He’s wearing a black suit with a crisp blue dress shirt underneath, open at the neck. No tie. His wheat-colored hair is perfectly parted. “You sound like a comic-book villain,” I say. “Cut it out.”
“Me?” he says, pointing to my wig. “You’re the one who looks ridiculous.”
I meet Turk’s eyes. Don’t worry, he mouths, but his words don’t make me feel any better. The only consolation I have is that Jarek isn’t here—I hope he’s gotten away safely.
To my left, near the door, two of my father’s men stand at attention, silver pistols in their grips.
A cooler rests in the center of the room. Behind it, on a metal table next to Turk’s chair, are two vials full of liquid mercury—quicksilver—that shimmer underneath the fluorescent lights. Next to them is a plastic bag that holds three empty syringes.
“How did you find us?” I ask my brother, struggling against the cord that’s keeping me tied to the chair.
“You’ve been tagged, Aria. I already told you.”
Kyle looks at me inquisitively. He doesn’t know I’ve had the trace removed, that it’s now on the locket. And since I’m not wearing it, and the locket wasn’t in the sweatshirt, how could Kyle have found me? Where’s the locket now?
Clearly, Hunter didn’t put the trace on me after all. But then … who did? The only person I can think of to blame is Kyle, since he keeps finding me, or Thomas, but Lyrica said the trace was too intricate for anyone but a powerful mystic to perform.
“You’re not really going to keep us here like this, are you?” I ask. “How will this help your cause?”
Kyle shakes his head. “How will it help your cause is the real question.”
“What are you talking about?”
He steps toward the cooler. “That.” He bends down, running a finger over the top of the container. “The heart.” He presses the side of the cooler and the lid slides open. Silver light bursts forth. “How do you use it?”
“Use it? What do you mean?”
His face reddens. “You know exactly what I mean. The heart—how do you use it?”
I’m silent. There’s no way Kyle knows, or cares, about the ritual for the heart of a lost mystic; he only wants to extract its power. He must suppose that it’s too delicate for him to dissect without knowing the proper way to do so.
But I don’t know the first thing about that.
“It was Davida’s,” I say. There’s no use in lying. “It’s all that remains of her body. I was going to return it to her family.”
Kyle snorts. “I know exactly what it is.”
“You do?” I ask. “How could you possibly?”
“Elissa,” Kyle tells me. “I didn’t realize what Davida’s box was until I’d already given it to you. I mentioned it to Elissa afterward and she went hysterical. She said it must have been a reliquary and that I was an idiot to have given it away. No matter, though. I’m not one for lacquered boxes. The real prize is here.”
He looks at the silver light radiating from the cooler. “Elissa explained all about the mystic heart—how it holds all your power.” Kyle sneers at Turk. “I realized then that we had to go back, to see if Davida’s heart was still intact.”
Kyle whips his head toward where I’m seated, glaring at me. “It was difficult to find, as you well know. Turns out it wasn’t where it should have been. I have no idea how someone beat us to it, but”—he glances at the open cooler—“at least I have it now.” He gives me a fake smile. “Thanks for leading us right to it.”
“You’ll always be a Stic junkie in one form or another,” I say.
“And you’ll always be a little mystic tramp,” Kyle says, turning his attention to Turk. “You. Mystic. How do you use this heart?” He takes a few steps in Turk’s direction, then leans down and stares into his eyes. “Tell me.”
Turk raises his shoulders and looks innocently at Kyle. “I haven’t the slightest idea.”
Kyle backhands Turk against the cheek, and I jump in my chair. “Don’t lie to me, mystic. I’ve put those quicksilver cuffs on you for a reason—so you can’t use your powers. Now talk to me, man to man.”
Turk remains silent.
“Not feeling chatty?” Kyle says. “Maybe this will change your mind.” He motions to the guards. The one on the right comes forward and sets down his pistol. He removes a syringe from the plastic bag, then uncorks one of the quicksilver vials, draws the liquid into the syringe, and replaces the cork.
Needle in the air, the guard approaches Turk.
“Quicksilver is the only liquid that can contain mystic energy,” Kyle says to me. “Did you know that, Aria?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer. “I’m sure you do. But perhaps what you didn’t know is that quicksilver is a volatile, deadly element in its own right. And no one has studied the effects of liquid mercury being inserted into a live mystic.”
Kyle gestures to Turk, who is rocking back and forth in his chair. His eyes are enormous, eyebrows arched in fear.
“Until now,” Kyle says. “Our very own guinea pig.”
“Get away from me!” Turk screams. “Back off!”
“Silence him, please,” Kyle says calmly to the other guard, who removes a long piece of cloth from his pocket and inserts it into Turk’s mouth. Turk thrashes his head left and right, hollering, but the guard manages to secure the cloth around his face and tie it behind his head.
Suddenly, his screams are muted.
“Let’s begin,” Kyle says. He snaps his fingers and the guard with the syringe tests it, letting a jet of quicksilver into the air. Then he presses the tip of the needle into Turk’s forearm.
“If you decide to tell me how to use the heart, we’ll stop,” Kyle instructs him.
Turk simply shakes his head.
I watch as the guard empties the syringe into Turk’s arm. The skin on the inside of his elbow, where the needle is inserted, begins to shimmer. I can actually see the mercury traveling up his arm, turning his skin a silvery blue.
And then Turk convulses.
His entire body shakes as though he is going through a draining. His eyes roll back in his head and he foams at the mouth, drool seeping down his chin and onto his shirt.
“Stop!” I cry out. “That’s enough!”
Kyle snaps his fingers again and the first guard removes the syringe. It’s half empty.
The other guard unties the cloth around Turk’s mouth.
For a second, it looks like Turk is dead. Then he sputters up a bunch of mucus and begins to cough.
“Are you ready to tell me how to use the heart now?” Kyle asks, seeming entirely unconcerned that Turk could have just died.
Turk groans softly. “Yes.”
“Good,” Kyle says, rubbing his hands together.
“The answer is simple,” Turk manages to get out. “You suck.”
Kyle makes a strange face. “What?”
“You. Suck,” Turk says. And then he sticks out his tongue.
I suppress a laugh. Only Turk would make fun of my brother at a time like this.
“All right, then,” Kyle says stiffly. “If that’s how you want to be.” The cloth is placed back around Turk’s mouth, and Kyle motions for the guard to inject him again.
Once again, the silvery liquid shoots up Turk’s bicep, turning his entire arm a pearly silver. He convulses wildly. The skin of his arm looks as though it’s hardening—as if he is turning to stone right before my eyes.
This can’t be good.
“Just tell him!” I shout to Turk, hoping he’s conscious enough to hear me. “Kyle, stop—you’re hurting him!”
“That’s the point, Aria,” Kyle says, watching as green energy seeps from Turk’s pores, turning a sickly yellow as it hits the air, running like egg yolk down his arms and legs—as though the mercury is pushing out his powers. His body writhes.
“Stop!” I repeat. “Just get Elissa to tell you!”
Kyle waves his hand and the guard pulls the empty syringe from Turk’s a
rm. “I don’t want Elissa to tell me, because then I’ll have to share the heart with her.” The cloth is untied, and I watch as Turk takes a few shallow breaths. At least he’s still alive.
“So you’re not only a junkie, you’re greedy, too.”
“Oh, stop your wailing, Aria,” Kyle says, pointing at Turk. “How do you use the heart, mystic? How do you extract its power?” He’s shouting now, and the veins in his neck look like they might burst.
“Well,” Turk says in a weak voice, just above a whisper. “First you open the box.”
Kyle looks on eagerly. “And then?”
“And then … you …” The words come slowly, painfully from Turk’s cracked lips. “… suck it.”
“Damn you!” Kyle raises a fist and punches Turk in the side of the head. His neck whips to the side and I hear something snap.
I squirm in my chair again, trying to loosen the cord enough to slide out from underneath. Kyle isn’t paying any attention to me—he’s busy muttering to the guards, instructing them to fill another syringe with quicksilver.
I look over my shoulder and realize there’s an IV stand behind me, as well as an open bag of medical tools. The stand is tall and thin; for some reason it reminds me of the kendo stick Shannon used to train me back at the compound.
Which is when I get an idea.
“Inject him again,” Kyle says. “Let’s see if the third time is the charm.”
He and the two bodyguards have their backs to me now, their focus on Turk. I watch as the quicksilver crawls up his neck and spreads across his skin like a terrible rash.
I use the sound he is making—the thwomping of his back against the chair and the scratching of the chair’s metal legs across the floor—to mask the sounds of my own chair as I wobble back and forth, attempting to crawl closer to the IV stand. At the same time, I heave my chest out, then in, trying to loosen the cord. With every move I make, I can feel more slack.
“Arrrggh!” Turk begins to scream.
Come on, I urge myself. He’s in agony. Just a little closer.
“Are you ready to tell me now?” Kyle hollers at him. “Come on, mystic!”
I keep shifting my weight back and forth. For a second, Turk’s screaming stops and I hear the tiniest whisper: “Suck it.”
“This is it, mystic,” Kyle says. “I’m guessing that once the quicksilver reaches your heart, you’re done. Dead.”
I can’t let that happen.
I shift my weight and feel the cord come undone and fall to the floor.
I try to remember some of the moves Shannon showed me, but my mind is a blur. I am so scared that Turk is going to die.
So I strike.
My hands still cuffed in the front, I bring the IV stand out in front of me and swipe it through the air, connecting with the head of the guard who is holding the syringe. The metal pole pierces his temple and he crashes to the floor, sending the syringe flying.
Kyle turns his head. “Aria?”
But I’m too fast for him.
I jump onto my right foot, slamming the pole into the other guard’s face. Blood bursts out of his nostrils, and I bring my right knee up and kick him directly in the groin. The soldier collapses, and I give him one more quick blow to the back of the head. He’s out cold.
I sense someone behind me. It’s the first guard, stumbling to his feet and clicking off the safety of his pistol.
He shoots. A bullet whizzes past my head, scraping the skin off my temple.
I spin in the air, letting the pole guide me. Then I smack the gun out of the guard’s hand. It clatters to the ground.
He looks at me with a frightened expression.
I tighten my grip on the pole, tilting my left hand up and my right hand down. The pole shifts diagonally in the air.
I step forward and, with one clean motion, drive the end of the pole into the guard’s chin.
His head snaps back and he flies against the wall, hitting it with a smack and crumpling to the floor like an abandoned puppet.
I spin again and face my brother, who is standing still. Shocked.
“Where did you learn to fight like that?” he asks.
I shrug. “Around.” I take a step forward.
“Come on now, Aria,” Kyle says, holding up his hands. Next to him, Turk is breathing heavily, the cotton tie still secured around his mouth. His arms are lumpy with congealed quicksilver.
“It’s me. Your brother.” Kyle takes a step backward. “Put that down. You’re not going to hurt me.” He gives me a nervous smile.
I don’t respond with words.
Instead, I raise the pole and whack him into unconsciousness.
Then I drop the IV stand and rush over to Turk. I remove the cloth from around his mouth, staring down at his cuffs. “Turk? Can you hear me? Everything is going to be all right.” I scan the room for a key.
“Aria,” Turk whispers. “Good job.”
“Keep breathing,” I say frantically. “Don’t you dare stop breathing! I’m going to get you out of here.”
One of the guards is on the floor right next to me. Still handcuffed, I reach down and unhook the key ring from his belt, then try the keys on the cuffs. The second one fits, and I rip the handcuffs from Turk’s wrists. I don’t risk taking the time to undo my own.
“Come on,” I say, moving in front of him. Nearly half of his body is silver, and his face looks still—immobilized. “What should I do?” I say, trembling.
Only Turk’s eyes move. “Cut me,” he manages to say. “Open me up.”
“What do you mean?”
But then his eyelids close. His face grows more and more silver by the second, and bubbles begin to form underneath the skin on his neck and shoulders.
I stare down at the set of keys that I’m holding. Open me up. Could he mean …?
There’s no time to think. Only to act.
I drag the sharp end of one of the keys down Turk’s arm, starting from just under his shoulder all the way to his elbow, digging deep into the flesh until his skin tears open. I expect him to start bleeding, but it’s not blood that pours out of him.
It’s liquid mercury.
The silvery goop leaks out of him, trickling down his arms and dripping onto the floor, forming a large quicksilver puddle.
Carefully, I drag the same key across Turk’s other arm, making another long wound. He groans.
Then I wait.
Sure enough, the silvery sheen on his skin begins to dissipate as the poison flushes out of his body. The pools of quicksilver on the floor grow larger and larger. His eyelids flicker open, and I watch as the color returns to his face and his skin begins to soften back to its normal state.
“Turk? Can you hear me?”
“Aria,” he says, flexing his fingertips. “Thank you.”
A few minutes pass and the silver leaking out of his wounds turns red with blood. Weakly, Turk stands up and presses his fingertip to one of the jagged cuts. It glows green, and he runs it along the incision, healing his own wound with his energy. He repeats this on the other arm. There are still dozens of cuts all over him that he’s too weak to heal.
His shirt is soaked with quicksilver and his own expelled energy. He pulls it over his head. “Come on,” Turk says, motioning to Kyle and the guards, who are sprawled across the floor. “We’ve gotta get out of here before they wake up.”
Glancing down, Turk sees that I’m still cuffed—he presses a fingertip to the metal links that join my hands; there’s a sizzling sound as the metal liquefies and my hands break apart. The silver cuffs dangle on my wrists like bracelets.
Turk grabs my hand and presses the touchpad on the wall. The door slides open to reveal a long, dark corridor. “Follow me.”
I pick up the cooler with the heart inside, close it, and together, Turk and I leave the room.
We tread softly around corners and past closed doors, on the lookout for more of Kyle’s men. Eventually, we reach a large door at the end of a hallway. I press the
touchpad next to it, and it opens onto a silvery bridge.
Aside from when Thomas kidnapped me, it’s the first time I’ve been back in the Aeries for over a month. The hot air hits us as we cross the bridge, keeping our eyes out for the triangular POD elevator that will take us down to the Depths. It’s night now, and the sky is black save for white lights from the surrounding buildings, the skyscrapers illuminated like majestic metal beasts.
I feel like an outcast, a stranger in the place where I grew up. Turk and I rush along the network of bridges that connects the skyscrapers, allowing people to travel to and from their homes and school or work. From the looks of it, there has been no real damage in this area: the skyscrapers are magnificent, offering no hint of the wreckage that lies below. The only real signs of change are the emptied mystic spires, no longer pulsing and glowing with stored mystic energy.
Cables and wires glisten in the night, and we run as fast as our legs can carry us. In the distance, I can see the white glow of a POD. We’re safe.
“Hurry,” Turk says. “Not too long now.”
We’re over one bridge, then another.
And then, a few yards away, I see a line of soldiers, the Rose insignia gleaming against their black uniforms, their guns pointed.
At us.
My heart begins to race. “How did they—”
Turk pulls us to a stop as a figure appears, staggering toward us from behind, followed by another gang of soldiers.
“What do we do?” I whisper to Turk, my breath short.
“You’ve got nowhere to go!” someone shouts behind us.
Kyle.
I glance back at my older brother. He’s limping toward us, a silver pistol in his hand. Behind him, soldiers are marching steadily. Up ahead, more soldiers have created a wall that neither Turk nor I will be able to break.
I look to the side. The fragile railings of the bridge—metal beams that seem to float in midair—would be easy enough to jump over, but then what?
We would fall, swiftly and desperately, into the Depths.
For a second, I see something shimmering in the air nearby. Something that looks an awful lot like a face.
Flanked by his soldiers, Kyle approaches. “This is the end of the road, Aria.”