Snow hums under his breath, starved of melody and so making his own. “So, still prison, but with softer sheets.”
Valentine doesn’t look at him. “Call it whatever helps you behave.”
Hatchet doesn’t move. His stillness is a language. He sayshurryin a way that doesn’t require letters.
The rhythm of the rotors eats minutes.
I don’t fall asleep – not properly – but my body does that trick where it pretends it did, because it’s tired of holding itself together. When I blink, the lights outside have shifted. When I swallow, my throat tastes metallic, like my nervous system is chewing on coins.
Let me have it,Donnelly says, bored now.There will be a time to be good, little Ghost. This is not that time.
We should promise,Silas says.Promise not to kill anyone else. Promise to bring her back and then?—
“And then what?” I ask him, quietly. “We go back inside? We become good? We get better?”
The laugh that rises isn’t kind. I bite it down until it turns to something sharp in my teeth.
Silas doesn’t answer. Maybe he can’t.
Maybe there isn’t a then.
The helicopter banks, and all of us lean with it except Valentine. He remains exactly upright, like the aircraft tilts around him. He has that effect on rooms. And wars. And men.
Cloud licks the door; damp needles in through the open seam like cold grit. Snow flicks out his tongue to taste it, because Snow never met a boundary he didn’t put his mouth on. Bones closes his eyes for three heartbeats, opens them, resets something quiet behind his face.
“Landing in five,” Valentine says to no one and to all of us.
Nightshade’s hand tightens on the strap above him until the leather squeals.
I think about Kayla like she’s made of light and knives. I think about her laugh and the way she looks at a closed door as if it were just a suggestion. I think about the last time I saw her eyes and the weather system behind them that I never learned how to read.
She chose you,Silas says, soft and awed and terrified.
She chose all of us,Donnelly corrects.That’s the problem and the prize.
I open my eyes because the inside is worse than the out.
Valentine watches the horizon. Nightshade watches nothing. Honeymonster watches everyone. Bones watches the floor. Snow watches me. Hatchet watches a point a thousand miles ahead of us that has Kayla standing on it.
Watching, watching, watching.
But are any of us even seeing?
The helicopter drops a shoulder and begins to descend. Lights below assemble into shape – a pad, steel, red warning beacons winking like an eye that refuses to close. The city is nearer now, loud even from the air, a mouth full of teeth.
Valentine’s shoulders loosen by a measurable degree. “There,” he says.
No one asks what now. The question would make the air heavier than the machine can lift.
“Move,” Valentine barks as soon as the skids kiss steel.
Nightshade is already unbuckled, already moving, already a blade drawn from a sheath that was never built to hold him. Honeymonster is at his back one step later, used to running toward whatever has decided to test us next. Bones gives Snow’s sleeve a fractional tug that looks like nothing and means do not stray. Snow ignores it, but he notices. Hatchet is up and out so fast the after-image of him takes a beat to catch up.
I stagger to my feet, refusing to stay behind. Not because they need me. But because I need to be there when we find her. Because if I’m not there, the inside of me will fill the gap with things I can’t control, and Donnelly will make a party of it.
You heard the man,Donnelly purrs.Up we get. New air. New toys.
We shouldn’t,Silas whispers.We shouldn’t go where they want. If we go, they’ll— they’ll?—
