Extracted (26 page)

I roll the Dox behind me to Nobel. He covers it with his body. Then I scramble forward, trying to stay as flat against the ground as possible, and I stretch until I feel the muscles in my shoulders and back tearing. I’m reaching out for Lex, trying to meet him halfway, but the gap between us is too far.

The twister bellows, a thick, hollow drum sound, and we both skid toward the mouth. Behind me, I hear Nobel call my name. Looking over my shoulder, I see he’s holding up the Dox, which is glowing faintly. Nobel yells again, and I just barely catch the sound of my name as the words blow past me.

I call out to him. The word rips its way up from the bottom of my stomach and erupts out of my mouth, burning like acid. Between my tears and the hair wildly whipping around my face, I don’t see Nobel crawl to my side. I’m breathing too hard, too fast. The air is growing thin as the vacuum sucks the oxygen out from around us. Somewhere in the calmer recesses of my mind, I know it will soon engulf us all. I gasp. My lungs burn. It’s like I’m breathing through a straw. No matter how hard I struggle, I can’t get enough air in my lungs.

Nobel pats my hand and I look over to him. The Dox is still glowing, but the closer we get to the tear, the dimmer the light becomes. Then it dawns on me.

It isn’t going to work. The paradox storm is going to eat us alive. Around me, a thick fog is overtaking my vision. I force myself to calm down. Only sheer will is holding me down here. If I faint, the darkness will take me. So my body wars against itself, part wanting to relax into unconsciousness, part struggling to survive.

“I think we have to take it into the tear,” Nobel yells. The strange, white surgeon’s mask that he normally wears has slid down around his neck, so I’m not sure if I’m actually hearing his voice or just reading his lips. Everything is fuzzy.

I nod, beginning to feel a terrifying lightness in my body. I wish I were back at the Institute, surrounded by my friends, playing in the surf with Ethan.

Nobel fights his way to his feet and is immediately pulled off-balance, pitching forward onto his knees. The Dox falls from his hands, hitting the ground with a sound that echoes like the crash of lightning. It’s the sound that shocks me back to my senses. It shouldn’t be that loud, but it is, even over our screams and the gusting wind we can hear it, the sound of hope dying. The glass dome of the Dox splinters, and tiny fractures spread like spiderwebs around the container. The faint glow immediately dies.

“It’s no good. We have to get out of here,” I yell to Nobel, who is scant inches from the mouth of the vortex. I see him reach into his lab coat pocket, pull out the small Contra pill, and toss it into his mouth. Just before he can be sucked into the darkness, he shimmers and vanishes into the time stream. I glance behind me and see Stein, her face streaked with muddy tears. She opens her mouth to show me the green pill between her teeth.

“I’ll get Lex. You get out of here!” I yell.

She hesitates, shooting me a look like, you better, then she swallows and is gone too.

I begin the painful crawl to where Lex and Ethan are holding on. Wiping the hair out from my eyes, I see the boys have made a kind of chain. Lex is holding the jagged rock with one arm and holding Ethan with his other hand. Ethan is scooting toward me, his free hand outstretched. In his fingers, he carefully holds a Contra.

My palms and knees are bleeding from the crawl across the stony ground. It’s only a few yards, but I might as well be crossing the Sahara. I can feel blood dripping from my chin, but I’m too numb to feel the pain of my injuries. Adrenaline is pushing me forward now, a primal need to survive. I reach Ethan and wrap myself around his arm with both hands. He has to put the Contra in my mouth for me—I can’t even let go with one hand for fear of being pulled away. As I draw a breath to swallow, I feel Ethan rising off the ground. Lex manages to take his own pill just before he loses consciousness. Ethan still has hold of his hand, but we are being scooped up like kites as the vortex engulfs us. I close my eyes and feel the wind change. It’s no longer the relentless sucking of the tornado, it’s the sharp push of the stream on my skin. Still clinging to Ethan, I let him drag us against the current. With Lex unconscious, we are literally flying blind.

“Where are we going?” I ask, pulling myself closer to Ethan even as the wind tries to force us apart.

He jerks his head and I can just make out Nobel, who is not too far in front of us, cutting through the stream. He vanishes and I know we’re close. I take a deep breath, preparing to purge myself from the stream just as Ethan stops. With an unspoken signal, we leap out of the stream and fall forward onto the lawn just outside of the Tower.

Nobel is standing with his back to us. I only have a moment to register his tension and the cautious stance of his body before I trip over the first corpse, sprawled lifeless on the ground.

When I come to, I find myself in a smoke-filled room that immediately makes me cough. I am facedown, and I must have thrown up from a coughing fit while I was unconscious, because my cheek is wet and covered with my previously half-digested dinner. I quickly wipe off my mouth with my sleeve.

I see the palm of a hand visible through the thick smoke. My senses are coming back. I slowly reach my hand toward the palm. Who does it belong to? Where are we? Did we close the vortex? All I can feel is that something is really wrong. Suddenly the hand closes around my index and middle fingers, and then a face emerges through the smoke.

“Lex!” Nobel says, sounding tired but relieved.

“Something is wrong,” I say, shaking my head. “Where are we?”

Nobel says nothing as he looks me over for injuries.

“We need to find the others,” I tell him, trying to urge his focus away from me. I’m fine. It’s everyone else I’m worried about.

I sit up and see that we are just inside the door to the Tower. Smoke is billowing past us like dragon’s breath.

“Where are Stein and Ember?”

Nobel points into the room. “They must be inside somewhere.”

Peeling off my vest, I tie it around my face. We walk through the smoke-filled room with our hands stretched out like a pair of zombies.

We haven’t walked very far before I trip over something. I fall forward, landing on a couch. Reaching down, I bring the object closer to my face.

“AAAAH!” It’s half of a Gear Head. I toss it aside like a dead rat.

“Ember, Ethan, Stein!” I yell into the smoky room. Have I lost them? This can’t be happening. I call out again.

“Over here,” Stein calls back. “Ember’s sick.”

We shuffle in the general direction of her voice. The metal foot of my fake leg clanks against another Gear Head as we walk. The gears still aren’t working, so with every step I have to hobble my leg into position.

“Call out again,” Nobel hollers.

“We’re over here.” It is Ethan this time. I exhale. At least they’re all alive.

After what seems like ten minutes of navigating through the dense smoke, we finally make it to the group. Stein is bent over Ember, stroking her hair, and Ethan is looking down at both of them, his face pale and waxy. Ember is breathing, but when she looks up at me, I notice her eyes are bloodshot. She is sweating and clutching her stomach in the fetal position.

“Ember,” Ethan says gently, “Lex is here now.”

“Lex, I don’t think those rifting pills sit well with me,” she says, squeezing her eyes closed.

“It can take some getting used to,” Nobel tells her. “Ethan, are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Ethan says, but I can tell he’s lying. He’s barely keeping his stomach. I remembered the feeling all too well. Sick as a dog but too proud to let the girl see him sweat.

“Are you going to be able to make it out?”

“I think so,” she answers weakly.

I crouch down. The smoke is a lot less dense near the floor. Everyone else follows suit and crouches down to the floor. Ethan helps Ember to her knees, holding her around the waist until he’s sure she isn’t going to fall. We crawl along the floor of the smoke engulfed room until we find a wall, then we follow that to a hallway.

“Do you recognize this hallway?” Stein asks, crawling up beside me.

“No, I don’t even know where we are.”

She reaches up into the smoke cloud that’s above us and rips something off the wall.

“Recognize this?”

Stein holds out a piece of the velvet wallpaper that lines the hallway toward Gloves’s office. I recognize it. And Nobel recognizes it. We’ve walked down this hallway many times. I’ve always traced my finger along the paisley-velvet wallpaper when we’re here, trying to connect the lines without removing my finger.

“Are we near Gloves’s office?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

“I think we are,” Stein answers. “We need to see if there’s anyone still alive in there.”

“What do you mean?”

Stein and Nobel exchange a glance.

“When we rifted back, there were bodies on the lawn. It looked like an attack,” Nobel says softly.

I stop, unable to believe my ears.

“Who?” I ask, my voice shaking.

“Two of ours and one that Ember identified as theirs.”

I want to ask more, to demand names, but now isn’t the time. If anyone is still alive in here we need to get them out. Now. We pass by what was Gloves’s door. The office has been burned to a crisp. The door is lying off its hinges, and its wood is blackened and blistered, charcoaled beyond belief. But there are no remains.

I turn to Ethan. “We need to get everyone out of here.”

When he nods, I crawl through the wreckage without hesitation, grab a burnt piece of door wood, and use it to break the window. The old glass shatters on the first blow. I then hack away at the jagged edges so we can crawl out without getting cut.

We are able to scale our way down the side of the old stone building. Most of the rock that was quarried on site to build this tower is now covered in a green carpet of moss. After carefully navigating each handhold and foothold, we finally jump into the out-of-control Pfitzer juniper that have been unkempt for many years. Fortunately, they provide a soft landing. The hardest part is trying to claw our way out of the juniper.

Once we orient ourselves, the sight before us is unbelievable. The Tower is no longer erect. The top three-fourths is severed and tumbled back. Flames surround the stump of what remains. It reminds me of a candle left to burn out overnight. To the right of the Tower, there is a massive, armored locomotive that is covered in plants, chunks of earth, and rust. The enormous steel-plated train clearly moved up an angled track to take down the Tower. I can imagine the train emerging from the ground to bomb the Tower to oblivion.

We run to the front of the Tower, where Ethan appeared just a day ago. Stein stands stoic, looking pale and half in shock, and Ember is throwing up in the Pfitzers. Bruce lies dead at the corner of the building. He has a hole blown in his gut. Even being half-man, half-kettlepot, he couldn’t withstand the blast. I walk over, kneel down, and close his one good eye.

Fire has consumed many of the dead weeds in the courtyard, along with some of the dead bodies. Even though I spent many nights purging my senses of the smell of fiery death, it all comes rushing back so fast that my eyes well up with tears. For a heartbeat, I’m paralyzed by it.

“No, no, no!” I yell, pressing my fists into my ears. “Not again!”

My second chance at a family of any kind has been burned up like the first. I can’t go on. My good leg goes very weak and I bend over. Am I dying? I’m hyperventilating for sure and the anxiety has taken hold of my body like a giant Gear Head. My mind is blacking out and my eyes won’t seem to open.

I don’t want to go. I don’t want to pass out. Don’t want to die. I will not lose it. Not here. Not today. Today, these people need me. I am the leader. I am a Hollow. A burst of adrenaline surges through my body. My eyes shoot open and my breathing becomes deep and controlled. I lift my chin to the sky.

I am a HOLLOW.

My brows furrow and fury surges through my veins. I stand up and take stock of the situation before me. Big mammoth train over there, dead bodies in the courtyard, and the Tower on fire. My hand slips into my pocket, searching for the bottle caps, but they are gone. My jaw muscles clench and I close my eyes, forcing myself to step back, to observe without emotion. My heart quickens when I see Sisson standing in the distance. She is darting from body to body to see if anyone is alive. A group of Hollows are bent over another body on the side steps of the Tower. I can tell it’s Gloves. His train chair lays broken on its side, still chugging and chugging. His body is slumped on the stairs to the Tower. I rush to his side.

“There was a blast and we all came out,” Gloves says, trying to tell me what happened despite the small bubbles of blood forming in the corners of his mouth. “Claymore went into hiding so he would be protected. Every Hollow who wasn’t on a mission came out to fight. The Tower fell behind us, and then people started to appear on the outskirts of the courtyard.”

Gloves’s eyes fall closed as he coughs up blood. His white beard is already stained crimson from the bloody spittle.

“It was Tesla,” he says finally.

“They found us,” I say.

Gloves continues, “We weren’t ready. That train emerged from under the ground fully loaded. The artillery was too much. We couldn’t hold them off. We didn’t stand a chance.”

“Where is Claymore?” I ask.

“He…” Gloves starts, but is interrupted with a fit of bloody coughing. “He went to a safe house. Stills got him out as soon as the fighting started.”

Gloves’s eyes flutter closed, then fling open.

“Stills!” he growls.

We look around, as we’ve been so focused on Gloves that we didn’t realize that a large man had joined our concerned group. Ember and Ethan gasp. Stewart Stills doesn’t have a face. All that sits atop his shoulders is a brass dome with two black portals for eyes. He looks like a bedpost knob with two hollow eye sockets. He doesn’t hesitate. After reaching up, he extracts a speaker from the side of his head. Steam hisses out.