Were Fleur and I one of them?
The possibility that none of this is real or mine, no matter how badly I want it to be, hurts to swallow. “What if we weren’t the ones who chose this?”
She backs out of my arms, her face stricken. “Are you saying all this because you don’t trust Lyon, or because you don’t trust yourself?” Her eyes are determined and clear. She reaches around me for the rifle and slings it over her shoulder. “I chose this,” she says defiantly. “I still choose this. Whatever regrets we have, whatever mistakes we made before, whatever our reasons, they don’t matter now.” She gives me one last look before she carries the rifle to the creek and pitches it in, letting the churning brown water carry it away. She wipes her hands of it, calls Julio and Amber back to the car, and spreads the map over the hood.
“We still have time to come up with a plan,” she says, giving me no room to second-guess myself. “Regardless of his motives, Lyon wouldn’t have warned us they were coming if he didn’t want us to survive. What else did he say, Jack? Think.”
“I don’t know. Nothing specific. He disconnected before I could ask him anything else.” I scrub the shadow of stubble on my face as I study the map, overwhelmed by all the possible routes, all the likely pitfalls and traps.
...every Season in the central states will be upon you by morning.
“We have to assume we’ll be grossly outnumbered.” This is theonly thing I’m certain of. “Chronos won’t make the mistake of leveling the playing field. We’ve come too far for that.”
“So what’s our plan of attack?” Julio asks.
I rake my bangs roughly from my eyes, as if some hidden answer might suddenly reveal itself. But if there’s a solution on the map, I’m not seeing it. “We’ll never survive if it comes down to a fight. There has to be another way.”
This won’t be like Croatan Beach, when we had the sea at our backs. Not like the cabin, where we held the high ground. We’re in the middle of the plains, between multiple territories. They’ll come at us from every direction. With a hopeless shake of my head, I stare at the expanse of open highway on the map. I’d give anything for a transmitter line to Chill right now. Strategy has always been our Handlers’ role. They’re the ones who see the big picture, the cool-headed voices in our ears when we’re pinned down. I look to Amber. “What would Woody do?”
She shakes her head, her eyes sharp and her face sober as she twists her long hair into a tight ponytail. “I don’t know. Probably suggest a distraction. A barricade, maybe. Evasive maneuvers will only get us so far. At some point, we’ll have to engage them.”
But engage who? There’s a maelstrom of potential enemies. Crows and smazes. Lyon and Gaia. Seasons and police. Chronos and his Guard. It’s hard to imagine a clear path without knowing exactly what’s coming for us. We’re not organized or prepared enough to engage an army, which is exactly what Chronos will be counting on.
Even as I push it away, Lyon’s advice comes unbidden.
In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.
Chaos.
My skin prickles as an idea begins to take root in my mind.
Chaos was the key to escaping before. And if it worked before, it can work again.
“We don’t have to engage them to gothroughthem.” Saying it out loud, it feels right. We were outnumbered, cornered at the elevators when we ran from the Observatory. Every imaginable obstacle hit the fan until shit was raining down all around us.
I think back to the solutions our Handlers came up with: the rain from the sprinklers, the howl of the alarms, the wind that slammed doors between us and our enemies, the electricity we generated to escape in the dark...
A perfect storm lies ahead... you can take control of it.
I look at Fleur. At Julio and Amber. And in them—inus—I see possibilities I haven’t let myself see before. Together, wearethe storm.
37
But Fire, but Thunder
FLEUR
The interstate stretches on like a steel-gray ribbon through western Oklahoma. A rose-gold sun breaches the horizon at our backs. The rest area is near empty at this hour. Just a few truckers asleep in their rigs. We sit in the car, sucking down weak coffees and donuts from the vending machine inside, but the sugar doesn’t do much to settle my nerves.
I flip through the local radio stations, searching for a weather report. Instead, I find the news.
“Police responded to an emergency call from a bar in Altus, Arkansas, at approximately ten thirty last night, where patrons reported they were held at gunpoint by teenagers matching the descriptions of four suspects wanted in the assault and battery of a minor two days ago in Tennessee. The two young men and two young women are considered armed and dangerous, and were last seen driving a late-model Chevy Impala westbound on Route 64, heading toward Fort Smith....”
Jack turns it off.
Julio’s knee bobs anxiously against the back of my seat. “Are you sure this is going to work?”
“No.” Jack rubs his eyes. He’s been driving most of the night so the rest of us could sleep, but we were all too keyed up. My stomach’s sour. My eyelids burn, and my brain feels hazy, as if I’ve just awoken from stasis.
