Dying Light (5 page)

54, 55, 56.

“
She doesn’t lose control
without a reason. She’s reactive.” I don’t take my eyes off the
ascending elevator numbers, willing them to go faster. “Something
must’ve happened.”

65.

The doors slide open, and all I can
see is black Kevlar. Bodies covered in full armor block the
elevator and the walkway leading out onto the terrace.

“
Move,” Nicole booms
beside me. Since she’s their commander, they obey her in one fluid
movement. The only person here with more authority is Jeremiah, and
I can see him up ahead. He’s closest to Jesse, trying to talk her
down.

“
Jesse!” I yell. “Jesse,
I’m right here.”

I squeeze through the mass
of
limbs
and make
my way out onto the roof. The terrace is empty except for Jesse and
Jeremiah who stand several feet away, his hands out in surrender. I
make a motion for him to fall back.

“
It’s okay.” I step in
front of the soldiers, making myself the closest person to
Jesse.

Nikki takes her place by Jeremiah’s
side, all eyes trained on Jesse.

“
Jess,” I say again and
this time she finally looks up at me. Her eyes are rimmed with
tears and her cheeks are red from the wind and cold. She stands
shivering in only scrubs. She must be freezing. I don’t see
Winston, so why is she here? “What happened?”

I come to a stop in front of her. I
don’t touch her yet.

“
He took him.” She screams
and the hair on my arms rises. The electrical charge around her is
active, and I shouldn’t be so close, but if I move back it might
upset her more.

I take a breath.

“
Who, baby?” I
keep
my voice steady and
soft. “I just got here. I don’t know what happened.”

“
Caldwell
took
Winston.”

The edge of my coat
catches fire and I jump back. Nikki leaps forward, but I throw up a
hand to stop her. “No. I’m
fine
.” I yank off my coat and stomp
out the flames. I love this coat, but it’s not the end of the
world. It looks like a dragon took a bite out of the bottom left
lapel, but I’m not burned.

Her eyes are wide with fear. “Your
coat—” She wipes at her eyes with her hands, and it’s the moment
I’m waiting for. “I’m sorry.”

I take her into my arms and hug her
tight. “I know you didn’t mean it. It’s okay.”

“
He has
Winston.”

“
We’ll get him
back.”

“
Gabriel—” She drops her
voice and places her mouth by my ear. “Gabriel says Caldwell will
kill him if I don’t go.”

“
What do you mean if you
don’t go?”

“
Caldwell said that if I
don’t come to him soon, he’s going to kill Winston.”

I can’t imagine what in the world
Caldwell will do with a slightly obese pug. What kind of ransom is
that? Jesse seems to read my mind.

“
He said my sister will be
watching him. Of all the lies.”

My jaw drops. “Maisie is
alive?”

Jesse wrenches herself from my arms.
“How do you know her name?”

“
Not here,” I beg, trying
to desperately recover the ground I lost.

A slight shimmer comes alive around
Jesse, and I recognize it as the gaseous precursor to the firebomb
blast I’ve seen Jesse do dozens of times in the last two
months.

“
You said no more
secrets!”

“
Breathe,” I tell her.
“You need to calm down.”

Jesse’s body erupts in white hot
flames. They dance two or three inches above her body, not touching
her skin or clothes. I jump back, knowing it’s a heartbeat before
the pulse hurls the flames in all directions, Jesse herself serving
as the pilot light.

Please Jess,
no.

I see her lips part in surprise. Her
shoulders roll back, and the first tinge of purple shines through
around the edge of her flames. Thank god. She is calming down,
calling the power back into herself. The outermost edge of flames
flicker and die away.

Then she collapses.

She hits the scorched sod with a hard
thud, and the flames extinguish on impact.

“
Jesse?” I run over to
her, placing my hands on her smoldering chest. The air around her
smells electric, but as I put my fingers to her pulse, I find her
heart beating fine. I pluck away the tranquilizer protruding from
her neck. It comes loose in my hand, rolling along the ridge of my
palm.

I look up and see Nikki lower the
tranquilizer gun.

Ally

“S
he was going to kill you,” Nikki says through clenched teeth
for the tenth time. “What did you expect me to do? Just
watch
?”

“
She was calming down.” I
pace
the hospital room, irritated beyond
measure that I am here again so soon.
“She
was fine.”

“
Stop arguing.” Jeremiah
makes a final adjustment to Jesse’s IV. “There were many lives on
the roof, and we needed to sedate her. Surely you can understand
that, Alice.”

I glare at Jeremiah as I wring the
metal bar at the foot of Jesse’s bed. Nikki I have patience for.
She is certainly patient enough with me. But Jeremiah has some
explaining to do. “How did Caldwell get up there? I thought he had
to see where he was going.”

Jeremiah pushes his glasses higher up
on his nose. “I can’t possibly predict his every move.”

“
You mentioned a name on
the roof?” Nikki hasn’t tried to get close to me since we left the
roof.

I meet Nikki’s eyes and soften at the
sight of her wide, concerned eyes. “Maisie. Caldwell has a second
daughter.”

“
How could you possibly
know that?” Jeremiah asks, placing his hands on his
hips.

“
Brinkley told me.” I hope
that I’m a better liar than Jesse. “Not long before he died, he
told me about one of his first FBRD cases, which involved
her.”

Questions are written all over their
faces, but I look away.

“
Why didn’t you tell us
Caldwell has another daughter?”

“
You didn’t ask.” I press
my hands to Jesse’s cheeks. They’re growing warmer.
Good.

“
We’re a team.” Jeremiah
falls back on his position as commander. “We can’t keep things from
each other.”

Yet, I don’t trust
you
, I think. I’m not saying Jeremiah is a
bad man. I’m saying that he seems willing to pay any price to
destroy Caldwell and I think some prices are too high.

“
We invited you and Jesse
here to be part of a team. Teams work together. We share
information, not hide it.”

I know where my loyalty lies. “I
wouldn’t mention ‘working together’ when Jesse wakes up. She’s
going to want you to ‘work together’ to get her dog
back.”

“
Out of the question,”
Jeremiah says. “I can’t spare my resources on a rescue mission for
a dog.”

Nikki glances at him, mouth slightly
ajar.

“
What is it, Tamsin?” he
asks, challenging her to open her mouth. He’s never been foolish
enough to offer Jesse such an invitation. It reminds me of how
different he treats Jesse than everyone else. What I wouldn’t give
to know why.

“
Sullivan is an important
member of our team. With continued investment and support, she will
help us achieve our objectives.”

My heart warms at her words. She’s
willing to advocate for Jesse even though Jesse has never been nice
to her. But that’s just how Nikki is.

“
Agreed,” Jeremiah says,
wearily.

“
If you deny her request
to retrieve Winston, we will likely see backlash from that refusal.
She may leave our charge altogether,” Nikki says. “This would be
terrible timing given Caldwell’s movements.”

“
She’ll go get Winston
with or without you,” I say, hoping to add weight to Nikki’s
argument.

Caldwell’s movements. I
linger on Nikki’s point. It was Jeremiah’s strongest selling point
in our coming to Chicago.
Caldwell has
renovated almost twelve buildings in the city to have no windows or
doors. It’s strange. The city believes it is some kind of art
installation, a giant joke to be explained later. I think it’s a
very bad sign.

“
You’re asking me if the
lives of my men are worth more than one
pug
,” Jeremiah says.

Both Nikki and I tense for his
possible reaction, but he doesn’t say anything. His face turns red
as if he is holding his breath. Then he turns and storms from the
room.

“
He’s being unreasonable,”
I say, staring at the door, half-expecting him to return. “Did you
see how he disregarded Winston?”

“
Caldwell kills thousands
of people a year.” Nikki comes to stand beside me. “Are their lives
worth less than Jesse’s?”

To me
, I think and I register the ugliness of such a thought. “I
never said that.”

“
Is her life worth more
than mine?” Nikki asks, softly, her fingertips brush my hand on
Jesse’s coverlet.

I open my mouth, shocked by the
question. “What?”

“
If I volunteer to lead a
team into Caldwell’s headquarters and I’m killed trying to rescue
her dog, would you think that was worth it? Or if I died trying to
save Jesse, would that make you happy?”

“
No, of course
not.”

Nikki gives me a sad, sweet smile and
kisses me on the cheek. The hint of irritation in her tone melts
away, replaced with her usual kind patience. “I’m going to go take
a shower before my shift in the control room starts. You’re welcome
to join me.”

She manages a devilish grin and gives
my hand another squeeze before leaving the room.

I exhale, but it doesn’t loosen the
tightness in my chest. The room suddenly feels too warm. My cheeks
are ablaze. I tug at my collar and slip off my coat. The pungent
smell of antiseptics makes my head swim.

Jesse sleeps in the white hospital
bed, but not peacefully. Sweat beads around her hairline and her
face scrunches then relaxes in turn. What wouldn’t I give to chase
all her demons away?

I want to stay here with her until she
wakes, but I know if I don’t join Nikki, she’ll take it as a
personal affront.

I watch Jesse for a long moment,
weighing my desire to stay with the consequence of not going. Nikki
was so quick to defend Jesse on my behalf. I want Nikki to know she
matters too.

If I died trying to save
Jesse, would that make you happy?

I give Jesse’s hand a squeeze. “I’ll
be back before you wake.”

Jesse

T
he city is in ruins. Cement and mortar lay in heaps across a
great road, tumbled over like a child’s building blocks. Ash falls
from the sky, landing on my hoodie and shoes. I look down to see
the toe of my red sneaker smudged gray. I lift my hand and ash
lands on the backs of my fingers like snowflakes, precariously
balanced on the folds of my knuckles.

Gabriel comes to a stop
beside me, a stark figure in the white haze. “
It’s fallout
.”

“
Where are we?” My voice
reverberates against the wreckage.

“
Your world. Is this the
one you choose?”

“
What? No.” I whirl around
to face him. His eyes are the same demonic green, bright and
iridescent as always. His dark suit jacket remains unmarred by the
falling ash. “Who the hell would choose this?”

His eyes deepen from green to midnight
blue. His tie changes to match. “If you do not choose, this is the
choice.”

“
What the hell does that
mean?”

Light falls against my face as his
wings open, and a brilliant red desert stretches out in all
directions. The ruined city with its fallout rain has disappeared.
Now there’s only this desert and a great expanse of blue
sky.

Poised in the sand in front of me is a
globe, a perfect replica of Earth balanced on a thin wire that runs
into the sand.

I look from the desert landscape, to
the globe, to Gabriel’s porcelain face. “What the hell is this all
about?”

Gabriel walks around the globe and
stands opposite me. Then he takes one slender finger and spins the
globe. “Your world is protected by a magnetic field, not unlike the
field that protects you.”

A thin layer of purple light begins to
glow around the globe, encasing it as it spins and
spins.

“
But this shield will
weaken and fail.” Gabriel jabs his finger against the globe and the
Earth stops spinning. The purple light disappears. “When that
happens, Earth will be destroyed by the first threat that comes
along.”

His green eyes meet mine, searching my
face for comprehension. I don’t understand and I’m pretty sure my
slack jaw and arched eyebrows say as much.