Refraction Page 19

  Something in the mayor’s eyes shifts, goes shuttered and dark. “You corrupted my son,” she says. “You loosed Beings on the city I swore to protect. The city I have protected, no matter what it cost me.”

  Her eyes are ice. Her aim is steady. And suddenly, there is no one, no one, who I hate more than I hate this woman—the mayor who lied to me about London, the woman who exiled me, the mother who might have killed her own son. She is nothing like him.

  Because, I suddenly realize, she’s too much like me.

  Earlier Elliott said I was all or nothing. But she is too. She thinks the ends justify the means, that protecting her city is worth the price she’s making everyone else pay. She’ll take out whoever stands between her and what she wants. Elliott, though—he’s the one who finally put himself between her and her goal. Between me, and a bullet. Because he doesn’t just believe in a middle ground. He’s willing to be the middle ground. And that is much harder, and more painful, and more right than anything either his mother or I have ever been able to do.

  Outside in the cavern, the Being roars. The sound is impossibly loud with an almost metallic quality that grates in my skull. More dirt clods rain on my head. The mayor ducks.

  Her second of distraction costs her. I use the same move on her that I used on her son, two days and a lifetime ago. I step inside her reach. I duck under the gun. I ram the heel of one hand into her wrist, lock my other hand around the gun, and wrench it sideways.

  She pulls the trigger. The shot thunders past my ear but misses. The gun is in my hands. I step away and aim at her.

  I’m not a good guy. I have done things I regret.

  Killing her wouldn’t be one of them.

  But Elliott would regret it. Elliott would never forgive me. And somehow, even though that shouldn’t matter, it does. Because I don’t want to be like his mother. I don’t want to make her choices anymore—don’t want to make the choices I’ve been making anymore.

  Be the middle ground.

  “Run,” I tell her coldly.

  But she doesn’t have time to move. A set of claws, so black it hurts to look at them, punches through the open-air windows. I dive away as half of my loft—the half where the elevator tunnel was, the half where the mayor was standing—caves in. She’s instantly buried.

  I curse as I army-crawl beneath the claws. There goes my exit. There’s no other way out, not from here. I’d have to get to the tunnels that lead out of the cavern below, have to get down the stairs past the Being that’s now using my loft as target practice.

  The claws retract, dropping heavily downward, tearing a chunk—and the staircase landing—out of the floor and wall.

  And just like that, I’m trapped.

  The bulb overhead flickers again. If the loft takes another attack like that it’ll kill the generator and I’ll be stuck in the dark, in a cave-in, with a Being. I don’t know which death would be worse: being suffocated, being torn apart by fear incarnate, or falling to my death through the darkness below.

  No. That’s not true—I do know which is worse. I knew it the moment I first saw those black veins crawling across my hand. The moment I realized that fear would, in the end, be the thing that finally got the better of me.

  The creature roars. I drop the gun and cover my ears, unable to bear the sound. Thud. The whole loft, the whole cavern itself, shudders. I hear rocks hitting the ground far below. The Being is too big for the cavern. It’s trying to punch its way through to the surface. I can stay here and be buried, opt for the less awful death, or … I can do something very stupid that might just get me out.

  I crawl to the edge of the hole the Being clawed into the floor of my loft. I squint into the darkness. A massive wall of scales and feathers shifts into view, only about ten feet away. Thud—it crashes into the roof of the cavern again. Everything shakes, harder this time. Several of the support beams that crisscross the ceiling over my head shriek and snap.

  I stand. I cross to the back wall and crouch down like a sprinter at the starting line. My heart is thumping fast, a steady, buzzing rush of blood through my veins. I take a deep breath. I let it out. I launch myself forward.

  Five steps to the ledge. Three. One. The wall of shadow-dark feathers and scales shifts in front of me as the monster slams itself into the ceiling again.

  I’m at the ledge. I push off it. For a moment I’m hanging, suspended, over nothingness.

  And then I crash into the Being. The shock of it jars my whole body, and my teeth snap together. Blood fills my mouth. I spit it out, grabbing for anything that’ll hold as I slide down the creature’s huge shoulder. Smooth scales ripple under my fingers, cool and hard like volcanic glass, same as the scorpion. The sting in my palm burns in resonance. The dim lightbulb at my back flickers off again and this time it doesn’t come back on. I’m falling blindly, scrabbling at a monster, trying to save myself.

  My hands close on something that holds. Feathers—massive ones, quills so big I can barely wrap my hands around them. The barbs are stiff and sharp, slicing at my fingers, but I hold on tight anyway. This Being is going to the surface, and it’s taking me with it.

  Thud. A shock vibrates across the Being’s body, nearly shaking me off again. The ceiling of the cavern finally gives. There’s a horrific rending noise and then dozens of feet of rock and earth crash down all around us. I duck my head to protect myself as the Being explodes upward, but I still get nailed in the skull with what feels like a boulder the size of my fist. The world flashes strangely bright and my grip on the feathers starts to relax. Everything feels murky and slow. I try to force myself back to alertness through sheer willpower.

  Water tumbles over me—the standing water from the hurricane, gushing downward into the crater the Being has just punched through the ceiling. My loft is no longer secure in the slightest, I think with a wild laugh. The monster’s front talons are latched on to the edge of the hole and it’s heaving itself upward. I’m hanging off its shoulder.

  The Being leaps up onto the ground. I’m a hundred feet in the air, my grip loosening more by the second, the world a strange blend of light and shadow. When the creature’s wings crack open like thunder, I slide the last few feet down the feathers I was clutching—and fall.

  Sky. Being. Ground. They rotate impossibly slowly.

  The city is laid out at the feet of the monster. The neat rows of hundred-year-old banyan trees are snapped and splintered. The ration dispensary is already rubble, imploded by the tremors. The hurricane is screaming from not far away, the towering slate-gray eye wall looming just offshore, but here the standing water that stretches across the whole island looks almost peaceful, reflecting the yellow-gray of the sky. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, to fall into the sky.

  My pulse is a drunken stagger in my ears. Falling. I’m falling. I should be terrified. I am.

  My body twists in another rotation. The Being’s wings are cloaked in curling shadows, flaring impossibly wide, seeping over the sky—a spilled-ink tsunami. Fog burgeons out of the crater behind it, blooming into a mushroom cloud that towers up and out like it’s the end of the world. The monster snarls a challenge to the city. I tumble past its ducked head: delicate reptilian nostrils, teeth carved of night. Eyes a violent golden contrast to the black of its body. At least I won’t end my life in this thing’s maw.

  Another rotation. The ground is closer now. People are streaming out of the shelters like ants from a squashed hill. The water beneath them is a vast mirror, and I laugh at the irony.

  Then I stop laughing.

  I remember how, thirteen months ago, mirrors were the only thing that Mirage offered as an exit. Then we got rid of those and he started showing us the door through polished metal and reflective sunglasses. I remember wondering when the ocean itself would be too reflective for safety—when we would all be doomed.

  Another rotation. I’ve got fifty feet before I hit the ground. Shadows creep across my vision as I start to lose consciousness.

  I want
to close my eyes but don’t dare. “Mirage!” I shout, hoping he can hear me. Hoping that in the real world, I still have my Being-stung palm against the ship’s rainbow floor, that I can still communicate with him. “Use the water!” My words are slurred and sluggish. I’m not sure if he’d even be able to understand them.

  One last rotation. Thirty feet left. I’m aimed right at the street in front of City Hall. The water here is dammed up, maybe knee-deep. It’s not nearly enough to break my fall. But maybe, maybe, it could be enough to get me out.

  The darkness closes in on me. It muffles my hearing, muffles the wind in my ears, muffles the screams of the people below. When a swarm of batlike Beings erupt from a squat building two streets over, they blend into the shadows already in my head. It’s not until I spot a giant onyx sea serpent snaking through the debris of the old train station that it registers:

  The plan worked. Mirrors, and Beings, are everywhere. And it won’t matter at all, not to me, unless …

  There! A vast rainbow sheen starts at one end of the island and ripples its way toward the city center. It swallows the fleeing people as it goes, body after body blinking out of existence. They’ll wake up safe on the ship. Will I?

  I’m racing against my death to the colorful shimmer of the exit. It’s five feet away. So is the ground. But in the end, it’s the shadows creeping across my vision that win the race.

  I blink into unconsciousness half a second before I hit the ground.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  WHEN I WAKE UP, THE WORLD IS MADE OF STARS. They roll out, horizon to horizon, shining gently like there’s never been such a thing as a storm. I want to fall into them forever.

  “They’re still wrong,” says a voice to my right.

  I turn. It’s Elliott. He’s sitting next to me, knees drawn up to his chest, head tipped back against an iron bar. I follow the line of metal upward; about twenty feet above his head, it arrows inward and meets with other bars to support a big, blinking red light above us. It looks faintly familiar but I can’t quite identify why. My thought processes are slow and muddy, and my head aches as if someone’s taken a hammer to it.

  I look down. We’re sitting on a metal platform. I lean out to look over its edge—we’re suspended above a pine forest.

  Radio tower. The term for this structure finally comes to me, along with an image: a day of sunshine and honey, “Stand by Me” in the background, my brother’s sideways smile. The radio tower we drove past. The promise to climb it when Ty returned.

  Another image: the same tower viewed from above, the top of it scarred and twisted, snapped off like a toothpick.

  I squint, trying to make my fuzzy brain work right. They’re still wrong, Elliott said a second ago, when I was looking at the stars. “We’re still … in the dream?” I finally manage, wondering why the radio tower is suddenly intact again, whether Elliott has fixed it with his thoughts for some reason. Although I guess I should be wondering how we got from the island—we were on the island, weren’t we?—back to here in the first place.

  Elliott’s gaze stays on the sky. “Not exactly.”

  “I was falling,” I remember.

  The faintest trace of a humorless smile crosses Elliott’s face. “Me too.”

  I stand up. I grab on to the iron bar and lean out, scanning the forest below us. There’s no fog anywhere. This isn’t right. I remember falling from the Being, I remember the rainbow sheen in the water. I should be either dead or on Mirage now. Not here. How could I have gotten here?

  Unless … I fell unconscious right before I hit the mirror-exit. Which has to mean that instead of waking up—because the damage that knocked out my dream self would also have happened to my real body on Mirage—I was inserted safely right back into the shared dream. Except this can’t be the shared dream, because there’s no fog and no hurricane.

  Not exactly, Elliott said a second ago.

  “Where are we?” I demand, staring down at him.

  He’s still not looking at me. “A mental construct,” he says. “I think it’s yours. I’ve been here about an hour, but from what I can tell, you’ve been here a little longer than that.”

  There’s something off about his voice. It’s too calm. He always sounds too calm when he’s trying to hide something—fear, anger, vulnerability.

  Pain.

  I was falling.

  Me too.

  Something tight and fearful settles over me. I crouch down. Elliott’s knees are still pulled up, his arms wrapped tightly around them. His shirt is dark gray, too dark to see any stains. I touch the spot between his shoulder and his heart. My fingers come back slick with red.

  My stomach turns. “Elliott,” I say helplessly.

  “It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he says. “I’m pretty sure that’s a bad sign. Though it has been a while since I earned my first aid badge.”

  He shrugs, but only with his right shoulder. The way he’s leaning against the iron bar starts to look less like casual stargazing and more like he’s propping himself up because he doesn’t have the strength to sit otherwise.

  “But you got out,” I protest. “I got you out.”

  He shifts his head in something that’s almost a nod—another motion made small, made painful. “I did get out,” he confirms. “Nice trick with the mirror, by the way.”

  “Elliott,” I say again. The word is strained. He keeps dodging the obvious questions, keeps trying to distract me. Or himself.

  He sighs: one last delay tactic. Then, finally, he looks at me. “I managed to stay conscious on Mirage for about an hour,” he says. His eyes are tight with the pain he claimed wasn’t there. “During which time I dragged you about halfway to the escape pods. Some of the other people who woke up tried to help me at first, but then Mirage started crashing, and it was everyone for themselves. Then I fell unconscious. From blood loss, probably. As soon as I passed out I was sitting up here on this tower with your body lying next to me. It’s been an hour since then.”

  I stare at him. “You … tried to drag me to the escape pods?” I say at last.

  He’s been slowly bleeding to death for two hours. He was conscious for half that time—time that he’d spent trying to get me to safety. If he’d left me behind, could he have made it to the pods, made it to Earth? Made it to medical help quickly enough to save his life?

  All this time I’ve been lying to him, thinking I needed to persuade him to help me save everyone. But he wouldn’t have needed any persuading, would he? Not if he spent his last moments trying to save me.

  I look down at my fingers, which are shining black in the moonlight. I want to wipe the blood off. I don’t deserve to wipe the blood off.

  “I lied to you,” I tell him.

  The night swallows the words. He inhales again and then, carefully, like it hurts him—because of course it hurts him—exhales.

  Then he says: “I know that, you absolute jackass.”

  I blink. “What?”

  He turns his head and stares me down. “I know people who die in the dream don’t just wake up fine on Mirage. I knew it wasn’t true about two seconds after I thought of it, because I realized it doesn’t make any sense. And also, because I remembered that the very first time we woke up on Mirage, I heard you screaming.”

  The memory flashes through my mind: waking up on the rainbow floor, my Being sting sending fire and brimstone through my veins—and me, howling like I was being burned alive.

  “You were far away, but I knew it was you,” Elliott says. “I came running. I could just barely see you ahead when I somehow got knocked back out and woke up in the dream again. I’m guessing that was your doing, right?”

  Numbly, I nod.

  He turns his gaze to the stars again. “I didn’t put things together until you fed me that bullshit about how maybe Braedan wasn’t really dead. I have to give you a little kudos—you at least looked guilty when you said it. That might’ve given me a clue even if I hadn’t remembered you screaming on Mirage and r
ealized it meant you still had the Being sting even there. Which means, I suppose, that we’re both dying now.”

  I sit down at his back, bracing myself on the opposite side of the metal beam. He’s only a few inches away but from here I could pretend I was alone, if I wanted to.

  I wish I wanted to. It would hurt less.

  “You were right,” I tell him. “About me being all or nothing. I wanted to see Ty again so bad. I would give anything.” Something catches in my voice and I stop, close my eyes. I don’t want to look at the radio tower anymore. Don’t want to think about what this place means to me. But, of course, now I can’t stop thinking about it. I open my eyes. “You said this is my dream, right? Not the shared dream.”

  “That’s my best guess.”

  It makes sense. I must’ve been reinserted back into the shared dream as soon as I initially fell unconscious, and then when all the islanders were gone or dead and I was dreaming alone, my mind built my own personal mental construct. Just like the construct of my old house, the one with memories playing in its windows.

  “This radio tower,” I say. “Ty promised the two of us would climb it together when he got back from his year of studying abroad.”

  Elliott waits.

  After a second, I sigh. “I’m sorry I lied to you. I just … I needed you to believe me. I needed you to think you had to help me wake everyone up. That it was Mirage forcing us to do it. That maybe there might be a chance Braedan was still alive, that you could see him the next time you woke up in the real world. I knew from how strongly I felt about finding Ty that it would work—that you would help me, if it was for Braedan’s sake.”

  “I would have helped you anyway,” Elliott says, “if you had just asked.”