“What were you saying about elementals destroying the arxium around the city? Do you mean all the arxium that’s protecting us? Because that sounds insane. You can’t—”
Saoirse launched toward Ridley and vanished. A rush of air swept around Ridley, and an instant later, she was invisible too. She had never done this before—disappeared because of someone else’s magic and not her own—but she let Saoirse’s elemental form whisk her away. Out of the room, through an air vent, into an air duct, racing along pipes, up and up and up, until eventually they shot out above the building.
17
They flew between the skyscrapers, over the poorer districts, and beyond the wall. Saoirse’s magic lowered them both to the ground where the ruins of the wastelands began. “I’m sorry,” she said as they reappeared, her voice barely audible above the storm. The ground shuddered beneath them, and they were drenched within seconds from the pelting rain. “I should have gotten you out of there the moment I found you. It’s just … all of this—attacks and search-and-rescue missions—it’s way outside my comfort zone.” She dropped her bag to the ground beside her feet. “I don’t know what I’m doing half the time.”
“We … we left Archer,” Ridley said, her mind still racing to catch up.
“I thought you didn’t trust him anymore?”
“I … yes. You’re right. I don’t. He’ll be fine.” She shook her head. She wasn’t supposed to care anymore whether Archer was fine or not. “Okay, so—Whoa!” She ducked as the front half of a truck soared overhead and crashed into the ground nearby. “Holy freaking—”
“It’s fine,” Saoirse assured her. “We’ll be fine. Magic knows us. It’s not going to hurt us.”
Ridley remembered the first time she’d ended up out here, when magic had whipped her up and flung her back and forth before returning her, unharmed, to the ground. It had figured out then that she was no threat. She sincerely hoped it hadn’t forgotten her.
“Um, okay.” She tried to gather her scattered thoughts. “Just … just hang on.” Her skin glowed and her magic rose to the surface, and in the next moment she was air, picturing those she knew—Dad, Nathan, Callie, Malachi—and pushing her questioning thoughts out to the magic around her. The answers came back instantly, from every direction. Elementals were all around her, mostly in the ground. Not Callie, which made sense—she had always seemed too nervous to take part in all of this—but everyone else was nearby. Except Dad. It took Ridley longer to sense him, and when she did, she felt herself drawn toward the city, somewhere on the other side of the wall.
“My dad—he’s in the city,” she said the moment she resumed her human shape. “That’s where he’s supposed to be, right? That was part of the plan?”
“Yes. Along with everyone else who isn’t elemental. They’ll use conjurations to protect people, if necessary.”
“Risking getting caught,” Ridley said, “and unable to get away like one of us.” Why hadn’t that occurred to her before, when they were going over these plans?
“Possibly, but once this is all over and magic isn’t forbidden anymore, they’ll be freed. And that’s if they’re caught. There’ll probably be too much chaos for that.” They were both shouting now to be heard over the storm, but the wind still seemed to sweep their words away almost the moment they’d been formed.
“Okay, but also …” Ridley wrung her hands together. “He doesn’t know I’m all right. I just—I just left yesterday. I was angry with him. And when you last saw him, you said you couldn’t sense me anywhere, so he’s probably worried, and he probably thinks I hate him now, and—and what if he’s looking for me instead of—”
“That’s fine, Ridley. He’s in the city, which is safer for him than if he was out here. I’ll find him and let him know you’re okay. Right now, you need to focus.” Saoirse gripped Ridley’s shoulders as the earth trembled again. “Are you ready?”
“I—I …” Ridley shook her head, though she didn’t mean ‘no.’ She wanted more than ever to rid the world of all its smothering arxium and the Shadow Society’s influence, but, as Saoirse had said only minutes ago, everything was happening faster than anyone expected. “Just tell me exactly what’s happening right now. Is this—is this the part where everyone’s in the ground doing the earthquakes to break those arxium gas machines?”
“Yes. I assume that’s why the storm is so bad now. If the machines are broken, all the arxium gas is probably escaping into the air.” Saoirse looked behind her. “If we were a little further into the wastelands, or up there—” she turned her gaze to the sky “—I don’t think we’d be able to change form without gas masks on.”
“They know where the bunker is, right? They know which section of the wall to avoid?”
“Yes, Malachi told Nathan exactly where it is.”
“So we wait for the storm to calm down—so it won’t damage the city—and then we burn through all the arxium protection?” Ridley asked.
“Yes. You go up to the panels, and you do exactly as we practiced. Just on a bigger scale. You were already more powerful than everyone else the last time we practiced this. I know you saw that. Now you know why. Now you know you can push yourself even further.”
“Okay, but …” Ridley wiped a hand across her eyes, clearing them of the raindrops that stuck her lashes together. A futile exercise, since more rain streamed down her brow and into her eyes within seconds. “Archer mentioned there are arxium panels in the ground around all the cities. They were put there before the Cataclysm. We never knew about those, so we didn’t plan—”
“That’s fine. The others will sense any additional arxium down there. It’ll crack because of the earthquakes, and then they’ll burn through it. They’ll move on to burning the wall, and if they’re not done by the time you’re finished with all the panels, you can take down the rest of the wall.” She squeezed Ridley’s shoulders again. “It’s happening, Ridley. We have you, and this is finally, really happening.”
The knot of anxiety that had begun to form in Ridley’s chest jerked a little tighter at the reminder of the responsibility that rested on her. “But … what about the rest of the details? We haven’t done that video recording Nathan wanted to broadcast across the city to explain everything. And what about all the other cities across the world? I thought we wanted this to be a synchronized event. Happening everywhere at the same time, so the Shadow Society chapters everywhere else don’t have a chance to fight back. It’s not that I don’t want to do this. I really, really do. I just don’t want us to end up failing.”
Saoirse paused, then said, “Change has to begin somewhere, Ridley. There are others ready to act. When they see that the revolution has begun, they’ll follow suit. The Shadow Society won’t have time to stop anything.”