28
I STUMBLED FORWARD AND TRIPPED, hitting one suit of armor on my way down. As its spear clattered onto the ground next to me, I looked up. The other girls were huddled together in front of me, dizzily trying to regain their bearings. Vasily and Jessie stood just beyond the iron gates with Rhys as their hostage. Though they wore their regular street clothes, they looked menacing nonetheless, both with their fingers on their respective triggers.
“You may feel a little dazed after the inoculation. This model’s a bit more powerful than the others.” Vasily slipped his dart gun back into his jacket, his hair tied up in a ponytail at the back of his head. “Just a protective measure.”
Jessie’s sneakers squeaked against the marble floor as she shifted her position to peer at the four of us over Rhys’s left shoulder.
“Now you’re all here!” Her manic laughter bounced off the high ceiling. “Great! Now you all get to see pretty Aidan’s brains fly out of his—”
Vasily put his hand up to silence her. He was clearly the more measured of the two, and that was saying something. But even without a gun, he was the one who frightened me the most.
“Maia,” he said as Jessie bit her lip moodily. He stretched his hand out to me next. “It’s time. Come with me. I know you don’t want Aidan to die.”
After pushing myself onto my knees, I let myself fall back, my dizziness blurring my vision. When my back hit the suit of armor, I hoped it wouldn’t topple over. “How did you get here?”
But I already knew. Naomi’s ring. Rhys had told me it’d been bugged. Jessie had been fiddling with it during Blackwell’s party days ago before throwing it back to her. They would have known we were meeting in Madrid. . . .
“Your prints on the keypad.” Vasily still showed a little sign of the torture he’d endured earlier under the cruel hand of the Surgeon. There were scars all over his face, and his skin looked swallow and dry, like he’d aged several years. But that Cheshire grin hadn’t changed. He showed just a taste of it to me. “You should have used gloves. Rookie mistake.”
“Besides,” Jessie added wildly, “Vasily followed Natalya around months ago. You think we wouldn’t find this place? You think we’re that stupid? Huh?”
Behind me, Belle stirred, her hand twitching against the floor.
“Calm down.” It was Rhys who spoke, saying words he’d probably said thousands of times before. He didn’t need to be able to see her face to feel her sudden frenzy. For a moment, it seemed as if Jessie had listened, her hand relaxing due to habit alone before she steeled herself and pressed her gun harder against Rhys’s skull.
“He’s right, Jessie. There’s no need to worry. This time, Maia will come with us.”
“Come with you where?” Chae Rin said. The other four were starting to come out of their dizzy spell, but I knew they couldn’t fight because I couldn’t fight. Whatever surge of power we’d felt in that mysterious room had once again disappeared under the influence of the inoculation dart Vasily and Jessie had hit us with. Our strength and our magic were gone for now.
“To Saul. The preparations are almost done. But we need you, Maia. You’re the last piece of the puzzle. There’s something you know that nobody else does. Even if you don’t know you know it yet.”
Marian’s frantic plea to Alice played back in my memories, her soft cries just an echo deep in my consciousness: “For only in calm can you hear them speak.” Miss Alice, we can go to those lands. We can ask them for one last wish! I can take you! Let us go together! If we do, we can finally end this!
“And what exactly is he preparing for?” Shakily, I got to my feet. “Is it Project X19?”
Vasily hid his shock much better than Jessie, who gritted her teeth and tightened her grip on Rhys’s neck in retaliation.
“For you to ask that question means you know a little, but not enough,” Vasily answered.
“I know the Sect is fractured. So is the Council. I know whichever part Baldric was terrified of is the part working with Saul—and working with you two.”
The flash drive we’d given Uncle Nathan—the one we’d taken from Philip—pointed to the Sect. The nanotech Mellie had injected into my neck was a similar model to the one in Jessie’s own. Baldric was right in thinking there was a connection between Saul’s soldiers and the Sect.
But why would Saul work with them? During our battle in France, Nick had told me that both he and Alice wanted the same thing: the rest of the stone so he could grant some wish. Marian knew where to find it. But that couldn’t have been all. What else did he have in store?
“How did they recruit you, Vasily?” I stared him down. “You don’t have any powers, so you weren’t in the Silent Children Program. Neither was Rhys.”
“The job was offered to me one day by a close associate,” Vasily said simply. “I didn’t think twice.”
“Because you wanted to help Saul?”
“This is much bigger than Saul. It’s not about the Sect, either. It’s about the whole world, Maia. It’s about changing the world.” Vasily slipped both of his hands into his pockets. “We’re making a world where poor girls like you don’t have to fight anymore. You can throw away your ‘duty’ and live your lives. Don’t you want that?”
Vasily was sincere, as sincere as when he’d stared pale-faced at the image of his mother, broken by the same cruel system that had abused him.
“The only way you can do that,” Rhys said, struggling against the pressure of Jessie’s arm, “is if you destroy the Sect.”
“The Sect should be destroyed, Aidan,” Vasily said, his voice rising dangerously, his face alight with quiet anger. “After everything they did to you. To me. To . . .” He swallowed his next words, but I already knew what he wanted to say. His mother. “We’re nothing to them, agents and Effigies alike. We have to build something greater. This is the only way to do it.”
Silently, he walked through the rows of suited armor, his gaze as sharp as the towering crystallized phantoms watching over us with their slitted eyes.
My feet felt weighted as I stepped out to the middle of the hall, directly in front of him, my back facing Patricia’s portrait. I had no magic, not enough training to go up against a monster like Vasily. But I wasn’t going with him without a fight.
Neither was Belle. I hadn’t seen her pick up the spear that had fallen next to me, but she had it firmly gripped in her hand as she stepped out from behind the suits of armor.
“Vasily.” She let the tip of the spear drag against the marble floor with a loud scratch as she walked. “Tell me again. That you followed Natalya.”
Rhys’s eyes met mine, secrets whispering silently between us. Belle still had the special volume in her hand, but not for long. She threw it to the side and it skidded across the floor until it came to a stop against the suit of armor. Belle was readying herself for battle.
Vasily laughed. “Who? Sorry, did somebody mention her?”
“Tell me.” She pivoted on her feet, facing the trio.
“Belle!” Lake got up, though she stayed where she was, her eyes nervously darting between both poles of the room. “Calm down!”
“Did nobody tell you?” He gave Rhys a sidelong look, delighting in the way Rhys’s jaw set. “She’s nobody. You should know that by now. Important to no one. I can’t even remember what I did or didn’t do to her.”
The spear shook in Belle’s hand. But out of the corner of my eye, I could see the digital wall clock ticking down from inside the opposite room. I could see the red numbers flashing just above the heads of the three stone statues. Ten seconds . . . nine seconds . . .
“Guys . . .” I grabbed Belle’s arm, but she shrugged me off without even looking back. Her breaths labored, her hands trembling, she raised the spear, pointing its blade at him.
“Did you kill Natalya?”
Four seconds . . . three seconds . . .
“Maybe.” Vasily smiled. “What a pity that you’re the only one who still seems to care.”
Belle raised her arm, ready to let her spear fly, when a buzzing noise sounded behind us. Two small square hatches in the wall burst open on either side of Patricia’s portrait.
Chae Rin rose swiftly to her feet, her eyes wide. “What . . . the hell . . . is that?”
That was a machine gun. Two, one in each hatch, their barrels pointed into the room.
And they started firing.
Belle and I ducked to the floor, covering our heads while Chae Rin and Lake found cover behind separate suits of armor. Rhys had used the moment of confusion to free himself from Jessie’s grip. I could barely hear her gunshot above the rattling of the machine gun, but I saw the gun sliding out of her grip onto the floor as they both ran and dove out of the way. The bullets riddled the floor, turning right to left almost as if to make sure no life escaped its reach. The Haas family had truly spared no expense in the security of their secrets.
It stopped, maybe just for a moment, maybe forever. I didn’t know. Belle didn’t care. Once the coast was clear, she ran down the hall, crossing diagonally to the opposite end of the room to where Vasily was hiding. He came out to meet her, dodging the swipe of her spear, punching her in the stomach. Chae Rin ran to help but was intercepted by Jessie, who tried to catch the nimble Effigy with her fists. That wasn’t so easy with Rhys striking her from behind. Yet while Jessie fought her battle, I could see the clock reset. Ten seconds . . . nine seconds . . .
“Guys! Take cover!” I found a suit to hide behind. “Take cover!”
The rattling began again and everyone dove out of the way. It would go on like this forever if we let it. We were all going to die unless we figured out a way to stop it. But just in front of me, Jessie, taking advantage of Chae Rin’s distraction, leapt onto her, her head staying well below the rain of bullets even as they clinked against the metal suit they hid behind.
After a swift punch, Jessie started choking her.
“Stop!” I cried. Rhys tugged at Jessie’s leg, but he couldn’t do much while he tried to avoid the machine guns’ attack. Chae Rin was dying.
On my other side, Lake flung off her knapsack, searching for the cigar box while the bullets wailed overhead. She flung open the lid and grabbed some of the shards of stone strewn about the paraphernalia. Was she making a wish? But there was no black sliver in the stone she picked. It wasn’t powered up for a wish—
Then I saw the crystal phantoms stirring.
“Lake . . .” Slowly, the phantoms stretched their necks out with a shiver, the crystal crackling and melting off of their flesh. “What did you just do?”
“I just told it . . . willed it to . . .” Lake’s trembling hand dropped the shards. “It was the only thing I could think of.” The whimper in her voice begged me to understand.
Just like Saul who’d used the stone to force his phantoms to harden their bodies around the train in France. Lake must have remembered Pete discussing the stone’s power. It could control a phantom’s biology. It could make a phantom petrify.
And it could do the reverse, too.
If Lake’s plan was to distract Jessie, it worked. The girl had stopped choking Chae Rin just long enough for the Effigy to push her off her body with as much strength as she could muster. The crystal hides of dragon-like phantoms began to shift and shatter.
“Change them back!” I yelled, but Lake’s shaking, sweaty hand couldn’t grasp the shards of stone before the phantoms roared, their unpetrified wings crashing into the machine guns, breaking them to pieces. A hunk of metal flew at our heads. Lake and I left the shards behind to dive out of the way before the debris could crush us. The guns were out of commission, but we’d only replaced one weapon with another. The phantoms hadn’t fully shed their crystal skin when they spotted us and began rushing forward.
“Run!” Lake screeched. Leaving her bag behind, she took off, pulling me along with her. Chae Rin was on her feet too, and Rhys. Jessie, Belle, Vasily—friend and enemy alike made for the gates as the phantoms charged after us, destroying everything in their path. I could hear their cries echoing behind us, too close for comfort as we ran through the corridor that led back out of the hall. It was mayhem behind us. Bricks crashing, walls crumbling as the half-petrified phantoms stampeded after us. I was the last one up the stairs, and I could feel half of it bursting into pieces below me as the monsters smashed it. I managed to just barely squeeze past the open bookshelf and back into the Little Room, but the phantoms held no such courtesy. They crashed through the bookshelf itself, sending spines and covers and wood flying into the air. I stumbled over a globe rolling across the floor, but before I could recover my footing, a phantom’s wing slammed into my side, sending me flying back. I felt my left ribs crack against the door from the impact.
“Maia!” Rhys cried, but he paused and turned, staring at the phantom. Wincing in pain, I looked long enough to catch it too. The phantoms—their bodies were starting to dissolve. Maybe they already had been from the beginning, but it was more noticeable now. The parts of their bodies that had unpetrified disappeared first, but I was sure the rest of them would follow eventually. I could see the black mist sizzling off their bodies, their bones wafting off into black mists.
“It’s the effects of the city’s APD,” said Rhys.
The phantoms slowed down, but with parts of them still petrified, they wouldn’t be stopped that easily. With a roar, they smashed what was left of their wings into the wall and stomped forward menacingly.
“Yeah, time to go,” Chae Rin said.
I couldn’t move. The pain from my cracked ribs was nearly debilitating. Rhys scooped me up into his arms and, punching in the code he must have glimpsed from Vasily, carried me out of the room. Rhys and I ran across the museum with the other Effigies following close behind. But Vasily still had his gun—I could see one dart fly past Rhys’s ear as we neared the entrance. The phantoms did whatever damage they could before they disappeared, the floor rumbling beneath their feet. It didn’t take long. The last of the phantoms finally disappeared, their faint cries echoing into the air, but we were far from free. I knew it the moment we crossed the doors of the National Museum and into the open air.
We saw them lined up along both staircases leading down from the front entrance. The national police force. Sect agents. Some were on the ground, hiding behind the doors of their police cars. Some were standing in front of the Wenceslas statue.
And all had their guns pointed at us.
“Effigies! You are under arrest!” one agent said. I couldn’t tell who. But I was sure I’d hear all the juicy details on the news later on, if the helicopters above were any indication. “Put your hands up and surrender yourselves into Sect custody!”
I peeked back over Rhys’s shoulders. Vasily held Jessie back, both of them concealed behind the doors. Wordlessly, he parted his jacket, and what he showed me made my heart stop. The thirteenth volume. I’d been so concerned with running for my life from the phantoms and guns, I hadn’t kept track of my human enemies; I hadn’t noticed Vasily snake the book for himself. He smiled. But I couldn’t do anything. They knew it too. The pain in my sides was so horrible, I couldn’t even speak.
Jessie stuck out her tongue at me as they disappeared back inside the museum, leaving us to be captured.