Wildcard (Warcross #2)(79)

Down below, Hideo lunges at the nearest bot to reach them, cutting its metallic body in half with a shower of sparks.

Hammie loosens the rope from her waist and tosses it down. She wraps her arms around my waist. “Okay,” I shout at them. “Up you go!”

Roshan goes first, followed by Asher. Hammie and I flatten ourselves against the stairs as each of them comes up, pulling themselves onto the staircase. Hideo comes last. He leaps for the rope and barely manages to avoid one of the bots that grabs for his leg. I reach down and take his arm as he makes his way onto the stairs.

We race up the staircase. As we go, the world around us shudders again. Scarlet beacons of light suddenly turn on from the rooftops of the other towers, sweeping across the moving city like prison spotlights. I concentrate on the climb. The steps crack underneath our feet as we go.

Hammie arrives at the top first. The door glows blue around its edges, a startling contrast to its grim surroundings.

She pushes against the glowing door, but it doesn’t budge.

“I think we need a key or something,” she mutters as she shoves herself against it again. We push along with her, but it doesn’t so much as shudder. I look back down at the steps, some of which have crumbled away, and then back at the door. There are two round hovels against either side of it.

Hideo steps away from the door first. “I recognize some of the pieces here.” He nods at the dark marbles hovering in the air, and when I look closer, I notice that they glitter a deep scarlet and sapphire.

Immediately, I know what he means. These are from the game that Sasuke had once made up with Hideo, when they’d gone to the park and thrown red-and blue-colored plastic eggs all across the grass and then raced to retrieve them. When Sasuke had been stolen away. Remnants of that memory are now scattered in here, distorted into a nightmare.

I look back at the door’s two hovels. They’re the slots where the marbles fit, harkening back to how Hideo and Sasuke had once played this game.

“We need to collect them,” Hideo says. “One red, one blue.”

Hammie looks out at the hovering dark marbles. She nods at the closest one, and before anyone can stop her, she crouches against the steps and takes a flying leap off the side, launching into the air in the blink of an eye.

“Wait—!” Hideo starts to shout.

She seizes the closest one to her, twists in midair, and shoves it into her pocket. As she falls, she shoots out her rope and snags it on a crack in the stairs. She swings in an arc down further on the tower, dangling to a stop below us.

“Got one,” she calls up to us.

Every single one of the sweeping red lights suddenly shoots toward us, flooding all of us in a scarlet glow. A deafening horn echoes across the landscape.

This was a trap. The marbles are needed in order to get through the door, but making contact with those same marbles has also alerted Zero to exactly where we are.

“Climb!” Asher shouts down at Hammie, right as we see a whirlwind of security bots cluster at the base of the tower.

Hammie doesn’t waste another breath. She starts pulling herself up the rope as quickly as she can. Roshan darts down the steps two at a time toward her, but the bots are moving so fast that I know they’ll catch up to them before Hammie can get back to us.

I glance at Hideo and toss him one end of my rope. He catches it. Then I swing down toward Hammie and Roshan. But the bots are swarming up too fast—they’ll catch up to them before I can make it. Below me, Roshan has reached Hammie and positioned himself in front of her as she pulls herself up onto the lone island of a step she’s on. He narrows his eyes at the approaching bots and crosses his forearms. His shield appears.

The bots clash against it. Roshan winces as he’s pushed back, his boots digging hard against the stone steps, trying in vain to keep them from pushing him right off the edge. Hammie hops to her feet and lunges back up the stairs toward us.

Roshan’s shield can’t sustain the hits anymore. The glowing blue circle shudders as the bots throw themselves once more at it, and then it flickers out. I scream something. They charge forward at him.

“Hey!”

My head jerks up at the sound of Asher’s voice. He’s leaped off the stairs to grab on to another marble. Half of the security bots shift direction toward him now, while the others slow for an instant, giving Roshan just enough time to turn and race up the steps after Hammie.

I dart past them both as they rejoin Hideo at the top. Roshan glances at me. “Where are you going?” he shouts.

I don’t answer right away. Instead, I stop beside Asher and crouch down, then pull a stick of dynamite from my utility belt. I fit it against the steps, right before the bots. “Move!” I shout at Asher.

He already sees what I’m doing. As I turn tail, so does he, and we sprint up right as the dynamite goes off behind us.

The explosion knocks us to our knees. Behind us is a gaping hole in the steps, so wide that it stops the bots from following us. They gather at the edge in a crowd—it won’t be long before they start leaping across the gap.

“Put them in!” I hear Asher shout. Hammie and Roshan take the two marbles and shove them into the slots on either side of the door.

The bots are climbing and clawing, making their way across the chasm in the stairs. They’re racing up toward us.

The door swings open. Hideo grabs my arm. The bots are almost on top of us.