The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(203)

The portal continued to ripple with the quiet serenity of a spring pond. Evan’s eyes darted around in frantic thought.

“All right, listen, listen, I’ll leave them alone. I promise. Not even a phone call. I’ll . . . I’ll go to one of your facilities. Breed with whoever you want me to breed with. Just give me a chance to make things right. I’ve helped you before! You said so!”

The sisters stared at the portal with the same white horror as Evan. No one was coming out.

“Azral?”

A colossal hand of tempis burst through the surface with terrifying speed. Amanda and Hannah screamed as the man-size fingers engulfed Evan like a chess rook. As quick as it arrived, the monster arm retreated, pulling its shrieking victim into the shimmering white depths.

The portal shrank closed, leaving two siblings alone in devastated silence.

Soon the tempic bars of Hannah’s cage flickered away. She fell to her knees and scuttled awkwardly across the rug. She ran her quivering fingers through Amanda’s hair, her mind painfully perched between aching concern and the utter futility of asking her if she was okay.

As emergency lights flared outside and a speeding Dep began his thermal scan of the fifth floor, the daughters of Robert and Melanie Given wept in soft harmony. Neither of them were okay. No one was okay. Not a single damn thing in the world was okay.





THIRTY-FIVE




The tunnel was a relic of the hydroelectric age, a dank and moldy passage of steam pipes that stretched beneath the buildings of Battery Place. The last dangling bulb had burned out years ago. David lit the way with a melon-size ball of sunshine, a ghost from an even earlier era.

Mia rode piggyback on his shoulders, her thoughts swirling like drain water around her nine-hour memory hole. All she knew from David’s curt summary was that she’d been mortally wounded by Rebel and then magically unwounded by Zack.

She launched a shaky glance at her wavy-haired savior, desperate for some kind of confirmation—a sigh, a squeeze, a “thank God you’re okay.” For a man who’d pulled a feat of Christlike proportions, Zack looked as macabre as his surroundings. He kept his tense gaze on Theo as the augur scanned the latest ladder to the surface.

“What exactly are you looking for?” Zack asked.

“A mouse.”

“A mouse?”

“A dead mouse,” said Theo. “Our exit has one at the base of the ladder.”

Theo knew how crazy he sounded. Though the miracle in the magazine office had granted him fresh credibility with David, his latest plan threw Zack into the role of the angry doubter.

“Goddamn it, Theo . . .”

“I told you. We’ll get them.”

“How? By leaving them behind? By moving in the opposite direction from where they are?”

“They’ll be all right in the short term.”

“Then why did David hear one of them screaming?”

Theo’s fingers twitched with stress as the cartoonist’s wrath echoed down the tunnel. If Zack knew the sisters were at the mercy of Evan, he’d make a hot dash back to the building. The decision would not end well for him.

“I care about them as much as you do, Zack.”

“I’m not doubting your motives. I just don’t understand what’s happening with you. Eight minutes ago, you were barely lucid. Now you’re floating around like a Level Ten deity.”

“No deity,” Theo insisted. “Just a Level Two augur. I’ll explain when we have time.”

He stopped at the next ladder and noticed a dead brown mouse on the floor. There it was, just as he’d seen in the God’s Eye. He glanced up at the square metal cover.

“Okay. This is the one. It’s welded shut. You’ll have to do your thing again.”

Zack moved to the ladder and launched his temporis upward. In the dim light of the tunnel, his friends could see the otherworldly glow in his skin and hair, the mighty white beam that burst from his hand. Clearly Theo wasn’t the only one who went up a level today. Mia wondered how many ascensions it would take before the people she loved started looking and acting like true gods.

They emerged into a delivery alley two blocks north of the office building, a thin and lifeless corridor full of concrete ramps and tempic pallets.

David lowered Mia from his back, then scanned the street at both ends. “Where to now?”

“Nowhere,” said Theo. “We wait here.”

“Won’t be long before the Deps expand their search.”

“We’ll be gone before that happens.”

Zack opened his knapsack and cursed at the sight of Mia’s pink journal. He’d grabbed the wrong bag in the rush to flee the office. Every last cent of their money was back in the building.

In the light of day, Mia could see the huge patch of blood on Zack’s shirt. My blood, she thought, with heart-pounding distress. She moved closer to look but was gripped by a sudden violent sickness. The others watched in concern as she dashed behind a truck ramp and threw up the bacon and waffles that Hannah had cooked in Quinwood.

David stroked her back. “You all right?”

She wiped her mouth, grimacing at the mess she made. “I’m okay.”

While Zack pondered the side effects of his temporal healing act, Theo fell into grander worries. The Mia he’d seen in the God’s Eye hadn’t vomited at all. Something happened differently. Events had changed.