Situational awareness, lovely Rita.
She got up and went over to Spencer. She glimpsed his ashen face in the firelight. His eyes were closed. His respirations were fast and shallow. She located the radial pulse in his wrist: weak and elevated. Her eyes moved to his injured leg, and she sucked the damp night air.
The wound was far worse than she’d thought: an open fracture, with a segment of jagged, bloodied bone (distal femur, probably) protruding through a rip in his pants leg, like the end of a gigantic candy cane snapped in half. He needed serious medical attention. Right away.
“Spencer. Listen to me. I need to go get help.”
“No!”
He opened his eyes and gripped her arm. His terrified expression seemed out of place and a little absurd—a boy’s frightened face pasted onto a grown man’s body. “Don’t leave me. Don’t ever leave me again.”
“Sweetie.” She kissed his forehead (cold and clammy, he’s going into shock) and held his hand. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m just getting some help. I’ll be right back.”
She kissed his hand once and stood up, ignoring his protests and those from her own aching body. She turned the collars of Sebastian’s jacket up against the wind and ran toward the closest building, intending to make her way around the construction zone and to the front of Turner.
It struck her then like a spiked vise closing around every portion of her head at once.
Pain.
Oh, God.
“Dr. Wu,” said Finney in her left ear. “You and I aren’t done.”
She staggered and fell, sprawling out in the mud at the side of the field, near one of the picnic benches, clutching at her head, thrashing and squirming.
THE PAIN.
“No, Dr. Wu,” he whispered into her mind; and the pain, incredibly, grew worse. “You and I aren’t done yet.”
FINNEY
Finney stabbed the cracked screen of his tablet with his finger and sent another pulse of energy into her brain.
Twenty feet away, she splashed about in the mud like a caught fish flopping around on a dock.
He smiled. It hurt, because his lips were cracked and burned. He didn’t care.
He’d underestimated them.
All three of them.
After he’d regained consciousness; after he’d yanked the conduction gun hooks from his buttocks; after he’d dragged himself through fire and pain, hobbled by the chunk of hot metal embedded in his left thigh; after the cool night air had soothed the burns covering much of the left side of his body and face; after he’d followed the sound of their voices (he couldn’t make out what they were saying but no matter) through the gap in the fence and arrived at the park in time to see Sebastian leave the other two; after trying to detonate the bomb first in Dr. Wu’s head, then her sister’s, only to determine that someone else (Sebastian, had to be Sebastian) had already defused them—after all of these things, his folly was now clear to him.
Still, one card left for him to play.
Her implant had been robbed of its explosive capability, but it was still active. Sebastian had failed to shut it down.
Sebastian, who was now gone.
He plucked his notebook from his coat pocket. Or tried to: Its blackened pages crumbled in his hand. He let the ashes drift to the ground.
No matter.
Dr. Wu was motionless now.
“Dr. Wu.” He spoke into the microphone of his tablet. “Rita.” His tongue caressed the two syllables of her given name. It was the first time he’d addressed her by it. Its use seemed appropriate now, for reasons he couldn’t fathom. “There’s one way left to save him, Rita. Only you can save him.”
“Spencer? You mean save Spencer?” she replied breathlessly.
“Yes. Save Spencer.”
He started limping toward her.
RITA
The pain in her head was gone.
Rita blinked, and looked to the side …
… and locked eyes with a twin version of herself, who was lying next to her in the mud, on her hands and knees.
“You need to walk over to the cliff,” the other Rita, the one on her hands and knees, told her in Finney’s voice. She was wearing blue jeans, which were splattered with mud, and Sebastian’s dark windbreaker. “At the end of the park. Overlooking the ocean. That’s the only way to save him.”
“Walk over to the cliff? But, firefighters, and paramedics—” She pointed in the opposite direction. It took a lot of effort. Her arm felt heavy.
“No. They can’t help him. They won’t get here in time. The cliff, Rita. The cliff will save him. Only the cliff will save Spencer.”
“Why? How? How will the cliff save Spencer?”
“Everything will be obvious to you once you’re at the cliff.”
Of course. The cliff. The cliff will save Spencer.
She didn’t know why, but this made sense. She needed to walk to the cliff.
“Walk to the cliff, Rita.”