The Rule of Thoughts (40 page)

Other men and women with weapons waited outside. Beyond them, crowds of people had gathered to watch the commotion. Fire trucks lined the streets, and cop cars, both wheeled and hovering, sat abandoned, their lights flashing.

Michael’s mind spun and his muscles burned. He could barely see, sweat blurring his vision on top of the sudden brightness. Now that they were out of the building, the man who’d pushed him along grabbed him roughly and dragged him farther away, to an area where others were taking Bryson and Sarah. To a big black truck, whose doors two men had just opened.

“Weber,” Michael breathed, stumbling along, barely able to keep his feet under him. “Weber.” He swiveled his head, searching for a Portal, wondering if he could make a break for it. Something wasn’t right. He hadn’t thought this far ahead, but things were supposed to go down differently.

Plant and trigger the Lance. Get Lifted.

Suddenly, like a waking dream,
Gabby
appeared. She was in the crowd, pushing past people, running toward Michael. He stared at her. He didn’t understand.

“Jax!” she screamed, her face lit with terror, sprinting straight at him. Two cops chased her. “Michael!”

“Gabby?”
he whispered, barely hearing it himself. What the hell was going on?

“It’s not real!” she yelled, just as one of the cops grabbed her arm. “I mean, it
is
real! They tricked you! I should never have helped—” The other cop slugged her in the head with his nightstick and she collapsed to the ground.

Unable to form words, Michael screamed, a bloodcurdling sound that pierced his own ears. It came from everywhere inside him, a banshee cry born of confusion and pain. He was pushed ahead, and he lost sight of Gabby.

They were throwing his friends into the back of the truck. Panic surged inside Michael. No, no, no. Everything was so
wrong
.

“Gabby!” he yelled.

He jerked his body, twisting away from his captor, trying to see Gabby. The man lost his grip and Michael staggered, turned, started running. Toward Gabby.

Wrong.

Everything.

Throngs of people surrounded her. If he could just get that far. Find her, help her, get lost in the crowd.

A woman stepped in front of him, dressed in all-black battle gear. She had a nightstick, too, and she swung the long, thin club directly at Michael’s face. It connected with his forehead, a crushing blow that made the world erupt into bright lights and pain. He fell to the ground, crumpling in a heap, the back of his head slamming into the concrete.

The sky and the tops of buildings swirled above him. He almost lost consciousness but held on, forcing himself to stay connected. His strength was gone. Gone.

“Gabby,” he whispered. “Weber. Where are you?”

And then he was being lifted into the air. Carried to the truck. Thrown inside.

They slammed the door closed, a long screech followed by a thunderous, echoing boom, leaving him and his friends in darkness.

Michael closed his eyes.

Michael floated in and out of consciousness. He woke up when they moved him, saw flashes of lights and faces, the blur of movement. His head hurt, a raw ache that reminded him far too much of the Decay. Of all that had been. Of Kaine. Nausea overwhelmed him.

He slept.

“Hey,” someone whispered. “Michael. You okay?”

Sarah. It was Sarah. He blinked a few times, opened his eyes fully. She was staring down at him. He was on his back, lying on something very hard. His head felt better, and the wooziness had subsided. With a groan he moved to get up, and she helped him. His heart sank when he saw where they were.

He was on a bench. He was with Sarah and Bryson in a dimly lit room with iron bars all around—a prison cell. There was no one else in sight. Had they been Lifted?

“Dude,” Bryson said. “That lady must’ve knocked half of your brains out of your ears with that blow. I saw it. You’ve been out for a while.”

“What …” Michael groaned. It hurt to speak.

Sarah was next to him. Holding his hand.

“Everything was a lie,” she said. “They won’t tell us much. Just that we’re under arrest. The cops here are terrible.”

“What …” Michael said again. Maybe he’d suffered some serious brain damage and that was the only word he’d ever utter for the rest of his life. “Did you see Gabby?”

He turned to Bryson, who didn’t seem to have heard him. His friend was fuming, rubbing his hands together as he stared at the wall of metal bars. “Weber. She set us up. Set the whole thing up, top to bottom. I just hope I get a chance someday … Just five minutes. That’s all I need.”

Michael wanted to ask what in the world he was talking about but had to focus on breathing.

“We don’t know it was her,” Sarah said. “In fact, it doesn’t even make sense if it was her. After she Sunk us into the Sleep, someone else must’ve charged in and taken over operations.”

Bryson just scoffed at that.

Michael was becoming more convinced by the second that he had been hit too hard to recover. “Wait … what’s going on? What do you guys know?”

Sarah kept talking, but she didn’t seem to be talking to Michael. “They must’ve done it right after Weber gave us the
Lance device. It was somehow linked to the Squeeze. I mean, we all passed out. Slept for who knows how long. They had plenty of time to do it.”

“I’m telling you, it was Weber,” Bryson said. He sat back against the cement wall behind the bench. “You can’t tell me she gave us that Lance thing and Lifted out of the Sleep, and then suddenly other people took over. That’s too convenient.
She
set us up.”

“But
why
?” Sarah asked. “We already had tons of reasons to be arrested. Michael’s supposedly a terrorist, and everyone on the planet thinks I did something to my … parents.” She faltered but quickly recovered. “Not to mention the umpteen times we’ve broken laws in the Sleep. It doesn’t add up. If Weber—or anyone else—wanted us in jail, all they had to do was turn us in. Call the cops.”

Michael just kept looking back and forth between his friends, trying to connect the dots. Bryson was slowly nodding, considering.

“Huh,” he said. And then he repeated it. “Huh.”

“Guys.” Michael shifted in his seat, wincing from the pain that lingered. “Call me slow. But what in the world are you talking about? What did Gabby mean back there? Have they even Lifted us out of the
Deep
yet? Where
are
we? What happened? Is this a real jail or—”

“Michael,” Sarah said softly, but firm enough to cut him off. “Michael. They tricked us. Someone did.”

“How?” he asked. “What did they do?”

Sarah looked terribly, terribly sad.

“We were never in
Lifeblood Deep
,” she said. “They had to
have drugged us at some point—knocked us out after we got in the Coffins, I don’t know—and then Lifted us and dropped us in the Wake, in the
real
Atlanta. It’s the only explanation.”

Michael’s head started spinning again.

Sarah gave his hand a hard squeeze. “Whatever was in that building, we really did destroy it. In the
Wake
, Michael. And I don’t know if it had anything to do with Kaine.”

Michael lay on a tiny cot in a cramped room. The floor, ceiling, and three walls were made of stone blocks. A line of thick bars made up the fourth wall. The only light was a single lonely lightbulb, which buzzed and flared every few minutes. Michael stared at the ceiling, overwhelmed by a deep grief like he’d never known. He wished he were dead.

He didn’t know exactly why he felt so despairingly sad. Things had been bad going on worse for a long time now. But being locked away—and worse, separated from his friends, which the guard had done a couple of hours earlier—gave him all the silence and time in the world to think about his problems.

And think he did.

About his Tangent parents, gone forever. About Helga, his loving Tangent nanny, gone as well. Sarah, her parents
still missing, accused of being behind their disappearance. Bryson, accused of helping her. Kaine, on the loose and taking over more bodies by the second, for all Michael knew. Agent Weber, the only person he’d trusted besides Sarah and Bryson, betraying him.

He thought about Jackson Porter. The boy’s life, stolen.

Michael, a murderer, whether he’d meant to be or not.

And Gabby.
He’d
dragged her into this. And all he could see was her crumpled, injured body lying on the pavement.

It was all too much.

Michael had always prided himself on not being the crying sort. That had changed recently. The lights above looked blurry, and when he reached up to scratch his cheek, his fingers came away wet.

He rolled over and faced the wall, curled up into a ball.

And then Michael cried. The kind of crying where his chest hitched and his throat closed up and his shoulders shook. The kind where snot flowed and the sound of sobs and sniffles broke the gloomy silence.

Michael
wept
.