We were outside, out the same door near the overgrown white roses, and the rain hit us in the face like a slap.
It was pouring. Not a storm—there was no thunder or wind—just that heavy, steady kind of rain that soaked through clothes in seconds. The sky was nearly dark, the last of the sunset bleeding its muted colors behind the clouds at the edge of the horizon, and everything was wet and gray and cold.
The whole day had passed, yet it had felt like an hour or two at the most to me.
Thewhole dayhad passed while we’d spent what was supposed to be minutes in that room.
A pocket.Wasn’t that what the Spade boy had called it?
Once outside, we ran.
Through the grass, through the weeds, through puddles that splashed up to our knees. It must have been raining the whole day. Silas groaned against March’s shoulder, and I held onto his arm as tightly as I could, too. Russ went ahead like he couldn’t even feel the weight of the Timekeeper’s body on him.
We cut through the trees, our feet heavy, our clothes already completely soaked—yet the energy rushing throughmy body made me feel light as air. The rain grew heavier beneath the canopy because the leaves were pouring it down on us in streams. My hair was plastered to my face. My sneakers were soaked. I couldn’t feel my fingers at all—yet I could run all the way to the Spill if I had to, just like this.
We had no idea if we were going in the right direction, but we thought so, until we were on the other side of those trees—and the world got strange again.
We were in some sort of a garden, exceptit wasn’t real.The sound of the rain as it splattered against everything in there gave it all away—it was metal.
The hedges were made of painted metal. The trees had bark made of metal, and the large leaves hanging on the branches were plastic.
An apple tree with brass apples the size of my fist. Rosebushes where the roses hid copper pipes that ticked faintly under the rush of the rain.
The smell confirmed it—it was sharp, oil and old metal and something sweeter underneath that I couldn’t name but almost knew.
“What is this place?” Erith whispered, but none of us had an answer, because none of us knew.
But my chest ached in that same way it had been aching since we woke up here all those days ago, but that’s it. All I had was that ache.
“Keep moving,” Seth said. “We can figure it out later.”
We went through the mechanical garden, water streaming off every false leaf, off every metal petal, off the brass apples that swayed without really swaying. Past a bench made of wrought iron that looked out at nothing.
It wasn’t long till we reached the other side and went beyond into the wet grass. The fence was right there, the golden tips catching the last of the dying light. We’d cometoo far from the gap where the bar was missing, but it was okay. All we had to do now was follow the fence.
Maybe it was the rain, but the farther we went, the more it felt like there were screams coming from somewhere behind us. Calls. Shouts.
“Don’t look, don’t look, just keep moving!” Mimi shouted as she went, running ahead faster than the rest of us.
Itwasn’tjust the rain, after all, but I did listen to her. I didn’t turn.
And what felt like minutes later, we made it all the way to where half the bar of the fence was missing.
Pieces of the memory were lost to me still, but in what felt like a blink, Cook, Mimi and Erith were on the other side. Mimi continued to run, to scream—“Hey! We’re here, hey!”—while Cook and Erith leaned down to grab the Timekeeper. Russ lowered him to the ground as slowly as he could.
They dragged his body through however they could, and the rain had washed away the blood on him, but he was still dirty from the mud. Russ went through, and Anika, and they helped us with the boy Silas as we lay him on the ground, then inched him on his side toward the gap.
So small. His wide shoulders barely fit, but they did.
And only after he was safely on the other side did I turn to look behind us. At the trees. At the people screaming, running,coming.
“Go, go, go!”
A hand around my arms, and I was pushed toward the gap. March kept his hand over my head to make sure I didn’t hurt myself as I went through, and then Seth was right behind me, and March was behind him.
Allbeforethe Timekeeper woman and her friends, screaming and shaking their fists in the air, made it to the fence.
They stopped when they were still five feet away from the bars.
