Dying Light (29 page)

“
Shit.” I jump off the
sofa and go to the window. “What’s happening?”

“
Dad,” she says. “It’s
started.”

“
He’s blowing up the
city?”

I don’t need her to answer. Another
explosion goes off and the vibration of the blast can be felt even
here in The Needle. The glass windows tremble under my palm and the
floor vibrates under my feet.

Ally. I see all the
different Ally’s out there. Ally in the beach house with me. Ally
with kids. None of them will exist if she’s blown up.
Please be safe.
At least
I know Jeremiah wasn’t lying about Caldwell’s threat to the city,
some ploy to get us to come to Chicago.

“
Why is he doing this?” I
ask Maisie. Beside me, her face is a mixture of regret, sadness,
and resignation—way too serious a face for a kid of
sixteen.

“
Because everyone is
here,” she says.

“
Everyone who?” I demand.
Because she can’t mean
everyone
, everyone. The whole world
is not in Chicago.

“
Everyone is here that
needs to be.”

Ally

I
’m not so sure about this.

The boat isn’t much of a boat. More
like a paddleboat, or even a little dinghy—but certainly no yacht,
no ocean liner, which is what I feel like we would have to have in
order to approach The Needle. From here I see no doors, only
windows that circle the exterior of The Needle’s head.

“
What are we going to do?”
I yell over the roar of the motor and the waves. The fierce wind
rolling off of Lake Michigan tears at our coats and clothes as if
trying to rip us from the metal cradle we’re hunkered down in. I
have both hands on top of my head, trying to hold my hair into
place. “We can’t shimmy up the side.”

“
Don’t worry so much. I
have a plan,” Rachel says, from her place at the front of the boat.
What is that called, the stern? The bow? I don’t know boats. Gloria
sits in the back, controlling the motor.

Rachel turns around and
grins at me. “Think of it this way. If we don’t die, hooray. If we
do die, nothing matters. We’re
dead
.”

This isn’t exactly how I would like to
look at the world, but I force a smile. She is making the effort to
rally my spirits. I can at least acknowledge and appreciate that,
even if I might be pitched out of this boat and into the icy water
at any moment.

I feel useless sandwiched between
Rachel and Gloria, shivering. My coat isn’t much protection on the
mainland and, on the water, it’s even less useful. It flaps around
me wildly, and I clutch the fabric to my chest. My hair whips
around my head too, sometimes falling into my face and blotting out
the lake altogether, despite my efforts to hold it down.

The sound of a helicopter roars
overhead. A nondescript black wasp with a propeller whizzes by,
momentarily making the horrible wind worse.

“
There’s my boy,” Rachel
says, looking back at me and Gloria with a huge grin on her face.
“He’s good, right?”

I can’t smile or speak because of my
chattering teeth.

I peer over the edge of the boat at
the gray water sloshing against the sides. I feel sick.

“
Okay, are we ready?”
Rachel asks, holding her hand up to the helicopter.

“
Ready for what?” I
ask.

Her hand comes down and for a
heartbeat, nothing happens. Then, what I am pretty sure is a
missile, shoots out of the front of the helicopter and explodes
into the side of The Needle.

“
That,
” Rachel says, laughing wildly as if she is having the time
of her life.

She really is
crazy.
The realization that I’m in a tiny
boat on a huge turbulent lake with an escaped mental patient hits
me all the harder. Fear, real
fear
, rakes across my skin. I scoot
back so far I bump into Gloria’s knees.

“
Just keep breathing.”
Gloria cuts her eyes from Rachel to me. “It’s all you can
do.”

“
It’s all I can do,” I
repeat, as another rocket slams into the side of The Needle,
exploding on impact.

“
Surely to god someone is
going to notice this. What will we do when the authorities show
up?”

“
They will have their
hands full,” Gloria says.

“
Get me a little closer.”
Rachel shouts over all the noise, pinning her own wild hair back
away from her face. “Not so close that the debris falls on our
heads though.”

Gloria angles the boat a bit, veering
off to the side of The Needle. A particularly horrible wave slaps
the side of the boat, spilling over the side and soaking my leg. I
gasp, sucking in icy air.

“
It’ll dry,” Rachel says,
after surveying my distress.

“
Firing rockets at The
Needle can’t be the best plan, can it?” I ask. I hope I sound
curious, diplomatic even, anything but miserably cold and terrified
out of my mind.

“
Jesse’s got her shield
and she can heal now, right?” Rachel asks. “She’ll survive this.
Our real concern is if Caldwell realizes what we’re doing and comes
running. We don’t want
that
.”

Jesse will survive
this,
I repeat.
God, I hope so.

“
What the hell did he make
this building out of?” Rachel whines. “Steel?”

A third rocket slams into the small
hole created by the second rocket and part of the glass is blown
away, revealing the inside of The Needle. I stare into the jagged
black mouth and wait.

Jesse

B
lack smoke billows up into the sky above the skyscrapers.
Another explosion goes off somewhere to the north—the Magnificent
Mile maybe—and all I can do is picture all the stylish mannequins
in storefront windows burning, their two hundred dollar scarves
going up in flames.

Another explosion sounds and The
Needle shakes. The plates in the cupboards of the little kitchen
nook rattle and Winston howls the way he does at home if the UPS
guy comes or it’s trash day.

Maisie and I lock eyes.

“
That sounded—” I
begin.

“—
like it was right on top
of us,” finishes Maisie.

“
Caldwell wouldn’t bomb
The Needle, right?” I know I sound freaked out, even to me. “I
mean, he put us here so we’d be out of the way. An
I’ll-deal-with-you-later kind of thing?”

This time I hear the whistle, followed
by another explosion that rocks The Needle. A funnel of black smoke
erupts from the other side of the room, the side facing the lake,
not the city. I rush over to the other windows and see a giant
helicopter hovering about two hundred feet away. I can’t see who is
driving it, but it’s clear that it’s packing and pointed at
us.

“
What the hell?” I
ask.

“
It must be one of the bad
guys,” Maisie squeals. “Winston!”

Winston comes running and she scoops
him up into her arms. Then she looks at me. “What should we do?”
she asks. “You’ve got the super powers.”

“
I can only shield myself
or the people I’ve replaced,” I tell her. “But maybe if I hug you
hard enough I can get it to be big enough to cover all three of
us.”

Maisie’s eyes are big and
wet.

“
Ah, don’t cry,” I tell
her and I sound a little mean about it. I swallow and try to make
my voice soft, the way Ally would do it.

“
If one of those partis
fuckers came to kill me, they won’t be trying to get you,” I tell
her. “They’ll be focused on me, okay? Just hold on to Winston and
stay out of the way, and you should be okay.”

She nods vigorously, her cheeks
red.

A plume of smoke shoots out of the
back of a third rocket and I yank Maisie away from the window
before I hear the whistling whine of its release. I grab hold of
Maisie and erect my shield. This time as the rocket hits, glass
sprays into the room, raining down on us. But I do a decent job of
protecting us from the blast.

If I grab on to her before I raise the
shield, the shield covers her rather than repels her. Good to
know.

A whirlwind of icy cold air bursts
into the room through an 8-foot hole where the rocket blasted out
the glass.

“
Get your coat.” I don’t
know why the hell that is the first thing I think of. But Maisie
doesn’t question me. She runs off in the direction of her bedroom,
still clutching the fat pug to her chest, her blonde hair streaming
out behind her.

I go to the hole and look out over the
water. I don’t see anything but the copter at first. And it occurs
to me that by standing in the hole, I might be making myself a
target.

Then I hear a noise, like a giant bee
buzzing. It’s almost inaudible over the sound of the wind and
waves.

I look down and see a boat. A small
boat with three people in it. My heart floods with joy. Gloria,
Ally, and…Rachel, of all people. Alive and here to get
me.

Maisie comes skittering into the room.
“Okay, I have my coat. And my computer. I messaged Dad.”

“
Shit.” My happy feeling
leeches away. “I wish you hadn’t done that.”

“
Why? He’ll save
us.”

“
Only to kill me later.” I
point at the little boat down on the waves. “Those are my friends.
They’re here to rescue me.”

“
Oh.” Confusion washes
over her face. She suddenly doesn’t look so ready to go with
me.

The helicopter pulls back, giving me
room, and I can see Rachel’s hands out in front of her as she
balances on the front of the boat. Ally waves and I realize what
they want me to do.

“
Come on,” I tell Maisie.
“We’re going to jump.”

“
We can’t,” she says.
“There are rocks down there.”

“
I jumped out of a
skyscraper the other night. That turned out okay. It can’t be worse
than that.”

At least this time, if I die in the
fall, they can get Maisie, Winston and my body into the boat. Ally
was fine, so they’ll probably be okay too. I hope.

She clutches Winston to her chest but
doesn’t come any closer to the broken window.

“
Come on,” I tell her
again. “I can’t leave you here with Caldwell. It’s like child
endangerment or something.”

“
He won’t hurt
me.”

“
You don’t know that. He
hurt me just fine. And yes, maybe he loves you more or whatever,
but it isn’t safe for you to stay here. Come on.”

Maisie takes a step toward me, resolve
in her eyes.

“
I’m going to jump out
first, holding Winston in the front,” I explain. I want you to hold
on to my back. If we hit the rocks, I think my shield will protect
you from the worst of it.”

“
What about Winston?” she
asks. “If you hit the rocks, he’ll be crushed.”

“
No, the front of the
shield will cover him,” I say. “Okay? Ready.”

I inch forward, my toes sticking out
over the lips of the broken window. The water below thrashes
against the side of The Needle’s metal base, looking far more
ravenous and sinister than the concrete below ever did. My heart
lurches.

I hold Winston to my chest and try to
situate him in such a way that he lies flat. I feel Maisie’s arms
around my waist.

“
Hold on tight.” I clamp
one of my free hands over hers.

“
I don’t know about this,”
she screams into my ear over the roar of the wind and waves. She
squeezes me tighter.

Neither do I,
I think and jump.

Ally

I
watch Jesse ease her toes to the edge of the punched out
glass, cradling Winston against her chest like a baby. Then I see
two white hands wrap around her black hoodie.

“
What the—” Rachel says,
obviously seeing the hands too, but doing the math.

But I already know the answer.
Maisie.

I look at the
water
beneath them, the
jagged black rocks jutting up from the waves, and my heart hammers
harder.

“
No, no, no,” I say and
stand up. The boat rocks beneath me, almost pitching me out into
the icy gray water.

“
Sit down,” Gloria barks.
“You’ll get hypothermia if you fall in.”

“
No, Jesse, don’t.
Don’t
,” I scream and
wave my hands over my head. She doesn’t look at me. She inches
farther forward.

“
You have to get closer.”
I sink into the boat. “Even if they survive the fall, we’re going
to have to pull them out of the water fast.”

“
I’m doing the best I
can,” Rachel hisses.

I give her a blank look.