Toxic Heart (29 page)

I sense someone behind me. It’s the first guard, stumbling to his feet and clicking off the safety of his pistol.

He shoots. A bullet whizzes past my head, scraping the skin off my temple.

I spin in the air, letting the pole guide me. Then I smack the gun out of the guard’s hand. It clatters to the ground.

He looks at me with a frightened expression.

I tighten my grip on the pole, tilting my left hand up and my right hand down. The pole shifts diagonally in the air.

I step forward and, with one clean motion, drive the end of the pole into the guard’s chin.

His head snaps back and he flies against the wall, hitting it with a smack and crumpling to the floor like an abandoned puppet.

I spin again and face my brother, who is standing still. Shocked.

“Where did you learn to fight like that?” he asks.

I shrug. “Around.” I take a step forward.

“Come on now, Aria,” Kyle says, holding up his hands. Next to him, Turk is breathing heavily, the cotton tie still secured around his mouth. His arms are lumpy with congealed quicksilver.

“It’s me. Your brother.” Kyle takes a step backward. “Put that down. You’re not going to hurt me.” He gives me a nervous smile.

I don’t respond with words.

Instead, I raise the pole and whack him into unconsciousness.

Then I drop the IV stand and rush over to Turk. I remove the cloth from around his mouth, staring down at his cuffs. “Turk? Can you hear me? Everything is going to be all right.” I scan the room for a key.

“Aria,” Turk whispers. “Good job.”

“Keep breathing,” I say frantically. “Don’t you dare stop breathing! I’m going to get you out of here.”

One of the guards is on the floor right next to me. Still handcuffed, I reach down and unhook the key ring from his belt, then try the keys on the cuffs. The second one fits, and I rip the handcuffs from Turk’s wrists. I don’t risk taking the time to undo my own.

“Come on,” I say, moving in front of him. Nearly half of his body is silver, and his face looks still—immobilized. “What should I do?” I say, trembling.

Only Turk’s eyes move. “Cut me,” he manages to say. “Open me up.”

“What do you mean?”

But then his eyelids close. His face grows more and more silver by the second, and bubbles begin to form underneath the skin on his neck and shoulders.

I stare down at the set of keys that I’m holding.
Open me up
. Could he mean …?

There’s no time to think. Only to act.

I drag the sharp end of one of the keys down Turk’s arm, starting from just under his shoulder all the way to his elbow, digging deep into the flesh until his skin tears open. I expect him to start bleeding, but it’s not blood that pours out of him.

It’s liquid mercury.

The silvery goop leaks out of him, trickling down his arms and dripping onto the floor, forming a large quicksilver puddle.

Carefully, I drag the same key across Turk’s other arm, making another long wound. He groans.

Then I wait.

Sure enough, the silvery sheen on his skin begins to dissipate as the poison flushes out of his body. The pools of quicksilver on the floor grow larger and larger. His eyelids flicker open, and I watch as the color returns to his face and his skin begins to soften back to its normal state.

“Turk? Can you hear me?”

“Aria,” he says, flexing his fingertips. “Thank you.”

A few minutes pass and the silver leaking out of his wounds turns red with blood. Weakly, Turk stands up and presses his fingertip to one of the jagged cuts. It glows green, and he runs it along the incision, healing his own wound with his energy. He repeats this on the other arm. There are still dozens of cuts all over him that he’s too weak to heal.

His shirt is soaked with quicksilver and his own expelled energy. He pulls it over his head. “Come on,” Turk says, motioning to Kyle and the guards, who are sprawled across the floor. “We’ve gotta get out of here before they wake up.”

Glancing down, Turk sees that I’m still cuffed—he presses a fingertip to the metal links that join my hands; there’s a sizzling sound as the metal liquefies and my hands break apart. The silver cuffs dangle on my wrists like bracelets.

Turk grabs my hand and presses the touchpad on the wall. The door slides open to reveal a long, dark corridor. “Follow me.”

I pick up the cooler with the heart inside, close it, and together, Turk and I leave the room.

We tread softly around corners and past closed doors, on the lookout for more of Kyle’s men. Eventually, we reach a large door at the end of a hallway. I press the touchpad next to it, and it opens onto a silvery bridge.

Aside from when Thomas kidnapped me, it’s the first time I’ve been back in the Aeries for over a month. The hot air hits us as we cross the bridge, keeping our eyes out for the triangular POD elevator that will take us down to the Depths. It’s night now, and the sky is black save for white lights from the surrounding buildings, the skyscrapers illuminated like majestic metal beasts.

I feel like an outcast, a stranger in the place where I grew up. Turk and I rush along the network of bridges that connects the skyscrapers, allowing people to travel to and from their homes and school or work. From the looks of it, there has been no real damage in this area: the skyscrapers are magnificent, offering no hint of the wreckage that lies below. The only real signs of change are the emptied mystic spires, no longer pulsing and glowing with stored mystic energy.

Cables and wires glisten in the night, and we run as fast as our legs can carry us. In the distance, I can see the white glow of a POD. We’re safe.

“Hurry,” Turk says. “Not too long now.”

We’re over one bridge, then another.

And then, a few yards away, I see a line of soldiers, the Rose insignia gleaming against their black uniforms, their guns pointed.

At us.

My heart begins to race. “How did they—”

Turk pulls us to a stop as a figure appears, staggering toward us from behind, followed by another gang of soldiers.

“What do we do?” I whisper to Turk, my breath short.

“You’ve got nowhere to go!” someone shouts behind us.

Kyle.

I glance back at my older brother. He’s limping toward us, a silver pistol in his hand. Behind him, soldiers are marching steadily. Up ahead, more soldiers have created a wall that neither Turk nor I will be able to break.

I look to the side. The fragile railings of the bridge—metal beams that seem to float in midair—would be easy enough to jump over, but then what?

We would fall, swiftly and desperately, into the Depths.

For a second, I see something shimmering in the air nearby. Something that looks an awful lot like a face.

Flanked by his soldiers, Kyle approaches. “This is the end of the road, Aria.”

I stare again at the dark blue sky.

Inhale deeply.

“Trust me.” I squeeze Turk’s hand. “Just follow me, okay?”

“What?” he says. “Aria, what are you—”

Making sure the cooler is still securely tucked under my arm, I take a running start straight for the railing of the bridge.

“Aria, no!” my brother screams.

I jump.

The breath is sucked out of me as I tumble toward the dirty canals hundreds of stories below.

To my death.

It’s funny how your mind empties when you’re about to die.

Gone is all my anger toward Hunter, my disappointment that our relationship didn’t work out. All I’m left with are slivers of memories: falling in love, stolen kisses, the time he made a dachshund appear in the sky and wag its tail. Laughter.

Gone is my hatred for my parents. I don’t think about being a prisoner in my own home, unwillingly depleted of my memories to serve their political cause. I think of being a little girl, holding my father’s hand. I remember when I was sick as a child and my mother would watch over me, dabbing my forehead with a wet cloth and waiting for my fever to go down.

I think of Kyle when he was younger and sweeter, and of the friends I am lucky enough to have, like Kiki and Bennie and now Ryah and Jarek, and maybe even Landon and Shannon. I think of Davida, who I miss seeing each morning and each night, who protected and took care of me unconditionally until she drew her last breath.

And Turk. I see him differently now: the tattooed boy with the silver motorcycle turned out to be quite wonderful.

The silver motorcycle …

There it is. A flash of chrome, a familiar wheel. Was I right?

The wind wraps itself around me as I fall into black nothingness, sucking the air out of my lungs as I drop farther and farther toward the Depths—

Until a flash of green pierces the air like lightning.

Rays of mystic energy shoot out underneath me, stretching across the sky like pulled taffy. I count ten of the long green beams of light and suddenly I’m no longer falling but lying flat across the rays as they support me, buoying me in midair, the cooler with the heart firmly in my grip.

Saved.

The green energy pulses, and I glance to the side.

There’s Ryah, a look of intense concentration on her face. Her arms are extended, mystic rays shooting from her fingertips, keeping me afloat. Each one is as thick as my wrist, and double my height in length.

She shifts one of her hands, turning her fingers slightly inward, and five of the rays sweep underneath the others, weaving together like threads on a loom until I am floating on a secure net of light.

“Got her,” Ryah says triumphantly.

But who is she talking to?

Ryah looks like she’s hanging from an invisible string bobbing in midair. I squint and see bits of silver against the black-blue sky. It’s hard to see through the wisps of smog scattered across the night like cotton candy, but then I see another pair of eyes.

“Ryah? How are you—”

“Be quiet, Aria,” whispers a masculine voice. “Or you’ll give us away.”

Jarek.

Jarek is riding Turk’s motorcycle.

He’s hovering in the sky, halfway between the Aeries and the Depths, camouflaging himself to blend into the dark night. Now that I know what I’m looking for, I can make out his arms gripping the handlebars, his jaw clenched, his eyes focused. Ryah is seated beside him in a chrome sidecar I’ve never seen before.

Dozens of voices are screaming from the bridge above, and I watch as a figure hurls itself toward us. They must be wondering where the mystic energy is coming from.

“I don’t know much longer I can hold this,” says the almost-invisible Jarek. “I’ve never camouflaged anything this big.”

“Let’s hope this is Turk,” Ryah says, staring up at the figure, who is growing larger by the second. “Otherwise, we’ve got a very unwelcome visitor.”

And then there’s Turk, bouncing onto the grid of light beside me.

He’s staring at me with wild eyes. “How did you know they were here? That Ryah would catch you?”

I reach out and touch his arm. “I took a chance.”

Turk smiles. He still looks weak from the quicksilver, but at least he’s alive.

We’re both alive.

“Come on, guys,” Ryah says. “Before those soldiers jump down here as well.”

She raises her arms in the air as if she’s holding a large serving platter. The rays of energy beneath us flatten out and begin to incline.

All of a sudden, I can feel myself falling forward; the energy rays are angled so that we can slide down them, onto the bike. Turk plops into the sidecar with Ryah, and I slip behind Jarek, grabbing his sides for support.

“Here,” I say, reaching around him and placing the cooler between his thighs. “Don’t lose that. It’s important.”

“Gotcha.” Jarek grunts, then twists back one of the handlebars. The bike roars forward, blasting green fuel out of its exhaust pipe and into the sky.

Ryah curls her fingertips into her hands and the green rays disappear. “You guys are heavy,” she says.

Just then, a soldier falls past us. He must have jumped off the bridge after Turk. His arms and legs flail as he realizes the web of light we fell onto has disappeared.

His screams echo into the night.