The Fifty-Seven Lives of Alex Wayfare (40 page)

Before I left, I grabbed the screwdriver and hammer to use when I hot-wired Gesh's car. Then I spun the scissors around my finger like it was Shooter's pistol. I wasn't going back out into the hall without some sort of weapon in my hands. Not that a pair of scissors would do much good if Gesh really did have a gun, but it made me feel safer. Perception is everything.

I stepped out into the hall, looked both ways, and took a single step. The moment my foot met the floor, I heard the unmistakable clack! of a gunshot suppressed by a silencer. It came from behind Gesh's office door. Then I heard what sounded like a massive body slump to the floor.

Holy crap. Gesh did kill Argus.

I bolted down and around the corner, and skidded to a stop in front of the first set of double doors.

“Nummer Firrrrrrre,” I heard Gesh call out. His voice tumbled and rolled through the halls. His office door closed behind him. “Hvor errrrr duuuuu?” Where arrrrre youuuuu?

I swiped my card, saw the green light flash, heard the beep, and darted through. By the time I got to the next set of doors, I heard Gesh open the set behind me. I had to move faster.

I raced through the hallways, but Gesh didn't run after me. I could hear his Oxford dress shoes clomping casually down the hall. He was taking his time. He wasn't worried about losing us.

By the time I skidded around the last corner and saw Levi and Blue, I heard Gesh's voice echo after me. “Kommer ud, kommer ud, uanset hvor du er.” Come out, come out, wherever you are.

Levi's eyes were about to bug out of his head. “Travlt!” he shouted. Hurry!

“Help me up!”

I tossed him the key card, the screwdriver, and the hammer. He hoisted me up to the drop ceiling by the door, my foot in his hands, the scissors pressed between my lips. I pushed the ceiling tile aside. I seized hold of a plumbing pipe and pulled myself up higher, Levi still steadying me by my foot. All I needed was that one dark gray wire. That one beautiful, lovely wire that would save our skins.

There were three wires coming up from the emergency exit door. The thick white one had to be the swipe card wire. The red was for the alarm. And the gray.

The gray was my power.

I pulled the scissors from my mouth with one hand. I reached my arm out and snipped the closest wire, the red one, shutting off power to the alarm. Now when Levi opened the door, it wouldn't go off and alert the security guards.

“Swipe your card,” I said.

He let go of my foot. My arm slipped from the pipe and I fell a few inches before I grabbed hold with my other hand, clinging for dear life, my feet dangling in midair.

Levi swiped his card through the reader. The light. The beep. He shoved Blue and his wheelchair through the doors, then he held it open with one hand. “Travlt!”

I struggled to pull myself back up onto the pipe. I reached out for the gray wire. My entire body shook as I tried to hold steady. Sweat slid into my eyes.

“Ah.” Gesh's Oxfords slid to a halt at the end of the hall. “Der er du.” There you are.

“Ivy!” Levi shouted.

I reached as far as I could. I strained. Stretched my arm muscles to the brink. The tips of the scissor blades brushed the wire. Hot sweat blurred my vision.

“Farvel, Nummer Fire.” Goodbye, Number Four.

In the time it took him to raise his gun, I wriggled the tips of the scissor blades around that wire and clamped down hard. It sliced through with a satisfying chunk.

I let go of the pipe.

Gesh pulled the trigger.

CHAPTER 33

 

 

I dropped to the balls of my feet, crouching down to the floor to absorb the shock. The bullet missed as I fell – I don't know by how much – and bit right through the glass of one of the doors, leaving a perfect hole. Spiderweb cracks spread out from its center.

I dove for Levi.

Clack!

Another shot. This time through the open doors, but I didn't see where it hit. I was too busy trying to squeeze through and shove them shut behind me.

Gesh sprang for the doors and slammed his body into them. He snatched the back of my shirt and yanked me back. Levi let out a feral yell as he rammed the doors closed with his shoulder. They locked. I hurtled myself forward but my smock was still caught between the doors.

Gesh took a step back and aimed at me through the glass. I ducked, sawing through the fabric of my shirt with the scissors. Another bullet lodged itself in the steel frame right above my head.

Levi grabbed the fabric in his hands and, with another yell, he ripped it in two, freeing me.

We ran.

We pushed Blue's wheelchair up the steep slope, panting, sweating, sprinting for our lives. I glanced over my shoulder to see Gesh slam his shoulder into the door again, and again, unable to open it.

It worked. I'd cut him off at the knees.

But Gesh wasn't done yet. He took his stance and fired his last two bullets through the glass. One hit the floor at my feet and ricocheted, the other must have gone astray.

At the top of the slope, we burst through another door and into a dark room. When Levi hit the light switch, a single bulb flickered on above us, illuminating what looked like a parking garage built for a single car in dingy, orange light. A sleek, black Cadillac with chrome rims and heavily tinted windows rested in the sole parking spot. Luckily, it was unlocked. I dove into the driver's seat with the screwdriver and hammer while Levi helped Blue into the back seat.

The thing about hot-wiring an older car? There doesn't have to be any hot-wiring involved. If you know where to hit the ignition cap, it'll pop right off. Then you can jam a screwdriver down between the ignition housing and the steering column, breaking enough pieces so the ignition turns, bypassing a key.

Easy peasy, popcorn cheesy.

I stuck the tip of the screwdriver into the side of the ignition cap and gave it a few good whacks with the hammer. I expected it to take longer than it did, but after a few hits, it broke through and the cap shot over into the passenger seat. I jammed the screwdriver in place, then wailed on it with the hammer. Within thirty seconds, the ignition was mangled enough to turn. The car rumbled to life.

“Ha!” I said, smacking the steering wheel with my hands.

“Um, we have a problem,” Levi said from the backseat.

“What is it?”

“Tre's been shot.”

I whipped around. Levi lifted blood-covered hands from Blue's side. Blue was still unconscious from his anesthesia, his head lolled back against the headrest. His mouth hung open.

Oh my God. “How bad is it?”

“Bad.”

“Can't you do something? Aren't you a medical apprentice?”

“I…” Levi hesitated at first, but it only took a moment for him to shake off the shock and jump into action. “OK. Hand me the scissors and screwdriver. Then drive. Whatever you do, don't stop driving. Get us as far from here as you can.”

I handed over the scissors and screwdriver, closed my door, and buckled myself in. I hit a button on the visor and the dingy garage door in front of us came to life, bathing us in afternoon light. The thunderstorm that had raged earlier was over.

I eased the car out into an overgrown gravel parking lot at the edge of a train yard, splashing through deep potholes and puddles. All the high-rise buildings of DC loomed behind us.

Levi sliced open Blue's medical gown and pulled it off of him. All I saw in the rearview mirror was Blue's naked, frail body coated in red.

Everywhere, red.

Levi balled the medical gown in his fist and pressed it to Blue's side. I slammed on the gas and tore through the parking lot, kicking up mud and gravel, searching for a way out of the lot.

“How long does he have?” I said.

“I don't know. He's bleeding like mad. I need bandages. I need my tools.”

“Where's the nearest hospital?”

“How should I know? I've never been outside HQ.”

“What? You've never been outside?” I guess that explained why all three of us were pasty white. I came to a chain link fence and a gate with razor wire coiling along the top. The gate slid open as we approached, activated by a motion detector.

“I was born at HQ,” said Levi. “We all were. We're not allowed to leave. And we can't go to the hospital or the police because we don't exist. We're not in their records. We don't have social security numbers. You want to spend the next few months explaining that to the US government?”

Once we were through the gate, I slammed the gas again and shot down a back alley toward an open road up ahead. “Maybe we should go to the police. What if that's the thing that brings Gesh down? An exposé on all the experiments he's done on two kids down in his labs?”

“Yeah, and that wouldn't make an impact on the future at all.”

I squeezed the steering wheel in my hands. Levi was right, but I didn't appreciate his snide tone.

Was this even part of the Variant timeline Porter wanted me to play out? Blue getting shot? Dying in the back of a Cadillac? Bleeding to death, just like in Chicago? Did Porter know all this was going to happen? He said I couldn't mess the Variant up. But what if he was wrong?

“You need to get me to a deserted area,” said Levi. “I need to lay him out flat if I'm going to try to get the bullet out.”

“The bullet's still inside?”

“Gah, he just bled through the gown.” Levi pulled off his T-shirt and pressed it to the wound, tossing the blood-soaked medical gown to the floorboards. The car was already full of the acrid, rusty smell of blood. I could taste it on the back of my tongue. The air was tinged pink with it.

As I sped through an industrial-looking part of DC, past power plants and factories, I heard Levi swear. I glanced at the rearview mirror and saw Blue close his mouth and wince. He let out a sluggish groan.

He was waking up.

Waking up to a bullet wound. To his body covered in blood.

All my fault.

I turned into the entrance to what I thought was a park, but I soon realized it was a cemetery. One of those beautiful, rolling hill cemeteries with century old shade trees. How morbid was that? Leading Blue to a cemetery while he bled to death? But it was the best I could do. I wound my way through the grassy knolls and tree-lined roads, until I found a secluded place to pull off. It was a small gravel parking spot behind a utility building, somewhat shielded from view.

I threw the car into park and scrambled out to give Levi a hand. We stretched Blue out on his back across the back seat, but it was too tight for Levi to work. We lifted him up and carried him into the woods. Naked and bleeding. Arms hanging limp. His blood leaving a trail. I didn't even want to think about what might have happened if someone saw us.

We rested him on the ground under the trees, and I cradled his head in my lap, in my arms. “I'm so sorry,” I said to him, my forehead pressed to his. I said it over and over, but no matter how many times I said it, it wouldn't be enough. How much more pain would I cause for him? If he remembered me at all, he probably wished he'd never met me.

Levi used the scissors and screwdriver to try to retrieve the bullet. He swore under his breath a hundred times. It was too unsanitary. The tools were worthless. The bullet was too deep. There was dirt in the wound. Every time he spoke, he shot my hopes one-by-one like the dart and balloon game at the fair.

Finally he sat back on his heels and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his bloody hand. “I can't do it.”

The last dart punctured the last balloon.

“No,” I said, looking up at him. “You have to keep trying.”

“I can't do it,” he shouted at me, making me jump. He clutched the scissors and screwdriver in his hands so hard his knuckles turned white. Then he let out a defeated roar and chucked them into the woods. He stood up and staggered back to the car, his head in his hands.

I watched him go, my mouth hanging open. It wasn't until then that I realized it wasn't only Blue's death Levi was angry about. It was mine. Ivy's.

Your souls are universally linked across time. When you die, he dies. When he is reborn, you are reborn. He is your soul mate in the very literal sense of the word.

Blue wasn't the only one Levi wasn't able to save.

I wanted to go to Levi, explain that it wasn't his fault. It was mine. But Blue rolled his head to the side and groaned.

“Blue?” I cupped his face in my hands. He wasn't as cold as he was in the recovery room. Was that because he was waking up? Or was it because he had a fever from the bullet? “It's me. I'm here. Can you hear me?”

He winced and groaned again, this one even more pitiful than the one before. He was getting weaker. He was going to die in my arms.

I bent down and pressed my lips to his forehead. I tasted my own tears. “I'm so sorry. Oh, God, I'm so, so sorry.”

I felt his eyelashes flutter on my chin. I jerked my head up to see his eyes half open. Groggy and heavy, but open. He stared at my face for a while, then his eyes opened all the way. He lifted his arm and cupped the back of my shaved head in his hand.

“Hey, Sousa.” He actually managed a small, weak smile. “You're bald this time.” He glanced down at his body. “And I'm naked.”

I let out a laugh, choked with tears. “You remember me?”

His body shuddered with a cough, but his smile widened. “You kidding? You're the one thing I can't forget.” He reached his other hand up to touch my face, but saw it was coated in blood. “Oh.” He turned it from front to back. “Is this when I die?”