Ash (45 page)

He howled as he dropped to the ground, one hand pressed over the hole blasted through his shoulder. Blood seeped from the wound, dripping from his fingers. It splattered over the fallen leaves. His gun lay beside him.

“Leave it,” Thom ordered. He took a step toward Zane.

“Why stop now?” Zane spat at him through clenched teeth. “Complete your destiny. Or get out of my way.”

It happened in a flash.

Oena yelled for her brother to stop. Zane lunged toward the gun. Thom bridged the distance between them in three giant steps, kicking Zane square in the face. Bones crunched as his foot made contact. Zane’s head snapped back, the momentum knocking him down with a heavy thump.

My whole body heaved as I scrambled further away from the fight. I couldn’t rip my eyes from Zane’s motionless body.
Was he still alive?
I wondered, and then immediately felt sick. Had the bullet hit two inches to the left earlier, it might have been me lying there.

“Hey,” Link said, rushing over. “It’s okay, you’re okay.” He put his arms around me, and I fell into him. He squeezed tighter, and I took in his familiar scent. I just wanted to get lost in it, get lost in him, but I knew I had to pull it together. Aya was still in the car, there was an unconscious, possibly dead man at my feet, and a bunch of Revenants out in the open. Now was not the time to break down.

“I’m fine,” I told him. I let myself soak in the warmth of his body for a few more seconds before I pulled away. “Is Zane alive?” Raze was hunched over his body, wrapping a jacket around his shoulder.

Thom shook his head. “Yes,” he said, his voice emotionless. “I’m not a killer.” He might not have been one, but he certainly looked the part, his expression grim with a gun in each hand. The one he fired and the one Zane discarded. But it didn’t matter how he appeared, the reality was, he saved my life.

Everyone went quiet as Oena joined Raze by her brother. She wiped his hair from his forehead before closing her eyes.

“The bleeding’s stopped,” Raze broke the silence. “He’s still out cold and his shoulder’s pretty torn up, but he’ll survive. Knowing him, he’ll probably even brag about it. Just another battle scar.”

“Wait,” I said, horrified. “You’re just going to act like he did nothing wrong? Go back to normal? Like he didn’t try to kill me? Kill Aya?”

“What would you have us do?” Raze replied. “Send him back to the holding cells? Your secret would be out the minute Zane came to. Or maybe you’d rather we get it over with and kill him right here?”

I held up my hands as if I could somehow fend off her words. “I didn’t say I wanted him dead. But you can’t just let him go. What if he comes after Aya again, or—”

Oena cut me off. “Zane will be dealt with.” There was a kind of bitter finality to her words “He’s going to the crypts.”

Raze looked taken aback, but a moment later she nodded her agreement.

“The crypts?” I asked.

“Our prison system. Makes the holding cells look like a Purple dream,” Oena said. “Don’t worry. None of you will see my brother again.”

I wanted to believe her, but I didn’t know if I could. Zane was smart. He’d fooled all of us. More times than I could count. “He got out of one secure prison,” I told her. “What’s to stop him from pulling another escape?”

“Me,” she said. “This time, I’ll be watching. He won’t hurt another soul. I promise you that.” She paused to take a deep breath. “And I’m sorry for what happened today, Madden. For all of it.” Her expression was guarded, but I recognized the look. I wore my own version when things were falling apart and I needed to appear in control. “You’ve been a help to us. Zane shouldn’t have used you like that.”

I felt a sudden wave of sympathy for her. It had to be hard to come to grips with the fact that her brother was responsible for Aldan’s death. I tried to remember that as I spoke. “It’s not your fault. I’m just glad Thom is a skilled shot.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” he replied in his stony voice. “I started training at five years old.”

I let out a gasp. Five? That was impossible. Only the PAE and authorized officials had access to firearms. A child would never be allowed to use one.

He saw the confusion on my face. “My destiny is to kill,” he continued. “No time stamp. No expiration. It’s why I defected. The PAE thought I’d make a good weapon. They gave me a gun when most kids were still learning their alphabet. But I never wanted to fight, let alone murder anyone.”

My father was in charge of national security. Did he know about this? Was he responsible for putting a gun in a child’s hand? I didn’t know what to say.

Dax chimed in softly. “Well, what you did today saved lives. Thank you.” Her eyes panned over the Revenants and Link. “All of you. I didn’t know what to do when I saw Sol…”

I swallowed the lump that was forming in my throat.

Dax looked over at me. “He’s fine,” she said quickly. “He’s alive. I found him in the garage. It’s how I knew where you’d be. Zane hit him over the head. He was still groggy when I left him there.”

I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. Sol was okay. I instantly felt lighter. Another question struck me. I looked down at my tracker, realizing it still showed my location at the UV. “How did he find us?” I asked.

“His bag’s in the trunk. He used it to track you. On my way here, I pinged Link.”

I nodded, piecing it together. We’d been lucky. But we’d made it. “Thank you,” I said to Dax. “For everything.”

She gave me a smile. A genuine one. “Well, the way you fought for Aya… that was pretty ultra.”

Before either of us had a chance to say anything else, Link stepped in. “You two need to get out of here. We don’t want anyone to notice you’re not where you’re supposed to be.” He walked toward Zane’s still body. “And we should get him underground before he wakes up.”

I looked back at the car. “What about Aya?” I asked. “Are we sure she’s safe?”

Oena answered. “She should be. If Zane didn’t share his plans with us, he wouldn’t have shared them with anyone. No one else knows about her destiny.” Her eyes narrowed. “Though you should still watch out for her. There are others who are just as good as Zane at finding hidden information.”

I nodded, my entire body charged with emotions. Relief that Zane was no longer a threat, but anxious about the future. My life as I knew it was about to end. But that was for another time. Today I’d won. And Aya had too.

We said our goodbyes. Link, Oena, and Raze stayed behind, standing over Zane, probably trying to figure out the best way to move him. Thom took over as my driver. Dax promised to check on Sol before continuing down the running trail. Which just left me.

As I climbed back into the car, Aya looked up, her eyes glazed. She turned off her sound cloud, holding her game up for me to inspect. She had no clue what had gone on.

“I’m back at the beginning,” she said, looking at the holograph. “I have to start building New City from scratch again.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“I didn’t have enough food in the lower rings, so I took some away from the upper rings, but that didn’t go over so well. The Purples revolted, and I lost my badges because of it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“That’s okay,” she said. “This time I’ll make sure the lower rings have enough from the start. It will be better than before. I’ll do it right this time.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

Too bad the game wasn’t real life. A do-over sounded like exactly what New City needed. Like what I needed too. Instead, I was going to be stuck with the rest of the unwanteds in Ash. I needed to come up with a plan. Just like the game, I needed to make New City mine again.

N
ervous energy ran up my spine, and I grabbed Aldan’s purple cuff to calm myself down. I had worn it under my gray shirt. Partially for luck, partially to keep my brother with me, and partially to remind myself who I really I was.

I turned to Madden. If she was as anxious as I was it didn’t show. “You really think our Destiny Specialist is here?” I asked. I stood on my tiptoes, trying to see beyond the hedges surrounding the property. I could just make out the gabled rooftop of Dr. Og’s home.

“Yes,” she said. “K.C. Palcove lives with Og. Sol triple checked.”

I couldn’t believe we were about to confront the woman who altered our whole lives. Especially in the home of the man who created the destiny system. Hopefully this meant the truth would finally come out. It meant a whole new beginning for me. But for Madden… I wondered if she regretted her decision to look into what happened the day we were born.

After we were sure Aya was okay, Madden turned her focus to figuring out why our destinies were swapped. I expected it to be a lost cause, but less than twenty-four hours later she’d tracked the woman at the center of the situation down. Now here we were at the front gate of a minister’s mansion.

“You ready?” Madden asked.

I wasn’t sure. But I knew I needed answers. I just hoped K.C. Palcove would provide them. I nodded to Madden, and she reached out a violet nail to tap the intercom beside the gate.

I looked around uneasily as we waited. We were in the very center of the Purple zone, and the most exclusive residential neighborhood in the city. It was strangely quiet here. There were no voices, no people. Then again, there was probably less commotion when your nearest neighbor’s mansion was a five minute walk away. “I kinda expected guards,” I said, careful to keep my voice steady. “Or something.”

“He knows we’re here,” Madden said. She nodded toward the hovercams hidden within the branches nearby. The gate swung open as if to prove the point.

We stood there, waiting, but no instructions came. No voice telling us to come in or go away or anything. We exchanged a long look. Madden wore her usual haughty expression, but I could see the tightness in her face. I guessed she was probably just as freaked out as I was, but then she seemed to make a decision. She strode forward like she owned the place, tossing her hair over her shoulder. I walked beside her, trying to look confident. More like a future Minister. Although it was hard not to gape at my first uninterrupted view of the mansion.

It stood at the end of a long, winding driveway, a lavender, three-story structure with dark purple shutters surrounding the windows on each level. A balcony wrapped around each floor and tens of thousands of purple flowers draped over the sides. A huge expanse of perfectly manicured lawn stretched out around it. I couldn’t believe people lived like this. That I would have lived like this, if destiny had gone as it should.

As we got closer to the house I noticed that the flowers weren’t as uniform as they’d appeared from the distance. Peeking through the sea of purple were unruly bursts of red and yellow. There were even colors I rarely saw, like orange and pink. Stranger still, the purple flowers had light veins of gray running through their petals. Almost silver in hue. They were two colors that didn’t belong together.

When we reached the house, Madden’s pace slowed. She fidgeted with the sleeve of her shirt. “Here we go,” she said. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince herself, but whatever she felt, she still sounded exactly like Madden always did—in control.

I tried to mimic her attitude, though inside I was starting to panic.

I walked up the half dozen steps to the porch two at a time, noting the wheelchair lift along the railing. Before we had a chance to ring the bell, a woman, old enough to be my grandmother, opened the door. I recognized her from the picture Madden had shown me earlier that morning. She’d been Dr. Og’s personal caretaker for the past few years, though she didn’t look like any sort of nurse I’d ever seen. She wore a purple tunic, and a long, white braid hung over her shoulder. Purple flowers had been threaded in and out of the overlapping sections of hair—they were the same ones we’d passed on the walk up. She was a lot older than the photo I’d seen, but she still had the same wide set eyes and square face.

She looked back and forth between us, her expression wary. Most people would have been surprised by an Ash and a Purple standing together, but I could tell she was seeing more than just our colors. “Hello, Madden,” she said. She turned to me, tilting her head to one side. “And you must be Dax. It’s nice to see you again.”