Beckett slides me down the wall, a finger to his lips, crouching beside me, out of sight. I Know it’s time now. And it will be easy. One word, and they will have me and this boy from Earth. The city will be warned, and I will die. I close my eyes. I’m shaking.
“Anything?” Craddock asks. And part of a face joins him. Marcus Physicianson. More dirty and dust-coated and unpainted than I’ve ever seen him. I wonder if Marcus realized he would be killing me when he approved me for physician training. When Reddix, his son, accepted whatever deal was offered by my mother.
“No, nothing,” Marcus replies. “Did you come underground?”
“Yes. It’s secure, the side entrance is being watched.”
“Where are the others?”
“Spread from here to the wall.”
I take a deep breath, ready to shout.
“And Lian and Sampson?”
“Thorne has them,” says Craddock. “In seclusion.”
Marcus laughs once, and I hold my breath, the shout held just inside my mouth. What do they mean the Council “has” my parents? Lian Archiva has never needed seclusion in her life. Beckett catches my eye, gives my shoulder a little push that means Stay here, and begins creeping down the length of the wall.
“This is not the way it was supposed to happen,” Craddock whispers. He sounds nervous. “It would’ve been better to let the girl be.”
“And that is Lian’s fault, isn’t it?”
“Shhh,” says Craddock. “Don’t tell me your family didn’t have any interest.”
“If we’d done what we should have and Judged her at the proper time, we wouldn’t be in this mess. It was a weak decision. We’ll have to make an example of them all now.”
Craddock makes another hushing sound, and for the moment there’s only the wrong kind of silence. An example … of my family. The Council is going to condemn my parents. The whole family. Like Ava Administrator. Because of me. The shout inside my mouth stays there. Beckett takes silent steps, half-bent, to just below the empty window.
“You need to be careful what you say, and who you say it to,” Craddock hisses. “You Know it wasn’t going to be unanimous. And Thorne thinks condemning still might not be necessary.”
“Why?”
“The appearance of the thing. If nobody Knows, then … ” His voice trails away.
Then, what? If they can come up with a good lie to account for my death, like accidental poisoning, then it might not be necessary to make an example of all the Archivas? Is that what he means?
“Either way,” Marcus says, “we have to end this before we lose the sun. Before we have more than her to deal with … ”
My shout is still sitting there, and I’m thinking, thinking … If I could get back to the city, keep what I’ve done from becoming public, would Thorne spare my parents? Or do I give myself up and warn them all about Earth? Right now? I look at Beckett. He’s holding a chunk of broken wall, weighing it in his hand. I draw another breath.
Craddock says, “She might not even be here.”
“She’s here,” Marcus replies.
I draw breath again, ready to shout, and then Beckett stands for a quick moment, heaves the stone, and ducks back down again. The rock goes sailing, over branches, over broken walls and out of sight, landing far behind Marcus and Craddock with a clatter. Two shadows pass beyond the empty window. Then Beckett is up, grabbing handfuls of plants growing from the floor dirt, ripping them up by the roots and tossing them onto the fallen door.
“What … ” I whisper.
“Creating a distraction,” he says before I can finish. He clears the growth away from the edges of the metal door, making a good-size pile of plants in the middle of it. “Five more are coming from the other direction,” he says. “Can you see them?”
My gaze darts to the window, and when I look back, the pile of plants Beckett has made is on fire. An instant, roaring fire. And there’s no more time for thought. No time for hiding or decisions. Those are oil plants burning. And that door is mountain rock. I leap to my feet, yank Beckett by the arm.
“Wait for the smoke … ” he says.
“Run,” I tell him. This time I push him. “Go!”
We jump over the remains of a collapsed back wall and sprint full-out around trees and saplings, angling back toward the rubble mound. I glance back, and a boom hits my ears like a fist, rattling the hidden paving stones of the road. I stumble, leaves and wood and chunks of blue-gray metal exploding upward in a cloud, and then I drop to the ground beside Beckett, hands over my head, back pelted with a stinging rain of broken stone and pebbles.
I look up when the shower stops. A plume of smoke is billowing into the sky, and there’s shouting all around us, voices calling from both sides. Close. I meet Beckett’s startled eyes. The ones I didn’t dream. We get to our feet and run.
I see the wall, just a few meters away through the trees, ruined gates open to the grasslands, and then the rubble mound is on our left. We circle it, toward the hole in the other side, and there are the backs of Marcus and Craddock, their hair braids tied for travel, hurrying away down the overgrown street toward the explosion, three more figures running with them. We slide through the hole and into the darkness of the mound.
“Quick,” Beckett says. He’s grabbing one of the stones I piled inside, blocking up the entrance to the mound. Like I had intended to. I hesitate, and then help him do it, uncovering my book as I set the rocks in place. But if Beckett thinks that’s strange, he doesn’t say anything about it. We stack the stones in silence. If the Council notices the mess Jillian left when she tore open this hole, they’ll find the opening and we’ll be trapped in here, and I don’t Know how many have come. I saw five just then, Martina Tutor running with Marcus and Craddock. But Martina isn’t Council. What is she doing here?
I need to think.
When the opening has enough rocks to make the room almost completely dark, Beckett whispers, “Okay, grab your stuff.”
I don’t Know what that means. But he’s holding out my book and my pack, so I take them, and we feel our way through the first room, the small second one, and then the vast, black, open space full of dust to the inner chamber where I first saw him.
Jillian is waiting with both Beckett’s pack and hers, one on each shoulder. And she’s angry. Very angry. “What did you do?” she demands.
What he did, I think, is set fire to mountain rock. And he’s lucky not to have blown up half the city and us along with it. But how? How did he start that fire?
Beckett doesn’t answer. He just points to the hole in the ceiling, then puts a finger to his lips. There’s shouting in the distance, beyond the mound. Jillian’s eyes dart up and she takes another step back, away from the dim light shining down from the hole, while Beckett stands still, on the ankle I just set, magnifiers on his face, listening.