Jade reached the bottom of the school stairwell before her depth perception admitted the stairs were finished.
Her boot hit flat concrete.
She stumbled.
Kieran caught her elbow.
Jade almost pulled away.
Almost.
Command had habits, and pain made those habits worse.
"I have you," Kieran said.
"I know."
"Do you?"
Jade looked at her with the one eye that still worked.
The right side of Kieran's face stayed missing until Jade turned her head farther. Then it appeared in pieces: gold-lit bandage, tight jaw, ash on her cheek, worry she had no ti to soften.
Jade hated how much effort seeing now required.
"Ask later."
"I will."
"That was not permission."
"Good. I was not asking."
Behind them, Waddell's soldiers moved the wounded down the stairs in pairs. Children ca next, wrapped in blankets that slled like floodwater and smoke. Tyree guided an old woman with one hand while clutching the cracked bone charm in the other.
The basent had once been a cafeteria storage level.
Now it was an ergency shelter with tal shelves, boxed fruit cups, water barrels, and a generator that coughed every few seconds like it hated being alive.
People looked at Jade as they entered.
They tried not to look at her eye.
That made it worse.
The Reaper thread behind her left eye moved with each person who passed.
Wounded.
Bleeding.
Afraid.
Alive.
The thread nad every body like a door it could open from the wrong side.
Jade pressed two fingers under her brow until pain sharpened enough to beco useful.
"No sheets over the dead in the main room," she said.
Waddell stopped halfway through ordering a soldier to stack tables against the basent doors.
"Jade."
"If they are dead, move them to the cold storage hall. Two guards. No one alone."
The soldier beside him swallowed.
"Ma'am, they are dead."
Jade turned her head until he entered the good half of the world.
"That is why I gave the order."
Nobody argued after that.
Kieran watched the cold storage hall.
"You think they can rise again?"
"I think sothing inside can ask them to."
Tyree whispered, "That is a very different sentence."
"Yes."
Jade kept moving.
Moving helped.
Standing still let her rember bone fingertips on her cheek.
Warm.
Real.
Gone.
The empty right side of her sight kept filling him in where he had been. A white outline near the generator. A red rib glow between shelves. A skull shape in the reflection of a puddle.
Every ti she turned, he vanished.
She saved breaking for later.
She chose a folding table near the center of the basent and shoved a box of plastic forks off it.
"Command table here."
Waddell stepped up beside her.
His hair was wet, his jaw bruised, and he looked older than he had in the gym.
"Your eye needs a dic."
"Everyone's everything needs a dic."
"That was not a disagreent."
"Then put in line."
"You are the line."
Jade looked at him.
He lowered his voice.
"You saw him."
The basent sound thinned around them.
Kieran pretended to check ammo.
Tyree pretended not to listen.
Everyone listened.
Jade placed both hands on the folding table because the room tilted when she thought about answering.
"Everyone saw him."
"They saw a skeleton."
"Then they need better eyes."
Waddell flinched.
She regretted it at once.
Not enough to take it back.
He nodded slowly.
"Fair."
The generator coughed again.
This ti the lights flickered in a pattern.
Short.
Short.
Long.
Jade's left eye burned white.
She grabbed the edge of the table.
Kieran raised her bandaged arm. Gold fire crawled along her fingers.
"What is it?"
Jade listened.
The building above creaked under rain and crows.
Pipes clicked.
Sowhere in the walls, an old school speaker popped.
The voice that ca through was Ty's.
Soft.
Amused.
"Hide well was only the polite part."
Every person in the basent froze.
Jade stayed still.
She grabbed the nearest tal tray and threw it at the speaker box above the ergency exit.
The tray smashed the plastic cover.
The voice cut off.
A baby started crying.
Waddell aid at the broken speaker.
"That was him?"
"No."
Jade climbed onto the table.
Kieran reached for her again, then stopped when Jade shook her head.
From the table, Jade could see the basent in broken halves. Left side full. Right side gone unless she turned. She forced herself to turn, slow and deliberate, making the missing half earn every face.
"Listen to ."
The room did.
"Whatever spoke through that speaker is using his voice. It is not Ty."
Tyree's cracked charm spat a red spark.
"How do you know?"
Jade touched her cheek.
The warmth there had faded, but mory had heat of its own.
"Because Ty ca through with bones and still protected strangers. That thing ca through a speaker and tried to make us stop moving."
Kieran's gold fire steadied.
"What does it want?"
"Doors."
Jade looked at the wet jacket scraps one soldier had dragged down in a trash bag. Pieces of the jointed creature had dissolved upstairs, but the sewn white beacon stones remained, dull as teeth.
"And proof that we are scared enough to open them."
Waddell followed her gaze.
"We should destroy those."
"Yes."
"Can we?"
Jade climbed down from the table.
"We are going to find out."
They cleared the middle of the floor.
Kieran set the broken beacon stones inside a tal serving pan. Tyree placed his cracked bone charm beside them, muttering that it might either help or make everything worse.
"That is your professional assessnt?" Waddell asked.
Tyree gave him a tired look.
"I got trained by panic and family stories. You want credentials, call a university after the crows stop circling."
Jade knelt in front of the pan.
The Reaper thread in her left eye leaned toward the stones.
The right side remained dark.
The dark had started to pulse.
Slow.
Patient.
As if sothing had noticed the empty room where sight used to live and wanted to rent it.
Jade dug her nails into her palm.
"Kieran."
"Here."
"If my eye goes white and the dead move, burn the stones first."
Kieran crouched across from her.
"And you?"
"Second."
"No."
"That was an order."
"Then I am refusing it early."
Jade almost smiled.
It hurt.
"You always this difficult?"
"Only when friends ask to be set on fire."
"We are friends?"
Kieran's mouth twitched.
"Do not make it weird."
Waddell stepped closer.
"I can shoot the stones."
"If this works," Jade said, "no bullets."
"If it fails?"
"Miss ."
Nobody liked that.
Good.
Jade touched the first beacon stone.
Cold shot up her arm.
The basent vanished from her left eye.
For one awful second, she saw two places at once.
Earth below ground: wet concrete, wounded people, Kieran's gold fire, Waddell's rifle, children trying not to cry.
Arena below law: Ty on a descending ladder, JJ behind him, Yun-Jin bleeding, Omina glowing green, Heissman watching the ceiling, black water falling from above.
Between them was a door made from Ty's old voice.
It had no handle.
It had Jade's missing right eye for a keyhole.
The thing beyond the door noticed her looking.
It smiled with a mouth it had borrowed.
"There you are."
Jade stayed silent.
Answering gave shape.
Shape helped monsters too.
She grabbed the Reaper thread before it could grab her and drove it into the beacon stone.
The stone cracked.
Every speaker in the basent scread.
The dead in the cold storage hall hit the door once.
Kieran's gold fire blood.
"Jade!"
"Wait."
The second stone cracked.
Jade saw Ty look up from the arena ladder as if he felt her hand on the other side of a wall.
His fire went still.
Good.
He knew.
She shoved harder.
The third stone broke.
The speaker scream turned into crows.
Not outside.
Inside the walls.
Waddell shouted for people to cover their ears.
Tyree slamd his charm into the pan, and red sparks pinned the last two stones in place.
Jade reached for the fourth.
The borrowed voice whispered through the broken speaker.
"He will co again if you hurt enough."
Jade's hand stopped.
That was the cruelest thing it could have said because so part of her wanted it to be true.
Wanted pain to be a ladder.
Wanted blood to be a bell.
Wanted Ty to hear every wound and answer.
Kieran crossed the room and put her burning hand over Jade's.
Gold fire and white thread t.
The fourth stone split.
Jade gasped.
Kieran kept hold.
"Last one," Kieran said.
Jade looked at the fifth beacon stone.
It was smaller than the others.
It had no symbol.
It had a hair-thin line of red inside it.
Ty's red.
Waddell saw her hesitate.
"What is it?"
Jade closed her fingers around the stone before anyone could stop her.
The right side of the world flashed.
For one heartbeat, the missing eye saw again.
Not the basent.
Not the arena.
A black feathered place with twelve empty chairs and one occupied throne.
Soone leaned forward in that throne, hidden by shadow except for a smile Jade knew she would hate for the rest of her life.
"Tell the skeleton," the figure said, "the lower lane is already mine."
Jade crushed the stone.
The basent lights died.
In the dark, every crow above the school took flight at once.
Then the ergency generator roared back to life, and the right side of Jade's vision stayed gone.
She opened her hand.
Red dust sat in her palm.
Kieran whispered, "Did we win?"
Jade looked toward the ceiling.
Far below sowhere impossible, she felt Ty falling.
"No."
She closed her fist around the red dust.
"But now he knows where the knife is."
User Comments
0 comments from readers