I was assigned to keep watch outside this door, which, initially, was supposed to be a good thing—assisting in the rescue mission, et cetera—but the longer I wait out here, guarding Nazeera while she hacks the computers keeping the supreme kids in some freaky state of hypersleep, the more things go wrong.
This place is falling apart. Literally.
The lights in the ceiling are beginning to spark and sputter, the massive staircases are beginning to groan. The huge windows lining either side of this fifty-story building are beginning to crack.
Doctors are running, screaming. Alarms are flashing like crazy, sirens blaring. Some robotic voice is announcing a crisis over the speakers like it’s the most casual thing in the world.
I have no idea what’s happening right now, though if I had to guess, I’d say it had something to do with Emmaline. But I just have to stand here, bracing myself against the door so as not to be accidentally trampled, and wait for whatever is happening to come to an end. The problem is, I don’t know if it’s going to be a happy ending or a sad one—
For anyone.
I haven’t heard anything from Warner since we split up, and I’m trying really, really hard not to think about it. I’m choosing to focus, instead, on the positive things that happened today, like the fact that we managed to kill three supreme commanders—four if you count Evie—and that Nazeera’s genius hacking work was a success, because without her, there’s no way we’d have made much headway at all.
After our sojourn through the vents, Warner and I managed to drop down into the heart of the compound, undetected. It was easier to avoid the
cameras once we were in the center of things; the rooms were closer together, and though the higher security areas have more security access points—some of them have fewer cameras. So as long as we avoided certain angles, the cameras didn’t notice us, and with the fake clearance Nazeera built for us, we got through easily. It was because of her that we were in the right place—after having unintentionally killed a super- important scientist—when all the supreme commanders began to swarm.
It was because of her that we were able to take out Ibrahim and Anderson. And it was because of her that Warner is locked up with Robo J somewhere. Honestly, I don’t even know how to feel about it all. I haven’t really allowed myself to think about the fact that J might never come back, that I might never see my best friend again. If I think about it too much, I start feeling like I can’t breathe, and I can’t afford to stop breathing right now. Not yet.
So I try not to think about it. But Warner—
Warner is either going to come out of this alive and happy, or dead doing something he believed in.
And there’s nothing I can do about it.
The problem is, I haven’t seen him in over an hour, and I have no idea what that means. It could either be really good news or really, really bad. He never shared his plan with me—surprise surprise—so I don’t even know exactly what he’d planned to do to once he got her alone. And even though I know better than to doubt him, I have to admit that there’s a tiny part of me that wonders if he’s even alive right now.
An ancient, earsplitting groan interrupts my thoughts.
I look up, toward the source of the sound, and realize that the ceiling is caving in. The roof is coming apart. The walls are beginning to crumble. The long, circuitous hallways all ring around an interior courtyard within which lives a massive, prehistoric-looking tree. For no reason I can understand, the steel railings around the hallways are beginning to melt apart. I watch in real time as the tree catches fire, flames roaring higher at an astonishing rate. Smoke builds, curling in my direction, already beginning to suffocate the halls, and my heart is racing as I look around, my panic spiking. I start banging on the door, not caring who hears me now.
It’s the end of the fucking world out here.
I’m screaming for Nazeera, begging her to come out, to get out here before it’s too late, and I’m coughing now, smoke catching in my lungs, still hoping desperately that she’ll hear my voice when suddenly, violently—
The door swings open.
I’m knocked backward by the force of it, and when I look up, eyes burning, Nazeera is there. Nazeera, Lena, Stephan, Haider, Valentina, Nicolás, and Adam.
Adam.
I can’t explain exactly what happens next. There’s so much shouting. So much running. Stephan punches a clean hole through a crumbling wall, and Nazeera helps fly us all out to safety. It happens in a blur. I see things unfold in flashes, in screams.
It feels like a dream. My eyes stinging, tearing.
I’m crying because of the fire, I think. It’s the heat, the sky, the roaring flames devouring everything.
I watch the capital of Oceania—all 120 acres of it—go up in flames. And Warner and Juliette go with it.
