Burn (21 page)

I clutch at the sweat-slick cable as every muscle in my body tenses, like the rest of me knows what my mind hasn’t accepted yet—the inferno below me is awaiting my arrival, ready to reduce me to ash. My fingers are white-knuckled over the cable, stopping my downward progression. With my legs kicking less than five yards above the flames, I cling desperately to it, afraid to move lest I start to slide again. It feels like my legs are starting to cook in the raging heat that rolls off the fire below me. I heave myself up with one arm and slowly climb, twisting the cable around my hand to keep from slipping down, until most of my body is tangled with the long orange cord.

Then I begin to swing again. Two rows of combat vehicles—two sets of cables—away, Manuel is waving his arms in quick, uncoordinated motions as he leans heavily on the massive scaffolding of the shelving. He doesn’t seem to notice it leaning dangerously over him, and he startles when a box falls from three stories above and slams to the ground nearby, hurling bolts and screws against his back as he hunches over more debris at his feet. He’s barely visible through the fog, but I can tell from the dark blob of his face that he’s got his shirt pulled up, desperately trying to block the fumes. His movements are sluggish and weak as he tugs at the pile of rags on the ground between his legs, trying to pick it up.

My heart clutches as the pile shudders and shifts, revealing dark blond hair and pale skin. Christina is lying at Manuel’s feet. There’s a swath of smudged cloth tied around her face. Her name is the pulse in my head as I kick and swing, and when I grab for the next cable, I’m ready for the sweaty slide and tangle the cable around me before I can lose momentum and altitude. I force my eyes away from Christina’s body and concentrate on making it to her, moving like a clumsy Tarzan as I lunge for the next cable, which hangs close to the huge, leaning shelving that Manuel is huddled under. I hope it’s strong enough to hold my weight without collapsing.

I swing just far enough to grab onto the shelving two stories above the floor. It creaks and wobbles, but it’s enormous—like one of those three-story-high shelves at Home Depot—so it tolerates my weight. It takes me only a few seconds to climb low enough to drop to the ground, landing next to Manuel.

“The back entrance is blocked,” he wheezes into my ear. His black hair is plastered to his face, and his eyes are red and swollen. “I was trying to get her out the front, but the smoke—” He doubles over, coughing.

But he’s said enough. If the back exit is inaccessible, we’re trapped, because although there’s a slim possibility that Manuel could climb the shelving and swing himself to safety, as I kneel and pull Christina into my arms, I know there’s not a chance in hell that she could follow.

I have to find another way. Huddled over her, I stroke her hair away from her face. I can’t see any obvious injuries, but the smoke has done its work. She’s barely conscious. Sooty tears streak out of the corners of her eyes. I start to rip the mask off my face to put it on her, but Manuel grabs my hand.

“Keep it on,” he says hoarsely, still bent over and bracing his hands on his thighs. “You’re our only chance to get out.”

And if I don’t move quickly, if I don’t think smart and fast, we’re all going down. Still holding Christina against my chest, I look around. Beyond the shelving are more combat vehicles, but none of them are fueled—which is lucky, since they’d be exploding if they were. And none of them have live ammunition, but . . .

“Are any of these vehicles armed?” I say loudly, just as an explosion shakes the factory floor and causes boxes of equipment to land heavily around us. If we don’t move, the shelves are going to collapse and bury us here.

“Only with dummy rounds,” says Manuel between coughs. “You can fire the cannons on the roof from a console in the back or the hood-mounted cannon from the driver’s seat.”

“That’s our way out.” I tug his arm. “Which one can I use?”

He peers at me, looking confused, and I realize his brain is probably a tainted stew of delirium-inducing chemicals that he’s inhaled from the smoke. He’s not exactly at his best.

“Manuel, which one is armed?” I shout.

He blinks and squints at the combat vehicles around us, then shoves off the scaffolding and staggers down the aisle, which is now completely closed in by the leaning shelving above it. It’s a miracle we’re not crushed as I scoop Christina into my arms and carry her, following Manuel along the aisle littered with debris.

We emerge on the other side to see more collapsed shelving against the back wall, but one small area is reasonably open, a set of combat vehicles sitting peacefully while the smoke swirls in lazy tendrils above them. “There.” Manuel points to the three vehicles in a row near the wall to our left. “We were testing the cannons on the roofs of the vehicles. Christina’s really good at . . .” The rest of his sentence is in Spanish. He closes his eyes and takes his head in his hands.

I heave Christina over my shoulder, curling one hand around her thigh as her arms hang down my back. With my other hand, I grab at Manuel’s sleeve to lurch him into motion. We make our way over to the first vehicle, a looming SUV with the gaping hole in the top. All these eight-wheeled fighting vehicles have two cannons on either side of the hole in the roof, but they’re not the usual stationary turret you’d see on an armored personnel carrier. These are each on rails that enable them to slide and rotate three hundred sixty degrees, allowing the gunners to operate both cannons at once. It must take mad skills, and I’m hoping I’ve got them. I gently lay Christina on the ground, and Manuel sinks to his knees next to her, coughing and heaving. I climb onto the combat vehicle and drop through the hole in the roof, landing awkwardly in a chair surrounded by a circular console.

In the tiny metal-encased world of the combat vehicle, I peer through the hazy air at the targeting system, which is giving off a dim green glow that tells me it’s connected to a stable power source, probably a battery. I’ve never seen anything like this, the three-hundred-sixty-degree video display, the odd things that look like blood pressure cuffs on either side of the seat, the two metal sticks jutting up from the floor like double helicopter controls. Wishing I’d studied my father’s blueprints a little more closely, I flip the safety off one of the control sticks and flinch as the thing kicks in my hand. Above me, one of the roof cannons slides along its rails, whizzing past the circular hole above my head, a dark shadow in the fog.

Now that I know how to move the cannons, I lean close to the video monitor.

What I need is wall space. To my immediate right, the area is blocked by those massive shelves. Right in front of me, one of them has toppled over and is blocking the rear doors. But to my left, there’s some space. I grip both control sticks and feel the jolt of movement above me as the roof cannons slide back and forth along their rails. The vehicle wobbles in its metal carriage that suspends it above the ground so that people can work on its underbelly.

I’m aiming when an explosion rips through the air, shaking me with the percussion and the wave of heat. I shoot to my feet and nearly clip my head on the metal edge of the hole in the roof, thinking of going out and bringing Christina and Manuel in here, but then I realize—I need to focus, and I need to save them.

I sit back down. My thumb hovers over the red button at the side of the control stick, and as the cannon swings into position, I push it all the way down. With a heavy
thunk
and a muffled boom, a projectile flies out of the cannon and slams into the wall to my left. On the monitors, I wait for the cloud of dust to clear.

As it does, no daylight greets me. I fire again, both cannons this time. The heavy dummy artillery collides with the wall in almost exactly the same place. But it doesn’t penetrate. As the smoke grows thicker around us, I grab two more dummy missiles from the stack inside the vehicle’s cabin and load them into the cannons, then fire again. And then I do it again. And again. On the fourth try, a section of the wall collapses outward with a loud crunch, and smoke is sucked out of the hole. The flames will follow, so I load up again and fire twice more, trying to make the opening larger. It’s about six feet off the ground, jagged and gaping, when I let go of the control stick. The lingering vibrations tingle through my bones as I climb out of the combat vehicle and jump to the ground.

Both Manuel and Christina are unconscious. I don’t check their vitals. I don’t want to know. I yank Christina up by the arm and stagger toward the smoky hole through which I can see daylight. I make it to the wall as the three-story-high shelving near the fire starts to collapse. If I don’t make it back to Manuel, he’s going to be crushed. Already I can see the shifting of the metal monster behind him as it buckles and tangles with the shelving next to it. Boxes and paneling crash to the ground, raining destruction onto the fire and the space around it. Flames and cinders shoot into the air. My grip on Christina is so tight that I’m leaving red marks on her pale, clammy skin. Panting, I lift her, planning to let her slide out of the opening and onto the ground—

Leo’s head appears in the opening. He’s wearing a gas mask. Kellan appears next to him, his arms outstretched. “I knew it was you!” Leo shouts as I hand Christina to Kellan, who must be standing on something outside. He wraps his arms around her slender body and pulls her into the open air.

“I have to get Manuel!” I yell, and turn back to the carnage without waiting for a response. But before I make it more than a few steps, Leo is next to me, matching my strides as I weave my way toward Manuel—and the collapsing shelving. We reach him as the unit nearest us begins to come our way. I don’t need to tell Leo what we have to do. I grab Manuel’s right arm and Leo hooks his arm under Manuel’s left, and we drag him as fast as we can, his long legs sliding across the floor as we scoot toward the hole in the wall, where Kellan is climbing through to help.

A rush of air and a roaring sound make me look over my shoulder to see the combat vehicle I was sitting in buried and crushed beneath the heavy metal shelving. Leo and I lug Manuel to his feet, and Kellan helps us pass him to some Black Box employees outside. With one last look at the flames and all the destroyed combat vehicles, I give myself up to the arms reaching for me, the voices shouting my name. The gas mask is torn from my face, and I suck in a burning lungful of toxic air before an oxygen mask is clamped over my nose and mouth.

People swarm all around me, putting victims on gurneys in the courtyard and helping others into the atrium of the main building. Two massive fire trucks are only a few yards from the factory, one aiming its foam cannon into the hole we escaped from. I let two guards drag me away, my thoughts buzzing, my mind drenched in dread. I have no idea how many people have been killed. I have no idea if Christina is one of them. But I do know one thing: Our chances of winning a ground battle against those Sicarii scout ships have just gone up in flames.

FIFTEEN

THE ATRIUM OF BLACK BOX IS A SEA OF PAIN AND
misery. I lean against one of the big columns at the edge of the room, forcing myself to down a granola bar as I stare. People lie shoulder to shoulder on the floor, some on gurneys, some in the arms of a relative. Manuel Santiago is two gurneys away, his hands fluttering at his sides as he sucks down purified oxygen and tries to clear his head. Dr. Ackerman zips from person to person, taking vitals, barking orders, having his staff whisk the burn victims up to the infirmary and commanding them to bring more oxygen tanks down in order to meet the needs of those who will remain here while we take stock.

We don’t know exactly what caused the fire. I’ve heard whispers of everything from a bomb to a hydrogen leak ignited by a spark. It wouldn’t even be clear it was a deliberate act—except that the sprinkler system was disabled sometime last night or early this morning, as was the automatic system that was supposed to raise the massive cargo bay doors. We need to find out, but we’ve got other priorities at the moment. Even before the fire was out, Congers and Race had dashed off to warn the guards in the perimeter defense posts to look out for signs of sabotage. If the stations are disabled, we’re dead.

My mother is here. She came rushing up from the lab in the basement and gave me a fierce hug as I walked into the atrium. Now she’s helping Dr. Ackerman care for patients. She’s shed the sling for her left arm, but her mouth is tense with discomfort every time she moves the limb. Her eyes keep darting over to me with concern and frustration. I’m wondering if she’s discovered something in the autopsies, but I’ve only got half a mind for it. Christina lies on a stretcher next to me with a mask strapped to her face. Her cheeks are streaked with grime, beneath which her skin is pink like she’s been sunburned. Dr. Ackerman said her vitals were strong, and her eyelids are twitching like she’s waking from a long sleep, but I still feel sick and shaky. My mind keeps replaying the moment I realized I was looking at her unconscious body. That image lingers in my brain, along with the seconds I spent in the same situation after a Core agent’s bullet tore along the side of her head. Too many close calls. She’s been lucky. But somehow I know: Our luck is running out, and I’m terrified that, sooner or later, one of us might not get up and walk away from the carnage. I’m not sure I’d ever recover, knowing that my actions had resulted in her death. I’m already carrying the burden of my father’s death on my shoulders. I’m not strong enough to manage the weight of another life snuffed out because I got us all into this.

I’m leaning down to kiss her hand as a dark shape rolls into my periphery. Rufus Bishop is a few feet away, also tethered to an oxygen tank and sitting in a wheelchair. His belly sits like a beach ball on his lap, and he rests his hands over it while he watches what’s happening with narrowed eyes.

His steely gaze lands on me. For a moment, we stare at each other. I wait for him to go off on me, to accuse me of murdering his son, to threaten me. But instead, as the seconds pass, his face creases with hard, desolate grief. And I remember looking down at Aaron, Rufus’s oldest son, and watching him take his last breaths. I remember how scared he looked.