Rogue (26 page)

But Ferbus’s left hand was gone.

Or mostly gone. He stared at the bloody shards at the end of his wrist, his face blank and confused. “I tried to block the hole,” he said in an amused voice.

“He’s in shock,” Uncle Mort said to the others, snapping into crisis mode. He took off his belt, wrapped it around Ferbus’s forearm just below his elbow, and pulled it tight.

Ferbus’s breathing was getting heavier the more he stared at what was left of his hand, so Lex delicately hugged him around the shoulders. He flinched at her touch, then stared into her eyes, insistent. “I tried to block the hole.”

“And probably saved us all,” she said, swallowing. “Good job, Ferb. You win an extra life.”

He puffed out a breath of air, which Lex guessed was a sort of laugh. Appropriate, really. This entire situation was downright hilarious.

“Are we done yet?” Pip asked.

Lex realized with a start that they’d been inside the new room for at least thirty seconds, yet nothing had tried to kill them. “We’re not done,” Uncle Mort said, looking around. “This is the last room, I think.”

Indeed, the floor was no longer sloped; it had leveled out into a perfectly circular room about a hundred feet in diameter. The floor was covered in a checkered pattern, with alternating dark and light steel square panels, as if it were one big chessboard. The Croakers stood on a raised white platform against the wall, and the target lay a few feet in front of them.

A large pole in the center stretched all the way up to the ceiling, ending in a glow of buzzing fluorescent lights. “Elevator shaft,” Uncle Mort said, pointing at it. “If we can get inside that, it’s a straight shot up to the president’s office.”

“Okay,” said Lex, starting to walk forward toward the target. “Then all we have to do is—”

“Wait.” Uncle Mort threw his arm out in front of her. “Don’t move. There’s got to be more to this.”

They waited for a whole minute, but nothing happened. The fake target lay still in front of them. Nothing else in the room moved, either. The only sounds were the hum of fluorescent lights and the drops of Ferb drminuus’s blood hitting the platform.

Lex stared at the pool of dark red forming on the polished white surface, Ferbus swaying beside it, and made a decision. “No,” she said. “We don’t have time.”

Ignoring Uncle Mort’s glower of disapproval, she rushed forward and pushed her fingers into the target’s cheek.

The lights went out.

Mechanical noise filled the room, the sounds of things moving—robotic things, some kind of machinery. A liquid splashing, too. The crew stayed frozen on the platform, waiting.

After ten seconds the lights came back on. Six new targets lay scattered on different squares throughout the space, but most of the other squares had disappeared, leaving gaping black holes in their wake.

“It’s a multiple,” Uncle Mort said, taking stock of the numerous targets. “One for each of us.” He peered down into one of the holes left by the absent panels. “Elixir,” he said, frowning. “Two, maybe three feet deep.”

“That’s not so bad!” said Pip.

“With all the cuts and scrapes we have?” All of them were bleeding from one spot or another, some more than others. “It’d go straight into our bloodstream. We’d die within seconds. It’s disorienting enough as it is airborne, in large concentrations like this.” He looked up. “We’re not going to last very long in here.”

Yet their scythes still vibrated in their hands, insisting that they try.

Each of them landed on a different square in the room, little islands in the sea of Elixir. In every case, however, their targets sat a couple of squares away, with nothing but Elixir below. They’d have to jump for them.

“Shitballs,” Lex said.

Pip was the first to leap, ever eager at the chance to flex those agile muscles of his. Bang quickly hopped to her target as well, followed by Uncle Mort. Ferbus still looked stoned, but he managed to rally enough to successfully fling himself over the gap. For a second Lex worried about Pandora, but the woman pounced across the panels like a grasshopper.

Lex, of course, was the only one who tended to crash through life without a hint of balance or grace. The one she should really be worried about was herself.

She swallowed. Her target was on a square platform to her left. A six-foot-wide gulf stretched between them, the Elixir sloshing calmly below. There was no way she’d be able to jump that far, especially without a running start.

“Come on, Lex!” Uncle Mort yelled. He was standing over his target, watching her. “We’re waiting on you!”

“Of course you are,” she said under her breath. She moved as far back on her square as she could go, lunged forward two steps, jumped—

And collapsed onto the target.

“Yes!” she yelled, pumping her fist into the air.

But her glee was short-lived. The lights went out again with a loud
click
. More mechanical noises, more whirring and splashing. Her scythe vibrated in her hand.

“More?” Pip cried, the desperation in his voice echoing everyone’s sentiments.

“Multiple means multiple,” Uncle Mort said. “Just keep going.”

***

Lex scythed and landed on a different platform, but she couldn’t tell where she was in relation to where she’d just been, or even where her new target was—because the lights hadn’t turned back on.

“What’s going on?” she shouted into the void. Others were yelling too. “Where are the lights?”

“I don’t know.” Uncle Mort sounded close to Lex, relatively speaking. “Just stay calm!”

But he didn’t sound calm at all. Carefully, Lex felt around the edges undthout a rof her island square, but just like last time, all the panels surrounding it had disappeared. She leaned as far forward as she dared, groping around with her scythe in front of her. Again she felt nothing. She’d have to jump, but in which direction?

And then it hit her.

“Uncle Mort, the Sparks!” she shouted. “See if they give off enough light!”

She heard him digging around in his bag. Seconds later, a faint glow popped out of the darkness. He held the bag wide open—she could see the little glass orbs within.

But the weak light that their whizzing embers threw off wasn’t enough. All Lex could see was the square he was standing on, and not much else—not even the target he was supposed to jump to.

Uncle Mort kept groping for a solution. “Um—” he said. “I could throw them to you . . .”

“Don’t bother,” Pandora said. “You can’t even see us.”

Her voice seemed to come from the floor. Or maybe the ceiling. Lex was becoming disoriented, the Elixir fumes working their way into her brain. They weren’t going to last much longer like this.

“Guys!” Pip yelled. “I’ve got it!” There arose a few sharp bursts of metal clanging, Pip’s voice getting higher as he spoke. “I ended up next to the elevator shaft. I can climb up and turn the lights back on!”

“How the hell do you know that’s going to work?” Uncle Mort shouted back.

“I don’t! But I’ve watched Bang mess around with wires lots of times. It’s worth a shot, right? Are there any other plans on the table?”

Silence provided that answer. “Well, no. But be careful.”

In addition to the clanging noises that Pip’s feet made against the metal of the shaft, Lex could make out some ragged breathing elsewhere in the room, along with a rapid foot tapping.

“Bang, he’ll be okay,” Lex said into her general direction. “Don’t worry.”

The tapping got faster.

A minute later Pip shouted down to them. He sounded miles away. “I made it!” A few more seconds of silence. Lex’s heart jumped as something lit up at the ceiling, then went dark again.

“Dammit, Pip,” Uncle Mort yelled, “don’t get yourself electrocuted!” Lex could see his face in the ambient flicker of the Sparks. He went into a fit of coughing, the Elixir getting to him too. “Get down!”

Pip’s voice came back fainter than it had been before. “It’s not working.”

“Then climb
down
,” Uncle Mort answered. “Carefully!”

Pip didn’t say anything. But there were no metallic thumping sounds either, no indication that he was following Uncle Mort’s instructions.

Lex was growing more and more panicked. She reached into her bag, hoping to find something that would help.
Dammit
, she thought, finding nothing.
Why the hell did I get rid of Cordy’s Spark? Cordy’s glowing, blindingly bright Spark?

“Guys?” Pip was calling down.

“What?” Uncle Mort shouted back.

“Good luck.”

Lex frowned. “Pip, what?”

She whipped her gaze at Uncle Mort, and even in the scant amount of Spark light she could see that he’d gone pale. “No,” he said quietly, then louder. “Pip,
don’t!
”

Lex didn’t know what was happening. She didn’t fully understand until Pip spoke one more time.

“Love you, Bang!” he yelled, a smile in his voice. “Keep going!”

Two noises followed. That of a very fast whooshing, then a loud, sickening thud.

One of the Sparks in Uncle Mort’s bag burst into light, illuminating the room. Lex
could see the square she was standing on, thtang thue target she was supposed to jump to, the alarmed faces—

And Pip, lying in a broken heap on one of the platforms.

The sound that came from Bang was inhuman. She crumpled to the floor, curled herself up into a ball, and rocked back and forth, wailing like a wounded animal.

Uncle Mort took an inordinate amount of time to come to his senses, even for him. “Come on,” he said, his voice gravel. He held up the blazing Spark so that it lit their paths. “Get to your targets.”

Somehow, they did. Somehow, they managed to land their jumps—two jumps, in Pandora’s case, since someone had to touch Pip’s target. Bang was the last one to go, flinging herself into space without seeming to care whether she landed. As soon as her finger graced her target, the lights came back on. The missing panels returned, forming a solid floor once again.

And the elevator door opened with a cheerful
ding
.

The whole way up, no one spoke. Uncle Mort’s face was hard. Pandora looked at the ceiling; Lex looked at the floor. Bang was curled up in the corner with her head between her knees, her body quaking every few seconds with silent sobs. Ferbus’s mangled hand dripped blood onto the floor,
drip, drip . 
.
 
.

drip . 
.
 
.

DING
.

The doors opened.

Lex, Uncle Mort, Ferbus, and Pandora walked out of the elevator, cautious, Uncle Mort jimmying a crowbar into the door to keep it open. Bang stayed where she was on the floor, not moving, still sobbing.

They stayed close to the all-glass elevator bank; there was an additional tube next to the one they’d exited, but its door was closed. They were in the center of another circular room, this one much smaller than the last—and far brighter. Its walls were one big window, sloping so tightly toward the ceiling that they formed a point. With nothing but glass above and 360 degrees around them, Lex could see across the Kansan plains for miles—through the cloudy gray Afterlife, of course.

They’d reached the very top, the apex of Necropolis.

And yet the place felt oddly familiar. Aside from the windows-as-walls, the room bore a striking resemblance to the Oval Office. A couple of sofas faced each other, a coffee table between them, and a large desk sat at the far end of the room. Unlike the desk in the Oval Office, however, this one was made not from wood, but from cut, polished stone, like a graveyard monument. Behind it sat an empty executive chair, and behind that, set directly into the glass, was a gigantic steel vault door.

“Dammit!” Knell shouted from behind them. The Croakers whipped around to find the woman stomping toward them, no longer the calm, poised leader they’d seen on television. Norwood was at her side, furious but wary. “What are you doing here?”

Uncle Mort put on an expression of mock confusion. “I thought you asked us to turn ourselves in,” he said. “Or was that a different president-turned-kidnapper?”

While Uncle Mort worked his classic irritation tactics, Lex scanned the room. She looked from the vault all the way up to the glass tip, then around the room once more . . . then realized with a crushing dread—

There were no dark places, no hidden closets. The room was far too bright and open.

Her parents weren’t there.

And as soon as she realized this, she remembered why their holding room had looked so familiar. The concrete walls, the dirty floor—it had to be the jail back in Croak, under the Bank. She’d been so convinced that President Knell had captured them, she hadn’t even considered that they might be somewhere elsd rhe Oval Oe, that Norwood could have done her dirty work for her. But Lex had spent days staring at that floor back when she was imprisoned. That’s where they were. There was no doubt in her mind.

Knell sidled over to her desk and pushed a hidden button. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, jutting out her chin. “I just gave my guards uppermost security clearance. They’ll be here any moment.”

Yes!
Lex thought.
Skyla!

“Fabulous,” said Uncle Mort, taking a seat on the sofa and throwing his legs up on the coffee table. They’d done exactly what they’d set out to do—clear a path for Skyla. “We’ll wait.”

Neither Knell nor Norwood knew what to do with this. They stood together behind the desk and watched the Croakers, waiting for the guards to arrive.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” Norwood said to them. “I told the president everything I know. How Lex and Zara worked together, Damning, terrorizing innocent people in cold blood all over the country. How you and your Juniors have repeatedly evaded capture and thwarted every opportunity to pay for your crimes. And as for why you’re here in Necropolis, well”—he produced the Wrong Book—“your old buddy Grotton filled in the rest.”

Right on cue, Grotton took form to Norwood’s right. It was so bright in the office, he’d been invisible up until then.

“Sorry, team,” Grotton told the Croakers. “Your secrets were too juicy. I couldn’t resist spilling.”