No way that would happen. I couldn’t leave Mark to the wolves. But Elli didn’t need to be there.
“Go,” I said to Elli. “Back to Solara.”
Elli ignored me and kept firing. It was like she was possessed. She had a steely look in her eye that reminded me of her daughter. She was scared, no doubt, but it also seemed like she was taking some pleasure in blowing the dados away. She had been through a lot. Maybe she was taking some small measure of revenge. Whatever it was, she wasn’t leaving.
“Elli! Go!”
She gave me a quick look and shouted, “We’re almost there.”
She backed toward the opening in the floor, firing as she went. There wasn’t time to argue. Dados were closing in on her from the other side of the conveyor belt. I spun and fired to keep them back. Aim wasn’t all that important. The charged particles that these weapons fired seemed to fan out like buckshot. Close was close enough. I dropped a dado with one shot, and saw a second fall at the same time. I fired again and dropped two more. But we were running out of ammunition, and time.
Elli’s gun emptied first. Without hesitation she dropped the weapon, turned to jump into the hole…
And was blown off her feet by a shot from another weapon that was fired from somewhere else. She let out a sharp gasp, as if she had been punched in the stomach. She hurtled backward and hit the floor, hard, square on her back. I think she was unconscious before she landed. I had the brief feeling of relief that she hadn’t been turned to cinder. Whatever hit her, it wasn’t the same kind of charge that we had seen from the silver weapons in the Taj Mahal. But where had it come from?
I glanced up to the control tower to see someone inside with a rifle up and on his shoulder, leaning out of an open window like a sniper. No doubt he was the guy who shot Elli, and he was swinging the rifle toward me. I lifted my own weapon quickly and fired off three quick shots. I didn’t worry about aim. The sight of Elli being so violently thrown by a shot from that guy made me lose it. I wanted him to suffer.
One of the windows of the control tower exploded from my first shot. The second hit the guy and knocked him back into the control room. The third blasted out a second window.
As I ran to help Ellie, I yelled to Mark, “Jump in the hole!”
Mark was out of ammunition. He fired two more times with no result, then threw his rifle at the approaching dados. No sooner did it leave his hands than he was knocked off his feet by another shot. I looked back up to the control tower to see another sniper leaning out of one of the windows I had shattered. Unlike his pal, he didn’t hesitate to admire his marksmanship. By the time I looked up, he was already aiming at me. I was staring square into the barrel of one of those black weapons.
I lifted my own.
Wump.
I never fired. I didn’t get the chance. My entire body went rigid. It felt like being Tasered by the Ravinian guards when Alder and I arrived at the Sherwood mansion on Second Earth. I’m sure I hit the floor, but I don’t remember it, because an instant after feeling the jolt, I was unconscious.
Waking up from being rudely separated from consciousness is never easy. I should know. It’s happened to me often enough. There’s that initial feeling of disconnection, followed by the pain of whatever event caused the lights to go out, followed by the desperate need to understand exactly where I had landed and what situation I’d have to deal with. This time was no different. Once I started becoming aware of my surroundings, the first thing I realized was that I was paralyzed. I couldn’t move. Not a pinkie. I didn’t panic. I hadn’t pulled far enough away from the land of the unconscious to feel as if it were anything permanent. I had been through this enough times to know I had to bring my brain back online before I could expect it to control my body.
One thing was clear. I may have been the illusion that Saint Dane said I was, but at that moment my body felt all too real. I hurt every bit as much as if I had been born in Stony Brook, Connecticut, instead of in some alternate universe filled with spirits. At that moment I kind of wished I was a little more spirit like and a little less humanlike.
I opened my eyes and tried to focus. There wasn’t a dado in sight, which meant I was no longer in that factory. I was flat on my back and looking up at a ceiling covered with white tiles. Was this a hospital? It didn’t seem like a prison. I moved my head, which meant I wasn’t paralyzed.
At least not from the neck up, anyway. Mark was lying next to me, still unconscious. Someone had covered us with dark green blankets. I saw that we were lying on thin mats and not directly on the floor. That was good. At least we were being treated semi-okay.
I felt control slowly returning. I twisted my head around to see that we were in a large, empty room. Windows were set high near the ceiling. There would be no way to get out that way. The walls were covered with ornate tiles that created mosaic patterns. If this was a prison, it was a fancy one. I rolled my head the other way and saw that someone was standing by the only door.
Nevva Winter.
“You’ll be fine,” she said without compassion. “The effects are temporary, which is better than what those weapons do to the dados. Where did you get them, by the way?”
Nevva wore a dark outfit that kind of reminded me of Saint Dane’s black suit. But not quite as severe looking. She had a cloth belt that tied at the waist and an open collar. It looked more like a dark warm-up suit. Her hair was tied back too, which was different from the way she’d worn it on Quillan. This was more casual and made her look almost human. Still, she had those piercing eyes that made me remember just how cold and calculating she could be.
“Water?” she asked.
Elli. Where was Elli? I forced myself up to my elbows and scanned the room. Another body was lying against a far wall. Her face was covered, but I saw the end of Elli’s gray ponytail poking out from beneath the blanket that was over her. She was here, but still unconscious. I hoped that the effects of the blast hadn’t hurt her.
“No,” I answered.
Nevva walked toward me. “Why did you come back?”
I put on my best smile. “I missed you.”
Nevva didn’t appreciate the sarcasm. She glared at me. “It’s over, Pendragon,” she said with a touch of impatience. “Halla has fallen. Anything that you and the Travelers do now is futile.”
“So then you won’t mind that we hang around a little longer,” I replied.
“You can do whatever you like, but why would you bring Mark here and put him in jeopardy? That’s just irresponsible. He’s your friend.”
I gave her a surprised look and said, “Wow. Do you really care?”
Nevva grimaced and turned away. It struck me that she hadn’t said anything about Elli. Did she even know that her mother was lying only a few feet away? It didn’t seem like it.
“Leave, Pendragon,” Nevva said. “Take your friends with you and find someplace safe for them to live.”
She said “your friends.” She didn’t know that Elli was one of them. I had to figure out a way to use that to our advantage. I also had to figure out a way to learn what Nevva knew about the exiles.
“Sorry,” I said. “Monkeying with Saint Dane is a hard habit to break. I think I’ll keep at it.”
“But it’s over!” she repeated with a touch of frustration. “Surely you understand that. You’re fighting a war that has ended. The territories are no longer. Every world in Halla has been cleansed. There’s nothing left to do now but rebuild.”
I sat up. “Cleansed? Is that what you call it? What you mean is that the people Saint Dane considers worthy are living the life, and everybody else has either been killed or will be soon.”
“We have rewarded excellence,” Nevva said patiently. “That has been the vision from the beginning. Nothing has happened to the rest of the people of Halla that they didn’t bring about themselves.”
“You’re kidding, right? Saint Dane manipulated the people of seven worlds into making decisions that led to their own destruction, and you’re saying it’s their fault? That’s like pushing a puppy out into traffic and saying it was his own fault that he got hit by a car. Give me a break!”