The Invisible (26 page)

Just as they turn to appraise me, I leap. I sail into the air, roundhousing one of them—a steroidal boy with bloodshot eyes. He grunts and falls backward, landing on the metal walkway and nearly flying over the edge of the dam. His gun falls out of his hands and over the edge, sailing into the river far below.

He looks at me, speechless. Suddenly scared. Then he starts to crab-walk away from us, back toward the woods.

The last one looks from Ford to me and thinks better of it. He puts his gun down. “Easy, easy” is what I think he says, but it’s hard to hear over the steady stream of water crashing out of the reservoir and into the river below.

“Good move.” Ford nods, jumping to the lower step to scoop up the gun, and removing the other one’s gun from his unconscious hand. He throws them both into the river below the dam, just out in front of the waterfall, over the edge. We don’t hear either one land.

I turn my gun on the magnet, and even from five feet away I can feel the gun wanting to pull toward it. It takes a lot more strength than I would have thought to keep the magnetism from pulling it all the way in.

The magnet seems to be activating something at the dam already, because when we got here the waterfalls were just a trickle and now they’re closer to a foot wide, water gushing from their stretching seams. It must be opening something internally, unlocking sections of the dam.

“Should we just cover it up and wheel it out of here?” I yell, the sound of the widening waterfalls deafening now. None of my schooling has prepared me for the best way to dispose of a mattress-sized magnet at the edge of a dam.

“How about we send it over?” Ford yells from the lower walkway, over the din of the water. “Dam’s way up here. The current would carry it far enough away, maybe.”

I’m considering this when I hear a clank above me. I whirl around and look up to where the glassy-smooth water of the reservoir meets the cement of the dam. There’s a metal walkway from the other side, one I didn’t notice before. And Invisible is on it, coming toward me.
Walking
. His legs move fluidly inside strange mechanical braces, made of a shiny black metal—titanium maybe—that’s so snug and flexible, it seems almost to be fused to his black jeans. His eyes are again lined in kohl. And they blaze with rage.

“I’d rather you didn’t touch my things.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

His face is red and sweaty. His brown curls longer than before, spiraling out in all directions like an overgrown shrub. His jaw clenches rhythmically.

And he’s with friends. Just behind him, there are six people in black T-shirts with that placid eye illustration done in white.

Each of his friends is armed, and all of their weapons are aimed squarely at me and Ford.

I consider launching myself through the air, aiming a boot at his face, taking my chances with the group of goons around him, when five more men and a woman appear in the trees behind them, each holding a rifle on their shoulder, taking aim.

I do a quick scan and count twelve people altogether.

Invisible is the only one not holding a weapon. “Your boyfriend is cute, Anthem.”

“Wait till you see how cute,” Ford says at my side. I sense he’s about to attack, and I put a hand on his arm so that he sees the shooters in the woods.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask, stalling for time. “I see you’ve got your legs. What more do you want?”

He smiles. Below us, the water churns and roars, promising the sureness of death. There is nowhere we can turn, and the advantage is all theirs.

Four of the goons—all close to my age, the oldest maybe twenty—move closer.

“I used to live right off Museum Mile, you know.” Invisible squints out over the river, staring out at the helicopters swarming like gnats over the towers in the North. A wave of shock runs through me at this revelation, but then I realize how much sense it makes. He’s targeting what he once called home. The place he was banished from. “Not far from that monstrosity your father named after himself. Fleet Tower used to be a moldy squat. Before he fixed all that.”

“It must make you so happy to see your old neighborhood sinking and burning,” I say dryly. My parents could be in one of the choppers by now, waiting for me, not sure how to find me. My mother probably hysterical by now, overmedicating. My father finally forced to tear himself away from his buildings, raging at her about me, asking her what I mean by scaring them half to death this way. “You want it to be a moldy squat again, is that it?”

Invisible laughs. “It was very posh, my childhood. Just like yours, Anthem.” He moves closer. I marvel at how graceful he is on his new legs. How smooth his movements, considering he’s just gotten the use of his legs back.

“You don’t know anything about my childhood,” I say.

“Oh, but I do.” His eyes twinkle with hate and mischief. “I know more about you than you know about yourself.” His face glimmers with a sheen of sweat. “I went to Cathedral, just like you. Before my father got caught doing bad things with other people’s money.” He laughs, a single bitter snort that is swallowed by the roar of the water.

“And then it all ended for my family. My father was disgraced. All of our money was ill-gotten through pyramid schemes, bad investments. We lost everything. Moved south. He went to jail. Killed himself after just three days in Bedlam Prison. Didn’t have the stones for it. My mother was penniless, and clueless about how to get by without money. So I started applying to menial jobs. One day I was putting in an application to be a dishwasher, and I got in the way of a bullet meant for someone else.”

“Poor you,” Ford says under his breath.

Invisible continues, not noticing or not caring. “And that was when I realized how cruel the world really is. Everything I thought I knew before was just exposed to me to be built upon these . . . glittery, pretty lies. Regina knew all about that, Anthem.”

His lined eyes meet mine and something passes between us that sends shivers down my spine. What does he know about Regina? I glare at him and I’m about to ask him what that’s supposed to mean, but he continues as if he never mentioned her.

“So I spent the rest of my childhood on the computer, teaching myself about why things were so unfair. Teaching myself to build bombs, to use technology. So that someday, I could teach my old neighborhood what it’s like. To be scared, to be helpless. To live in a world that is out of your control.”

As he talks, I survey the goons behind him. I count nine guns pointed at us.

“And what you did to Jax? Was that to teach everyone a lesson? I think all you care about is yourself.” Ford looks at me sharply. I wince, horrified that this is how he’s finding out about the death of one of his closest friends.

“I’m not particularly interested in killing people, believe it or not. That was just the way the cookie crumbled. She was very helpful, until she sabotaged it by attacking us. She’s the reason Dr. I’s invention worked. What do you think—don’t I look amazing in these jeans?”

I steal another glance at Ford. He’s absorbing the news of Jax’s death. And his face is growing redder. His hands clench. “Ford, don’t.”

“The foundations are rotten,” one of his goons—a boy built like a fireplug, with blue hair and glazed eyes—says. “We’re evening the scales.”

“Volo, stop talking. You are here for your body, not your brain.” Invisible rolls his eyes as if he and I are in cahoots. And that’s when I realize his philosophy is all faked. A hodgepodge of buzzwords that even he doesn’t quite believe. He doesn’t really want to “even the scales.” He just wants the kind of people he grew up with to feel the same kind of pain he’s felt all these years, sitting in his wheelchair remembering his past, and looking ahead at the future and seeing nothing but a black hole.

“Anthem,” Ford whispers.

I nod slightly, just enough to show him I can hear.

“I’m going to knock down those guns in the woods now.”

Before I can respond, he fires four shots. Four bodies fall in the woods, like dominoes.

Then the thugs on the walkway begin to fire. Ford and I both jump into the air at the same time, and I’m amazed to see Ford flip his whole 180-pound body in the air, his feet coming down on the neck of another one of the minions, the gun the guy carried flying out of his hand and into the river.

Static echoes in my ears as I attack, kicking guns out of hands, dodging bullets. Ford is doing the same, a few feet away.

Something slams into my head just then. I turn around in time to see a huge fist coming at me. It’s the blond dreadlocked guy. I stagger backward and fall, and then I’m tumbling past the flimsy railing, the white crash of the water into the river 200 feet below all I can see. I flail, and manage to grab onto the bar of the railing at the last second, flipping over it, feet first. I leap into the air and attack him, pausing just before I throw him into the water. Instead, I take my gun and hit him with it, hard enough so his legs collapse and his eyes roll backward into his head.

I have a second to watch Ford, who is smashing his fists into the final two goons, both already bleeding. He’s fast and strong and seems to want to kill them. Invisible has a gun in his hand and is aiming it at Ford, looking unsure. I have a feeling he’s not accustomed to guns. He prefers remote-detonated bombs and poisoning children. He moves closer. His leg braces are smooth and fluid.

“Ford!” I shout. He whips around just as Invisible is about to fire, and lunges at him, so fast it’s little more than a blur.

Whatever Jax did to enhance Invisible, it worked. They seem equally matched. Both of them fast and strong as they roll on the railing. I still have a gun.

I wait until I can find an angle where I won’t harm Ford. Invisible pins him to the ground, and I have my shot. I shoot him in the arm, enough to disable him temporarily but not kill him, and not destroy his legs.

He’ll need those legs where he’s going. The land Bedlam Prison was built on is called Dead Man’s Hill for a reason.

When the bullet hits his tricep, though, Invisible barely seems to notice. So I move toward them and yank him off Ford, using everything I have to toss him into the air. He lands thirty feet away, smashing upside-down against the giant magnet.

Amazingly, his legs stick to the black surface. He struggles and squirms, blood pooling around his nose, dripping into his eyes, but he can’t detach the lower half of his body from the magnet.

Ford knocks out the last two minions, and we step over their bodies toward the magnet.

“You know, I wasn’t sure I liked those jeans when you first mentioned them,” Ford says, reaching out to flick the kneecap of the metal-denim hybrid, which makes Invisible yowl. “But I’ve come around. They really do look amazing on you, you sick bastard.”

“Just do it,” Invisible croaks, clearly in pain. His head is down by my feet. “Shoot me in the head.”

“Tempting,” I say. “I’d love to do that, since you have no problem killing innocent children and since you killed our friend. But I think the city wants something more from you. I think they’d like to
even the scales
themselves.”

I dig into my wallet for the ripped business card of Officer Rodriguez. She’s the only cop I know who my gut tells me isn’t corrupt.

Miraculously, she picks up on the second ring.

“Rodriguez here.” The sound of chopper blades thumps in the background.

“Hi, Officer Rodriguez. This is Anthem Fleet. Do you remember me?”

A long pause. “Yes,” she says at last. “Of course. What can I do for you?”

“I have someone here, and I want you to make the arrest. I need to be kept out of the papers entirely.”

“I’m going to need a little more information, Anthem. We’re kind of busy here, what with the evacuations . . .”

“Right. He’s, uh, it’s who we’ve all been looking for.”

“You have
Invisible
?”

I look out over the river toward the city. It’s gray and ugly and hard, but it’s mine. And now maybe it won’t sink into the ground. “Yes. I’m at the dam, at the edge of the reservoir. Can you bring a team with you? There are a lot of arrests, I’m guessing. We’ll keep an eye on them until you come.”

“I’ll be there in five,” she says. “And Anthem?”

“Yeah?”

“Nice work. It’ll be our secret, if that’s really what you want.”

Then the line is dead. I put my phone away and look for Ford. I spot him dragging Invisible’s goons off the dam railing, toward the woods. A few of them look like they’re regaining consciousness again. I jog toward him, marveling at how strange—a good kind of strange—it is that I don’t have to do this by myself.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“I hear jackhammering in my sleep,” Z says, stretching out languidly on my bed. It’s two weeks later, and Zahra and I are in my room, the sounds of construction all over the North Side floating up to us, even here on the eighty-seventh floor.

Invisible had poured an industrial dissolving acid into the ground to get the landfill mass to shrink. Teams of environmental engineers, structural engineers, and city planners worked together for weeks to reinforce the ground and swell the landfill mass back up to its former levels. Now construction workers have the go-ahead to repair all the buildings. Only a few of them needed a complete demolition. My parents’ development company is busier than it’s ever been, working on new buildings for the demolition sites.

Construction aside, things in the city are back to some semblance of normal. Everyone has returned from their summer places. Zahra and I both graduate in a month. I’ll be heading to the Bedlam Ballet Company dorms, and Z is taking a year to “just live life,” as she puts it, before she decides what she wants to study. And now that Invisible is gone, she can. We all can.

There are no more curfews. People aren’t afraid of being kidnapped anymore. And Invisible is behind bars, awaiting his trial.