Departure(69)

I bend down to check Yul’s pulse, letting my fingers linger even after I feel the cold flesh.

“Harper, come on!”

I glance up, still unable to move.

“He was dead when I got here. We have to go.”

We race through the dark passageway toward the cacophony of gunfire and blasts ahead.

The five towers, fingers of Titan City, meet in an elaborate promenade aptly named the Palm—it’s shaped like a palm, but it’s also dotted with palm trees, both inside and outside.

The Palm I saw before was pristine. Now it’s battered and bloody. Shredded palm leaves and bark cover the previously spotless white marble floors. Scorch marks pock the walls. Half the glass panes in the wall of windows that looked out on the promenade are gone, letting the breeze in from the valley side of the dam. The rush of the waterfall is punctuated by firing, screaming, and occasional grenade blasts. The sound is sickening.

Nick and I pause in the dark corridor, waiting, watching for a break in the carnage. We’re at the base of the little finger. The device is in the ring finger, the hotel tower adjacent to the Titan apartments, so we don’t have far to go. That’s a break. But still four people stand in our way, crowding the entrance to the hotel tower: two colonists, dressed in simple gray garb, and two Titans loyal to Sabrina and Yul. The Titans hold rifles, watching the battle unfold, their faces pained, as if they’re resisting the urge to join the Titans on their side below, who are steadily losing ground to Nicholas’s assault force moving up the Palm.

We edge closer to the corridor’s threshold, the shadows giving way to moonlight through the seven-story wall of glass.

The Palm is actually seven levels of restaurants, shops, and sundry stores, all long since abandoned. Two lavish marble, glass, and steel staircases shaped like DNA helixes flank the open space that looks out on the valley and waterfall.

Suited Titans are fighting their way up the twisting stairwells, shooting and taking fire from combatants hidden in the shops and restaurants on each level. It’s like mall warfare, an elaborate game of laser tag, but these shafts of light draw blood. Occasionally a Titan is shot off the stairwell, plummeting down to the massive fountain on the bottom floor.

“Stay behind me,” Nick says.

I want to ask what his plan is, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s that Nick Stone is good at thinking on his feet. There’s no one I would rather follow. We just need to reach—

He steps out into the promenade, raises his rifle, and fires point-blank at the Titans guarding the entrance to the hotel tower, catching the Titan on the right with a deadly shot to the head.

The two colonists shield the remaining Titan with their bodies, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in front of her, but Nick doesn’t hesitate. Two blasts from his rifle. They drop. Two more, and the Titan falls, her rifle still by her side.

Shock and fear consume me. I’m only vaguely aware of him pulling my arm, dragging me to the entrance of the hotel tower.

Down the dim corridor the moonlight fades with each step, replaced by the soft glow of emergency lights. We’re on the first floor, near my room, where I awoke in the white layered garments I still wear, where I finished the outline for Alice Carter, the girl whose decisions determined the fate of her world.

He’s still dragging me, almost forcibly now.

“Harper, focus.”

His face is inches from mine.

“What room?”

I close my eyes. Swallow.

“It was just two colonists, Harper. They have five thousand more—plenty to repopulate the planet. Now where is it?”

I say the word fast, hoping . . . “Two three oh five.”

He lets out a laugh. “Clever.”

We bound up the stairway, my legs burning, but I push, trying to keep pace, knowing what I have to do. The stairway is straight up, but the tower actually curves, the finger curling slightly toward the Mediterranean. I don’t know how many floors it is to the top, but I know the rooms on the first twenty floors all face the Atlantic—as mine did that first morning. Higher up, they look out on the valley where the Mediterranean once was.

At the landing to the twenty-third floor, he stops and pants, smiling at me.

“Room five?”

I gasp for air. “Yeah.”

He throws the door to the corridor open and leans out quickly, rifle first, peeking.

“Clear,” he announces before storming down the hall. I follow slowly, watching him charge into the room the same way. I need to catch my breath. Need every ounce of energy for this.

He’s searched the room by the time I reach the threshold. He stands in the center, just between the bed and desk.

“Where is it?”

“Balcony.” I almost choke on the word.

He glances behind him, to the glass door, the dark, rocky valley beyond it, and then squints, scrutinizing me. “Balcony?”

“So they could pick it up with the airship, evacuate it if needed.”

He turns his head slightly, as if hearing a noise.

Then he takes a step toward the sliding glass door. I follow, my pace matching his. This is far enough. I plant my feet, bend my knees a bit. One chance.

If I’m right, the passengers of Flight 305 will live. If I’m wrong . . . we’re all doomed. I have only one thing to go on: the Nick Stone I know would never have killed those four people in cold blood, not that quickly, not that easily.