What has Hunter done?
I pull my head inside, and I’m back in the living room, in front of the window. “This is insane,” I say to Turk. “What’s the deal?”
“He came back early this morning and looped all the doors and the windows,” Turk says. “Every exit has a partner. If you open one, the other opens, too, and if you try to leave through any of them, you’ll only end up back inside the house. None of us can leave until he breaks the loops.”
I have to give it to Hunter—he’s smart. Irritatingly so.
“So everyone knows about this and just decided not to tell me?”
Turk gives me a sheepish look.
Pushing past Turk, I rush up the stairs to my bedroom on the third floor. I hear him pounding up the steps behind me.
There are five windows in the bedroom—three on the wall next to my bed, and two on the adjoining wall that look out onto the street.
I head over to the closest window and press the touchpad to open it. I stick my head out—
And find myself staring into the window of the second-floor library. It’s empty, with papers and leftover cups of coffee scattered along the conference table.
“Argh!” I scream again, pulling my head back inside. I turn, and Turk is right behind me. “So every floor—every possible exit—is blocked?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says. “Which is exactly what I told you downstairs.”
“This is so unfair,” I say. “How could Hunter do this to me? You have to help me get out of here. Please, Turk.”
He averts his gaze. “I can’t. I promised Hunter I wouldn’t.”
“What about what you promised me?” I say.
Turk shakes his head. “You’ve gotten into too much trouble, Aria. You don’t like to play by the rules, which I get, but I don’t want to be responsible for you getting kidnapped—or worse. I’m sorry.”
He gives me a tight-lipped smile, then turns and heads out of the bedroom.
In some small corner of my mind, I know this isn’t Turk’s fault. If anything, he’s sympathetic, but I don’t want to think about that now. It’s easier to be angry with him.
“Fine,” I yell. “Go!” I slam the door shut. I hope he feels awful.
What am I going to do? Wait until Hunter shows up and decides he’s not mad at me anymore? Now that I know he’s planning to set off a bomb, is there any chance he’ll let me leave the hideout before the peace summit?
Not likely. Hunter was the one who freed me, who saved me from my parents. But ever since then, he’s kept me cooped up, first in the mystic compound, and now here.
He’s not the boy I fell in love with. And I’m not the girl he fell in love with. Have we changed too much to stay together?
Maybe our love wasn’t meant to last a lifetime.
Just then, a head pops through one of the open windows in the bedroom.
It’s Jarek, his impossibly broad shoulders filling the window frame.
“Shh.” He holds a finger to his lips, motioning for me to be silent. “I can help you.”
I have no idea why Jarek is offering to help me, but I don’t want to give him time to change his mind.
“Come on,” he says. He grabs the ledge and pulls himself into the room, careful not to make any noise. No one can know what we’re up to.
Quickly, I take off my locket and slip it into the pocket of a ratty-looking sweatshirt in the closet. Since the rebel hideout is untraceable, if I leave the locket here, then whoever is tracking me won’t realize I’m gone.
And since it’s probably Hunter who put the trace on me in the first place, well, he’ll think I’m still here. His pretty songbird in a cage.
“Aria, seriously,” Jarek says, looking nervous. “Let’s go.”
I pull out the bag I stuffed under my bed last night, removing the blond wig I purchased in the Depths; it came with a cap, which I stretch over my skull. Then on goes the wig.
The reliquary and the goggles are still tucked safely inside the bag. I grab another pouch of coins from the cabinet in the wall and toss the bag over my shoulder.
“Whoa.” Jarek lets out a low whistle. “You look …”
“Strange,” I say, glancing at myself in the mirror, seeing a girl with my features and bright platinum-blond hair staring back at me. I am instantly reminded of my mother and her friends, who love nothing more than going to the salon and having their hair infused with mystic dyes and sculpted into pieces of art.
I’ve never been one to focus much on my looks. The most my father ever said to me about my style was that I looked respectable, and that was on the night of my engagement party to Thomas. Kiki was the one who loved mystic-enhanced skin and hair, and she could spend thousands of dollars on one outfit. She tried to get me to highlight my hair once, and I refused. We got into a fight and didn’t speak for three days.
“I was gonna say intense,” Jarek says.
I look back at the mirror. Why didn’t I choose a more demure wig? The shiny blond hair is almost white, with an asymmetrical cut shooting from the nape of my neck to just below my chin.
“Ready?” Jarek asks. “We’ve gotta leave now, before people start looking for us. The others are showering or training, and Diamond and Roderick are gone, so the place is pretty empty.”
“Who?” I ask.
“You know,” Jarek says, swiping his hair back behind his ears, “those older dudes who never speak to us.”
Oh—those guys. Hunter’s henchmen. “So where should we go?” I ask. “All the windows and doors are looped. That’s what Turk told me, at least.”
“At the core of the building, sure,” Jarek says. “And we can’t go up because there’s a force field closing us in from the outside, and Hunter surely wired that as well to make sure you didn’t jump off the building or whatever.”
I stare up at Jarek, confused. It’s obvious he’s figured out a plan.
He tilts his head down at me. Even if I stood on my tiptoes, I wouldn’t reach his chin. “Why am I helping you?” he says.
“Hmm?”
“That’s what you’re thinking,” he says. “Why am I helping you?”
“I appreciate it, but … yeah. That is what I was thinking.”
He lets out a long breath. “What Hunter did, it’s not cool. You should only be here if you want to. Not because anybody says you need to be.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I appreciate that. And I thought you didn’t even like me.”
His face is still. “I don’t.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling my heart race. “Well—”
“I’m just kidding, Aria,” Jarek says, rolling his eyes.
“Ha, ha,” I say, letting my arms relax at my sides. “So … you’re helping me, which is wonderful, but we can’t go out and we can’t go up. What’s left?”
Jarek gives me a crooked smile. “Down, of course.”
We sneak down the stairs to the first floor and pass the kitchen and the armory. The door to the basement is open, and I can hear Shannon yelling. “Blast him like it hurts, Ryah!”
Jarek peers down the steps, making sure no one is coming up, then waves me past him. The door to the infirmary is closed, then we’re in the dining area. The long tables are empty.
“Where are we going?” I whisper.
“Here.” Jarek strides over to a table that’s against the far wall and moves it a few inches. He drops to his knees and runs his hands along the large stone tiles.
“What are you doing?” I whisper.
His fingers stop on a groove next to one of the tiles. He pushes down with his thumbs and the tile drops into the floor, creating a space wide enough for one person.
Jarek glances over his shoulder. “Emergency exit.”
I peer into the darkness. “So we just … jump?”
He laughs. “Of course not. Are you crazy? The drop is over twenty feet.” He reaches down and presses a button on the inside of the shaft. Suddenly, the vertical tunnel is full of light. “Ladies fi
rst,” he says.
A metal ladder is fastened to one of the walls. “Are you sure this is safe?”
“Yes. Now go. We don’t have much time.”
I nod, stepping onto the ladder. I’m glad I’m not claustrophobic, because there’s barely an inch on either side of me. I feel like I’m burrowing into some sort of cave.
Above me, Jarek begins to descend, and I hear a scratching noise as the tile above us slides back into place. Tiny circles embedded in the walls cast a pale green glow over the dark cement. There’s a dripping noise coming from somewhere, and the air smells stale, as though it’s been trapped in this passageway for years.
“You all right?” Jarek speaks quietly, but his voice echoes like we’re inside some huge cavern.
“Yes,” I reply. The rungs are a bit slippery. Focus on your grip, I tell myself.
“Almost there,” Jarek says after what feels like a full ten minutes. “Should be, anyway.”
My shirt is sticking to my back, and beads of perspiration line my forehead and drip down my cheeks. I reach my foot toward the next rung, and it lands on solid ground. “I’m at the bottom,” I say, relieved. I step to the side to make room for Jarek, when—
“Watch it!”
Jarek grabs my arm just before I fall.
The ground is actually a cement platform, no wider than two or three feet. Below us is a sheet of water: a pool of black liquid that slaps lightly against the walls.
I nearly toppled right into it.
Jarek jumps down next to me and pulls me to the middle of the platform. There’s barely room enough for both of us, and he slides his hand around my waist to balance us.
“What is this?” I ask.
“A sub-sub-subbasement,” he says. “We’re way underneath the training room right now. This was built as an escape route in case the hideout is ever raided. It shouldn’t loop, because this is the only exit in the entire house below water level, and that’s the extent of the force field.” Jarek grips me tighter. “There’s a loophole down there somewhere. All you have to do is swim through it.”
I stare into the water. I see something shimmer and I think I can make out the green loophole beneath the surface, but then I look again and the water simply looks black. “Though in all honesty,” Jarek says, “I have no idea where it lets out.”
If I weren’t worried about falling, I’d smack him. “So basically what you’re saying is that you have no idea whether this will work,” I say. “There may be a loophole down there, but if there is there’s no saying it won’t (a) not let me out of here or (b) let me out of here but dump me, say, right into my parents’ apartment?”
“I don’t think it will let you out into your parents’ apartment.” Jarek cracks a smile. “That would be pretty dumb of whoever made it.”
“Is it safe?”
I can feel Jarek shrug. “Probably not. But is that going to stop you?”
Good point. I have no idea where this loophole will take me, but if it was meant to safeguard the mystics, then I’ll have to trust that, wherever I end up, it won’t be too dangerous.
“Are you coming with me?”
He shakes his head. “I’ll soften the blow when everyone realizes you’re gone. I can’t hold ’em off for long, but I’ll try to buy you some extra time.”
“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”
I remove the wig, stuffing it back inside the bag, but leave the cap on my head. I take out the goggles and snap them on.
Jarek gives my hand a squeeze. “Don’t think too hard or you’ll chicken out.”
“I’m not a chicken,” I say.
“Then jump,” he says.
So I do.
I step off the landing and plunge into the water below. It’s surprisingly warm, like bathwater. Swimming downward, I see the loophole immediately, a perfect circle of blazing green mystic energy in the murk. I kick out my legs, splashing water behind me and reaching, reaching—
Until I break the surface, gasping for air.
I toss back my head; my face is hit by rays of sunlight and the familiar, overwhelming heat.
Opening my eyes, I look around: I am in the middle of a canal in the Depths.
“Look!” says a young girl sitting on a gondola with her mother. “Someone is swimming!”
I tread water, spitting out a mouthful of brown.
“Get out of there!” a gondolier hollers at me from a few feet away. I glance to the side; a cluster of gondoliers are standing up in their boats shouting at me and waving their arms, cigarette smoke curling in tiny spirals. “What are you doing, girlie?”
This canal runs along a fairly busy street; people are hustling to and fro. The buildings, though covered with dirt, seem mostly intact. Where am I?
A few feet down, two children are sitting with their feet dangling into the water, next to a narrow stone bridge. I swim toward them, moving out of the way of whizzing gondoliers and water taxis.
“Why are you all wet?” the little boy asks me as I approach the canal’s edge.
“Silly,” the girl sitting next to him says to me. She’s missing her front baby teeth, and both she and the boy are wearing dirty clothes—ripped shirts, pants with holes and stains. Their faces are smudged, and they have the same chocolate-brown eyes. “We’re not allowed to swim in the canals. Everybody knows that.”
“Mind helping me?” I say.
They nod excitedly. I grab the edge of the canal and hoist myself up, and the children help pull me onto the cobblestone street.
I lie there for a second, catching my breath. The boy and the girl stand over me, staring down. Their heads block the sun, and for a second I feel cool. I close my eyes.
“Are you dead?” the little boy asks.
“Of course she’s not dead,” the girl says. “I can see her breathing.”
“Doesn’t seem like she’s breathing to me,” the boy says. “Not one bit.”
I open my eyes and the boy screams.
“I’m alive,” I say, pushing myself into a seated position. “Don’t you worry about me.”
The girl pats the boy on his shoulder. “He gets scared easily.”
“Do not!” the boy shouts.
They’re cute. For a second, they remind me of Kyle and me when we were younger. “Thank you for your help,” I say to them. I remove the wig from my bag—it’s wet but not soaked. I take off my goggles, then place the wig over the cap that’s still covering my scalp.
“Wow,” the little girl says. “I like your fake hair.”
“Thanks,” I say. “Do you mind telling me where I am?”
“West Side,” the girl says. “Just south of Houston Street.”
“Thanks,” I say, surprised at how far downtown this loophole dropped me. “You two take care of yourselves, you hear?”
They nod again, and I stand, wiping my hands on Ryah’s pants. The way the sun is beating down, I should be dry in no time.
I walk away from the canal and the gondoliers, who are still staring at me. I check to make sure the reliquary and the coins are still in my bag—they are—and toss the goggles in as well. Inside my sneakers, water squishes between my toes. Thankfully, no one on the street seems to notice a wet, uber-blond girl strolling over the broken pavement.
I take a few quick turns to distance myself from the scene and spot another canal not too far away. I make my way toward it. It’s time to begin my search for someone who can help me track down Davida’s heart.
I hurry west along the hot streets of SoHo.
A few gondolas churn the water as they pass. I see a row of brownstones that look like they’ve been covered with black paint—actually layers and layers of accumulated dirt. A few of the windows have shutters, which might be charming if the paint weren’t peeling and the wooden slats broken.
Besides the brownstones, there are various mystic-enhanced buildings throughout the area. Some were built from scratch by mystics, while others have shiny modern additions of Damascus steel on top of
older buildings. In those cases, though the steel has survived the bombings intact, the lower stories haven’t, leaving transcendent Aeries skyscrapers resting on poles that seem far too thin to support their weight.
I crane my neck and stare into the sky: I can see the faint outline of the bridges that crisscross the Aeries, glistening in the sun like silvery spiderwebs. I wonder if anyone up there comprehends the fragility of the structures they inhabit; it would be easy for the rebels to break the reinforcements, causing thousands of buildings to plummet.
But how many Aeries dwellers have ever set foot in the Depths? This is a class of people who’ve been raised to think that buildings crashing into the water below is cause for celebration: Plummet Parties. They never think about the devastation left in the Depths—the dirt and debris and falling metal.
The destruction of the past month has been different, though. Has the war really affected people in the Aeries? Are they less enthusiastic about my family and the Fosters? And if they are, how can I help them understand that mystics and the humans who live in the Depths must be granted equal rights? Would people like Kiki and Bennie ever see that?
As I make my way along the canal, I spot a half-dozen wooden posts sticking out of the water near a rickety-looking dock. Gondolas are crowded around the posts, waiting for passengers. The gondoliers stand in the back of their boats, swaying with the water as they chat and smoke thin cigarettes. A few of the younger ones are splayed out on the dock with their shoes off, dipping their toes into the water for a brief respite from the heat.
I approach them first—they’re most likely to talk to me.
“Hello?” I take one step onto the dock and jump back when a board snaps under my feet.
One of the boys laughs. “Fancy a ride, miss? Where to?”
I tug on the back of my blond wig, making sure it’s secure. Thankfully, no one recognizes me.
“I’ll give you a ride,” an older boy says, cocking his head at me.
“Don’t listen to him,” another gondolier says. This one has a sweet-looking, if dirty, face and sweaty blond hair plastered to his forehead. “I’ll make sure you get where you need to go.” He motions to a dingy black gondola tied to the dock, its nose rising out of the filthy water. “C’mon.”