There is one moment of silence, where my father and I stare back at each other, and everyone else catches their breath.
“Run,” Peri says. Her voice is clear and solid. It is the first thing she has said since we found her. “RUN!”
Hundreds, thousands of Needles fall from the sky.
CHAPTER 106
ZEPHYR
It’s like the sky is crying knives.
We run through the trees, holding our arms over our heads like they can protect us, but it’s totally useless.
A Needle lands in my arm. I yank it out and keep going, but the spot turns black in an instant, and I can feel a sick, horrible sensation as whatever the Needle was laced with pours through my veins.
Tox takes the lead again, using his walking stick to brave the path, and we follow behind. Every few seconds, Meadow’s dad stumbles. Koi helps him back up, and we keep going.
Meadow is beside me, running in tandem, holding Peri’s hand. The little girl is fast, but what amazes me is that Tox manages to stay ahead of us.
The Needles keep falling all around, whistling as they soar past my head.
One lands on Peri’s Regulator, bounces off. Another gets me in my back.
Around me, everyone’s getting hit. Everyone shouts as they’re jabbed through the skin.
But there’s one shout that’s louder than all the others. It’s Koi’s voice.
Meadow stops and turns, pulling Peri with her.
We all look back and see her father crumpled in a heap on the ground.
He’s covered in Needles like the rest of us.
“We have to run!” I scream. But Meadow hands Peri to me and turns back. She falls at her dad’s side.
I see the flash of his wrist cuff, 98, as Koi hauls him under the canopy of a tree, trying to protect him from the Needles. They’re still falling, not as many, but it seems like it won’t ever end.
Sketch rounds back, comes up beside me. “Zero, let’s go!”
“Meadow’s dad!” I yell. I push Peri into her arms.
“Go, get to the Perimeter!”
She shakes her head, dark eyes wide, but she wraps her arms around Peri. The little girl is crying out for her daddy, trying to get away, but Sketch is strong enough to hold her.
“GO!” I yell. “Peri can’t see this.”
A Needle falls between us.
Sketch nods, takes off after Saxon and Tox. I turn and stay behind with Meadow and Koi, as they lean over their father.
He’s coughing up blood.
“You’re okay,” Meadow says. Her eyes are rimmed with tears, but she swallows them back, refuses to let them fall. “Just get up, keep walking. We don’t quit, remember?”
Meadow’s dad coughs again, spits crimson. “I’m done,” he chokes out. His chest is rising and falling too fast.
“We’ll carry him,” Koi says. He looks over his shoulder, sees me standing on the edge. “Zero, come help!”
“No!” Meadow’s father yells. He tries to lift an arm, but it falls.
Either from the weight of the Needles or weakness or both, but I see the number on his cuff now: 99.
His eyes are wild as he looks back and forth between Meadow and Koi. I’m invading this moment, an outsider who needs to be far away, but I can’t go. I won’t let Meadow out of my sight.
“You keep Peri safe,” Meadow’s dad says. He chokes on his own blood. His eyes start dripping it, like he’s drowning from the inside out and it’s trying to escape from every place that it can.
“You’ll keep her safe with us,” Meadow says. She’s crying now, real tears that won’t stop. Then she starts yelling. “We don’t die! We’re survivors, remember?”
Her father shakes his head. At this point he can’t get any words out.
Koi and Meadow stare at him, frozen.
It’s a horror scene, the Needles in his arms, in all of our arms, the black spots spreading on everyone’s skin.
“Go . . .” their father chokes out again. “Go!”
The word is muffled, like he’s shouting from underwater.
Meadow shakes her head. “No,” she whispers. Another Needle falls, lands in her dad’s outspread leg, but it’s like he can’t feel it anymore.
He takes a deep, rattling breath. Go. He mouths the word, but it doesn’t come out.
He gasps, one final time. His cuff changes to 100. Suddenly, as he dies, his eyes flick toward mine. There’s a look in them I haven’t seen before, like he’s pleading with me. Begging.
I nod.
He looks at his children, one last time.
And then the strongest man in the world, the one who would do anything to survive, dies.
CHAPTER 107
MEADOW
My father.
My father.
My father is dead.
But he can’t be dead, not now, not ever. He has always been strong, always taught me to do whatever it took to survive. Killing, stealing, fighting to the last breath.
I roll him away from me, see his gray eyes open and still.
Not blinking at all.
Koi is moaning, sobbing. “No, no, no.”
The world is a blur, as Zephyr comes up behind me, tries to tug me away from my father’s body.
“Wake up!” I scream. “Wake up!”
“He’s gone, Meadow!” Zephyr shouts. “He’s gone!”
The Needles have stopped, but the world feels like it is screaming, raging all around me.
He was supposed to escape with us. He was supposed to survive.
It might be minutes, or seconds, that pass, when my brother rises to his feet. “We have to leave,” he says.
I try to shut my father’s eyes with my fingertips, but they won’t close. They stay open, staring at nothing. I can’t leave him like this.
He is the strong one. He was supposed to be there for my family when I couldn’t be anymore. The switch hits, and I’m so weak that I collapse beside him.
“We have to go!” Zephyr yells.
He lifts me, hauls me away from my father. I’m screaming, writhing, and even in my weakness Koi and Zephyr have to hold me together so I cannot get away.
They start moving, pulling me from my father.
We leave him behind, stuck with Needles, lying on the floor of the Ridge.
Soon the Initiative will find him, and that will be his end. Captured by the very people he spent his entire life trying to hide from.
CHAPTER 108
ZEPHYR
We make it to the Perimeter.
Saxon and Sketch and Tox are here, waiting, and everyone seems fine. The Needles hurt us, but they didn’t kill anyone else here. I set Meadow down on the forest floor. Koi sits beside her, holding her up as her nose drips and she coughs blood. Just like her father.
I wonder when the Leeches will take his body. I wonder if they’ll finally get their Death Code from his blood.
Peri sprints for Meadow and Koi.
“Where’s Daddy?” she asks, but Koi shakes his head. Meadow just stares, blankly, into her sister’s eyes.
Meadow’s cuff is at 98.
Her father’s cuff was there, and it took him minutes to die.