And nothing happens.
“Sam,” I say. “Sam!” I get her painted eyes to look at me from beyond Reddix’s shoulder. “It was sand. Only sand.” From the workshop. In a tiny bottle blown by Cyrus, sealed with the same color wax. “If you want to Forget, I have the real thing, and I’ll help you. But you get to choose, and so do the rest of them.”
Sam blinks, and then she eases the knife from Reddix’s throat. He sits up, his crazed expression gone blank, his palm running red and sparkling with glass. I scramble out from under him, get to my feet, while Sam yells, “Stay away from me, Marcus!” The other man, Marcus, steps back again, hands up. I hold out a hand and Samara is at my side, and then we both have knives, though hers is a little bloody.
Reddix steps back, toward the mural. One or two small rocks are falling down into the Torrens behind him, the platform pulsing beneath my feet, and when I look over my shoulder, Thorne and Craddock are gone, and there is a roiling, fighting mass of dyed and undyed cloth below us. But Reddix only has eyes for Samara.
“You heard me?” he asks. “Everything I said?”
“Yes,” Sam replies. “I heard everything.”
The man Sam called Marcus is still standing to one side. “Reddix,” he says, moving forward. “Why … ” But Reddix holds out a hand, takes another huge step back. Marcus stops. Reddix is only looking at Sam.
“And you’re going to remember it now,” Reddix whispers.
“Yes. But you have to stop. You don’t have to be … ”
And then his eyes go wide, a little surprised. And Lian Archiva steps from behind Reddix, pulling a needle out of his arm.
And his face relaxes. Relieved. Happy. He smiles, steps back again, opening his arms. Marcus yells like the needle just went in him. Then Lian gives Reddix a little push and he falls off the edge, down into the churning dark of the Torrens.
Sam looks up at me, opens her mouth to speak, and a rock falls five centimeters from her head. I look around us. What’s happening? I’ve been on an adrenaline rush ever since that laser came at my head, but now I slow, listen. And then I know what I’m feeling. Understand the rhythm that has been below my feet. I grab Sam’s bare arms.
“Sam! It’s—”
And a boom shakes the world and knocks me off my feet.
Beckett is still wiping the dust from his eyes when I push myself upright. My ears are dulled, ringing, but I can hear the crescendo of shouts. Cries. Some of it fear, and some of it injury. One wall of the cavern has partially tumbled in, two columns fallen, choking the Torrens, and a great crack has opened in the mural wall, like a wound between Earth and Canaan.
Then Beckett has me by the hand, pulling me to my feet. “Run,” he says. “Run!”
And we do, down the steps of the platform through the haze, and I can’t see my mother or father, or any of the Noble Wardens, just dazed faces and blood on both kinds of cloth. I look back, but my hand is firm in Beckett’s, and he is sprinting across the Forum, up the wide stairs to the entrance hall, running with people who are trying to get out, and against a steady stream of others trying to get in. Nobody seems to know which is better. Outside or Underneath. We run up the sloping floor, gain the gates, and then we stop, and my hand lifts to my mouth, so I cannot scream.
The sky is made of metal, a ceiling of pale white with lights that are bright and false, blinking, flashing down against panicking people and wooden walls. The ground pulses beneath my feet, and then I see the gap in the mountains, a missing peak in the surrounding circle. Ugly, like a broken tooth, an orange glow around it that is not the sunrising. Rock has been flying, pebbles and dust, small boulders tossed where they shouldn’t be, and I can smell the fire in the wind. I look at Beckett.
“You said they couldn’t see us. You said they couldn’t find us!”
He doesn’t answer, just stares at the surroundings with a jaw that is set, his breath coming hard from between his teeth. He jerks the glasses from inside his shirt and puts them on, eyes moving in that odd way, rips them off again, drops the knife and turns to me, taking my face in both his hands.
“Sam, you listen to me. You do not get on that ship. No matter what. You fight. You run. You do whatever you have to. You don’t get on the ship. Do you understand?”
I look at the expanse of metal. I didn’t Know his Earth could explode mountains. I didn’t Know my mother had technology that would cut people up with light.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry.”
And in the middle of all this chaos, for one long moment, all I can think is how he is not a memory. Not even a dream.
“You came for me,” I say.
“Of course I did.”
“Beckett!”
We both turn, and it’s Nathan, running through the gates, Grandpapa behind him.
“Are you okay?” he asks both of us, though he steps back from me. Nathan’s never seen me dressed like the Knowing. Grandpapa kisses my head.
“Where’s Annis?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Grandpapa replies. His voice sounds shaky. “She was on the cameras above the gates … ”
“Where is Jill?” This question comes from Beckett, and the intensity of it brings my gaze back to him.
“At the house,” Nathan replies. “With the kids.” He looks behind him at the missing mountain. “They’re well away from—”
“Don’t you get it?” Beckett yells. “They’re coming!” There’s a whoosh through the air, up high, and a sudden burst of wind. “Get some help and guard this gate,” Beckett says. “Get the Outsiders in. As many as you can. But the first person you see who’s dressed wrong, talks wrong, like me, then you have to shut yourselves in, do you understand? They’ll have weapons, but they won’t want to kill. But all of you, you stay off that ship, whatever you have to do … ”
“Beck,” I say, “where are you going?”
“To get the kids. I’ll bring them straight back here … ”
“What about Jill?” Nathan says.
“Oh, I’m looking for her, too. Sam, stay with Nathan … ”
“No. The wounded,” I tell him. “Underneath. I’m needed.”
I see his chest heaving. And then Beckett takes my head and kisses me once, hard. “Yuàn dé yī rén xīn, bái shǒu bù xiāng lí,” he says, his lips still against mine. I kiss him one time more, and he knows my answer.
“I’m coming with you,” Grandpapa says, but Beckett shakes his head.
“Let me go. I know what they’re capable of … ” He glances upward, picking up his dropped knife and tucking it back somewhere beneath his shirt. “I’ll be right back. But there’s some who still might want to kill her down there, and I don’t know where they are. Don’t leave her alone!”
Grandpapa nods, and then Beckett takes off, fast, into the thrumming world of metal and flashing lights that looks nothing like the Outside to me. Grandpapa watches him go, and then he stares at what isn’t the sky. I think he’s crying. And then I find Nathan’s gaze on me.