It was more than I could stand, and given that it had been my irritation at Lacey’s refusal to let me help her—in order to let Anna work—that had caused her to send me out here in the first place, I stood up and moved away, not wanting to start another fight. I walked down the hall, pausing to chat with the lookouts Cyril had stationed there and making sure that they still had line of sight on the others, who were spread farther out into the adjacent junctions, before moving down the hall, aiming for the big man himself.
He was at the second position down, nearly a hundred feet from Lacey and the door, keeping a steady eye on the lights in either hall. “How’s it going?” I asked softly.
His dark eyes flicked to mine and then back to the hall. “It would be going better if I knew Lacey was making progress with that door. Anything?”
I shook my head, trying not to show my own worry and agitation that it was taking so long for her to get it open. “Can we cut through?” I asked. “Surely a cutter could open up the bulkhead. It’s not ideal, but—”
“We treat the walls with a special sealant that makes it impossible to cut them. It’s to avoid structural damage should any of the machinery suffer a catastrophic explosion, and it makes it impossible for the cutters to cut through the walls. There are specific areas that are left untreated, and I was just about to lead everyone there when you showed up. Maybe we should start pulling people back, and—”
“Excuse me, Champion?”
I looked over to see Anna standing behind me, nervously tucking some hair behind her ear. Her brown eyes flicked to Cyril and then to me, and she cleared her throat. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but it’s about Engineer Green. She needs blood, which means I need to know if anyone here is a universal donor, or B negative or positive, so I can administer a transfusion.”
I stared at her for a moment, and then shook my head. “I’m neither,” I told her. “Cyril?”
“A negative,” he replied grimly. “Frank, Zeke?”
“AB positive,” one of them replied. The other one simply shook his head.
I looked at Anna. “We’ll ask around. In the meantime, can you tell me how she’s doing?”
“She’s going to die,” Anna said solemnly. “She needs surgery. She has a metal fragment lodged dangerously close to her spine, and I think she’s going to lose her kidney and her spleen, but I’m not entirely certain. I’d feel much better with an experienced doctor.”
“You’re doing fine,” I reassured her, but inside, I felt very much the same way she did. Lacey was growing weaker by the minute and would pass out soon due to blood loss. If we didn’t do something to stop the bleeding, she would die.
And as much as she pissed me off, I didn’t want her to. Not just because I still needed her to tell me where Tony was, but because she could mobilize her Cogs into a veritable defense force and work to keep the power being generated in Cogstown from going to the Core—and hopefully keep Sage’s plans from becoming reality.
That, and as far as human beings went, she wasn’t awful. Sure, she had blackmailed me and my friends and thrown us all into danger, but she had done it with the good of the Tower at heart, so I supposed I could forgive that.
Then again, I felt like I could forgive a lot of things if I got through this alive.
“You’re her only hope,” I told her softly. “And I know that you can do it. And we’ll make sure you don’t do it alone, okay?”
Anna nodded and expelled a slow breath. “Thank you,” she said. “And… I’ll do my best. Should I go down one of the halls to ask about the blood?”
I exchanged looks with Cyril, and then nodded. “Go ahead and check with the lookouts in the left one. I’ll take the right. And Cyril? Do you mind taking the farther position and asking around?”
He nodded. “I’m on it. Have one of the workers tap twice on the large pipe running down the center of the ceiling if you find someone first, so I can send a replacement for him.”
I flashed him a thumbs-up and then moved down the hall, heading for the two lone lights glittering in the distance. Even though they looked far away, I only walked fifty feet before I hit them. It was a man and a woman, both Divers from Water Treatment. They glanced over their shoulders from the halls they were directing their lights down, giving me a curious look.
“Are either of you a universal donor, or B negative?” I asked. At their perplexed looks, I added, “Engineer Green needs a blood transfusion.”
The woman glanced at her counterpart, and then back to me. “I’m B negative,” she replied, and I expelled a breath of relief. That had been easier than I’d thought it would be.
“Excellent,” I replied. “If you don’t mind tapping twice on the pipe to let Cyril know, I’ll wait here with your friend and—”
The woman suddenly held up her hand, her eyebrows furrowing as her eyes got distant. She cocked her head slightly, and a moment later, I heard it: an erratic pattern being beaten out somewhere against the pipe.
“Something’s coming,” she whispered a moment later. “Eastern hall. Reports seeing… a crowd of people racing toward them, being pursued by six small golden lights in the distance, approaching rapidly.”
I turned around, looking back the way I had come. The eastern halls were on the other side of the main one. The one that led toward the door where Lacey was. “Fall back,” I told them. “Order everyone to the center—”
“More spotted on this side,” the man interrupted a second later, and I glanced over my shoulder to see him peering farther down the hall, his hand trembling. “Coming down all three adjacent hallways.”
Fear clenched my gut as I realized that Alice had us surrounded, and was closing in, and I slowly let a breath out against it, focusing on something productive. “Fall back,” I repeated. “Get to the door, now. Tell everyone.”
The two nodded and began tapping against the pipes using wrenches they produced from pockets in their suits. I didn’t stick around to watch them. I was already turning back to head to the door, needing to appraise Lacey of the situation.
I emerged from the hall seconds before Anna emerged from the opposite side, her cheeks flushed red with fear and exertion. “The man down the hall told me to run,” she hastily explained. “What’s going on?”
“The sentinels are coming,” I told her grimly. “C’mon, we need to get to Lacey.”
She nodded, mustering up a brave face in spite of how shaken she was, and we made our way up the hall toward the doors. We were halfway there when the first scream started. It was cut short before I could even turn around, but a second scream followed it. I heard several more screams and shouts go up and realized that everything was about to erupt into chaos. We needed to be close to the door when Lacey got it open so that we could make sure Lacey and the rest of the people got through safely.
I grabbed Anna’s wrist and began to pull her away, moving toward the next ring of lights at a brisk walk that turned into a light jog as soon as she matched my speed. Within seconds, we were running down the hall, led only by the bright lights ahead. We reached them just as the sound of running feet began to echo loudly through the halls, drowning our own out, and I came to an abrupt stop in front of Lacey.
“Tell me that you are two seconds from opening it,” I practically begged.
Lacey’s face was even paler than before, but the look in her eyes was one of fierce determination. “I take it we have guests?”
I glanced back down the hall and saw that the few lights from before had already doubled, and that the beams were jerking back and forth across the walls—which told me they were running.
“Yes,” I said. “And people are starting to panic. So please tell me you got the door!”
“Of course I have the door. The door likes me! It’s my friggin’ friend, through thick and thin!”
I looked over at Anna, who gave me a little shrug, and then glanced at Dylan and Rose.
“She’s been talking like that since Anna left,” Dylan said quietl
y.
“She was talking like that before I left,” I muttered, looking back at Lacey, gravely concerned about how the blood loss was starting to affect her. “Lacey, listen. The sentinels are coming, and you haven’t told anyone exactly what you are trying to do, and now you’re babbling. What do you need us to do to get the door open?”
“I need you to shut up for just one… damn… second,” she grated out, her arm stretching up to run the pen over a vertical circuit and then drag it back down toward a central node. “I’ve almost…”
The pen hit the central node and erupted in a spray of sparks. Lacey snatched her hand back, even as Anna threw herself over the woman, shielding her from the spray. The lights in the door flickered, and then turned a deep orange, before sliding to one side.
A blond woman wearing the orange coveralls of her department stood on the other side, and took a step back, her eyes widening in surprise as she took us all in. Her eyes leapt from one of us to another before finally settling on Lacey. “Engineer Green!” she said. “What’s going on? We haven’t been able to get the doors to open!”
“Power’s out in the shell,” Lacey croaked, motioning for Anna to help her up. “But still on in Cogstown. That locks the doors up to prevent them from being overridden by the Knights or anyone else trying to attack the department. A little design feature we had installed after the last Requiem Day, heh. But it’s a bitch and a half when you’re stuck on the outside, trying to get in. Now…” She paused as Rose moved in to scoop her up, clutching her side and giving a weak cry of pain. “I think I’m ready to lie down.”
“Less talking, more running!” I shouted, feeling like everyone was ignoring the oncoming wave of panicked humans behind us. “Rose, you get Lacey and Anna to a room, and then find Lacey a blood donor. Anna will explain what I mean. You, Cog girl—”
The woman pointed at herself, and when I nodded, she offered a tentative, “Neela.”
“Neela, people are going to be coming through here quickly. You need to keep them moving so the hall doesn’t jam up, and then be ready to seal the door. Tell me you can do that.”
Neela nodded and moved out of the way, speaking to some people just out of view from where I was standing. I ignored it for now and turned to Dylan. “You too,” I said, pointing to the doorway. “I’ll stay to help get people through, and—”
I stopped when the first person finally reached us, rudely moving between us to go through the door. Dylan and I exchanged looks, and then the first wave of people was on us.
“What’s going on?” I shouted as they began to push through, frantically making their way toward the door.
“Two people are dead!” a woman—who I recognized as Lacey’s volunteer blood donor—shouted as the crowd grew thicker, and more compact, slowing down due to people pressing to be first.
“Slow down,” I ordered them, shoving my hand in between bodies to prevent them from pushing farther forward and jamming things up. “Don’t panic! If you slow down and maintain patience, this can move quickly.”
“THEY’RE AT THE NEXT JUNCTION!” a voice in the crowd shouted, and everyone erupted into pandemonium. I was pushed back by a shoulder and slammed into a wall, losing all sight of Dylan as a throng of people hit the opening—more than I could possibly imagine. All of them were fighting for a position in the front, screaming and jostling, eyes wide with fear and panic at whatever was coming from the hall behind them.
Out of desperation to see what was coming, I threw a lash line overhead and used my harness to reel myself up so that I had a view over the tops of the heads of the crowd. Most people carried lights of some sort, but they were all pointing them forward rather than back and weren’t holding them still at all. Still, the crowd of people—which had doubled, if not tripled—was casting enough light collectively that I could see several feet behind them in the hall, where more and more people were racing to join us.
Then one man who had just entered the light gave a surprised scream and was violently ripped off his feet and thrown backward, his hoarse shout of alarm being cut off with a harsh thud.
People screamed as a sentinel stepped into the light, the golden eyes glowing like twin suns. “Citizens of the Tower,” Alice said. “Scipio is being attacked by dissidents. We are here to remove them from your ranks. Fear not, for if you have served Scipio well, you will not be harmed.” And then she reached into the crowd, grabbed a screaming woman in Diver’s blue, with short auburn hair, and lifted her up in the air. “You have been deemed a dissident,” she reported, wrapping her other hand around the woman’s jaw. “You will now be purged.”
Alice jerked her hand to one side, taking the woman’s head with it, and a sickening snap silenced the woman’s panicked cries.
9
Several heartbeats of stunned silence greeted Alice’s casual brutality, but that silence was broken when she lazily dropped the body to one side and began to reach into the crowd again.
“RUN!” I shouted, unable to watch as the crowd stood frozen in terror. I pulled out my gun and fired a round at Alice to punctuate my command, and just like that, the pandemonium began. The shot hit her in the head, and she staggered back, one hand reaching up to grasp the side of her face.
A woman screamed, but the sound was lost quickly as the entire crowd began to cry out in panic, viciously clawing their way toward the door. I saw several people halfway back break off from the bulk of the crowd to dart down the side halls, but seconds later, they were thrown back in by sentinels emerging from the side.
“Do not panic,” they announced in one united voice, which could barely be heard over the panicked cries. “If you are a true servant of Scipio, you will be safe.”
Within moments, they were diving into the crowd, seemingly picking people up at random, and then killing them in the most grotesque fashions. I hung, transfixed and horrified as I watched them pull men apart, sending blood and viscera spraying into the air, spattering the crowd with the remains of what had just been one of their comrades, and practically fold others in half. A man in the back of the crowd slipped in the blood as he tried to get away, and I watched one of the golden-eyed, blood-soaked monsters reach down and pluck him into the air.
He screamed, his legs kicking wildly, and I recognized him as Dalton, the Engineer whose rank-obsessed idiocy had almost gotten him killed outside the Tower when I was a lowly Squire. I probably wouldn’t have remembered him, but everything about that day was burned into my memory, as it was the day I met Grey. It seemed a lifetime since I had seen Dalton, and while I had wished more than my fair share of ill will upon him at the time, I had never wanted anything like this to happen to him—to anyone. It was too horrible.
I was starting to look away, to disconnect my lines, when the sentinel holding him flipped him over, gave him a cursory glance, and then set him down roughly on his feet. “You are free to go, citizen,” she said, finally using only one voice. “Please remain here until we have finished, and we will guide you from the shell back to your department.”
Dalton remained stock still as the sentinel stepped past him, moving toward the final few people trying to escape through the door. Moving toward me.
I suddenly realized how close they were getting to me, to Dylan, and I quickly twisted around, scanning for Dylan’s crimson uniform in the crowd. I spotted her trying to fight the tide pushing through the door and waving at me, and I disconnected the line, intent on making for her and getting through the door. As much as I wanted to stay and fight them—stop them—I knew that there were too many for me to handle. Not to mention, if they saw me, they would alert Sage that I was still alive. That was the last thing I wanted.
I landed heavily on my boots and then plunged into the group of people shoving their way through the door. “MOVE!” I roared, shoving the people in front of me low in their backs, stabilizing them even as I urged them forward. I realized instantly that it was a mistake to try to get to Dylan; there was only one way the crowd was going to let me
go, and that was forward. The heavy steps of metal feet on the corrugated flooring filled the hall over the sound of panicked crying, and I grunted as the press of bodies grew even tighter, the crowd becoming a mass of nothing but torsos, elbows, knees, and feet. If I went down, I would be trampled to death by the others in their panic to escape.
But I kept upright, pushing out with every ounce of strength I possessed to keep from getting overwhelmed, and nearly tripped over the lip of the door, my toe catching on it. I grabbed a fistful of somebody’s uniform to keep from falling, but I was already getting pushed farther down. I reached out with my other hand, seeking something that would help me reestablish balance, and found a strong hand instead. It wrapped around my forearm and hauled me up and forward.
I gasped as my rescuer and I suddenly stumbled free of the crowd, the numbers thinning out once we were past the threshold, thanks to the Cogs directing traffic. Glancing up, I was a little bewildered to see that it was Dylan who had saved me, and then was instantly relieved to see that she was all right. And, oh yeah, she had saved my life.
“Thanks,” I gasped.
She nodded, but her pale face was angled toward the door. I turned to see that the sentinels were closing the distance, and even though they were being slowed by whatever selection process they were using as they decided who lived and who died, they’d be at the door in thirty or forty seconds. Long before we got everyone through it.
I looked around and quickly spotted Neela by the door. She had some sort of wrench jammed into a large gear in a compartment behind the wall. As I watched, she flexed her arms and placed her weight on the long arm of the wrench, pushing so hard that her feet lifted off of the ground as she forced the gear to turn. As it shifted, the door began to close, moving an inch for every inch the wrench moved. When her feet hit the ground, she’d start the process again.