Dying Light (31 page)

Rachel points at a helicopter landing
in the distance. The black smudge lowers itself down slowly at the
edge of the green field. “There’s Gideon. Come on.”

We run across the lawn toward the
helicopter. People are now flowing out of the buildings as if a dam
has broken. At first, I think they’re going to try to steal our
helicopter, but they aren’t. Most are running for the parking lot.
Others push themselves back inside the buildings as if they believe
the massive structures will protect them

“
People are starting to
lose their shit.” I grab Ally’s hand and pull her closer. “It’s
going to get worse.”

Gloria catches up to us, appearing on
my right side. “Once the National Guard is mobilized, we won’t be
able to fly. They’ll ground all planes trying to contain the
perpetrators.”

“
It doesn’t help that our
helicopter pilot is Middle Eastern,” Rachel says.

Ally makes a surprised clucking sound
deep in her throat.

Rachel arches her eyebrows. “Sad but
true, honey.”

Gloria adjusts the pack on her back.
“I’ll fly if I must.”

I whirl on her. “You can fly a
helicopter?”

“
It’s been a long
time.”

The helicopter blades whirl to life as
we close in.

“
Hurry up,” a man shouts
from the cockpit of the plane. “We have seven minutes before the
airspace over the city is shut down.”

Rachel jumps in first and starts
strapping herself in. I push Ally in ahead of me and let her have
the next available seat. She cradles Winston in her lap.

I slide into the seat by the open
door, and Gloria slips into the one next to Gideon up front. If he
has any objections about her as copilot, he keeps them to himself.
In fact, he looks relieved to see her.

She doesn’t look as happy to have
him.

Rachel makes gestures, trying to catch
my attention. She mimes putting the headphones on and I do, lifting
the heavy device from its hook on the wall.

Her voice is loud and clear in my
ears.

“
You missed a buckle,
Jessup.” Rachel points at a second seatbelt that goes over my lap,
not just my shoulders.

“
How do you know so much
about helicopters?” I ask her.

She flashes a devilish smile.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“
I want to know a lot,” I
snort. “I want to know where the hell you’ve been. How the hell
Ally knew about Maisie. Who the hell this dude is and when I’m
going to get my damn coffee.”

“
I should’ve told you
sooner,” Ally says, adjusting the earphones on her head.

“
Yes, you seem to say that
a lot.”

“
Girls, don’t fight,”
Rachel says, but she’s grinning as if she’s having the time of her
life.

“
Wipe that crazy grin off
your face,” I tell Rachel. “You’re freaking me out.”

“
Hello
, mental patient,” she says with a wave of her
hand.

“
It’s her face. She can’t
help it,” Gideon’s voice filters through the earphones.

“
That’s rude,” Rachel
says. “I have a lovely face.”

“
Prettier than a sunrise
over the moors,” he says.

Rachel falls against her seat grinning
as if this is the best compliment she’s ever heard. “Yes, let’s go
to England. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

My phone pings in my hand
and my heart leaps. I have service and a text message. Only it’s
not from Lane. It’s from a fabric store that I went to
once
, ages ago, letting
me know I have a 15% off coupon.

“
I can’t go to England. I
have to check on my boyfriend,” I say. “It’s occurred to me that he
may not be answering my texts because Caldwell killed him and
buried him in a shallow grave.”

And if he hasn’t, I will.

“
He’s not your boyfriend.
He dumped you,” Ally says.

I shoot her a look. “Thank you for
that reminder.”

“
We need to get out of the
city,” Gloria adds, more gently this time.

“
We can make a pass by
Wacker Drive, at least,” Ally says. “We will fly over it won’t
we?”

“
Yes, but we can’t
stop.
Minutes
. We
have minutes before someone will shoot us out of the sky,” Gideon
says.

“
They won’t shoot us out
of the sky,” Gloria says. “Probably.”

Rachel bounces in her seat. “Better
practice making really big shields, Jessup.”

“
How far until we fly over
Wacker?” I ask.

“
About thirty seconds,”
Gloria says.

I turn on Ally who tries to look all
sweet and innocent with Winston in her lap. At least his fur is
starting to dry a little and he’s starting to look somewhat snug,
tucked into the side of her red coat.

“
You have thirty seconds
to tell me everything you know that I don’t know,” I tell
her.

“
That’s not much
time.”

“
Try,” I
insist.

She thinks for a moment, opens her
mouth, closes it, and then spills her guts. “Brinkley left me some
journals when he died. He said they were just for me. In them, he
talked about how he met Gloria, their first case together, which is
how I know about Maisie. She was born in the camp to Georgia and
Caldwell. He smuggled her out, in that way of his, and then when he
got out with Georgia about six years later, they
reunited.”

Reunited. Like a big fucking happy
family. Without me.

“
I’m sorry, Jess,” Ally
says, her eyes full of tears. “It seems like it was more of
Georgia’s idea than Caldwell’s.”

“
Go on,” I say. “What
else?”

“
It talks about how he met
Gloria, their work together, how he became Rachel’s handler and how
Gideon came into his life.”

“
I’d like to read this
journal,” Rachel says with a cocked head.

“
Me as well,” Gideon
says.

“
Me three,” I chime in.
“Where are they?”

“
A couple are the things
we left at Gideon’s. The others are in a lockbox in
Nashville.”

“
Anything
else?”

“
Not that I can think of
right now,” she says.

“
Wacker Drive,” Gloria
calls into the headphones. “On your right.”

Ally and I both crane our necks out to
look down over the top of the skyscrapers below. Only, I don’t
really see the top of any skyscraper because of the
smoke.

“
It’s gone,” Ally says.
“Tate Tower is
gone
.”

“
Not gone,” Gloria says.
“Burning.”

Ally

T
he smoke clears in the whirl of the helicopter blades and I
see the tower, or what is left of it. Gloria is right. It isn’t
gone, not completely. What remains is half-eaten with black smoke,
half-devoured by flames.

Nikki
.

“
We have to touch down. We
have to check for survivors.”

“
Uh, no.” Rachel says. “We
need to get out of the city before Caldwell eats our brains like
cereal.”

Jesse snorts. “You weren’t scared when
you were mouthing off to him.”

“
Bravado, kid.” Rachel
crosses her arms over her chest. “Have I taught you
nothing?”

“
There could be survivors
down there. We don’t know if they were able to evacuate in time,” I
argue. “We can’t just fly away.”

Rachel shrugs. “Better them than
us.”

“
Jeremiah is a jerk, but
they fought by your side,” I remind Jesse. “You have to see if they
need our help. They put their lives in danger for you. More than
once.”

A strange look passes over Jesse’s
face. Her brow pinches and I have a feeling something is
wrong.

Something
happened
, she had said.

“
We have to go down,” she
says, her voice low in the microphone.

“
We are not stopping,”
Gideon says.

“
It isn’t safe,” Gloria
adds.

Rachel folds her arms over her chest,
content that she’s won the majority vote.

“
How far up are we?” Jesse
asks and locks eyes with mine. Immediately, I know what she’s
thinking.

She is going to jump.
She’s ready to jump
now
without even thinking.

She’ll become less stable
the more power she has.

I could say no. I could refuse to jump
from the helicopter because it is reckless, and hopefully that will
slow her down. She looks almost excited by the idea of jumping. The
alternative is to trust her and leap.

I take a deep breath and unbuckle the
strap across my chest. I put Winston on the floor inside a box that
I’m sure was meant to hold parachutes or something useful. He looks
up at me reproachfully.

“
We’re about 450 meters
high,” Gideon says. “Why?”

“
No,” Gloria yells into
the headset, but she’s too late.

Jesse snaps off her last buckle just
as I undo mine and she grabs me. One yank and we’re out of the
helicopter.

Through the black smoke, we
fall.

Jesse

“T
his is going to hurt.”

“
Protect your head.” Ally
screams over the wind tearing at our hair and clothes.

Now that I’m far enough away from
Rachel, another partis like me, Gabriel decides to show his pretty
face. Well, not his face exactly.

Her or
you
, he says into my ears. I can’t see
much because of the smoke-thick air, but I get the distinct
impression of wings extending, black feathers enveloping
us.

Her.
Always
.

The shield glimmers around us, growing
bigger and brighter than I’ve ever seen it. We hit something and I
scream like a girl. Surprised. I also think I shake Ally a little,
wrenching a yelp from her. But whatever we’ve hit, it only knocked
us off course a little. I get the sense I’m in a giant hamster
ball, tumbling into the ruins of Chicago below.

“
You’ll heal. You’ll heal.
It’s okay, you’ll heal.” Ally keeps saying this over and over again
and I’m pretty sure she is trying to reassure herself as much as
me.

I just keep waiting for it. The hit,
the moment when my body slams into the pavement and I feel the
terrible explosion of pain like I felt before.

One breath. Two. My heart is pounding
as loud as a marching band in my ears.

We hit—something. We shudder, the
protective field rippling as a fresh pillar of smoke billows up
around us, blocking out our view of everything else. The sound of
rock and steel cascades down, clanking against the
pavement.

We slam into the ground. I cry out,
waiting for another bone-crushing impact, but I don’t feel it.
Instead, ash and pavement explodes around us.

I scream and scream as Ally runs her
hands up and down my body looking for injuries.

“
Stop screaming,” she
pleads. “You’re fine. Oh my god, you’re
fine
.”

I gulp down the last of my scream and
open both of my eyes. The purple field shimmers around us, giving
us a good foot of clearance on all sides.

“
It wasn’t this big
before, was it?” Ally asks.

“
Caldwell said that all of
my partis powers would get more awesome as I picked up other
gifts.”

Beyond us,
a sheen of smoke and ash dances, blocking out our
view of the city.

“
Oh—” Ally says, frowning.
She kneels down in front of me and wipes her thumb across my cheek.
“You have a cut here.”

Her eyes widen in surprise. “Uh, no
you don’t.”

I grab her hand. It’s soft in mine. A
sudden desperate urge to hold her washes over me. To kiss her. I
catch myself staring at her lips. I look away. “Is it weird seeing
me heal?”

“
No weirder than anything
else,” she grins.
She brushes
off her knees.

You missed your
chance
, I think. I can’t tell Ally that I
love her now. She’s got a girlfriend and the world is falling
apart. That’s just stupid. I swallow everything I should’ve said
ages ago and search the area.

The dust and dirt from our impact
starts to clear, and I expect to see Wacker Drive come into view.
It doesn’t. Instead, I see only busted up black concrete
everywhere.

We are in a giant hole. A crater. I
place one hand over my chest and try to breathe.

“
We’re buried,” I tell
her. My throat goes tight.

“
No, no, this is
different.” Ally pushes the hair away from my face. “We aren’t
buried alive. We’re in a hole. We can climb out, okay? Jess? Take a
breath.”