Skandar stares at the Pearl in my arms, laying his finger on top of the swirling energy. “Man, where’d you manage to get one of these?”
“I caught it,” I reply, keeping my attention on Eva. “So what’s Alkine’s plan now?”
“He was hoping to pick you up,” she responds. “I guess the Unified Party had the same idea.” She pauses. “Wait a second, did you just say you caught it?”
I nod.
Her eyes widen. “Alkine was right. There is something different about you. Back at Lookout Park… that was you, wasn’t it?”
Before I can answer, Avery swears, cradling her forehead.
Skandar glances at me. “What’s wrong with her?”
I lay my hand on her shoulder. “Headache again?”
Avery nods, speaking through clenched teeth. “They’re getting worse.”
Eva frowns. “Why is she down here, anyway?”
I rub Avery’s back. “She knows what’s going on,” I mutter, “from Madame’s side.”
“From Madame’s side?” Realization dawns on Eva’s face. “Wait, she’s a spy, isn’t she? I always thought there was something going on there. Flunked out of the program, yet you know how to hack into our com-pads.”
“She’s not a spy,” I lie. “She’s my friend, Eva. Drop it.”
Avery runs her hand through her hair, managing the pain. “I work for Jesse,” she whispers. “No one else.”
Eva nods. “Then I guess we have something in common.”
Skandar elbows my side, grinning like this is all some fun little game and I’ve just won them both as prizes.
Eva sighs. “How did you find out about Alkine, Fisher?”
“Air vent,” I say. “Your little closed-door meeting wasn’t as secret as you thought.”
“Then you saw how much it was killing me to do it, to follow you around like I was your mother. I swear I didn’t know anything. Alkine asked me to protect you. I thought it was some sort of mentor thing.”
“Yeah,” I reply. “Well, I don’t need your protection.”
She nods. “We’re going to Seattle, I assume.”
Avery takes a deep breath. “What’s left of it.”
“Alkine will follow us,” Eva starts, “with or without the tracer. Watching your path so far, he realizes what’s happened. He knows that you know. He’ll try to stop you from doing something stupid.”
Avery scoots closer to me. “With those cruisers dropping out of the sky one after another, he might not have a chance.”
“He’ll get there,” I say. “It’s just a matter of who gets there first. We’ll need to-”
A voice interrupts me, words I’ve never heard before, swirling around my head. Whispers. I close my eyes and try to focus on the sound. There’s no one else in the trailer. A string of nonsense echoes around me.
“We’ll need to what?” Eva asks. “Jesse, are you all right?”
I set the Pearl on the ground between my knees. The whispers stop. Everything’s quiet. I open my eyes. Everyone’s staring at me.
I glance around the trailer, then place my hand on top of the Pearl once more. Whispers again. Nothing but cryptic babble. I lift my fingers from the surface. Silence. Somehow, the voice came from inside the Pearl. These things just get weirder and weirder.
“I’m fine,” I mutter.
“Oh!” Skandar digs through his pocket, “I almost forgot.” He pulls a chain necklace from inside and drops it into my hand. Attached is a silver key. I run my finger over the curved metal head. It’s the same as the one from my dreams.
Eva clears her throat. “I swiped it from Alkine after the meeting. It’s important, I think. He always talks about it when he’s mentioning Seattle.”
I hold the chain between my fingers, allowing the key to hang above the Pearl, glinting with the reflection of the wavy green light. “Thanks.”
She shrugs. “I told you I was on your side.”
I pull the key up into my fist, clutching it tightly as our van speeds out of the city and toward the mountains. “We were so close to finding answers without the Academy.”
Eva sighs. “The Academy’s not your enemy, Jesse.”
“Yeah,” Skandar says. “Alkine’s worried sick.”
I scoff. “Alkine doesn’t get worried.”
Eva nods, her eyes pleading with me to understand. “I know. And that’s the scary thing.”
I bow my head, getting lost in the Pearl energy, and try to convince myself that everything’s fine. But I can’t ignore the cruisers back in Lenbrg, or Cassius’s grim determination to find me. This isn’t just some fancy scavenger hunt amidst the ruins. There are weapons involved. Armies.
I should be worried. I should be mass worried.
39
Cassius laid on the accelerator, propelling the sports car up the side of the mountain pass. He’d found a gun under the passenger seat and used it to snatch a canister of water and a quick meal from a pair of Fringers on the outskirts of the nearest town. He’d dumped the guy’s body from the trunk as well. Less weight in the car.
Now he sped along a narrow road between miles of dry forest, much of it blackened by continual fires. The Northern Cascades-once a lush, snow-clogged drive to Seattle, now a thinning forest fire waiting to happen.
He felt strange sitting behind the wheel of a car. The warm breeze pushed against his face through the half-open window. Families used to take trips in automobiles before the Chosen Cities-radio blasting, hands sticking up out of the sunroof. Now everyone crowded onto the Chute system, except those lucky enough to afford a shuttle of their own. Driving felt all right. Freeing.
He drank from the water canister before dropping it onto the seat beside him. The motor puttered up the steep incline. He prayed it wouldn’t give out entirely. Still, if he had to get out and push the fraggin’ thing, he’d do it. The sooner he got to Seattle, the sooner this nightmare would be over.
Suddenly, he saw movement in the forest ahead of him. He slowed down slightly, peering out the dust-caked window.
Then, a heavy whoosh. The trees crashed to the left of his car, bending forward to let something through. He watched as a large, dark shape flew through the forest up into the air, casting a shadow against the hood of his car.
He slowed to a stop as a boulder the size of an oven smashed into the pavement, fracturing the already busted road and nearly pancaking the front end of the car in the process.
The trees settled back into place, swaying gently in the breeze. All was quiet and still.
Breathing hard, he stared at the giant rock blocking the center of the pathway up the mountain. He looked at the sky, half-expecting something else to fall. But the boulder hadn’t come from the heavens. People had done this. He wasn’t sure how, but he wasn’t alone on the mountain.
He grabbed the gun from beside him, surveying the woods.
Nothing.
With one hand on the wheel he backed up, swerving to the left. Shifting gears, he curved around the right side of the boulder, darting his head from window to window.
Halfway around the rock, a gunshot rang out from the forest and nicked the corner of his bumper.
He sped up immediately, rocketing around the boulder and back onto the road. A second shot shattered the passenger window. Glass spilled onto the seat. He ducked, car weaving as he tried to stay on the road with one steering arm and limited vision.
He glanced at the rearview mirror and watched as several gangly figures bounded out from the trees onto the road, running after him. He kept his head low and stomped down on the accelerator, flying up the hill as fast as the car would take him. The figures fired shot after shot, some of which hit the back of his trunk. Others ricocheted off the pavement. He longed for one of the government’s concussion grenades, or even a proper shotgun instead of the peashooter he held now.
He kept a constant, breakneck speed, whipping around a cluster of dying trees before straightening out once more. Then he saw it, half a mile ahead, stretched across the road. A wooden barrier. It was at least a foot thick, with two words carved in jagged marks on the bark. Cascadia Territory. It’d crush the car no matter how fast he was going.