Mystic City (27 page)

“Manhattan, it is time for a change. When I am elected,” Violet continues, “no longer will mystics be segregated. No more will the rich live high above and the poor down below. We will be one city—united by our love for New York and for each other.”

The crowd hoots and hollers in response. Some boys around our age stand on each other’s shoulders and wave their lights in the sky. Next to me, a woman and her husband are clutching each other, smiling.

It’s here, in this moment, surrounded by people I have never met and listening to Violet speak about a future Manhattan with equal rights for every citizen, that I realize I want Violet to defeat Garland and win the election—no matter what that means for my family. I hear myself cheering with everyone else.

“She has a way with words, don’t you think?” Davida says.

“Definitely.” I inch closer to her, our arms touching. “I’m glad you came with me. It means more, listening to this with you here.”

Davida smiles—her lips curl up and her face radiates happiness. As soon as she does, I realize how distant we’ve become over the last few years. How much I’d like for us to be friends again.

“I’m glad I came, too,” she says.

At the podium, Violet stands proudly, pumping her fists high in the air.

And then she drops to the ground.

The noise of the crowd is so loud that it’s difficult to tell what’s happened at first, but then I hear it distinctly: the sound of gunshots ripping through the sky.

“Get down!” people start shouting, and then there’s a suffocating commotion as the people around me try to evacuate the lawn. People who were cheering only moments before have gone wild, almost feral. The crowd surges around us, squeezing my chest and lifting me off my feet. “Davida!” I scream. “Davida!”

Violet Brooks is hustled offstage, likely to safety. It’s the last
thing I see before the hood of my cloak falls forward, over my eyes. Bloodcurdling screams pierce the air; it sounds like people being trampled underfoot.

I fall to the ground and begin to crawl, yanking back my hood so I can see. I look around frantically, searching for Davida. Where is she?

The rush of people fighting to pass me is too intense—men and women are getting elbowed in the stomach, punched in the face, shoved aside. Instead of trying to leave the lawn, I step back onto a thick patch of grass, toward a cluster of trees.

“Davida!” I spot her a few feet away—she’s okay, and seems to have the same idea I do. A man knocks her to the side as he runs past her. She stumbles toward me, reaching out for my hand. I grab it and pull her back, into the trees.

The crowd surges forward like a stampede of animals. It’s strange to watch from outside, how the faces and bodies seem to blur together until they look like one solid mass.

We catch our breath for a few minutes, and eventually the crowd thins. People pick themselves up off the ground and begin to walk. There’s no more yelling or screaming. Fallen tubes are everywhere, cracked glass scattered across the lawn.

“Are you all right?” Davida asks me, wiping her gloves on her pant legs and whisking off her cloak.

My wrists and elbows are sore, but otherwise, I’m fine. “Yeah, are you?”

She nods. “Did you see what happened to Violet? Is she—”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I hope she’s safe.”

I could have lost my life tonight. And Violet Brooks most
certainly could have lost hers, if she hasn’t already. The only people who’d want to assassinate her are my parents and the Fosters.

The realization sickens me. Is there no end to what my parents will do to get their way? Will they stop at nothing, leaving a trail of dead bodies in their wake?

I am racked with guilt. With anger. If my parents tried to kill Violet Brooks tonight, then surely Hunter will be in danger if they find out who he is. They already did … 
something
to me, their own daughter. My father will not hesitate to murder Hunter.

Hunter is good at covering his tracks, at living as a rebel without being caught, even when he’s in the Aeries. At basically disappearing off the Grid. But what if that’s not enough? I
will
protect him. And I’ll protect the people in the Depths if I can, poor people who want a better life, mystics who want equality.

And most of all, I think as Davida clings to my arm and we exit the Great Lawn, I will protect myself.

• XIX •

At work the next day, I sit back and watch the higher-ups—two dozen men and women—trickle past my cubicle and upstairs to my father’s conference room for an emergency meeting. Most likely to discuss the failed assassination attempt. Patrick Benedict hustles out of the room with the stainless steel door, and we lock eyes as he passes.

I wait for a familiar sound without even realizing it: the click of the door latch locking behind him. It never comes.

The attempt on Violet Brooks has been all over the newsfeeds: it was confirmed early this morning that one of her bodyguards lost his life; she and the rest of her team escaped unharmed.

I stand up from my cubicle just as my TouchMe buzzes: Kiki. I let it go straight to voice mail. I already owe her a half-dozen phone calls. What’s one more?

The few people who don’t have their noses pressed up against their TouchMes are busy upstairs. A better opportunity may never come.

As casually as possible, I walk over to the water fountain and take a drink. Then, after a moment, I stroll to the keyless door—it
is ajar a quarter inch. I have my hand against it and am about to push it open when—

I feel a tap on my shoulder.

I whirl around and see Elissa Genevieve staring down at me. “Here,” she says calmly. “Allow me.” Then she reaches past, pushes open the door, and we’re inside.

I really don’t know what I was expecting.

A secret office where Patrick hid important files on me, on Hunter, or even on Violet Brooks and her father, Ezra Brooks? Assassination plans mapped out and tacked to the walls? An armory full of mystic-powered long-range weapons? Video feeds from every camera in the Aeries and the Depths, tracking every citizen through every step of the day?

What’s inside is nothing like any of that.

I follow Elissa down a long hallway. Our heels clop loudly against the tiled floor, and my breathing is so labored I can hear it. At the end of the hallway is a white door that opens onto a flight of stairs. We descend one floor, and there’s another doorway, this time with a retina scan; Elissa submits her eye; the door unlocks, and she hurries me through before it closes.

Inside, the overhead lights are so bright I have to squint. Three of the walls are covered with long white curtains. The fourth is blue-black metal. A door much like the one we came through stands smack in the middle of it.

Elissa walks over to the far wall, yanking the curtains aside. I whistle: behind them, the wall is mounted with dozens of glass tubes. They’re about as thick as my wrist, covering the entire
length of the wall and disappearing into the floor and ceiling, so it’s impossible to see where they begin or end. Are they fifty feet long or five hundred?

I go over to the opposite wall and pull the curtains aside: more tubes. The floor is white marble, and in the center of the room is a large metal throne that resembles nothing so much as an old-fashioned electric chair, the kind used for executing criminals. Straps dangle from the body, armrests, and legs of the chair. I don’t even want to think about why people have to be strapped into the thing.

“What
is
this place?”

“This”—Elissa motions around the room with her arms—“is one of the rooms in which Patrick, under the instruction of your father and George Foster, drains the power of the mystics who live in the Magnificent Block.”

“Oh.” Suddenly the beautiful glass tubes take on a sinister, cruel look. I walk closer and run my fingers down one of the tubes; I can see they’re lined with a thin coating of something silver and glittery.

“Quicksilver.” Elissa points to the silvery substance. “It’s another word for mercury. The only element strong enough to contain mystic energy.”

The quicksilver sparkles under the bright lights. “It’s beautiful.”

“Beautiful, yes, but also volatile,” Elissa says. “It’s quite dangerous to handle.”

“Where do all the tubes go?”

“Different places.” Elissa motions to a row of tubes. “Some go to transformer stations, where the raw power is stepped down
and filtered directly into the city’s power grid. The spires you see everywhere—those are where the waste energy from that process is burned off into the air.”

I notice the swirling green liquid inside the tubes—the same as what’s inside the city’s spires. Drained mystic energy.

“But that’s only a small percentage of the drainings. Most of it is captured and sent elsewhere.”

I think about Violet Brooks’s speech, how she said that the city already has enough mystic energy to run for years and years and years, yet they’re still draining mystics every day.

I already know that the real purpose of the draining is to control the mystics. But another reason pops into my head: the mystic energy is being used to create—and sell—Stic.

Tabitha’s words come rushing back to me—Manhattan has one of the largest mystic populations in the world, and Stic is being sold here illegally. How much money do my parents and the Fosters make selling it? Is
this
really why they will stop at nothing to maintain their control of the city—the source of their profits? To control the farm where they raise mystics to harvest?

It’s sickening. This room disgusts me. It’s nothing more than a torture chamber.

“Why did you bring me in here?” I ask Elissa. “Why didn’t you report me?”

“I won’t sugarcoat it for you, Aria. You’re a smart girl. You would have figured it out eventually.” She strolls to the center of the room and places her hands on the back of that grim chair. “You already know that I’m a reformed mystic. What you don’t know is that I’m a double agent. I’m working with the rebels. If Violet
Brooks loses the election, I’m going to help overthrow your parents and do what I can to destroy these places. They’re evil.”

Elissa? Double agent? “Is that why you’ve been so nice to me?”

She sighs. “You’re not like your family, Aria. You’re not greedy or cruel. You want what’s best for this city—I can tell. And I need your help.”

“My help? What can I possibly do?”

“I know you’ve been in touch with some of the rebels,” she says. “I have my sources. I haven’t reported you—in fact, I’ve helped you, deleting red alerts from the computer system that have popped up when you’ve accessed PODs in the Aeries. I’ve kept your secret, Aria.”

It makes sense now—why I haven’t been reported for sneaking into the Depths. I
do
have a Grid guardian angel: Elissa.

“But recently,” she continues, “Patrick has gotten suspicious. He assigned someone else—a worker named Micah—to monitor the Grid without me knowing, and your access to the POD was denied. Micah is the one who sent your father’s men after you the other day, the ones you sent on a wild-goose chase.” I’m shocked that she knows about that, but I don’t interrupt her. “Since then, Patrick has been watching you himself, trying to discover whether you’re able to access the rebels’ underground warrens.”

“He knows about the underground?”

She casually sits down in the chair. “Of course. Your father and the Fosters have known about the rebel hideouts for years, but they’ve been unable to find an entry point. It takes mystic power to get through the wards and barriers the rebels have erected, and all the legal mystics aboveground have been drained.”

“Even you? Even Patrick? Don’t you still have
some
of your powers?”

She sighs. “But I still don’t have access to the subways. Not just
any
charged mystic can get through—most need a passkey of some sort. So the rebel mystics are safe from Patrick and your father … and from me. Without all my powers, I have no way to warn them of what’s coming.” She pauses. “Your father is planning something that could wipe out the entire underground. They’ll be slaughtered, and everything Violet Brooks has struggled for will end.”

I want to believe Elissa, but is
anyone
who they say they are? Davida, Hunter, Thomas—now this? “Why should I trust you?”

Elissa glances down at her watch. “Come. You’ll see.”

She stands and goes to close the curtains. Then she motions for me to hide behind the set of curtains opposite the chair. We disappear just as Benedict enters the room. A high-pitched beep sounds as he opens the door, the latch clicking behind him. He must have just left my father’s emergency meeting. I peer through one of the slits, watching him take a white lab coat off a hook on the wall and slip it over his suit.

Seconds later, the other door opens. Through it walks Stiggson in his typical all-black attire. He’s dragging a woman whose hands are cuffed.

“What’s happening?” I whisper to Elissa. She doesn’t answer, but holds a finger to her lips and motions for me to keep watching.

Benedict flicks on a few switches as Stiggson pushes the woman into the chair. Her blond hair is lifeless; her eyes are the color of dishwater.

“No,” she says weakly, her lips turned down.

Stiggson ignores her and straps her in. He slips a bite guard into her mouth and immobilizes her head with a series of belts that go underneath her chin and across her forehead. Then he undoes the cuffs and gently places them in a container.

Benedict opens the curtains nearest him. He scans the wall and adjusts a series of tubes and levers. At last, he presses a circular green button. The sound of some kind of vast machine coming to life fills the room. It doesn’t seem possible, but the lights in the room burn even brighter.

Benedict places a pair of goggles over his eyes, then hands another pair to Stiggson, who dons them and steps back against the wall.

Two large black discs emerge from the floor on either side of the chair. Benedict presses another button, and then it begins.

The woman seems to brighten and glow, as though she is burning up from within. Thin filaments of green light—like the ones I’ve seen flow from Hunter’s fingertips—writhe out of the woman’s chest. They coil and snap and move so sinuously that they’re almost pretty. The tendrils of light layer themselves one upon another, always moving, until they form a tight sphere around the woman, a bright woven cage of light.