“I am a peaceful person,” Saoirse said, her eyes pleading with Ridley to understand. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted for us. I’ve never used a gun before. I didn’t want to use one now. During the attack, after I left you outside the city, I went looking for him. I waited until I could sense him. I was going to fly down, grab him, whisk him away as air, and then drop him from a great height. But something … repelled me. There was arxium all over him. I realized I wouldn’t be able to get close. So I went back to your friend’s apartment and stole her gun. Then I started watching and following and trying to work up the nerve to use the darn thing. I discovered this place. I got inside easily enough and shut down the arxium gas system. Magic told me exactly which room to find the director in, and now … here we are.”
“So you never went looking for my dad like you said you would,” Ridley said. “And you never joined the others while they were trying to break through the wall. You just went off on your own little murderous mission.”
“Ridley—”
“After your whole speech to me about not acting alone, about trusting everyone else.” The world shuddered beneath her feet again. A horrible, shiver-inducing sound, like the screech of metal against metal, reached her ears.
“I told you to trust everyone to do their part,” Saoirse said. “This is my part. This is for the good of all elementals. I—I’m not a killer, Ridley, but someone has to do this. Someone has to—What is happening out there? Are we trying to break through the wall again?”
“We’re not doing anything,” Ridley told her, “since you’re apparently acting on your own now. But Nathan and the others are—Hey!” She shoved away from the wall as Alastair launched himself across the floor toward the fallen gun. She kicked it aside, which meant he grabbed her leg instead and tugged her down. She splashed to the floor in the form of water, slid away from him, and became human again near the bank of screens, at least half of which no longer displayed an image. Alastair scrambled for the gun again, but his fingers had barely scraped the edge of it when a piece of the ceiling fell and hit the edge of his head.
“Get out of here now,” Saoirse said, and then she vanished. Ridley knew she should follow. Saoirse clearly assumed she would follow.
There was a bang and a screech overhead, and another part of the ceiling began to crack. “Dammit,” Ridley muttered. This room was on the ground floor, and approximately ten stories worth of city wall and illegal research facility were about to cave in on her. Her magic pulsed beneath her skin, ready to transform her in an instant.
But she hesitated. Was Alastair dead? No. Ridley’s gaze caught on the slow rise and fall of his chest. She should go. She should leave him here. She wouldn’t have to kill him, but he would die anyway, and that was a win, right? But this was Archer’s father. His father. It was possible Archer and Alastair hated one another by now, but Ridley had lost a parent, and there was something inside her that couldn’t simply leave him here to die.
Her magic transformed her to air in a second. A crack split the ceiling from one side of the room to the other. She swooped forward—
—and someone raced into the room, hands raised, fingers splayed, magic forming a hemisphere shape in the air. Archer lifted his hands, and the shield of magic rose toward the ceiling, expanding to fill the room. The shield sparked where pieces of concrete, brick and metal struck it before being blown aside by the magic. But the pieces were growing larger, falling faster, as the facility collapsed on top of them. Archer let out a guttural cry, his arms shaking beneath the strain of holding the shield in place.
Ridley’s air self slipped past the shield and into the mass of falling rubble. Tornado, she whispered to the magic. Hurricane. Whatever you have to do, just throw this all AWAY!
There was a moment—less than a moment—when everything seemed to freeze. And then the chaos of falling concrete, metal, beds, computers, laboratory equipment, arxium, torture instruments, and everything else that made up this horrible place was hurled violently outward. Exposed now, Ridley watched the debris spill across the ground on the wasteland side of the wall.
She dropped back down. In the single, non-demolished room, Archer released the shield of magic and leaned over, shoulders heaving as he breathed heavily. There was nothing above them now but a sky full of tumbling dark clouds. Rain pattered down. The earth continued to shudder around them.
“Archer,” Ridley said once she’d pulled her magic back inside herself.
He straightened quickly, turning to face her, surprise clearing the exhaustion from his face. “Rid.”
Raindrops trickled down her face. The space between them swelled with every secret, every past mistake, every moment of hurt and betrayal. But the rain kept falling, and it seemed to Ridley that it was washing everything away, leaving behind only the desire to fall into Archer’s arms and never leave his embrace.
“I … I want to talk,” she said. “About everything. But—”
“But you have to go save the world?”
Ridley almost found it in her to laugh. “Well, I need to check first that my dad and grandfather got out from under all of this. I asked Nathan and Malachi and the others to focus all their earthquakes on this section of the wall to try to break through the—”
“I saw them,” Archer interrupted. “I was looking for the entrance to this place—I only just found out about it—and there was a tremor. I thought it was another earthquake, but then the ground exploded, like someone set off dynamite underneath it. This great big hole appeared and then out climbed Mr. Kayne and another Mr. Kayne.”
Ridley smiled. Her chest swelled with something like pride. “I told your dad they were badass.” The smile slipped away and she wiped rain from her eyes as she looked down at Alastair Davenport. “He’s still alive. But I don’t know if he’s … okay. Saoirse shot him and the others, and she was going to finish him off, but—”
“Saoirse?” Archer repeated in surprise.
“Yes. That’s another long story, but—”
“—you should go. Sounds like the others are attempting to break through the wall again. They probably need your help. I’ll get my father out of here as quickly as possible and then you’re free to go wild.”
Ridley nodded. Her magic drifted around her. She was about to vanish when instead she stepped forward, grasped Archer’s T-shirt, and pulled him closer. She pressed her lips against his. For several heartbeats, the rain-drenched kiss was the only thing that mattered, and Ridley wished she could climb inside this moment and hide here forever.
But another shudder of the ground reminded her that none of this was over yet. “I’ll find you afterwards,” she told Archer. Then she disappeared.
28
This revolution was pretty much all on Ridley now. There were eight other elementals involved, and they were doing what they could—they’d broken apart the section of the wall that housed the research facility, along with a decent portion on either side—but everyone was aware that they would fail again if Ridley didn’t have the kind of power that an heir with two super-powered parents should supposedly have.