When the Sky Fell on Splendor(84)

Art looked at me hard and clicked on the flashlight in his hand to better appraise me.

“Maybe,” I said, then after another moment, let the truth out. “Yes.”

“Shit,” Nick said.

“What do we do?” Levi asked. “How do we fix it?”

“We don’t.” My heart palpitated. “At least not right now. We need to worry about Remy.”

Art jerked his chin over his shoulder. “Did you see that giant plastic bag over the substation? We think that’s where he is.”

Levi nodded. “That’s where Agent Rothstadt was taking us before we escaped.”

“Agent Rothstadt?” Nick said.

“Escaped?” Arthur said.

“We were rescued, actually,” Sofía said. “By your dog.”

I took a deep breath before launching into the whole story as quickly as I could.

“So we can use it up,” Arthur said when I’d finished. “That’s why your scars have been shrinking?”

“Oh,” Sofía said. “Okay, we’re not going to latch too tightly on to the part where we almost died?”

“According to Bill—Albert—every use of our abilities should let off some of the energy in us,” I answered Arthur. “If we can get rid of it, Agent Rothstadt and the others might not have any use for us. But the problem is Remy. We don’t know if he’s got any power left, if they’ve seen his scar or not.”

Arthur was studying the purple ridges on his arm as he clenched and unclenched his fist. “What about me? How am I supposed to get rid of my scars when Molly totally stiffed me?”

“Look, dude,” Sofía said. “If I could give you Ordinary-Vision in 3D, I would gladly trade you.”

“I’d give you mine too. You totally deserve it,” Levi said without a trace of irony.

“Thank you.” Arthur shot a resentful look at Droog, who wagged excitedly.

“Did Droog bring you here too?” I asked.

Arthur’s eyes flicked to Nick, and they held a silent counsel.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Seriously,” Levi said. “For all we know Remy’s strapped to a metal table right now, so please hurry and just say it.”

“We weren’t trying to come here,” Arthur said. “The stampede pushed us this way. We were trying to get to the quarantine tent.”

“We knew they had Remy,” Nick said. “And when the group text went silent after Levi sent those messages about that Black Mailbox guy, we thought either they’d gotten the rest of you or he had. And if that was the case, we didn’t have the resources to get you back, or to stop Wayne. Turning ourselves in seemed like the best option.”

Turning themselves in?

After everything that had happened last night? When Arthur and the others had stopped me from doing the same thing and ending this before Remy or anyone else got hurt?

“And then what?” I snapped, surprised by my own anger. The cord in me went taut, ready, eager. “Then all of this—everything we put ourselves through this week would’ve been for nothing!”

“You would’ve been safe,” Arthur growled.

“For how long? How long does a human dissection take, Arthur?”

“Longer than a bullet to the brain!” he said. “You heard what the sheriff said about your bud Black Mailbox Bill! He was planning to murder you. He had every nook and cranny of our lives mapped out—he knew exactly how to play you! You’re lucky it wasn’t over in seconds, Franny! At least if we’d turned ourselves over—found you—you would’ve had a little longer!”

“So what?” I screamed. “I would’ve been dead and you would’ve been dead.”

“You think I care?” Arthur screamed back. “You think I’d want to be here alone?”

His words hung in the air. My eyes stung, and my throat felt like a paper finger-trap pulling tight, shutting out all the air.

Arthur stared back at me. I imagined my expression must look just like his: crumpled, broken.

Nick cleared his throat. “Look, y’all, what matters is we’re all together, and we’re safe. Now we need to get back to the plan.”

Arthur’s eyes scrunched closed, and he massaged the bridge of his nose. “The plan was to lie low. In what world is that plan salvageable at this point?”

Seeing him like this—watching him give up—sent a searing pain through me.

The hyperventilating, blood-rushing, ears-ringing feeling of knowing you’ve just lost your grip on your life, that it’s drifted away from you.

I looked away from him to keep the emotion from exploding out of me in lightning streaks.

“Fine,” Nick said. “We need a new plan: We get Remy, go stop Wayne from blowing up Splendor with his Super Machine, burn through our energy to get rid of our scars, then turn Wayne over to the FBI and pin the whole thing on him.”

Levi’s eyebrows pitched up as he turned toward me. “You can get us into the compound, right?” His gaze dropped to the shrunken scars, just barely visible below my sleeve. “You’ve got enough of the power left to take out their electricity one more time?”

“Absolutely not,” Sofía said. “Look what that energy’s doing to her. She can barely sit up. It’s probably giving her some kind of radiation poisoning or something!”