“Come on!” he yells, stepping through. We all follow, though I grab the extinguisher and put out the smoldering fire on our way through.
The people who live in this apartment start screaming, but Draven gets them under control, fast, erasing their memories and sending them back to the safety of their locked bedrooms as I put out the last spark. I can’t imagine what they’re going to think when they wake up to disaster in the morning.
The battering ram pounds against the door while Nitro rips a hole in the far wall of this apartment and we follow him into the next. I do the fire-extinguisher thing; Draven does the mind-erase thing. Nitro gears up for one more hole—to the corner apartment—but just then, the pounding stops as Riley’s door gives with a tremendous screech of hinges.
“Move!” Draven yells, and Nitro lets loose his fireball. This time, neither Draven nor I pause to mitigate the damage. Instead, we hightail it through the apartment.
We’re aiming for the fire escape, when Riley says, “Corner apartments have attics. We can get up there—”
We don’t have time to be shocked by his helpfulness.
Draven’s already pulling at the cord hanging from the ceiling. And then we’re climbing up the rickety ladder, Dante all but carrying Rebel up the stairs and Riley doing the same for Nitro in their haste to get ahead of our pursuers.
I can hear the SWAT team storming after us as I start to climb. Draven pretty much throws me up the ladder and into Dante’s waiting hands, and then he’s there beside me, yanking up the ladder and wedging something against the door to keep it from being opened.
“We need to move,” he barks. “They could start shooting at the ceiling—”
He breaks off as gunfire sounds below us, bullets slamming into the floor where we’d been standing only seconds before.
“Bugger it!” Nitro yells. “We’re trapped!”
“We’re not!” Jeremy says, pointing to a small skylight in the middle of the attic. “That leads to the roof.”
“What if they’re on the roof?” Rebel demands.
More bullets come plowing through the floor. “You really want to debate what-ifs right now?” Jeremy says.
“Not even a little bit.” Dante reaches out and slams his wind into the small skylight. It shatters on the first blow.
“Give me a boost!” I shout.
God only knows what’s on that roof, and I want to be the first one through the window. It’s the most vulnerable position, the one most likely to get hurt, and I feel like it’s my responsibility. I’m the one who convinced Draven that coming here was a good idea, which means it’s my job to figure out how to get us out of it alive.
Draven doesn’t agree. “I’m going up first,” he tells me.
“No way. I am.”
“Don’t fight me on this, Kenna. You’re not equipped to go up there on your own.”
“Not equipped?” This isn’t the time, but my blood begins to boil.
“Yes. You’re—” He stops.
“I’m what? Powerless? Didn’t we just decide I’m not?”
“An electromagnetic power will do you no good in this situation!” he whisper-shouts, his voice echoing in the narrow chute. “You don’t even know how it works yet!”
“Seriously?” Jeremy says. “We’re fighting about this? Now?”
“No,” Draven, sounding dangerous. “We’re not going to fight about this. Kenna, you have no immunity. You can’t control your power yet. You need to just go with me on this. You need to let me protect you.”
I know what Draven says makes perfect sense. Yet the idea of sending him out there like a sacrificial lamb… It makes me sick.
“You know it’s the only way this is going to work,” Rebel tells me softly.
I turn to look at her, and Draven takes advantage of my momentary distraction to climb through the skylight.
I brace myself for the sound of gunfire. It doesn’t come. At least not from up above. From down below, it’s still going strong and getting closer.
“Come on,” Draven snaps a second later, reaching back through the skylight to help me up. “They’re positioned at the stairwell, expecting us to come up that way. If we move, we can be gone before they learn otherwise.”
Taking a deep breath, I jump and grab his hands. He pulls me up. Then Riley flies through the hole dragging Nitro behind him, with the others on their heels. Rebel wavers a bit, tapped out from using her powers so much. Until she gets some rest, she won’t be able to reach full strength for a while.
We huddle behind some kind of large, rooftop air conditioner. It’s the only reason the guards on the other side of the roof haven’t seen us yet.
But as their radios start to crackle, I know it’s only a matter of time before they figure out that they’re watching the wrong spot.
“We need to split up,” I whisper. “There’s no way they’re going to let seven of us waltz across the roof.”