Witch's Pyre (Worldwalker #3)(91)

We can’t contain this, Rowan said.

I brought them here to fight together, not one another. I can’t just let them riot.

While Lily looked around at the mounting chaos, she met Lillian’s eyes. Lillian turned away from her, unyielding. She wanted Chenoa dead. Samantha dithered her way into the center and stood next to Chenoa. She looked out at the crowd, wringing her hands and trying to duck as rocks sailed by. Lillian took a step forward to stop her, but Samantha moved even closer to Chenoa.

“You can’t have both, Lillian,” Samantha said, suddenly calm. “You have to decide. Chenoa or Grace.”

Samantha stared Lillian down. She was chillingly sane and in control of herself. She didn’t back down until Lillian finally looked away. Knowing her job was done, Samantha seemed to unravel. She shuffled off into the crowd where Juliet hastily corralled her and took her away.

Lillian turned to the crowd, raising her voice so everyone could hear. “I need her,” she shouted. She stepped forward, stood in front of Chenoa, and raised her hands. “Listen to me—I need her.” The sound from the mob died down. “When we get to Bower City, we are going to be facing a force too large for us to conquer. That’s a fact. Our only hope is to use the last remaining bomb against the Hive, and Chenoa is the only person who knows how to detonate it safely.”

Surprise, confusion, even sounds of dismay arose from the mob.

“But Alaric promised the western city would be our home,” shouted one of the Outlanders.

“Mary promised us the same,” said a ranch hand. “What good is fighting the Hive if we’re just going to blow up the city when we get there? We’ll still have no place to live.”

“We came out here to fight for a home,” someone else added stridently, touching off an avalanche of responses.

Alaric stepped out next to Lillian and quieted the crowd. “Let us consult with the leaders from all factions before we make any decisions,” he said. “Everyone make camp until we’ve had a chance to discuss the best plan of action.”

The crowd began to disperse, but Lily could hear the grumbling and feel animosity mounting as they went.





CHAPTER


13


Toshi walked casually down the hill toward the trolley line. It wasn’t easy to walk casually. In fact, just thinking of what it meant to act casual stopped him from being able to do it.

A Worker landed on his shoulder. Then another. Toshi forced himself to breathe in and out. He thought of the color green and recalled the sound of rain. When he opened his eyes again, the Workers were gone.

The Hive had been on edge for almost a week now. The Warrior Sisters had come down from the high watchtowers that had kept them out of sight, and they now hovered over the streets or clung to the rooftops and to the sides of the buildings. Workers were quick to swarm, and more than one panicky citizen had been anesthetized with a sting, collected by a Warrior Sister, and never heard from since. Any elevated emotion could call Workers to you for closer inspection. Toshi was even setting them off in his sleep now. He’d wake, drenched in sweat, to find his body completely covered in them like a living blanket.

Toshi broke into a light jog and swung himself up into a passing trolley. He spotted his contact and shuffled through the other passengers until he stood back to back with him. It wasn’t long before he felt his contact bump into him. Toshi opened his hand and passed his contact a small vial of antidote—or what Toshi and Ivan hoped was an antidote—to the Workers’ stings.

His contact palmed the small vial easily and then waited for the next bend in the trolley line to disguise bumping into Toshi again. Toshi briefly felt the man’s hand tuck a note in the folds of his tunic, and then his contact hopped off the trolley.

Toshi watched the man blend seamlessly into the garment district’s waves of humanity. He wondered whether he would be the one to test the antidote himself, or whether the vial was going to be smuggled out of the city to one of the farms for the rebels hidden there to test it. Toshi knew it might be safer to get it out of the city, where the death of a Worker might be chalked up to accident, but that would take longer.

In the Hive, every single member was accounted for. If even one Worker used her stinger or was killed, a Warrior Sister came to collect the tiny body and investigate the reason. Even the death of one Worker could alert the Hive to foul play, and thus Toshi and Ivan had been unable to test their antidote.

They still hadn’t completely abandoned the idea of finding a way to kill the Hive, but keeping what homegrown rebels they could find alive in case of a rebellion had become a more pressing concern. Mala had insisted. She argued that they couldn’t hope to gather more support for the cause unless they could offer some kind of protection against the instant death that was, at present, the only outcome for defying the Hive.

For defying Grace.

Toshi stared out the window at the people on the street. Heads that used to be held high were now bowed with fear and suspicion. The entire city seemed to know. Maybe they had always known deep inside that Grace was behind the Hive, and it only took someone else to say it in order for them to believe it. Toshi knew he had accepted it quickly, as had Mala. And the Hive had been quick to sense the change in the populace.

He jumped off his trolley, crossed the tracks, and caught one going in the other direction back home to the government center. He felt more relaxed now that the exchange was over and opted to take a seat rather than stand. Back at the Governor’s Villa, Toshi ran up the stairs to his apartments to change before meeting Ivan in the lab.