False Future (10 page)

M
y scream is drowned out by the noise. First the deep bass of the explosion, and then the high-pitched screech and whine of the twisting iron inside the building. Both towers are leaning toward us, falling slowly, so slowly, and I only have time to think—
she said I am her
—before they pass some invisible line and come crashing down. The earth shakes, and a few Roses have to brace themselves against trees. The tops of the towers land hundreds of feet away, glass and debris flying toward us through the air like knives, and I want a few to pierce me so I won’t have to feel what I’m feeling. The Black has nothing on the darkness inside me right now.

The wind fades away as the smashed towers settle into new shapes. The air is filled with a choking gray dust. I can barely see ten feet in front of me.

The director is holding me up. “These are the moments that change you,” she says. “Your only solace is that you will survive, Miranda. I’m not going to kill you. You are going to make the future. The Black leads to many eventualities, but sometimes a past and a future are linked. That just happens to be us.”

The Roses are still watching us, waiting to see what happens next. Two buildings lie shattered next to them, and they seem bored with it all. I hear the director’s words, and I choose to believe them for now, because denial isn’t going to help me. I’m her, sure. Whatever. She’s obviously got something wrong, because I can always kill myself. I can always choose.

As if she’s reading my mind, the director peels the stamp off the base of my skull. If I die, and I’m somehow brought back again, that will be the last thing I remember.

That’s when the darkness turns to fire; I decide to take control of my life. I swing my elbow up for her face, as fast as I can, with every ounce of strength I can muster.

She ducks underneath it.

“Fighting back is not in your best interest.”

I barely hear her; I’m too busy trying to blast her head clean off with a punch. She steps aside easily, and I fall in the snow. The director grabs a hank of my hair and pulls me up to my knees, then kicks me in the face. My nose crunches, and blood flows out of my nostrils and coats my mouth and chin. It’s so warm it actually feels good, my nose just this abstract throbbing thing that hasn’t quite graduated to pain yet. I fall on my back, eyes blurry, and almost laugh. It’s then that I know I’m losing it. I can tell in a kind of clinical, detached way. I try to remember a moment when I was happy. It had to be the dance, before Noah died. When a bright future didn’t seem like that crazy of an idea. When I had my arms around Peter’s neck, and we danced, and all of our problems were for tomorrow.

“There is more that has to happen today,” the director says, staring down at me again. I can feel her, if not see through the tears. “You must be broken before you can rebuild, before you can be as strong as you’ll need to be to lead your world into the future.”

That’s when an Olive and Noah march out of the Verge with Peter—my Peter. He’s bound and gagged the way I found him in the basement of Key Tower, but this time his eyes are crazed and filled with rage. He’s struggling, but the Roses hold him fast, pushing him toward us, lifting him when his feet stumble in the snow. I realize they’re the Olive and Noah from our new “team”—O-9 and N-7. Peter is screaming behind his gag.

I lock eyes with him. He’s shaking his head back and forth, and I know if he could speak he’d be saying
I’m sorry
even though it isn’t his fault. It’s no one’s fault.

“I know this hurts, Miranda,” the director says. “But I promise time heals all wounds. I’m proof of that.”

She pulls a sword off her back. I didn’t even notice she was wearing one. In a flash I’m on my feet, even though my body is telling me to lie down. She flourishes the sword, and then lines it up horizontally with Peter’s neck.

I charge ahead, knowing her blade will meet Peter’s flesh before I’m halfway there, but I have to try anyway. I have to try.

There’s a blur of motion from my right, a shape materializing from the dust, and then a Rhys is lunging forward with his own blade, meeting the director’s in a burst of sparks. It’s
my
Rhys. “Get out of here!” he screams to me. “Go!”

The director is laughing as her blade scrapes against his.

Rhys pushes hard against the director, and she stumbles back. Peter spins around, lifting his bound wrists as Rhys slices down and neatly severs his bindings.

In unison, a hundred Roses pull the swords off their backs.

The wind picks up, but it doesn’t feel natural—it’s too forceful, too sudden. Three seconds later, an Ax is hovering over the clearing, impossibly loud. The back hatch is open. The downward thrust flattens a pack of Roses ten feet away, pressing them hard into the snow and creating a whiteout effect. The air is nearly opaque with snow, steam, and dust.

Through the white, I see the blurred shape of Rhys engaged in a full-on duel with the director, swords swinging and crashing together, high low high. The snow at their feet is sprinkled with blood. Peter has my arm and he’s pulling me backward toward the Ax, where a thick coil of rope dangles from the rear. He gets me in a bear hug.

“No! NO!” I’m screaming and struggling, trying and failing to pull his arm off my chest. I can’t even jam my fingers under it. Peter keeps dragging me, slowly and relentlessly. Two Roses come at us, but gunshots from the Ax drop them. The people in the Ax are friends, but I don’t care. Peter grabs the rope and suddenly we’re ascending. Two hands pull us into the Ax—it’s Sophia!

“I got you!” she says, and I feel a momentary burst of joy that she’s still alive.

Down below, the director pushes Rhys back a few paces, then looks up. She screams something at me, but the roar is too loud, and I don’t hear what it is.

I wipe the blood and tears off my face, then try again to get free. I stomp on Peter’s foot, but that only makes him clench harder.

“Help Rhys!” Sophia cries out.

“We’ll get him! We’ll get him!” Peter says.

The Ax banks to the right, the rope dangling by Rhys. Two Roses lunge for it, but Rhys spins, severing the rope high above his head to keep them from grabbing it. He slashes both their throats with the same spin, scales from their armor flying with the blood.

In the next second the downward thrust from the Ax’s vertical engines knocks Rhys over. He scrambles in the snow for his sword.

“Move away!” I scream to the pilot. The Ax slides sideways a little, just a few feet.

“Let out more rope!” Peter yells.

But it’s too late. Rhys gets to his sword, but a Noah—it has to be N-7—steps on the center of his back, pulling his own sword off his back. Rhys tries to drag himself along, but N-7 has him pinned. He can’t even roll out of it. The director holds up her hands, and she’s screaming something at N-7, but no one can hear her over the roaring engines. N-7 isn’t looking at her, or he would stop. He would stop, but he doesn’t.

I’m screaming Rhys’s name when N-7 raises his sword up, then plunges it straight down into the center of Rhys’s back.

T
hings happen in the seconds after that, but I’m not completely aware of them. I know Sophia is screaming. I know I fight Peter off, or try to. I know I almost make it out the back hatch again, but this time Peter gets an arm around my neck. He’s screaming something too. I stop fighting as the Ax ascends, and just watch, so I can remember.

The snow under Rhys is red on both sides. He isn’t moving, and I know he’ll never move again. The sword in his back leans slightly to the left. A dozen silver-suited Roses are pulling the RAWs off their backs, but the director gives a cutting hand signal, and they stop. She takes four steps and slashes out with her own sword, severing N-7’s head from his neck. He stands upright for two full seconds as everyone around him backs away, exchanging terrified looks.

Now the director is saying something to Albin. He nods, turns his face toward us, and closes his eyes. In the next moment, I am struck completely blind. All I see is darkness. But my other senses are intact. I can hear the ship around me, feel the vibrations in the soles of my feet, and then my knees, when I fall to them. Peter drops with me, still holding me tight against his chest, his arm an iron bar across my body.

“Bank right! Bank right!” I hear someone yell from the front. It sounds like Noble, which makes the fist around my heart relax just slightly. Noble’s alive too. Of course he is. Who else could rescue us, after all?

The Ax shifts violently to the right, throwing me and Peter and Sophia against the wall. I slip from Peter’s grasp and fall on my stomach near the still-open hatch. The turbulent wind at the opening thrashes my face, and I relish the pain, the little ice particles that bite into my skin. I could pull myself another foot and fall through the opening and never have to deal with this shit again. I wouldn’t have to lose anyone else. I wouldn’t have to become the director. I still can’t believe that’s even a possibility—but why would she lie? For what purpose? Does it fit with what Olivia told me? I need to see what’s on the disk. If events happening here have an effect on the future of True Earth, then I still have a choice. Maybe I have an opportunity to change it all.

Besides, if I died now, the director still has my memory stamp. She could just bring me back.

The voices from the front of the Ax are panicked. I feel us slowing down. “I can’t see a damn thing!” an unfamiliar voice shouts. A man, but not Noble.

An alarm starts blaring. I still can’t see, but it sounds like we’re flying down a street, tall buildings amplifying the engine noise on both sides.

“Brace for impact!” Sophia shouts. The metal under my left hand starts rising; the rear hatch is closing.

I press my face against the cold metal floor of the Ax. Peter pulls himself on top of me, covering my body with his. He presses his cheek against mine, so it’s warm on the right side of my face, freezing on the left.

“I love you,” Peter whispers in my ear. All I can do is nod, but he feels it with his face against mine.

In the next second, the Ax collides with something, and we fly straight up into the ceiling. The darkness continues, but in a different way.

I blink myself awake and find that I can see again. The first thing that settles on me, the first thing I
feel
, is disappointment, and that makes me ashamed. I wanted the darkness to last forever. There are too many things to think about right now—I can’t even order them.

She said Olivia had tampered with her memories somehow. Does that mean she doesn’t know what I’m going to do next? If I’m truly her, wouldn’t she remember and be able to find us right away?

No, otherwise we would’ve never gotten away in the first place.

Unless she just knows we’ll be captured later.

The uncertainty is a scream rising in my throat, one I have to choke down like poison.
Which is it?

Someone else groans in the hatch, and I feel Peter’s hand brush across my face. I can’t see out of my right eye, and when I try to move, pain bursts down from the back of my skull into my nose and right shoulder. So I don’t try to move. The Ax is upside-down, the back hatch wrenched open. Snow is blowing into the compartment. I hear the whistle-roar of a turbo diesel engine close by—Humvees.

I try to push myself up with my left hand, but it’s useless. I can’t feel it at all. I look at it. The scales have been stripped off the armor, and my last two fingers are swollen, making the material underneath the scales bulge.

Now that I can see my hand, it begins to hurt.

Badly.

Peter is seated across from me, holding his knee. Otherwise he looks all right. His eyes scan my body, looking for damage, wincing when they find it.

“You okay?” he says.

“No,” I reply.

I turn my head to the left and see Noble standing over me, his hair and beard matted with blood. He’s clearly dazed, eyes unfocused. Either a concussion, or Rhys’s death.

“Miranda,” he says. There are human shapes behind him, but I can’t make them out. I reach up and touch my right eye to make sure it’s still there; it is. Just swollen. “How did he die?”

“Cleanly.” I say the lie through fat lips.

He nods, then helps Sophia to her feet. She’s just coming to, and once again I’m filled with relief that they weren’t in the Time Warner Center. I want to continue feeling good about it, but their survival isn’t a victory. Everyone in the towers is still dead. All because I revealed the location.

Noble grabs Sophia and they embrace tightly. He strokes the back of her hair as she cries silently into his chest. “It’s okay,” he says, but it isn’t, and it never will be.

The diesel engines are so close now. I hear heavy doors open and slam shut. I hear parts of heavy rifles clicking and clacking, boot steps muffled by the snow, orders being shouted back and forth. Through the gap in the hatch, I see a flash of urban camouflage, blue, gray, and white. There is no sense of urgency inside the Ax; we’re just waiting. The people outside are not Roses, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less dangerous. There is nothing more dangerous than a human who is afraid.

Peter crawls over to me, grimacing against the pain. He sits down and loops his arm around my shoulder, then kisses me on the cheek, leaving a smear of blood. He’s looking at me like he can’t believe I’m here. He kisses me on the other cheek, and the forehead, and keeps looking at me. He shakes his head.

“You’re alive,” he says, and then presses his cheek to mine. The stubble on his chin pricks my skin, and it is a good feeling. “I can’t do it again, Miranda. I won’t watch you die. Say you won’t.”

“I think my hand is really hurt,” I say tonelessly. Perhaps I’m in shock. “And I won’t.”

“These people will fix it,” he says. “We’re alive, that’s all that matters.”

Is it?

The soldiers outside get the back hatch the rest of the way open by connecting it to a Humvee and wrenching it down. Bright white light fills the Ax. My eyes adjust, and I see a dozen or so soldiers pointing their rifles in our direction. Peter positions himself in front of us, a shield.

The stranger in the front of the Ax unbuckles himself from the pilot’s chair, falls hard in a clump, then staggers upright, pressing a palm to his temple. I focus hard with my good eye and can barely make out the details of his face. His identity is confirmed a moment later, when a soldier yells, “Holy shit! It’s him!” and another yells, “That’s the guy they’re looking for!”

I turn toward the man again and see what Noah would look like if he’d lived long enough to become a middle-aged man.