Without a second to dwell on my newfound defense, suddenly my legs pushed me from the ground, launching me forward into flight. My shoulder caught Wyck’s side and sent him crashing into the rack of screens.
All of this had happened in mere seconds. I was suddenly on the other side of the table, eyes filled with fire, hands covered by scales, and a short, silver Blade clutched in my right hand.
My teeth ground together, all the pent up fury coursing through my body and feeding me strength. Wyck stumbled against the rack, knocking the screens over, scrambling as his claws ripped through the cables he attempted to use to help him to his feet.
“One tiny prick!” I said, lunging for him as he pushed himself backward, arms and legs diving away from the Blade. Now that I saw the weapon, I recognized how identical it was to the one from the video, entirely unchanged by age. The black metal handle was tight in my grip, with indented bumps to secure it against my fingers and a golden hand guard. The knife’s edge—as I’d seen before—was like a large feather, narrowing to a point at the end.
I couldn’t marvel at it though, holding it out as Wyck lifted his claws in defense. The largest knife I’d ever held was a meat cleaver and thus at first the Blade felt wobbly in my grasp. It was nearly weightless. I heard the men trying to crawl up behind me so I pushed Thad’s bed backward, brandishing the knife between them and I.
“Just one prick,” I told him again. Wyck circled us, forcing me to turn the bed again so that it remained protected behind me. I jabbed the Blade in his direction, startling him, and in that flash of a second, I caught a Glimpse.
Fear and terror. A panic that consumed him from the inside out.
Never before had I seen such in this man’s eyes.
And yet the calm, composed, ever-present emptiness on his face displayed none of this on the outside. I wanted to run across the space between us and bury the end of the Blade into his heart, knowing that it would be hardly an increment of the pain that he’d already caused me.
“You don’t want to do this.” Wyck’s voice was laced with warning. He held a hand out like he was calming a misbehaving child.
“I think I know what’s better for me than you do,” I said. Wyck just shook his head.
“But I counted on this happening,” he said. “That’s why I prepared myself to raise the stakes if needed.”
His eyes weren’t on me anymore. They were looking over my shoulder, head tilted up to see what was behind me. My first instinct told me that it was a distraction; that he wanted me to turn so that he could take me by surprise. I refused to, ready to run forward with the Blade.
But I heard footsteps, gentle and scratchy on the floor behind me. The sounds made me freeze. The feet stopped at the same time.
I grasped the bed with my free hand, rolling it back again so that I could see both Wyck and whoever had approached me. Wyck insisted that I look. Warily, I turned my head.
The two workers were standing there now. The woman had one of her arms up and around the shoulders of someone beside her in a neck lock, while the man held a pistol.
White gauze was taped over the girl’s eyes, arms down as the woman led her to stop a few feet away from me. The girl’s blonde hair was clustered on her forehead from the sweat of panic. She breathed in shallow, scared gasps, too afraid to lift her arms from her sides.
No, I thought.
No. No.
No.
Then the woman reached forward, and taking the two pieces of gauze by their edges, ripped them off the girl’s face abruptly. But I didn’t need to see her eyes or to hear her shout of pain to know who she was.
“Alli…” I whispered. She looked up at me, and all my plans of escape vanished.
23
To Be Human
Alli blinked at me as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“Michael!” she choked, but when she tried to run to me, the woman held her back with a steel-like grip, the man pressing the pistol even deeper into the top of her head. The woman showed no reaction as Alli kicked and screamed and beat her with fists. I slid a step in her direction only to see Wyck move out of the corner of my eye in response.
I jumped back again, slinging the Blade out to him in warning.
“Don’t move!” I roared, and he stopped in mid-step. Alli ceased her fighting, breathing heavily from her struggle and looking to me with wild eyes.
“They told me you were dead!” she screamed, her neck locked in the woman’s elbow. And all of a sudden, I realized why I’d never found Alli in the burning house.
I exploded with a mixture of so many emotions at once: a feeling that all was not lost after all, followed by a sinking terror when I saw the unaffected expression on the woman’s face, looking to Wyck for her next orders. I twisted to look at Wyck again, and in that motion, betrayed myself. His eyes filled with an eager vengeance—a merciless delight. He stood up straighter, brushing his bruised hands against the front of his now-ruined suit coat.
“So you’re defeated!” he burst with glee. He didn’t laugh any more than a small huff of enjoyment, reaching over to pull the heavy rack of screens upright again. Two of the screens had fallen off and their wires were ripped but the other three remained attached, with the faces of the Guardians behind them still struggling to see. It fell back into place with a crash, the camera wobbling forward to look at the room again.
“You’re one of us but you could easily be one of them,” he told me, as if finally enlightened to some truth that he’d been missing. The speakers that the people on the screens had used to communicate with us had been destroyed, so we could not hear their voices as their mouths moved. Morgan was yelling at Wyck but he didn’t see her. His claws twitched eagerly.
“You won’t leave this room,” he said. He was far too correct. If I moved for Wyck, the workers would kill Alli. If I moved for Alli, Wyck would slice Thad through the middle with a flick of his finger. Thad! I thought. If only I could get him awake, if I could somehow get the I/V from his arm… but Wyck was too close.
Wake up, Thad, I can’t do this alone…! I thought, but it was in vain. Thad’s eyes had slumped forward halfway, his body having given in to weakness.
“Just give me the Bl—” Wyck started.
CRASH.
The room was so large that when the noise interrupted no one could tell from which direction it had come. It was like the sound of a ball slamming into a window, then seconds later there came tiny, tinkling noises as glass rained down to the concrete and broke into bits.
All of us looked up at once. And there, diving down through the very skylight she had just smashed through, was Callista.
Beams of sunlight shone across the glimmers of falling glass like they were airborne diamonds. The silver of her claws spread majestically, frighteningly, like the attack of a bird as it swooped toward the ground.
She’d found me.
The two workers who held Alli turned their heads up. In the second it took for them to see Callista’s claws, their faces paled in a startled awe, looking like they were seeing a goddess soaring from the clouds. Their knees bent slightly, as if unsure whether they should fall to kneel, the pistol falling from Alli’s head and to the man’s side.
Callista hit the ground with a smash, two inches from them. Their heads followed her down, petrified as Callista threw both of her hands forward between them. With one sweeping part, she threw both of them aside, the pistol firing a string of pops into the air worthlessly: the arm holding it detached and flopping to the ground. Their bodies crashed against a wall and a table, slumping over.