Ascending the Boneyard (16 page)

“We can't fail this,” someone says into the cluster.

I fully understand the imperative.

“If we let them destroy this,” Tenth Warriors whisper, “there are no second chances. Once it's gone, it's gone forever!”

The words ricochet against my ear along with a spray of frenzied saliva.

I throw a terrified glance over my shoulder, watch as Supershooter lunges for the bullhorn-toting suit, snags the device right out of the guy's twitchy hand, and comes straight at me. Before I can react, he shoves the bullhorn against my bony chest and says, “You wanna be part of this? Then say something, Einstein. And make it genius.”

The raid.

I'm in.

Not to mention terrified, as the roiling crowd tumbles reluctantly into silence.

I frantically scan the crowd for Haze as Supershooter shoves me forward, and when I spot him, he gives me a nervous thumbs-up. For the record, I think he'd make a much better spokesman than I would. He's much more articulate, for one thing, not to mention incognito. But it's not his game, and besides, right now all eyes and ears are on me. The silence is brain-splitting.

The brown suits position themselves at my back, close in as tight as they can without actually touching me. I let my gaze slide up the side of the fortress, then down again, until it settles dustlike over the top of the crowd. I have no idea what to say as I lift the bullhorn to my face and hit the switch.

“The sky will fall.”

My voice comes out the other end a hell of a lot stronger than it does going in. Not my words, I acknowledge. I'm stealing text messages someone sent to my phone. But still, my voice.

“And death will beat its wings against the ground.”

I drop my arm for a moment, watch as the crowd murmurs and nods.

“The world beneath will weep blood.”

The murmurs turn into loud whispers, and I feel my energy rising with theirs.

“And the known . . . will cease to exist.”

Those last words come from nowhere, just roll out of my mouth and into the crowd. The mob starts yelling and cheering and pumping their fists into the air, and suddenly a helicopter appears overhead with letters painted on the underbelly that I can't quite decipher. I swing around to the left and then to the right, as more and more bodies filter into the crowd, doubling the size of the mob in a matter of seconds.

Only these guys aren't Tenth Warriors.

They don't wear blue hair, or blue face paint, or blue anything.

They're infiltrators.

I drop the speaker, dash into the crowd, grab Haze by his coat sleeve. We fight our way through the crush of Tenth Warriors, half of which are climbing onto the crane, scaling the long arm toward the wrecking ball. The other half try to pick us up and crowd-surf us, but all I can think about is getting out of there before they realize that they've been hacked, that somehow UnderWorld minions are raiding their raid.

We sprint off campus and across a crowded overpass, not needing to stick around to know what's going to happen. All hell's about to break loose, and the abandoned building next to the highway is going to be demolished in the next few seconds. Concrete, glass, wood, dust, memories, dreams, gone—just like that.

I hope not too many of those raiders get taken out with it. That would hardly seem fair.

Then again, fair isn't in the playbook.

The thought shoots like a mortar round through my stomach.

I pull my phone out, thinking maybe I'll try the old man at home. He's gotta be back by now. He doesn't even go out drinking for more than a few hours at a time, and this time he took Devin with him. I don't really care what the old man does to himself, but the guy doesn't have the slightest idea how to take care of my brother.

When I unlock the screen, there's a message waiting.

From the cockroach.

Every bone in my body begins splintering under the weight of grim reality. . . .

I failed at saving the abandoned building.

I couldn't keep Tenth Warriors from the disastrous fate of incursion.

I'm an absolute fail.

13.5

We duck into
a casino a couple of blocks away, where the cocktail waitresses have on these skimpy bikini tops that plunge so deep in front there's almost nothing left to fantasize about and microminis with lots of ruffles that make the skirts bob up and down as they wiggle through the casino, offering free drinks to the gamblers.

A girl in a neon-yellow wig sashays up to us, asks, “Can I get you handsome boys something to drink?”

I take in the heavy makeup, the starkly outlined cheeks and lips, the green-coated, black-rimmed lids, the heavy false lashes. When I get to her eyes, something about them makes me want to look away.

“No thanks,” I tell her. “We've got shit we need to do.”

14

We make our way
to a bank of slot machines off to one side where there aren't too many people playing and hop onto the tall stools. I can't say it's quiet over here, but at least it's quieter than smack-dab in the middle of the casino.

“So what are we supposed to do now?” Haze says, not even trying to hide his irritation.

I take a slow spin, examine every square inch of this place. It's a decent hideout, at least until we can regroup, try to get some info, figure shit out.

I haven't even fully articulated a coherent thought before a buzz hits my back pocket. The last thing I want to see right now is Turk again, but I open it anyway, all judgment to the contrary.

The known will cease to exist.

By the time Haze notices, I've been staring at the screen so long I've lost the ability to blink.

“What's wrong?” he asks.

I clutch. I've never told Haze about the text messages. Not about Commandant Turk, who's been tracking me with my phone since before I started this rogue mission. Not about the commandos, who said I could be of use to them. And sure as hell not about the expansion pack—Haze would kill me for getting that invested after he warned me off the game.

Now, for the first time since we left Sandusky, I show him this one, since these exact words tumbled out of my mouth just minutes ago.

“Someone catches you on the news and is so inspired by what you said, he texts your own speech back to you. So what?”

I can't expect him to know it's from Turk when I've never told him about Turk.

I start nervous-swiveling on my stool, but Haze sticks his foot out and stops me midspin. “We're probably not even supposed to be here,” he says. “The least you could do is not draw attention to that fact.”

“Drinks, boys?”

The cocktail waitress has found us again. We turn to see her standing behind us in a classic supermodel pose (yes, the old man makes Devin watch that crap too—I usually switch it to
Roundhouse
whenever he leaves the room). She's carrying a drink in each hand.

“We're not gambling,” Haze says, then quick backpedals so we don't get kicked out. He tries to drop his voice a whole octave. “Uh, not at the moment, anyway. We will be. Shortly. As soon as we decide on our best strategy.”

I want to kick Haze under the chairs, but I know she'd see me.

“You're not gonna get very far on these slot machines, I'll tell you that much,” she says. “They have 'em rigged so you have to feed it some serious coin before it'll kick anything back. And you can't walk away, because you're thinking,
One more slug and this baby's mine.
”

Haze pulls the edges of his cap down. “Yeah, well, we're a little light on slugs at the moment, so maybe we'll just—”

“Take the drinks anyway,” she says with a fake pout. “They're terrible, but they're on the house.”

Haze shakes his head, but I quickly relieve her of one of the cocktails.

She smiles as I sip what tastes like watered-down pop, then reaches into the pocket of her ruffled apron and pushes her hand toward me. I turn my palm up, and as she presses the object into it, I feel something pass between us, an electroshock wave of familiarity, of remembrance, of knowing. I lift up the bottom edge of the gaming goggles, but she's no less a vision in yellow without them.

“Have we met?” I ask, trying to get a better look at her under that masquerade of a getup she has on.

“That's the oldest pickup line in the book,” she says, straightening her screaming-yellow wig.

Still, she winks at me before walking away.

“What'd she give you?” Haze asks.

I open my hand, look up in confusion.

It's a slot-machine coin.

“Why'd she do that?” he asks.

I shake my head, scan the garish, neon-lit casino, hoping to catch a glimpse of sunshine-yellow hair. It's a big floor, though, lots of banquettes with nooks and crannies that could swallow a person up whole.

I spin my chair back around, noticing the machine in front of me for the first time.

It's a slot machine called Hells Bells.

I look down at the coin in my hand, then back up at Haze.

get lucky,
her note said.

“You gonna play it?” he says.

“I dunno. Should I?”

“What've we got to lose?”

I hand him the slug, which he immediately pushes into the machine, and then he pulls the handle. After a moment or two of jockeying for position, four sevens drop into place across the front of the screen. Bells and lights go off overhead, and for a split second I think it's because we're busted, but then I realize it's because we won. I expect the metallic
ka-ching
of dropping coins to follow, but it doesn't. Instead a small digital readout tells us how much we won and asks if we want to keep going.

Haze doesn't even consult me. He pulls again, and once again, a row of sevens rolls across the screen.

“Someone must've been on this machine all day and then gave up, like she said.” He pulls the handle two more times. The first yields a win with sevens, the second with bars.

I kick a glance over my shoulder, jarred by the small cluster of brown suits taking casual strides in our direction. They're armed with sunglasses and antennae-like earpieces and who knows what else.