Scrolling through tornadoes was impossible, but they all traded in impossibilities now.
Liliana drove herself to a vision again and again for Farooq-Lane, trying to skip ahead to a different future, a treeless future.
Nine: the number of injured civilians so far. The visions were so risky. Farooq-Lane worked out quickly that the teen version of Liliana was the most dangerous, because she hadn’t yet developed any sense of when one was coming on. One minute she could be paging through blank journals in a bookstore with Farooq-Lane, and in the next—disaster.
Parsifal, the previous Visionary, hadn’t cycled between ages until the very end of his timeline, when he started to lose control of his ability to turn them inward. Lock had gingerly suggested this method to a crying teen Liliana after a particularly unexpected vision had decimated a handful of nearby squirrels.
“That just sounds like slow-motion suicide,” Liliana had told him.
He hadn’t had an answer for her. The Moderators were always making judgment calls about whose life was worth saving and whose wasn’t, and they hadn’t, to this point, ever come out on the side of the Visionaries.
But Farooq-Lane had.
“It’s not Liliana’s fault she’s dangerous,” Farooq-Lane had said. “She tries to make sure no one else is around. I don’t think we should try to convince her to turn it inward.”
Lock had been dubious. “Now who’s committing slow-motion suicide?”
Eight: the number of yarn shops Farooq-Lane had visited until the oldest Liliana found enough skeins in the color that she said would suit Farooq-Lane. This Liliana had a good sense of when visions were coming on, which meant time with her could be spent less on survival and more on creature comforts. Ancient Liliana was very much about domestic pleasures. Knitting! She was intent on teaching Farooq-Lane, because she remembered teaching her.
This was the strangest part of the oldest Liliana—she remembered a lot of what she’d already lived through, and a lot of that seemed to involve Farooq-Lane. In her past. In Farooq-Lane’s future. Somewhere along their collective timelines. Thinking about it too hard hurt Farooq-Lane’s brain.
“Thank you for standing up for me,” the old Liliana told her once, in her precise, gentle way. “About turning the visions inward.”
“Did you remember me doing that?” Farooq-Lane asked.
“It was a very long time ago. So it was a lovely surprise to be reminded. Well. Not a surprise. A gift. I knew you were a good person.”
Farooq-Lane wished she’d met Liliana before she’d met the Moderators.
Seven: how many meetings the Moderators held to work out the logistics of an attack that would occur without being in the presence of a tree at any stage. A good deal of these get-togethers were devoted to debating if getting information from trees was even possible. Farooq-Lane thought disbelief was a waste of time when their quarry was also impossible.
Some of these meetings were spent discussing the Potomac Zeds. Their backgrounds, their families, their hopes and dreams. They got ahold of Jordan Hennessy’s father and asked him if he had any idea where she was.
“I thought she was already dead,” Bill Dower said. He sounded disappointed, if he sounded anything at all. “Huh.”
They got ahold of Ronan Lynch’s boyfriend’s Harvard roommate.
“They broke up after he trashed our dorm,” the student said in a plummy voice. “I never expected to hear his name again, honestly. What did he do now?”
They tried to find Ronan Lynch’s brothers, but after the attack that had cost Bellos his arm, Declan and Matthew Lynch had gone off the radar.
“Their stuff is gone from the town house,” one of the Moderators said, somewhat impressed. “Did anyone see them come back for it?”
No one had.
And no one knew a damn thing about Bryde.
Six: how many got away. Six Zeds who would have previously been targets were saved from death by their proximities to trees in Liliana’s visions. Lock would have still liked to have killed them. But the trees would tattle their plans. Trees! They were everywhere, once you started regarding them as the enemy. Lining sidewalks. Sprouting from green islands in parking lots. Nodding at the edges of farms. For a little while it seemed like there might not ever be a vision without trees in it. Several times, Farooq-Lane had to beg them to keep their eyes on the prize. Did they all want to look like fools again?
Really, she was glad to stop killing for a bit. She hadn’t counted how many deaths she’d been responsible for that year because she was worried it would be twenty-three. She and Nathan would be even Steven.
Five: how many agencies cooperated in the planning of the attack on the Pennsylvania farm. Deep in a broad valley, the closest trees were acres and acres away. Thanks to the agency coordination, the Moderators were equipped as they had never been before. Some wore noise-canceling headphones. Others wore protective goggles. There were dogs with keen noses. Trucks with keen armor. A guy with a flame-thrower. A woman with a Stinger. This might be the only chance they had to corner the Potomac Zeds. It had to count.
“No hanging back like you did the other times, Carmen,” Lock said. Not cruelly, but firmly. “This is your plan. You take lead. Bring Liliana.”
Farooq-Lane swung wildly between hoping she was right and fearing she was wrong. This could be the attack that ended it all.
Four: the number of Zeds in the big stone house when the Moderators broke through the door.
There was just a second to see the scene, the Potomac Zeds arranged around a formal sofa like a portrait. Rhiannon Martin, towel in hand, face shocked. Jordan Hennessy, crouched on the sofa arm like a cat. Ronan Lynch, black liquid oozing down his face, slumped against Bryde. A second to think, it worked! Well, they were visible, which was already an improvement.
And then Farooq-Lane glimpsed a silver orb flying toward her.
Farooq-Lane wasn’t sure how she even saw it in time, but her arm was already swinging her pistol. It connected with the orb like a small baseball bat and knocked it right through the windowpane.
“Hello and fuck you,” Hennessy said, pulling out a brilliantly bright sword.
Then it was chaos.
There were bursts of gunfire. Tremendous swipes of light arced through the dim hallways. Someone screamed in a very unselfconscious way. A voice rose: “Hennessy, what are you waiting for? Now!”
They braced themselves for a dreamt horror, but no dreamt horror came. There was just a frantic race outside as the agency woman fired the Stinger directly into the house. What ensued seemed to be an ordinary foot chase, an ordinary gun battle. How astonishing that these things had become commonplace to Farooq-Lane. How astonishing that the Zeds had not yet unleashed anything worse.
Three: the number of yards Farooq-Lane discovered were between her and Jordan Hennessy. She had been trying to find a place where she wouldn’t get shot in the cross fire—she dimly suspected some of the Moderators might take pleasure in the excuse—and had been pressed against the barn, which still smelled of the turkeys that had lived and died in it. She had no idea where Liliana was. Everything was masks and riot shields and faceless agents like a war zone.
But there was Jordan Hennessy, staring up at two figures moving through the commotion: Bryde and Ronan Lynch. The first dragging the second. Ronan Lynch’s face was still streaming that black ooze, and even from here, Farooq-Lane could see his chest heaving for air. They were being rounded on by Moderators, but Bryde was keeping them at bay with a sunfire sword, one of the two weapons they’d used to get away on the banks of the Potomac.