“Are you okay? Can you move?”
Orion grimaces. “Not sure about that. My ankle feels pretty messed up.”
My chest tightens, squeezing every breath I’m trying to take. The number of Archangels coming after us now is going to make it a hundred times harder to run and hide, even with my ability to phase. It’s going to take so long to try to shake them, to get clear from their searching, glowing eyes and cannon arms.
If we can even shake them at all. And all of that will take me farther and farther away from my goal of getting up to the Gate.
Dani jogs through the smoke, dropping our packs onto the ground and taking a knee on Orion’s other side. “How bad is it, Skywayman?”
“I’m alive.” He nods at her. “Nice shot.”
I can’t stop watching the sky. There are more than eight Archangels up there now, probably a dozen or more, and they seem to be starting to peel away from the Gate and shift into a synchronized line. Maybe it’s because I’ve never seen so many of them flying together, but something about the way they move strikes me for the first time.
“Their wings…” I grip the front of Orion’s shirt, drawing his eyes up to me. “You and Liren studied the Archangel back in Concord. They’re not using their wings to fly. What do they use?”
He frowns, his eyebrows crinkling. “Some kind of device in their feet, hooked up to their hearts.”
Before he’s even finished speaking, I’m dumping the contentsof his pack onto the ground and snatching up the circular saw he used on the aqueduct walls. I pull my mask up over my mouth, guarding against the lingering haze of burning niter as I phase back over to the Archangel wreckage. I don’t let my gaze stray to the remnants of the saint inside it. If I stop to think about what I’m doing, whether I’m hurting them, I’ll hesitate, and our time is too short for that. I haven’t gotten this far just to risk my friends’ lives and fail to get any answers. As quickly as I can, I find the parts I think he’s talking about and cut them free from the metal frame with vicious slices. I rescue its mechanical heart, too, gathering the whole mess of metal pieces and veins dripping naphtha and phasing back over to them.
I drop everything on the ground next to Orion. “Did I get it all? Will this work?” I ask, half breathless as I snatch up his soldering tool.
Orion exchanges a wary look with Dani and clears his throat. “Val, tell me you’re not doing something supremely idiotic right now. I need to be reassured.”
“They’re designed to collect saints. They’ll follow wherever I go.” I look straight into his eyes, my jaw set. Decided. “You know I’m right.”
There’s a heavy pause between us, and then:
“Dani, help V solder those foot pieces on tight so they don’t fly right off.” Wincing, Orion reaches over and plucks up the naphtha veins, sorting them out and connecting them together with quick, sure fingers.
I chance a quick glance at the sky. The Archangels are spread out now and descending, heading for our area of the garden. The Gate is so far up, and they seem to be moving more slowly,methodically. Like a search party. Even so, my best guess is that we have three minutes.
Four, at most.
Dani leans over me, soldering metal pieces together into cages around my feet. The devices are wide and platelike, gleaming oval discs underneath the soles of my boots.
“This is ridiculous,” she mutters angrily. “You’re just going to end up shooting yourself into a wall. Or worse.”
I smile a little at that, watching her dark-purple hair fall like a curtain across her profile. I’m tempted to reach over and tuck it behind her ear, but I keep my hands to myself. “Like you’d be so lucky.”
Orion finishes rigging up the heart, and I feel the devices warm against my feet as the power starts to flow. He frowns deeply but still hands the heart over to me, pointing to a flat crystal affixed on the bottom.
“This is the only option you’re going to have as far as control. Twist left for more power, right for less.” His gaze traces my face, his expression softening with concern. “Val—”
I clamber awkwardly to my feet, cutting him off before he can get any farther. We don’t have time for whatever soft thing he’s about to say that might make me waver. “Get to better cover. Get out if you can. Don’t wait for me.”
And then, before either of them can stop me, I phase away.
I go as far as I can, straight up into the sky, before I come back together, gasping, and gravity immediately starts to pull me downward. I fight to keep my feet beneath me, fight to suck breath into my lungs, as I fumble for the crystal and twist it—nope, wrong, other way—and naphtha floods the tangled veins and the devices flare to life.
There hadn’t been enough time down there to consider what it might be like to have rockets attached to the bottoms of my boots, but I’d had at least the vague idea that they’d work in tandem. They don’t. The momentum nearly tears me apart as my feet are pushed in different directions and I’m whipped through the air in a wild flail. The world spins around me, my body half crushed by the pressure; I can’t even figure out which direction the ground is in, and just as I’m about to be torn into pieces, I phase.
I hang in and out of existence, molecules in the air.
When I pull myself together again, it’s with my body straight and locked into position, muscles straining to keep my legs and feet practically glued together.
It works. I shoot forward like pulse fire from a pistol, and this time I’m able to angle my body toward the glowing orb of the Gate.
The Archangels spot me almost instantly and change direction, back up into the air. I glance below and fight the cold shiver down my back. My breath comes sharp and quick; I lost a lot of air in those initial, flailing moments, and it’s tough to get it back this high up. It’s making me lightheaded, and the wind whistling past my ears half drowns out Trinity’s song, so I don’t even have that to ground me.
