the hospital’s underground levels. Without realizing I’m doing it, I take a step toward it, but I’m yanked back by Brohn.
“Caryl is the mission, Kress. Let’s get her out of here,” he insists, his eyes scanning the bleak space of this miserable underworld. “Let’s all get out of here.”
In instant agreement and with Brohn and Simeon supporting Caryl from either side, we climb back up the parking garage ramps—our first time rising up from the bowels of this humid, hellish place instead of plunging down.
After a brisk walk and finally through the lobby and out of the hospital, we breathe in the air. It’s not fresh or clean. But the ability to inhale it at least means we’re alive. Caryl coughs, and Tallynne—sad-eyed and just this side of full-on tears—rubs her back while Simeon and Dove help to support her from either side. Next to them, Méridienne is fussing with Corbin, brushing dirt from his hair and clothes while he swats at her hands and whines at her to quit it.
“That’s eight of us,” Brohn points out with a sigh of satisfaction, his eyes flicking between us and the Fallen.
“Same number as our original Conspiracy.”
“Now, unless you have anyone else in need of immediate saving, how about if we start trying to find a way out of this city and see if we can get us—and them—back home.”
At the word “home,” I gush my relief, throw my arms around Brohn’s waist, and press my cheek to his chest. “Absolutely! It’s been a tough few days of tracking down the Fallen. But at least this final rescue was easy!”
He’s just wrapping me up in the strong safety of his arms when I catch a glimpse of a marble-white man with eight orange-eyed figures in black stepping out into the buckled road from around the far corner of the hospital.
32
DISASTER
Epic, flanked by a semi-circle of his Hypnagogic entourage, walks toward us—kicking at pebbles in the road as he goes, the toes of his boots pointed up, his light spring jacket rustling gently around him. He’s got his hands plunged deep into his pockets as if he’s on a casual stroll through a botanical garden.
“You’re right, Kress,” he smiles. “That was easy.”
Epic grins, and behind him, the eyes of the eight hooded Hypnagogics glow an eerie electric orange.
In a flash, Brohn and I position ourselves between Epic and our Fallen friends. Out of the corner of his mouth and without turning his head from Epic, Brohn orders the Fallen to run.
None of them moves a muscle.
“Seriously,” Brohn commands, now giving them a stiff half-turn of his head. “You need to go. Now!”
When they still don’t move, I feel a pulse of panic beat through my temples. Epic is dangerous, but he’s single-minded about what he wants. If it doesn’t have anything to do with his obsessive quest for the Rosetta Stone of digital and genetic code, he’s not interested. The Hypnagogics, on the other hand, are a wild card. An unstable and imbalanced wild card. They have Emergent abilities but none of the empathy, restraint, or self-control one might hope for in the next budding branch on the evolutionary tree. We’ve seen them in action. They take lives with the hard-hearted indifference of someone shaking off a dream. Epic will kill if he has to. He’s proven that. The Hypnagogics…unless he specifically orders them not to, they’ll kill us just for the fun of it.
So we do what heroes never do in the movies but sometimes have to do in real life:
We run.
Gathering up the Fallen with tugs, pulls, shouts, and wildly waving arms, we bolt as fast as we can down the road.
Behind us, the black-robed teenagers shout out an air-rippling, enthusiastic cheer, apparently thrilled by our fear and eager for the chance to run us down. I can’t see him from here, but I imagine Epic sauntering forward after his sprinting Hypnagogics, a foxhunter confidently following his pack of baying hounds.
Still dazed and a shell of her former self, Caryl is struggling to keep up. In a single motion, Brohn slows down, scoops her up in her arms, and joins us in our desperate flight through the blighted city. Unable to run in a straight line, we’re forced to weave and dodge our way through the maze of obstacles in our path.
Whipping around a corner, we slam to a stop. Normally, there’d be no end of roads and laneways we could bolt down or empty houses or abandoned storefronts we could duck into. But what must have been an apartment building—I’m guessing at least five or six stories tall when it was intact—has been obliterated with its mountainous remains blocking off two of the streets that might have otherwise led us away from the Hypnagogics and to some degree of safety.
The high ridge of rubble is intimidating but technically manageable. We could climb over it, but the thought of us turning our backs on these powerful Hypnagogic maniacs in hot pursuit gives me an eye twitch I can feel in my teeth.
Overhead, Render kraas! out an unnecessary warning, one we can’t possibly hope to heed.
Cornered, the eight of us turn as one to face the eight deadly assassins.
The Hypnagogics slow their deadly advance. Instead of a dreadful death sprint, they’ve eased into a casual, confident amble. They don’t have a single weapon between them. What they do have is some sort of intimate connection with dreams. If Render and I are the link between the organic and the digital world, the Hypnagogics are the connective tissue between what people are and what we dream ourselves to be.
One of the Hypnagogics, a boy with pale skin but a shaggy mane of nearly black hair framing his angular face, pushes his cowl back and locks his sizzling orange eyes onto mine. He smiles, exposing a set of rotten teeth behind his chapped and peeling lips. Another Hypnagogic—a girl whose long blond hair hangs down over her shoulders in tight, bouncy curls—also pushes her cowl back. She steps forward with two of her partners sliding aside to make room for her approach. She looks at me and Brohn with sad eyes, like she feels sorry for us. Her high cheekbones glow a little hotter as she sets her jaw and presses the fingertips of one hand to her temple.
Around her, the other Hypnagogics seem to fall into a strange trance. In unison, their fiery-orange eyes roll back and go pure white.
Next to me, Brohn groans, clamps his hands to his head, and doubles over. His knees hit the street like thunder. There’s nothing more panic-inducing than seeing a bulletproof hero fall to the ground. Except maybe if it’s a hero you love. I call out to him, but then whatever searing pain hit him hits me as well, and I drop to one knee.
In my life, I’ve been shot, stabbed, cut, punched, kicked, blinded, drugged, and dragged. But nothing compares to the strange sensation running through me now. As sure as if they were tangible threads, my memories and all my connections—to Brohn, to Render, and even to myself—start slipping away, and it’s as if my mind is being unraveled from the inside out.
A vague thumping sound vibrates through the ground. I think it could be a small earthquake, but it’s not. Instead, it’s the Fallen dropping down one by one behind me like birds being shot from the sky.
Simeon and Corbin each drop to one knee. Racked by spasms, Dove, Tallynne, and Caryl crumple down completely. Méridienne shrieks and staggers, stumbling over a ridge in the cracked asphalt before falling backward to the ground.
I don’t know what’s happening, but it feels like the end of me, the end of all of us. So I breathe a heavy sigh of relief when Brohn sidles up to me on one side while Simeon eases up next to me on the other. Rising fully to my feet, I slip one arm around each of their waists and beam my happiest smile to each of them in turn.
This is way better than being attacked and so much better than being a scared prey animal. I’d realized this before but never admitted it to myself until now: These two handsome young men—Brohn and Simeon—represent everything I ever dreamed about and knew in my heart I didn’t really deserve.
Two sides of one coin, they are the power and confidence I wish I had and the easy stability of the life I wished I had lived.
I don’t feel like I’m talking out loud, but I must be, because both young men curl their arms a little tighter around my waist as I prattle on.
I beam up at Brohn and announce with an almost drunken delight I can’t control, “I’ve known you for a long time.”
“All our lives,” he answers, his voice a bluster of baritone boom.
“Almost,” I correct him with a laugh. “You’re the unattainable guy, the boy I looked up to too much to love. The one everyone wanted or else wanted to be. A true and total hero.”
Brohn’s lips part, but I don’t give him a chance to respond, turning instead to shift my attention to Simeon.
“You’re gorgeous,” I confess. “I’ll give you that. But it’s not just that,” I add as Simeon blushes. “You’re mysterious and uncomplicated. You’re a survivor and a father figure to the younger members of the Fallen. I haven’t known you my entire life. You could have saved a hundred people or else killed a hundred people for all I know. You’re brave and strong but without the baggage and responsibility that come with being an Emergent. You don’t need to save the world. You’re happy just living in it.”
From their flanking positions at my sides, Brohn and Simeon smile down at me, and I honestly don’t know which smile to return first or which set of perfect sensual eyes to let myself fall into.
Brohn glances skyward and stares and then blinks, as if he’s scanning the tops of the broken buildings around us for a transcript of his memories. “Remember, a long time ago, the kind of person you told me who you thought I’d wind up with?”
“Umm…”
“You said you were sure that someone like me was destined to find that confident, gorgeous, perfect girl…”
“Yeah?” I ask, brightening up.
