Who are “they”? Where were those lands Marian spoke of? That Castor spoke of? The more I learned, the less I knew.
“Maia, come on!” Chae Rin said, jolting me out of my thoughts, and I turned to follow.
The others disappeared quickly through the door before me.
That’s why they were hit first.
I ducked back behind the doorframe fast enough to miss the dart, but the others had struck their target. From around the frame, I saw Chae Rin stumbling forward, Lake falling to the ground, and Belle leaning against the statue for support. Belle’s hands shook as she pulled the large needle out from her neck. The one meant for me was still lodged into the doorframe.
“Come out, Maia.”
Vasily. My heart pounded against my chest as my head starting spinning. How did he get here? What was going on?
Pulling out the dart from her neck, Chae Rin raised her hands, and though the earth trembled beneath us, it was nothing but a whisper that died off the second it’d started.
“Maia, are you going to leave your friends here to rot? Do come out,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice.
“Yeah, bitch!” Jessie. She was already laughing. “We’ve got something for ya.”
I couldn’t hide here forever. Steeling myself, I stepped out from the doorframe, ready to launch an attack, but my hands froze the second I saw Jessie’s arm around Rhys’s neck and her gun to his head, her menacing grip squeezing his trachea to the extent that he could barely speak. Even captured, he remained stoic, but I couldn’t. My pulse was already racing, my eyes wide. I’d just begun to say his name when I felt the needle sink into my neck.
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?”