Nathan looked doubtful. “Everywhere? Really?”
“Ridley’s right,” Shen said. “Waiting to see something on the news is old school. People check social before they check anything else.”
“That video we just watched about Linevale was on the news,” Nathan pointed out.
“Yeah, and I saw it because someone shared it on one of the social feeds.”
Malachi gave Nathan’s shoulder a light punch and grinned. “Come on, man. You’re not that old. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how this stuff works.”
Nathan narrowed his eyes. “Okay, fine. That’s what we’ll plan to do. And if I don’t survive, then it’ll be one of you who has to stand up in the middle of a busy square to tell everyone the truth.”
The possibility of Nathan not surviving—of any of them not surviving—was enough to wipe the grin from Malachi’s face.
“Well, we should get going,” Nathan said to Malachi. “Ridley …” he added, looking at her.
“My dad,” she said quietly. She hadn’t forgotten that they’d been about to go out and search the city for him when Shen showed up.
“Please don’t try to find him on your own,” Nathan said.
“What if I just do what we were going to do? It’ll take me longer to cover the whole city on my own, but that’s fine. I’ll stay above the buildings and—”
“Above the buildings is where you were caught before,” Nathan reminded her. “If Davenport is still creating elementals, you could be caught again.”
Ridley paused, chewing on her lip. Nathan had a point. “So … you want me to just wait?”
“We need you, Ridley. You know that. You can’t risk yourself. And you never know, Maverick might be back here by the time we return. If he’s looking for you, and if Saoirse is with him, they’ll probably find their way here.”
Ridley nodded, though she felt that was probably too much to hope for. “Okay. I’ll wait.”
Nathan looked at Malachi. “Time to go.”
They disappeared, and Shen slipped his commscreen into his jeans pocket. “I need to go. I’m probably late for those deliveries now. We’re still on for dinner when I get back?”
Ridley nodded, pasting on a smile that was far brighter than anything she felt inside. “Yes, definitely.”
Shen pulled the door open, then hesitated and looked back. “You will be here when I get back, right?”
“I will,” Ridley said. And she meant it.
But the door shut, and she was left alone in the semi-darkness with that sense of urgency nipping at her, and the prospect of sticking to her word seemed almost impossible. She switched on a lamp, sat on the couch, and reached for the old commscreen she’d been using earlier. With her knees pulled up to her chest, she scrolled through the social feeds looking for any news of other cities’ walls coming down. We can do this, she kept telling herself. We can free Lumina City. We can change the world. We don’t have to hide forever.
But if anything had happened elsewhere in the world, it hadn’t been shared online yet. Trying not to be discouraged, she tapped her way over to Meera’s profile to see if her best friend had posted anything recently. Nothing except a link to a fundraiser event happening at the indoor sports center Meera was apparently a frequent visitor at these days.
Ridley looked at Lilah’s profile next, but nothing had been posted in days. Was Lilah … gone? Was there now a gaping hole in the universe where Delilah Davenport had once been? Guilt squeezed Ridley’s insides tighter. It’s not my fault, she tried to tell herself. She tried over and over, but the guilt wouldn’t loosen its grip.
She was about to toss the commscreen across the couch when a notification popped up in the corner of the screen, sending her heart tripping over itself: Archer Davenport is live now.
25
Ridley’s grip tightened on the commscreen. “Archer Davenport is what?” she whispered, tapping on the notification before it disappeared. A moment later, Archer’s face filled the screen. Ridley’s heart jolted, then took off at a gallop. She almost dropped the device before reminding herself that he couldn’t see her. This wasn’t a video call. He didn’t know she was watching. Well … she didn’t think he knew. Archer Davenport had so many followers and ‘friends,’ there were probably a hundred other people who’d tapped on that notification at the same moment she did—and more joining every second. There was no way he could keep track of everyone watching.
The video background was a plain cream wall, giving Ridley no clue as to where Archer was. He cleared his throat. Pushed his shoulders back. Swallowed. If not for everything that had happened in recent days, Ridley would have smiled. “You look far more confident when you don’t even try,” she would have told him. Except … confident Archer was the one who could tell a great story. She didn’t trust confident Archer. But this Archer? It was possible he might say something she actually wanted to hear.
“Hi,” he said, then cleared his throat again. “My name is Archer Davenport. Some of you know me; some of you don’t. I’ve never done anything particularly amazing, but people know who I am because I had the fortune—or misfortune, depending on how you look at things—of being born into an obscenely wealthy family. We throw lavish parties, we buy yachts and planes and private islands—or we did, before the Cataclysm—and we socialize with actors and singers and politicians. Apparently all these things make us celebrities too, though it really shouldn’t.” He let out a long, slow breath, beginning to look a little more relaxed now.
“The reason I mention this,” he continued, “is because I’m hoping that by the time I’m finished talking, thousands of you will be watching. Thousands of you will know the truth. And you’ll tell everyone you know, and they’ll tell everyone they know, and soon the truth will be everywhere.”
He paused, looked down, then focused on the camera again. “Our world is not what you think it is. You don’t know that the magic outside our walls isn’t the deadly power the government wants you to believe it is. You don’t know that they’re trying to keep you afraid, contained. You don’t know about the machines buried in the ground outside every city, routinely spraying arxium gas into the air to stir up the magic in the wastelands. And you don’t know about the people who are different from you.” He took a deep breath just as Ridley held onto hers. “The people who are born with magic coursing through their bodies.”
Ridley released her breath in a rush. He’d done it. He’d actually said it. Her gaze flicked to the bottom of the screen, where the number of viewers was going up and up and up.
“Let me say that again,” Archer said, “just in case you missed it. There are people in this world who are born with magic rushing through their veins. They’re called elementals. You don’t know about them because they’ve lived in hiding for a very long time. Why? Because there is an organization of people known as the Shadow Society dedicated to wiping them out. They have always believed magic is unpredictable and deadly, and that a world with elementals is a dangerous one.