Quickly, before blood flows into the area, making it swell, he shifts the cuff slightly and brings his heel down on his wrist. The bones of his wrist shatter on the metal of the cuff. He feels his vision begin to go as dark as if he’s been tranq’d, but he forces away the cloudiness and nausea, breathing slowly, deeply, forcing himself to stay conscious and transforming the pain into action. He’s bit his tongue; blood fills his mouth, but he spits it out. The job is done. With his right hand, he twists his left cuff. This time he’s unable to hold back the wail of pain as he forces his shattered left hand through the small hole.
61 • Noah
Being assigned to guard a guy who’s handcuffed and closed inside a jet isn’t exactly a difficult job, but hey—if Connor feels Starkey needs two guards, who is Noah Falkowski to argue? This is the first assignment given to Noah directly by Connor since he was rescued from his unwinding nearly four months ago, and he’s not gonna screw it up. Inside the jet, Starkey lets out a guttural scream.
“What the hell?” asks the other kid who’s guarding Starkey.
“That is one pissed-off dude,” says Noah.
Right about then a Jeep comes speeding toward them, its headlights making the twilight seem darker around them.
“What the hell?” says the other kid. Clearly his favorite expression.
The Jeep screeches to a halt, and out steps Trace. He heads straight for Connor’s jet.
“Whoa, Trace, hold up. Connor’s not in there,” Noah says.
“Where is he?”
Noah’s not quite sure. All he knows is that Connor has called the remaining members of the Holy of Whollies for a meeting after the Starkey incident. “He left the main aisle. One of the supply jets, maybe?”
“You’re useless.” Trace hops back into his Jeep and speeds toward the outlying planes. Only once he’s gone does Noah hear a banging sound from inside Connor’s jet—but it’s not the kind of sound he’d expect Starkey to make. The emergency exit above the wing begins to open.
“What the hell? How did he get loose?”
“Shh!” Noah cocks his pistol. He’s never fired it and knows it’s just a tranq, but it will do the job. He never really liked Starkey and won’t mind being the one to tranq him as he tries to escape from the jet. The emergency door falls inward. Both kids hold their weapons at the ready, but Starkey doesn’t come out. Cautiously they get closer, and when Noah looks inside, he sees straight through the plane to the darkening desert on the other side. While they were staring at this emergency exit, Starkey had climbed through the other one on the opposite side of the plane and is gone.
“Aw crap!”
Noah is less worried about Starkey than he is about having to tell Connor he screwed up his first real assignment.
62 • Starkey
He wears a hooded coat pulled from Connor’s closet to hide his face. His left hand feels like a twenty-pound weight on the end of his wrist. With every heartbeat it pounds so painfully that his knees wobble, but somehow he keeps himself moving. He knows that Trace is back, and that’s a game changer. Connor doesn’t know yet, which means Starkey can use Trace’s return to his advantage.
The Graveyard is scrambling. Kids race every which way. An aisle over, there’s a crowd at the arsenal. Hayden hands out weapons; not just one or two, but everything. No one notices Starkey.
A Stork Club member passes, carrying a load of weapons, and Starkey grabs him with his good hand. When the kid sees who it is, he almost shouts out his name, but Starkey stops him.
“Shut up and listen. Get a message out to the Storks. On my signal, we storm the escape jet.”
“But . . . that’s not the plan.”
“It’s my plan, do you understand?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure, Starkey.” Then he looks at Starkey’s hand, like he might ask a question about it, but decides not to. “What’s the signal?”
Starkey looks at the kid’s load of weapons and pulls out a flare gun. “This,” he says. “Go now!”
The kid races off to spread the word.
Starkey can see Trace’s Jeep speeding back toward the main aisle from the supply jets, having been given bad information from the idiots guarding him. Starkey’s not sure where Connor is—perhaps the ComBom, which will probably be the next place Trace will check.
Then Starkey spots Ashley racing from the arsenal with a nasty-looking machine gun, and he intercepts her. Her eyes go wide when she sees him.
“What the hell are you doing out? Does Connor know?”
“He will if you don’t keep your voice down!”
Ashley moves closer to him. “Forget it, Starkey. Why don’t you just make a run for it? Connor won’t care, as long as you’re out of his way when the Juvies come.”
“Are you a stork, Ashley, or are you one of Connor’s lackeys after all?”
When it’s put that way, there’s really only one response that Starkey’s key “sleeper agent” could give.
“What do you want me to do?”
63 • Trace
Unable to find Connor, Trace speeds back to the main aisle, headed for the ComBom, ready to sound the alarm himself. He sees kids carrying weapons away from the arsenal, but they’re not moving nearly fast enough.
He’s so distracted, he nearly runs down Ashley, who’s standing right in his path. He screeches to a halt.
“Trace! There you are!”
“Where’s Connor? The Juvies are coming with a full takedown force.”
“We know, Hayden heard the chatter,” Ashley tells him. “Connor wants you to power up the escape jet.”
“He knows I’m back?”
“Of course—he saw you racing off to the supply jets in a panic.”
“It wasn’t panic,” Trace says, although he knows it was. “I’ll get the Dreamliner ready for flight. If we’re fast enough, we may not need to fight them. Tell Connor to start loading kids onto the plane.”
“Sure thing, Trace.” But she does no such thing. She watches Trace race to the Dreamliner and climb up the stairs. Then she goes to tell Starkey that her mission has been accomplished.
64 • Lev
The rifle shot explodes through the Graveyard gate, ringing in Lev’s ears. “Down!” he yells. “They’re shooting at us!”
But Miracolina is already down. Not just down, but crumpled. She lies lifelessly in the dirt by the side of the road.
“No!” He falls to his knees beside her, afraid to look, afraid to touch her. “Please, God! No!” This can’t be happening. Not again! Everyone Lev gets close to is either killed or maimed, and it can’t happen again! He prays for the impossible. He prays for it not to be true. . . .
Then he rolls Miracolina over to find there’s no gaping hole in her chest. But there is a small spot of blood on her shoulder. And the tiny flag of a tranq bullet. He doesn’t know whether to be relieved or horrified.
“Looks like you’ve got trouble from both sides, Lev,” says Nelson, somewhere in the dark behind him. “What to do . . . what to do?”
Then, from the gate, he hears a shaky voice say, “Stay away, whoever you are, or I’ll shoot again!”
But before the teen guard can even aim his rifle, Nelson fires a second tranq bullet out of the darkness and takes the guard down right through the fence.
“Enough of him,” Nelson says calmly. “Now, where were we?”
Lev still can’t see Nelson, but Nelson can clearly see him, because Lev hears the telltale pffft of a tranq being fired. It hits his pant leg, deflecting off a rivet in his jeans, and lands in the gravel beside him. Lev knows he has no defense against Nelson now, so thinking quickly, he grabs the dart, digs it into the fabric of his jeans, careful not to nick his skin, and collapses on top of Miracolina. He closes his eyes. He hears the second guard panicking by the fence, and hears Nelson’s footsteps approaching from the other direction on the gravel. Lev’s heart races like it might explode in his chest, but he holds still, playing possum for his life, and prays for a second miracle in as many minutes. He prays that Nelson will fall for his act.