Steel Lily ARC (37 page)

“WE NEED TO GO NOW!” I screamed.

The doors shut as the first man jumped unnaturally high and hurdled the banister of the stairway, his face connecting with the metal grating. Blood splattered between the closing doors and sprayed us.

Riggs was the only one who didn’t seem to be fazed by the attack. “Xander has more of them than I imagined.”

Dad’s voice was astonished and disgusted as he wiped the blood from his cheek. “What are they?”

“The Alliance army that escaped the nuclear bomb in New York,” Riggs said as light began to stream through the grate in the elevator’s ceiling. “They were mutated by the radiation. Xander convinced them that he could save our world. They follow Xander’s orders without question.” He looked at me sadly. “My son in the medical wing…”

I held a hand up. “I understand. You don’t have to say anything else.”

The elevator slowed and the door opened, and we spilled out into the last stairwell that separated us from potential freedom. Everyone surged toward the final door. Legs barreled through it, metal shoulder first, without any regard for his body. Instinct drove our every move; the desire to escape flooded our veins with adrenaline.

Just as Asher promised, the buggy sat humming expectantly outside the door. Its legs were lowered and the door open, ready for us to board. Riggs leapt in and donned the controls as Dad laid Jaxon on the back seat. The rest of us piled in behind. I looked up and realized we were under the concrete and steel overpass.

“How are we getting out of here in this thing?”

Riggs pressed a green button and the buggy shuddered to life, pushing off the ground and lifting the carriage into the air. Before it hit the overpass, Riggs punched a flashing red button and the glass that protected us when we escaped Dome Four suddenly covered the carriage. It connected with the underbody of the overpass and cracked, but didn’t break. The overpass crumbled and sunlight spilled through the new opening.

Riggs yelled back to me with pride. “Never underestimate my son’s ingenuity!”

The legs of the buggy groaned as they gripped the disintegrating roadway, pulling us out of the pit. The gears weren’t meant to deal with such extreme conditions, and steam rose from the front leg. A screw popped off at one of the joints, causing the buggy to lurch forward. I gripped the seat tighter and prayed the remaining legs would support our escape.

Dad yelled from the back seat, his tone panic-ridden. “We’ve got company!”

I looked back to see one of the burned men pounding the glass with a mangled fist, his eyes opaque and unseeing. He was relentless in his attack, and the glass cracked and spider-webbed under his third blow. The man howled with triumph.

Riggs cursed and jerked the controls back and forth, causing the carriage to sway from side to side. The man lost his grip and fell away from the glass. I followed his descent to the ground, horrified.

Hundreds of the burned men ran below in varying states of undress, their military uniforms still clinging to their bodies where they were unburned. They climbed up the moving legs of the buggy with inhuman speed, catapulting themselves higher and higher along the legs as they gained purchase on the steel bolts that extended from the sides.

“This is bad!” I said over the din. “VERY bad!”

“Keep calm!” Riggs yelled from the front.

“Calm? Have you seen what’s coming for us?” screamed Alice.

“Avery, can you send a rain to make the legs wet?” called Riggs, his body tense with each jerk of the controls as he tried to keep the buggy from going down under the added weight of the soldiers. “We need to keep them off the buggy!”

I remembered the last time I tried to create an element, but I refused to let the memory hinder my ability. I was strong enough for this; I had to be. I closed my eyes and extended my hands, begging for the rain to come.

It didn’t.

“I don’t know what to do!” I shook my hands and jumped up and down, hoping that my crude rain dance would bring down a torrent. “It’s not working!”

Mom stood and swayed against the movements of the carriage as she came toward me in the center. She clutched my hand with hers, and supported herself with her free hand against the center seat.

“Together!” she yelled over the bedlam that surged around us. She lifted our joined hands in the air and together we yelled, “RAIN!”

The result was immediate. A hurricane wind came from the west and nearly tipped the buggy over. I opened my eyes to hail and rain and wind that converged on us with unrelenting force. Everyone cheered in unison, as we watched the men lose their grip and fall back to earth.

I turned to congratulate Mom when I felt her weight sag, pulling my arm down. She collapsed to the floor, her face white and slack.

“Mom!” I shook her. “MOM!”

Dad fell to the ground beside me, the space too close to hold all of us crouching around Mom. Dad pushed me out of the way and scooped her up in his arms as he sat beside her.

“No, no, no, not now. You’re strong,” he said to her, speaking as though it were only the two of them. “Be courageous like you told Avery. You can’t leave me now. We’ve weathered the storm. We’re getting out of here, don’t do this.”

He rattled her shoulders, her body limp. I fell on top of her, crying uncontrollably. “Mom! No! I just got you back!”

Legs pulled me off and wrapped me in his embrace as we both watched my father plead with his wife to live. To live and be brave and survive another day.

Her eyes closed for a moment, but then she focused on me. “Avery, my baby,” she said as she coughed, a small line of blood trickling from her nose. “I’m so glad I got to see the woman you’ve become.”

She reached her hand out, and I caught it just as it began to fall. Her grip was weak, but I felt the minute squeeze. “Never let anyone take away your hope for a better future. Know what’s worth living—and dying—for.”

As the words left her lips, a small smile turned the corners of her mouth upward. She looked at Dad. “I’m ready to go home, my love. I’ll save your spot, and wait for you.”

Her hand went limp.

“NO!” I screamed as I watched the light leave her eyes, her expression peaceful but far away.

“It’s too late, Avery, she’s gone.” Legs said as he held me tight and pulled my head to his chest. “The exertion was too much. She’s gone.”

CHAPTER

THIRTY

Tears filled my vision. Not Mom.

I’d just gotten her back.

The memories of us laughing, talking late into the night, practicing—everything we’d done for the past week. It’d felt like a dream.

And now it was just that: a dream and a memory fading away into nothing like smoke on the wind.

Anguish and fear and fury consumed me.

This was all Xander’s fault.

I would kill him if it were the last thing I accomplished on this earth.

Riggs’s voice bit through the angry buzz in my ears. “Hold on!”

Legs’s embrace grew stronger and his metal arm bit into my exposed flesh. I gasped in pain as I saw one of his broken metal rods slice my upper arm, leaving behind a crimson stain that quickly dripped down my arm and over the metal components of his own appendage.

The buggy hit the invisible barrier of the dome and stuttered, the mechanisms fighting against the unseen force. I heard Riggs grunt in frustration, and all of sudden the buggy jerked forward. Fire engulfed the hatch as the buggy pushed through the fortification and caused a torrent of heat to cover us like a blanket.

The force of the explosion caused Legs to lose his grip on me and we all tumbled toward the front of the carriage, pressing Riggs to the controls. The buggy jolted violently and the snap of metal twisting apart resonated in my bones. Another leg must have been buckled. The carriage swayed to the right and suddenly the ground was coming closer, closer, closer.

The screech of metal and the screams of my friends filled my ears. The world spun around me in a haze of colors, yells, and smoke. Pandemonium reigned. It was ironic that we would escape the dome only to die right outside the limits.

Legs groaned and pulled himself out of the ruined buggy, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. Everything hurt, and I was positive my wrist was broken. I hadn’t tried to move anything else out of fear that it would be just as excruciating.

“Avery?” Dad called.

“I’m here,” I coughed.

“Legs?”

“Ugnhhh…”

“Jaxon?” Dad role-called.

“Rainbows and unicorns, as always.”

“Riggs?”

I watched as Dad pulled Jaxon from under a large piece of rubble.

“Riggs?” Dad repeated.

There was a gurgle, accompanied by Legs shouting. I whipped my head around to find more horror.

Legs held Riggs aloft in the clutches of his steel hand, his grip so tight that Riggs was kicking and flailing to free himself. Blood trickled down the side of Riggs’s neck, where Legs’s metal fingers bit into his flesh.

“Make it let go!” Legs yelled. “Make it stop!”

Dad dropped Jaxon’s limp body and ran to Legs’s side. Riggs’s eyes were bloodshot, a silent scream emitting from his mouth.

Legs cried out again, looking to Dad for answers. “Why can’t I control it? What’s happening? Make it stop!”

Dad struggled to pry the metal fingers away from Riggs’s neck. I watched, unable to look away from the grisly scene as Riggs’s attempts to free himself became less and less powerful.

“Because I don’t take lightly to traitors.” Xander’s voice boomed from all around us. A high-pitched squeal erupted from the speakers as Xander’s voice rang out once more. “Did you really think I’d give Legs the mechanical arm that
I
built, that
I
designed, without programming it to murder the treacherous bastard who backstabbed me?”

I scanned the ground for something—
anything—
to use to free Riggs from Legs’s sadistic grip. His voice was full of pride and malice as the speakers in the dome hissed from the sheer volume being put out. “That was a gift from me to Riggs, and he betrayed me. I gave him a second chance at life, a second chance with his son, and this is how he repays me? With lies and deceit? He won’t live to boast of becoming a turncoat.”

Legs gripped the metal arm with his human hand and tried to pry it from the sockets that bolted it in place, his fingernails scrabbling against the welding.

“Get it off! Get it off and then it’ll stop!”

There. A piece of metal.

Xander’s voice boomed. “It’ll stop when Riggs is dead. Which is…now.”

“No it’s not!”

I brought the metal down, its weight crashing down with enough force to halfway cut through Legs’s metal arm. Wires sparked and whipped where they were sliced, spraying in all directions. The hand released Riggs as it jerked out of control.

Riggs hit the ground with a sickening crunch, but I heard him splutter and cough as he pulled oxygen back into his lungs before passing out.

“Avery Pike, you continue to impress me with your desire to make your lot worse and worse. I will have you back here alive. You and your mother, but the rest will die. And you will watch. Maybe I’ll even have you pull the trigger on Jaxon.”

Dad couldn’t contain himself. He stood and his voice cracked as he yelled. I turned toward the group, careful to avoid Riggs’s still body. Veins bulged in Dad’s neck and spit flew from his mouth as he yelled out in rage.

“You killed Regina, but you’ll never have my Avery! Regina and I have spent our lives protecting her from the Resistance, and I won’t stop now. I’ll die before I let you have her!”

“Regina didn’t die by my hand,” Xander’s voice crackled through the loudspeakers that echoed from the dome. “She died in vain for an Alliance that’s dead. And you, Cole, are now completely useless to me. My soldiers will come for your traitorous group, and you will die.”

Legs’s metal arm swung to life, landing a solid backhand blow to the side of Dad’s face. I screamed and tried to go to his aid, but Legs’s body was not his own. He looked on in horror as his hand lifted me in the air and I began to choke. He threw me to the ground, and my head struck a rock nearby.

My vision swam. Just before darkness clouded my sight, new pairs of feet came into view.

The soldiers had come for us.

***

I awoke with hands poking and prodding me. Cool water ran over my body and left me feeling exposed as the air hit my skin.

I was naked.

I tried to pull up, but my arms and legs were strapped to the bed. Panic consumed me.

Where was I?!

People cloaked in the white medical coats milled about the room. One woman held a clipboard and kept looking at a computer screen that lit up with numbers and lines while a man pressed his thick fingers against my jugular.

I was naked, and these people were touching me.

I screamed. “Let me go! Get off me!”

“We’ve got a live one, boys!” cried a woman whose voice I didn’t know. Her clipboard clattered to the ground as she threw her entire weight into keeping my upper half pinned to the table. “It’s all right, dear, you’re safe here! We’re just cleaning you up!”

Her black hair tickled my face as it rained down in sheets around her face, and I spat to keep it out of my mouth. She smelled of cinnamon and vanilla. Not what I’d imagined death would smell like. Even with her reassurance, I bucked and screamed and begged to be left alone. Tears streamed down my face and I blubbered incoherently.

She hollered over my screeches. “I need sedation!”

There was a prick at the crook of my arm. My vision blurred again as the sting of the medicine expanded my vein. The woman’s face began to spin in circles and became a kaleidoscope of colors as the medicine took its toll on me.

“Don’t kill me,” I slurred.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, honey,” said the woman, her face fading into the blackness. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

CHAPTER

THIRTY-ONE

My second awakening was much less traumatic, as I woke to the sound of birds chirping.

No, it couldn’t be real. There had to be a track playing somewhere.

I pushed myself off the plush bed, my hands sinking into the soft sheets and mattress as the duvet fell away. My arms were bare and free of the cuts and bruises I knew should be there. The black shirt that I wore was soft and worn. For a moment I wondered who dressed me, but the curiosity of what happened to my wounds won out. I shoved the covers down to expose my legs and pulled the black pants up to my knees, expecting to find lacerations and half-healed gashes.