I had nothing left.
There was nothing I could do.
Strange disconnected images flashed in my mind. Adrien’s bright blue-green eyes. The first time we’d met in the crowded Market Corridor. Our first kiss.
Any moment now, we’d hit. I closed my eyes and gripped Adrien’s leg harder. At least we’d be together at the end.
But suddenly our momentum slowed down, like we’d landed on a sea of cotton. I opened my swollen eyes in confusion. Blinding blue light surrounding us, cradling us on all sides. I didn’t know when I’d last taken a breath. Had I died?
“Get them inside!” someone shouted. “The armada’s right behind us!”
The blue light dissipated around us. In my disorientation, I watched in bewilderment as Saminsa pulled Adrien to his feet. Buildings rose up on all sides, and the Rez’s transport was parked in the center of an intersection.
Rand saw me and grinned. “Did you miss us?”
Cole jumped out of the transport while Xona held a rocket launcher over her shoulder and fired at a group of Regs running down the street toward us. Cole scooped me and Adrien up, one in each arm, just as the explosion lit up the street behind us.
“Saminsa, more Regs are coming, we need another orb!” Cole called as he deposited us inside the back of the transport.
Saminsa immediately raised her arms and blue light exploded from her fingertips. It looked like the same light that had created the otherworldly net to catch us, except this time it expanded outward. Before the orb could encompass the entire transport, a Regulator came from nowhere and leapt toward the still open door. Xona was reloading and couldn’t fire. Cole threw himself in front of her as red light exploded from the charging Reg’s laser weapon.
The instant before it hit, Saminsa’s blue orb expanded and made a shield. The laser fire hit the barrier just an inch from Cole’s face and dissipated harmlessly, absorbed by the blue light. Xona stared up at Cole in disbelief as Rand slammed the back of the transport shut.
“Go, Henk, get us out of here,” Tyryn said, looking out the window. “Two more armada ships are flying in from the north.”
My muscles started shuddering again. I was on the edge of consciousness, darkness threatening to swoop in. Tyryn’s face was suddenly over mine. “We brought another epi infuser,” he said, pushing my hair back from my face.
I felt a bite of fire in my chest. I jerked away from the hands holding me down as the blaze spread through my whole body. I wheezed and clutched my heart, and for the first time in who knows how many minutes, air whooshed through the small space that had opened in my throat and into my lungs.
Tyryn helped me lean back. I gasped and finally got a full breath. The transport jarred beneath us as we launched off the ground.
“There’s three of ’em now!” Henk shouted.
I felt the momentum as our transport rose straight up into the air. Nausea and dizziness swarmed me, but I managed to keep my eyes open. As we lifted past the top of the buildings, I saw three fully loaded armada transports waiting in the air. They launched another volley of laser fire. The lasers rippled harmlessly into the blue orb still surrounding our vehicle.
“This one’s disintegrating,” Saminsa yelled from where she stood in the center aisle.
“Attack as soon as she releases it!” Henk said.
City and Rand lined up shoulder to shoulder and lowered the long window running along the side of the transport. Air rushed in as soon as it was open.
“Now!” Saminsa called, shifting her body forward. The blue orb expanded like a spherical wave outward. City sent a giant spiral of electricity in its wake. Right as the blue orb dissipated, City’s electricity circled around one of the attack transports, slowly weaving into a web. Sparks and explosions crackled through the air.
Rand held out his arms too, and the air wavered like water as he sent out an intense wave of heat. The outer hull of the attack transport closest to us began to melt.
Saminsa launched a small burning blue orb toward the third transport, and it hit with an explosion that rocked the whole thing backward. It toppled into the transport Rand was working on, sending them both spiraling into the buildings below. The next moment, the transport City attacked dropped from the air like a dead weight too.
Bright explosions burst from below us where the transports had hit, but Henk already had us speeding toward the horizon before I could even get a good look.
City closed the window, letting out a loud whoop. “Did you see that?”
Ginni laughed and hugged her. Rand grinned and clapped Saminsa on the back. “That was amazing!”
My mind was clearing a little now that the epi had taken effect. I pulled my tired body over to where Adrien was buckled in near the front of the transport.
I hugged him hard, fat tears seeping out of my swollen eyes as I thought about General Taylor and how close we’d all come to suffering the same fate. “We’re safe.” I clung to his skinny frame. “We made it.”
He didn’t hug me back.
“Adrien?” I pulled away.
That was when I finally looked into his eyes.
And knew something was horribly wrong.
His eyes had no vibrancy. Even the normal bright blue-green hue seemed leeched out of them.
“Adrien?” Even though he was looking straight at me, I wasn’t sure he saw me at all.
“Adrien?” My voice raised to a hysterical pitch. “Adrien, you’re scaring me.”
He continued to stare ahead dumbly.
I grabbed his hand and put it to my beating heart. “It’s Zoe, talk to me.”
“Zoe,” he echoed, his voice hollow and lifeless. “Why didn’t you save me?”
Chapter 29
ADRIEN SAT ON JILIA’S MED TABLE as she finished her diagnostic. His mother sat beside him, squeezing his hand. Deep brown circles ringed his eyes, and I couldn’t look away from the barely healed scars lining his head where his skull had been cut open.
“Adrien,” Jilia said, her tone falsely bright as she lowered the imaging panel. “You’ve done very well. Please go back to your dorm room and rest now.”
He stood up and did what she said. All he ever did now was follow orders. Nothing else. He’d stand for hours if no one told him to sit down.
Rand was waiting to escort Adrien back to his dorm room.
“What is it?” Sophia asked the doctor anxiously.
Jilia swallowed, then pulled out a projection tablet that loaded a 3-D image of Adrien’s head.
“He’s had multiple operations. From the bit that he is able to remember and relate, the Chancellor had him under compulsion for over a month. Until he had a vision of what he thought was Zoe’s death.” She looked at me. “He foresaw you going into the allergy attack with no one there to save you. He knew if he told the Chancellor, he’d be telling her how to kill you. His determination not to harm you somehow enabled him to finally break her control over his mind. He began successfully fighting back and refusing to tell her his visions anymore. That was when she started in on the surgical options.”
I felt numb as she spoke. This had happened to him because of me.
“What, as some kind of torture?” Adrien’s mother asked, stricken.
“She did torture him at first to try to get the answers out of him.” Jilia looked down. “But in the end, she lobotomized him. She cut out portions of his brain, including almost the entire amygdala. He has his memories, but can no longer attach emotion to them. Or to anything he experiences. After the operations…” she swallowed again. “After the last operation it appears the Chancellor’s compulsion did indeed work on him again. But he’d stopped having visions altogether.” She looked at me. “The only reason the Chancellor even kept him alive was as collateral against you. She knew that he had to be alive for Ginni’s power to locate him, so she could draw you into the trap.”