Earthquake (26 page)

There’s no time
for reveries—and no guarantee that the fall killed Daniel. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since becoming an Earthbound, it’s that it is
hard
to kill a god.

I know I should have done something more extreme—cut off his life directly—but I just couldn’t. I can’t become what he is.

Too late, as I stare at the destruction of the lab, I realize what I’ve done—I’ve exposed samples of the virus into the Curatoria headquarters. If the destruction of Death Valley doesn’t kill them, the virus will. Forever. I have to tell everyone to get out!

Doing what I can, I create a huge plastic dome around the rubble, then stagger into the hallway and toward the grand staircase that looks like it’s a million miles away. Pain shoots through my abdomen, and blackness crowds in on my vision. I force it away. Once I get to the stairs it’ll be easier.

Or so I think. The first step down jars my body, and renewed agony ripples through me. My head spins and my knees tremble. “Help.” But my brand-new vocal chords don’t want to work quite right. “Help! Help me!” I finally manage to yell in a voice that only just sounds like my own.

Faces turn to me. And shock and gasps ripple through the crowd. The last time they saw me Daniel was declaring me to be their salvation. What am I now? I remember how I look, my mouth caked in my own blood, my clothes spattered and ripped. I must appear completely crazy.

The conspiracy theories pouring from my lips certainly don’t help my image. “Daniel has betrayed you all. He’s . . . he’s . . . a Reduciate.”
No, it’s worse than that; he’s manipulated their entire organization and thrust the world into infinite peril. But that’s the only word they’ll understand—
Reduciate. “He did this.” My head swirls. I’m not sure if I’m talking or whispering now. “Help.” I get that last plea out before my knees collapse from under me.

And I fall against something warm and solid.

“Tavia.”
Thomas. Thank you, gods.
I don’t even mind that he and Alanna were supposed to stay in hiding. Maybe now we all really can leave together.

“We have to escape.” I try to open my eyes, but they won’t obey.

“Drink this.” Alanna’s voice pushing a straw into my mouth. Something sugary sweet. I don’t like it, but a tiny sliver of my consciousness reminds me that I need it if I’m going to survive. If anyone is going to survive. I
am
the vaccine now.

“Where is he?” Thomas whispers, but not to me. I don’t know who he’s talking about.

“I don’t know. I told him not to go far, but he said he had something to do.”

No.
Logan.
They don’t know where he is. And it’s because I sent him after my artifacts.

“Tavia,” Thomas repeats, bending down so I can see his face without opening my eyes too much. “We’re a hundred miles away from anything. You’re hurt—I’m going to take you to medical. We need to get you fixed up, then we’ll leave. Just like we talked about earlier.”

“No, Thomas, listen to me.” I reach out and grab his sleeve, hanging on like that’s all that’s keeping me here in this world. “Daniel knows about you and Alanna. Knows
everything
. If he’s not dead, he’s coming after you next. But . . . but . . .” My brain is swimming me toward unconsciousness. But there’s something—something I have to tell him. “The virus,” I finally remember. “It might be loose.”

Thomas hesitates, staring at me in horror.

“Thomas, please,” I beg. “I destroyed the lab. I may have let the virus out. Everyone has to leave—especially you.”

He stares. An infinity passes. “Logan or Benson?”

Now? Seriously?

“I can’t save them both. There’s no time. We can look for Logan, or we can break Benson out. We can’t do both.”

The crowd around me yells, grumbles, calls out questions, but it’s like all sound has been muted. Time slows, stills, stops.

Which one?

Which one?

Of course.

“Benson,” I breathe.

Then my legs are swept out from under me, and I’m crushed against Thomas’s huge chest. He’s holding me, running down the stairs so quickly that each step jolts my entire body and I have to bite down on screams of pain.

At the bottom of the stairs he doesn’t pause but heads for the western staircase that will lead us to the security wing. To Benson.
Thank you
, I think, my eyes trying to close on their own again.

“Stop them!” Daniel’s voice reverberates through the hallway. Tears of pure and utter hopelessness well up in my eyes as Thomas jerks to a stop and turns just enough that I can see Daniel. He looks terribly powerful, standing there, straight and tall, though his sleeve is torn and dusty and blood pours down several gashes—the most obvious across his forehead, blood striping his face like a macabre mask. He points a finger at us. “She has the vaccine, and they’re taking it to the Reduciates!”

The Curatoriates hear his lie, and unlike how they reacted when I made a similar declaration while equally bloody, they
listen
to him. And then they turn as one, the fear and anger in their eyes shooting directly at us.

Daniel raises his fist, and I know whatever he is about to do will look like it’s attacking Thomas, but it’ll kill
me
. There’s no way Daniel is going to let me live now. Especially if he saved a few vials of what he thinks is the new vaccine.

And if he managed to protect himself, then he probably did.

“Run,” I whisper.

But I didn’t have to. Thomas is already fleeing, shoving people out of his way as he leaps up the stairs two at a time.

I expect something—the floor to collapse beneath us, the roof to suddenly lose its supports and rain down on us, but when I peek back, I see someone on top of Daniel taking care of him in the oldest human way—with his fists.

Someone blond.

Logan
.

But there’s only that tiny second before the screams and crashing begin. A panicked crowd of humans can kill; I don’t want to know what a panicked crowd of gods can do.

I keep my eyes scrunched shut against tears, but it doesn’t take much imagination to picture the walls of the Curatoria prison falling away before Alanna’s destructive power.

The security doors shut some of the noise out, and I’m surrounded by voices, protests.

Then silence.

“Benson, take her. No questions. We have to get her out of here. To a hospital.”

I’m tossed roughly to Benson, and I shriek in pain, but as soon as I settle in his arms, I know I’m safe. Not what I once thought of as
safe
—protected from bodily harm—but safe in the knowledge that even if I die, I’m in the right place.

“She’s bleeding!” Benson says.

“Worse than that—she’s half-dead,” Thomas says, his voice farther away now.

“You’re going to help her, aren’t you?”

“I’m going to do my damndest.”

“Please, Dad—” Benson’s voice breaks off. “Show me how to save her. I’ll do anything.”

“Benson, I would lay down my own life for this girl of yours. I only gave her to you because I think you would too. Now
run
.”

“This way.” Alanna’s voice now. My eyes are scrunched closed. It’s all I can do to even stay conscious as I bounce around in Benson’s arms.

I’m trying.

Trying.

Logan
. We left him. I don’t think Thomas even saw him.

I try to speak. To tell them to go back. But nothing in my body is obeying me. My eyes won’t stay open. It hurts to breathe.

They’re taking me in a small space. A tunnel, I think. “We made this about a year ago,” Thomas explains as they jog. I wonder if he’s talking to cover up the sounds behind us. Sounds of destruction I can’t bear to think very hard about, despite the rumbling of the earth beneath us. “Took ages to get around all the pipes and footings and crap that go into a structure this big.”

“What do we do when we get out?” Benson asks, his breath heavy from carrying me. I want to help, but I can’t.

Can’t.

“Making dune buggies is one of my specialties,” Thomas says, but now, with my eyes closed and listening closely, I can hear the fear and panic in his voice too. I remember how Benson used to get very quiet when he was afraid. My tired, weary brain finds it humorous that his father is the opposite.

“How long before we can get her to a hospital?”

Thomas doesn’t answer right away.

“We’ve never had reason to time it,” Alanna says softly. “But at least an hour, maybe two. Once we get going I’ll help you staunch the bleeding. It’s all we can do.”

“Hold on,” Benson whispers, and it takes me a second to realize he’s talking to me.

And that I was letting go.

How did he know?

Warm air hits my face, and I cling to consciousness as Benson slides into something that must be the thing Thomas talked about. Dune buggy?

“Hold her tight,” Thomas says. “This is
not
going to be a smooth ride.”

Benson’s arms tighten around me, and even though somewhere in my brain I know I’m dying, I feel safer. The weird vehicle bounces into action, and suddenly there is sand in my nose and I have to cough, but doing so sends spasms of pain through my abdomen and I can’t hold back a scream.

“Cover her mouth with this,” Alanna says, and cloth goes over my mouth and nose as my head lolls on Benson’s shoulder.

I force my eyes to open one more time to look behind us. The last thing I see as we speed away is the entire enormous glowing triangle collapsing into the desert sand and the bright stars twinkling against a black velvet sky.

It was the
first glowing triangle I saw. Nothing more, nothing less. Just simple chance. I ran from my Colorado home and jumped the first train I could get on. Then, every time it stopped, I would go walking, looking for glowing triangles. The symbol of a Curatoria safe house.

It took over three months.

I’m not proud of the things I did to stay alive during that time, but here I am, and technically, no one got hurt.

I don’t like going to the Curatoriates, not when I know about Daniel and Marianna. But if I’m careful, I can use their resources to help me find Quinn—whatever his name is now—before they figure out exactly who I am.

Then I’m gone.

But even having made the decision ages ago, I’m terrified to take those last few steps to the door tonight. Into the lion’s den, really. But I have to find my
diligo
if I want any chance of this all ending. Ending happily, I should say.

I should have told Quinn about Daniel and Marianna. I know that now. Trying to find each other without the brotherhoods is hard enough without one member of a pair not having any idea he
needs
to avoid them both.

If I could go back . . .

But I can’t. Maybe this house—these random Curatoriates—could be a step forward though. I lift a hand that feels like it weighs five hundred pounds and press the doorbell. I hear the chime peal beyond the thick door.

A minute passes. Two. Or maybe it’s only seconds; it’s impossible to tell. But finally the door opens and I’m standing before a tall man with regal, prematurely white hair, dressed in a three-piece suit. I’m glad it’s dusk so he probably can’t see the scuffs and stains on my shabby jeans.

“Can I help you?”

Dear gods, can I even say it? “My name is Sonya,” I start.

“Yes,” he prompts when I’m silent.

I peer up at him, channeling every ounce of courage I have within me.
“Sum Terrobligatus.”

His eyes widen, but he covers it quickly. “I suppose so, if you can be quick about it,” he says just a touch too loud. “Come in.”

I resist the urge to glance in both directions before hurrying through the doorway. Because, really, what good would that do anyway?

I walk into a nice parlor that—though dim because no one has turned the lamps on yet—looks both elegant and comfortable.

“Please have a seat,” the man says, more anxious to please now that the front door is closed and locked with—I notice gratefully—two bolts plus a chain.

We sit in armchairs on opposite sides of a carved coffee table, and I’m trying to figure out which of us is supposed to speak first when I startle at a movement in the doorway.

The man’s eyes follow mine, and he smiles. “Don’t worry. This is my daughter, Samantha. She’s a Curatoriate as well. Young, but initiated.”

Sammi stands there, long blond hair curling around her shoulders, staring at me with excitement, but still that inner strength I always sensed in her later in her life. Even at seventeen years old, she has it.

And although I know this isn’t how the first meeting with Sammi and her father actually ended, I rise from my armchair and rush over and throw my arms around her, overjoyed to see her again, even though I know it’s only a dream.

Her arms lift and wrap around me, hugging me back, and for the first time in so very long, I feel at peace.

I awake to
the sound of a machine pinging out the beating of a heart.
My
heart, I assume. It’s so reminiscent of the way I awoke from the plane wreck that for a moment I wonder—really wonder—if everything, every terrible and wonderful thing, could have been a dream.

The most awful, wonderful dream of my life.

But the throbbing I feel is only in my stomach—not my leg and head and chest and throat, the way it was when my poor, barely alive body came back to life after the crash.

I blink, and my eyes obey me—another difference.

The light is piercing but bearable. I look around at a small but clean hospital room. At first I think it’s empty, but then I see Benson curled up in the gray recliner, his dingy white T-shirt almost blending in.

“Benson?” My voice sounds different. Not a lot, but enough that I know these are
not
the vocal chords I was born with.

He’s instantly awake. “Tave!” He vaults up out of the chair, trips on his shoes, and sprawls on the floor. Maybe not quite instantly.

I smile weakly as he gets to his feet and comes to sit beside me, reaching for my hand. The one without an IV. “How do you feel?”

I have to consider his question. “I’ve felt worse,” I settle on.
Oh, that is the truth
. I confess the pathos that being stabbed in the stomach only rates
minor inconvenience
in my life.

“Is . . .” I hate to ask Benson, but it’s the most important question. “Do you know if Logan got out?”

Benson shakes his head. “Not
no
,” he corrects quickly. “We
don’t
know.” He shrugs helplessly. “We don’t know anything beyond the four of us.”

Oh gods. Logan
.

And the loss feels somehow worse having woken up in a hospital bed for the second time in my life. I hate hospitals now.
Hate
is too tame a word. I want to jump up and run screaming from the room rather than lie here at the mercy of a team of doctors and nurses as I fight to make my body obey me. Tears are pricking at my eyes, and panic and regret and a sharp mourning are sweeping through me. “Benson,” I whisper, “hold me.”

He hesitates for a moment, but I know it’s not
me
per se—he’s worried about hurting me. Again. I scoot over a bit, and he slips into the bed, his body warm against mine. I curl against his shoulder, and his hands rub up and down my back as I wait for the terror to fade.

“I left him.” My heart aches at the thought. “I saw him. At the last second.”

“Dad said we had to,” Benson whispers.

“No.” My lips tremble. “There was a moment when I had a choice. I chose you. Instead of him.
I
left him.” The sight of the triangle collapsing in on itself. It would have killed all the humans. Or—at the very least—those not close enough for an Earthbound to save them.

What about Audra?

Daniel?

Logan?

Logan.

Logan
.

My heart wants to cry, but my body has no tears left. “I would know, wouldn’t I?” I ask. “If he was dead?”

Benson is quiet for long seconds, his fingers rubbing lightly over my arms. “Maybe,” he finally says. “You often seem to just
know
things.”

It’s not a yes. But it’s not a no either. “Thank you for bringing me here,” I say into his shirt.

“Thank you for holding on,” he whispers.

After a few minutes I feel calm enough to raise my face from his shoulder and look at him.

“I hope he’s alive, Ben. But I can’t go back to him.”

He’s silent, and I know I’ve put him in an awkward position, listening to me talk about the guy I should be in love with. Who might be dead.

I’m not sure just how to explain this, but it has to be said. “Benson, have you ever been to the top of a really tall building and looked down and gotten that weird feeling in your stomach?”

“Sure.”

I hesitate. “That’s how I feel when I look into Logan’s eyes. The way he feels about me—the love he has for me—it’s so vast and deep it makes me dizzy to see it.”

He shifts uncomfortably but doesn’t pull away.

“But I can’t spend the rest of my life trying to be good enough for someone. I can’t love someone just because I’m supposed to. I just . . . I can’t be with him.” I lay my cheek against his chest again. “Especially when I want so badly to be with you.” I chuckle sadly. “I guess I really am an ant.”

“An ant?” Benson asks, clearly beyond confused.

“I’ll explain another time.” I force myself to sit up. To look him squarely in the face. “Benson, I’m at war with the Earthbound. Maybe some of them will believe me and be on my side, but I don’t think there will be very many. It’s literally going to be me against nearly the entirety of
both
brotherhoods.” I grip his arms with my hands. “Will you stand with me?”

“To the death,” Benson whispers with zero hesitation.

“Thank you.” The words feel so paltry. I lift a hand to his face, and when my fingertips make contact, my whole body seems to sag in relief. As I pull him forward with the slightest pressure against his cheek, I feel an almost audible click, as though my life was on the wrong course and only now is going back to its true destiny. My lips touch his, and a warmth spreads through me that’s more than wanting and desire—although it’s that as well—it’s comfort and pleasure and something beautiful that I can’t describe.

I push nearer, press closer, and a pain shoots up from my abdomen, making me gasp.

“I’m so sorry,” Benson says, looking me up and down, not sure what he did.

“It’s my stomach,” I say, gingerly fingering the surface of my hospital gown. “It hurts.”

“Do you want to look at it?”

“Yeah,” I say, not understanding why he’s even asking.

“Well I . . . I have no idea what you’re wearing under . . . there.”

I snort at his reddened face. “Like that really matters,” I say. I pull the bottom of my hospital gown up, leaving only the blanket to cover the barest of essentials, and reveal my stomach.

“Oh gods,” I breathe. I must seriously be under the influence of more pain meds than I thought because there’s a line of staples from just below my belly button to right between my breasts.

Benson is staring in horror. “I didn’t see it while you were still out,” he says, his face having gone from red to white in a matter of seconds. “They only described it.”

“What happened?” I ask. I am
quite
sure this is more than what Daniel did to me.

Benson sits back down on the edge of the bed, and it’s probably a good thing he did so before
falling
over. “Here’s what the doctors told me; maybe you can make sense of it. I told them we were at a party last night and that I didn’t know what had happened to you, just that you told me to take you to a hospital. When they came out, they told me you’d been stabbed.”

“Daniel stabbed me,” I confirm.

He nods. “But that wasn’t the weird part. They said they had to extend the incision because your entire abdominal cavity was filled with blood and . . . and stuff. They used bigger words. But basically, they said it looked like you had been stabbed multiple times, but that there was only one entry wound, and they had to go all over cleaning everything out.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” I say, and Benson looks at me funny. I explain as well as I can what Audra told me about what would have happened in my body when Daniel severed my throat from the inside. And the resulting mess it would have created. “I would have had to go to someone else and have it fixed, but they were smart enough to take care of it. So now everything’s okay.”

“You made yourself a new throat?” Benson asks, amazed. I remember that he’s been around Earthbounds his whole life, and instead of that making me mad, this time I’m proud that I could impress someone who has seen everything he’s seen. “That’s why you sound different.”

I kinda love that he noticed.

He looks somberly down at the incision my belly. “We can’t stay here waiting for your stomach to heal,” he says. “We took a risk checking you in and letting them take you into surgery. I am so sorry to do this to you, but how soon do you think you can leave?”

“Benson,” I start to scold.

“Tave, it’s not easy to kill a god. Even after everything collapsed, they could be on their way here
right now
.”

“Benson—”

“Please, please, Tave, don’t make me watch them take you again.” His eyes shine with tears, and I reach out a hand for his.

“Just look,” I whisper, then turn my attention to my stomach. Slowly, carefully, an inch at a time, I transform the staples into unbroken skin. In less than a minute Benson is sucking in fast breaths and staring at my unmarked abdomen.

“I didn’t think of that,” he says after a long silence.

“It’s not perfect,” I say, cringing as I push up to sitting. “The stitches are still there on the inside. I don’t know enough about anatomy to heal it all the way down, not to mention muscle walls and organs and . . . stuff like that.” I transform the air around me into underwear and loose cotton pants as I slide from beneath the blankets, and another thought gives me a cotton T-shirt and bra instead of the short hospital gown. I smile painfully at him as a jolt sears through my abdomen. “I’m going to be very sore for a while.”

Sore
may be a bit of an understatement; it’s difficult to even stand up straight. But I have very little pride left, so I let myself hunch, leaning on him. Another thought takes away the IV, the little chest sensors, and the heartbeat thing on my finger. “What do we do now?” I ask, trying to be brave.

“Thomas and Alanna are getting us a car.”

“Dare I ask exactly what that means?” I ask, rolling my eyes.

“I’m not sure, actually,” Benson says. “Before he left us—my mom and brother and me, I mean—my father was an automotive engineer. For all I know he’s
creating
us the best car ever made. But he could be acquiring it the other way too.” His phone chimes and he pulls it out and looks at the screen. “We’re about to find out. He’s ready and wants instructions.” He looks up at me in question.

I take in a slow breath and run my fingers through my hair, turning it jet-black. “Tell him to drive around to the front door, that we’ll be there in a few minutes.” While Benson’s tapping away I add smudgy black eyeliner and several pieces of silver jewelry as well as shoes. I take stock of myself and quickly conjure up a purse just before a nurse pokes her head through the door.

“Oh, excuse me,” she says, and ducks out again only to return a few seconds later. “Are you Jane Simmons?”

“No,” I say honestly, though I imagine that’s the name Benson came up with for me.

“But . . .” Her eyes return to the chart open in her hands. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

“What?” I say, letting false indignation hang heavy in my tone. “But I was just released. My mom and dad are getting the car. This is my brother, Bud,” I add when the silence stretches out a little too long. I smack Benson on the shoulder in what I hope is a sisterly fashion. “He drove me here last night.”

“You just got out of surgery,” the nurse says, still befuddled.

“What? Whoa, no,” I say, holding both hands up in front of me. “I was in for food poisoning. And cramps,” I tack on, and I lift the bottom of my shirt enough to show my unmarked stomach and pat it gently. “Bad combination,” I say. “But I’m good now. The doctor said I could go.”

The woman stares at my stomach, then at the chart, then my stomach again. “I’ll be right back,” she says.

“We better get out of here,” I tell Benson, turning toward the door. “She’s going to call security or something stupid in a second, I’m sure.”

Benson nods and takes my hand in his. It feels right, our hands joined as we head out to fight a world that would prefer us dead.

We manage to skirt around the corner without seeing the nurse, and I hope she doesn’t get in trouble for the stunt we just pulled. Alanna and Thomas are waiting for us right at the front doors, and though they give my new look a double take, Alanna hurries around to help me into the sedan. It’s a very fancy-looking car and I don’t quite recognize the make, so I suspect it’s newly created rather than newly stolen.

“She sealed her skin on the outside,” Benson explains under his breath, “but she’s still sore.” He sits behind the driver’s seat, and I lay down carefully with my head on his lap, my hidden incision throbbing from the fast walk.

“Where are we going, Tave?” Thomas asks, pulling away from the hospital.

Anywhere but here
, I think. But I have a plan. “Phoenix,” I say. “There’s a Mayo Clinic there.” I remember seeing it from the Greyhound two weeks ago. It’s perfect. Close, in a huge city, and no one would expect me to go back there after the attack on Logan’s family.

“Well, the news is just trickling in,” Thomas says over his shoulder. “The two people we saw in the secret hospital room must have managed to live maybe an hour after the Earthbound panic led to the collapse of the headquarters—which is what we saw as we drove away.”

Despite the flat tone of his words, I can’t help but believe that if the initial collapse didn’t kill
those two
—helpless and unconscious—maybe Logan survived too. They make earthquake-proof buildings; maybe the headquarters was designed to stand up to a collapse.

“But they’re definitely dead now. Death Valley is gone,” he finishes, almost in a whisper, and my hopes sink. “Leveled. More than leveled, actually. It’s a hole in the ground hundreds of miles across. There’s a lake at the bottom, but they still can’t tell how deep it is.” He pauses. “I expect it goes down to bedrock, but that’s only a guess.”

“Any sign of . . . of anyone?” I ask, hearing the desperate edge in my voice and not caring.

“No, but that’s not surprising. No Earthbound would let themselves get caught in the middle of this.” He pauses for a long time. “There’s just no way to know if Daniel
or
Logan are alive, I’m afraid. Not yet.”

I nod, and then tears are leaking down my face. The rough pads of Benson’s thumbs rub them away, and I smile painfully up at him.