False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(99)

We start to hobble toward the door. Our guns are hidden in a cupboard, and Nazarin passes me one. We keep them in our hands, at the ready. My tongue keeps niggling at the molar, now missing its strip and the virus. My mouth tastes of iron.

Nazarin opens the door, darting his head out and back, gun held up by his ear. “It’s clear.”

We leave that awful room behind, staggering against the walls. We don’t seem to have any lasting damage, but my brain still feels … confused. Senses still don’t seem anchored to this plane of reality. My brain is still recording, but I don’t turn it off yet, despite the headache. I guess I can handle it better than Kim’s subjects. I swear, the white of the walls tastes like lemons. The squeak of our shoes against the floor feels like fear. I can’t trust what I see. Only Nazarin feels real. Aziz.

We’re so disoriented, so very focused on getting out into the fresh air, away from this place of terror, that we don’t think about alarms. As soon as we open the outer door, high, piercing wails sound. It’s too much for my raw, mixed senses. I clap my hands over my ears, screaming, adding to the cacophony. Nazarin cries out too, but recovers before me. He takes my arm. The King of the Ratel had not taken us far. We’re still on the pier. I can even see the cranes where Ensi and his men were earlier that night, the storage crate we hid behind.

There are the men that had been with Ensi. Standing guard. With them is Malka. The Queen.

Mana-ma, wearing a poor soul’s body.

She wasn’t there before we went in. Ensi must have sent notice. Was she on her way? Was she going to join us in the dream world, and visit one of the missing members of her flock? Or did she only come when things went wrong? Is her true body lying supine back in the Hearth?

Malka, or Mana-ma, is the first to see us. She raises her head and meets my eyes, and I can read her expression: You’ve failed this Test. She wishes it was me, her, and her sword in a soundproof room.

She yells a warning, and the men run toward us.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” is all I can think to say, staring at them. I’m so tired.

Nazarin takes my hand, pulling me with him behind the nearest crate. He shoots over the top of the crate and ducks down. There’s a distant cry of pain. Nazarin shoots again. No cry of pain. I can only seem to stare at the gun in my hand. A bullet ricochets against the metal of the crate with a crack that seems to hover in my vision, a riot of yellow, red and orange. It’s beautiful.

My sister’s voice is in my head: Get your gun, T. You have to get your gun.

I’m imagining it, but it’s comforting to hear just the same. The gun still lies in my numb fingers. More shots fire. I can barely see. My head is splitting. There is a ringing in my ears, like tinnitus. Another shot. Where is Nazarin? Is he all right?

I clutch the gun to my chest, and the cold metal grounds me. Nazarin is next to me. A bullet has grazed his forehead; his Kalar suit didn’t have a hood. Blood pours down the side of his face, but it hasn’t stopped him. He shoots and dodges, shoots and moves. Another bullet hits him, and he falls. I can only hope it’s the force of the bullet that felled him, not that it’s breached the not-always-infallible Kalar.

Shit, shit, shit, shit. I can’t tell if I’m thinking it or saying it out loud. Gunshots still pepper the storage crates. I unlock the safety of the gun and put my finger on the trigger. My hand shakes.

I peek over the crate, and then dart back. There’s only one person left: Mana-ma. It’s fitting. Her against me.

I gather the last of my strength and bravery and stand up from behind the barrier. I try to gather my senses together to make sense of the world again. I fire off shots, my vision still blurry enough that I’m not sure if I’m aiming at her. The shots focus me.

The first few miss, but then a bullet hits her in the arm. She folds forward. She’s wearing a Kalar suit, but I’ve still hurt her. I aim again, and hear the crack of her gun. I squeeze the trigger and start to move back behind the crate. Everything slows. Mana-ma crumples, the bullet hole over her third eye beginning to weep.

I watch, almost disinterestedly, as the bullet she fired hits me straight in the chest. It does not puncture the suit, but I feel the impact against my metal sternum. My mechanical heartbeat slows.

Then stops.





THIRTY

TILA

I don’t remember actually arriving in San Francisco.

Taema and I were out cold, but we woke up in the ambulance hovercar. The attendants pulled back the window screen, and even though I felt the worst I’d ever felt in my life, I remember how beautiful San Francisco looked the very first time I saw it. The sun was just setting, and it was like seeing a whole new planet, alien and strange. Tall buildings full of people, others full of trees, cars flying through the sky, bridges linking the lands across the water. It was so big. I knew billions of people lived out here in the world, but it was still something else, this city where over a million people lived, flying and seeing straight out to the horizon, tiny people walking down below. This new world seemed infinite.

At the hospital, they stabilized us and Taema woke up. I started crying when she did. I was so scared that she wouldn’t.

The doctor who spoke to us had the same mild confusion about us as the rest of the people out here. We were so lucky, though. He knew our VeriChips were brand new, and he later quietly found someone who would be able to advise us about claiming sanctuary from Mana’s Hearth and make our identities real.