“No!” I screamed running to her side. Her eyes were already glassy, the vivid blue dimming. But her lips were trembling. She was still alive.
Behind me, the creeper hissed, “You weren’t supposed to do that.” When I glanced back, he was staring at Stan with eyes filled with equal parts fury and fear. Stan looked back at him, confused and scared, maybe not quite comprehending what had just happened.
“We’re going to get you help,” I told Dymphna.
She shook her head unsteadily. “Too late,” she said. Blood appeared on her lips. “Just remember what I said, okay? Love and compassion.”
I nodded. “Of course.”
She touched my cheek and smiled. “So glad I got to know you…even just a little.…Your father would be so proud.”
Her blood was everywhere, tricking down the racks and onto the floor. Some had made its way into the tubes of water and nutrients feeding the plants, a pink blush darkening to red as it flowed through the tubes.
Her head sagged and her eyes lost focus as she let out a long raspy sigh, her final breath.
My eyes clouded with tears as a rage built inside me.
Screaming, I lunged at Stan, one fist connecting with his nose while the other hand raked his eyes. He swung the butt of his gun at my head. I ducked and avoided the worst of it, but he still connected and I crumpled to the floor, dazed.
Stan walked up to where I lay, his gun once again extended in my direction. The creeper followed close behind.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Dara helping Rex to his feet, blood streaming down the side of his head. They looked over and saw Stan and the creeper standing over me. Dara raised a gun, pointing it at my attackers as Rex launched himself toward me, but the building shook with a sound like thunder as the cracked column finally collapsed, bringing with it a large section of ceiling, the rubble walling off Rex and Dara and whoever else was over there.
Stan and the creeper turned back to me as the massive cloud of dust from the ceiling collapse rolled over them. It stung my eyes and clogged my nose and mouth. For a moment I couldn’t even see them standing over me. Then it cleared, just enough that I could see Stan. The creeper had vanished, replaced by another figure who now loomed over Stan. I couldn’t make out the face, but as the dust continued to settle, I realized it was because the person was wearing a mask. It was Cronos.
With a strangled roar, he grabbed Stan by the wrist of the hand holding the gun and lifted him off his feet. The gun tumbled to the floor and Stan tried to pry Cronos’s fingers loose. But they wouldn’t budge. Stan kicked his feet and his eyes bulged. I heard a loud, dry snap, then another, and Stan screamed as the arm Cronos was holding bent between joints. With another roar, Cronos threw Stan violently to the side, sending him tumbling across the floor.
I could hear sirens approaching outside as I ran toward the rubble that separated me from Rex. I knew the sirens weren’t cause for hope. The police had been in on this from the beginning, they were part of it.
Cronos stalked after Stan, but he stopped, listening, and pivoted toward me. He clamped a hand on my shoulder. “We need to get you out of here,” he said, his ravaged eyes softened by something like worry or compassion.
“I need to make sure Rex is okay,” I said. “And Dara.”
Cronos shook his head. “There’s no time.”
I pulled away from him and continued on, but he grabbed me around the waist and slung me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, apparently unfazed by the bullet wound in his upper arm.
“No!” I yelled, wriggling and pushing and punching his back, horrified at the thought of leaving Rex behind, and humiliated at being carried like that. Cronos was trying to save me, but I was as sick of being moved around against my will as I was of being followed. “Put me down!”
He ignored me, breaking into a trot as he carried me toward the ramp. Through the thick dust, I saw the creeper lying on the floor, dead or unconscious. As we headed down the ramp, Roberta fell into step behind us.
We picked up speed as we descended, around and around, both Cronos and Roberta running flat out, and impressively fast, although I imagine the downward slope helped with that. Each step shook me to my core, jostling my brain and my guts. By the time we reached the bottom I was nauseous and disoriented.
Cronos kept me over his shoulder as he opened the sliding door to a green van not unlike the one he had abducted me in the day of the bombing. He heaved me into the back, and just before he shut the door, there was a moment when he looked me in the eye and I got that feeling again, like there was something familiar about him. Then he slid the door closed. As he and Roberta got into the front, I threw myself at the door to open it, but it was locked.
Cronos started the motor and the tires screamed as he accelerated away toward the exit. I checked the rear door, but it was locked, too.
As we shot out the exit, I saw the wreckage of the drone and the truck, a tangled heap of twisted metal, spitting sparks and releasing tendrils of black smoke. On the other side of the building, almost overhead, the Ben Franklin Bridge arced across the Delaware River and into Philadelphia.
As we skidded into a left turn and sped away, a copter took off from the roof of the farm and shot across the sky, over the river, while at the same time another police drone showed up, lights flashing as it hovered over the wreckage of the first one. As we turned again, rounding the building, the drone disappeared behind it.
The road curved around the building on three sides before heading away, and as we rounded the next corner, Roberta said, “Look, there’s Zak!”
The guy with the zebra splice emerged from a stairwell, limping. Cronos swerved and skidded to a halt right in front of him.
I heard a distinct click of the power locks and braced my back against the inside of the van, muscles tensed. When the door slid open, I launched myself through it, planting my shoulder into Zak’s chest. He was easily twice my size, but I caught him off-balance enough that I was able to knock him back and run away, back toward the farm.
“Stop her!” Roberta cried.
Cronos got out and yelled after me, “Jimi! No! Come back!”
Two more police drones were circling the building. One peeled away, zipping by right over my head to inspect the van.
Without slowing down, I looked back and saw Cronos bracing his legs, with both hands wrapped around a handgun. He fired, and the bullet dinged off the drone, causing it to wobble and spin before its automatic stabilizer righted it.
Panels on either side opened up and two guns came out. They fired once, raising a divot of asphalt in the road next to the van. Then Cronos fired again, and a plume of sparks erupted from the drone. It spun again, but this time the stabilizers didn’t correct it. Instead, it just hovered in place, continuing its slow, lazy spin.
When I reached the stairwell Zak had emerged from, I looked back and locked eyes with Cronos. Then he got back in the van and sped off, and I entered the stairwell and ran up the steps.
THIRTY-NINE
The first four floors were wide-open concrete spaces, flanked on all sides by orderly rows of plants and tubes of pale blue nutrient water, identical to the floor we had been on. Or identical to what it had been like up until a half hour ago.
The fifth floor was littered with blood and rubble and bodies and dust. The stairwell let me out on the same side of the rubble pile that Rex and Dara had been on, but the only sign of them was a trail of blood spatter that ended abruptly in the middle of the floor. Dara’s van was gone, as well.