Page 70 of Violet Spark
Across the room, in a recessed corner, was the telltale EXIT that marked the stairwell. Considering this was a highly secured vault, likely the door would be locked, but I could make short work of that.
A violent hiss from overhead made me duck, heartbeat stuttering, as fire-suppression vapor poured down from spigots in the ceiling. The Desert Freeze had a cheapie version of the gas that sucked heat out of electrical or grease fires, and I knew it wouldn’t actually suffocate us. But in seconds, the thick fog had obscured everything, dulling the light and crackle of the fire. So much for my happy blasting.
Mom shivered in the swirls of icy-cold vapor, but steam rose off my skin. Crouching low and holding hands, we snaked through the banks, quiet as mice.
Fast footsteps squeaked on the floor somewhere off to our right.
We paused. Jen 2.0 coming? Alling, too, probably. I remembered the [reveal] spell that Alling had used with his bugs at the tradeoff earlier, but no matter how hard I concentrated, I had no idea how to command and cast my purple minions into the air to figure out where Alling and Jen 2.0 were.
I’d needed weeks and weeks of gameplay to figure out Legendelirium. I expected I’d need longer to figure out how to use my moths. And I’d only get the time if I survived today.
At least the mission in this case was clear: a dash to the stairwell door, blast it open, and climb however many levels necessary to reach the ground floor.
“Okay, we gotta make a run for it,” I said.
Mom squeezed my hand in response.
I took a deep breath, sucking in the sharp stink of the lingering gas. Run, boom, climb. Ready, set…
“Imogen!” Alling called. With the deadening effect of the fog, I couldn’t quite gauge how far he was. Five rows over? Three? “You’re not ready to go yet! You still have part of the hive within you. They will degrade and kill you if they’re not extracted.”
“Wait.” Mom tugged on my arm to keep me in place. I looked over to find her eyebrows doing that reverse-parentheses wrinkle worrying.
She wanted me to live. Well, duh, I did, too. But I trusted the moths more than I trusted Alling.
“You need several more extraction procedures before the hive will be completely out of your system,” Alling called from wherever he was.
Mom looked at me intently, letting me know through mom-daughter telepathy that maybe we were making the wrong decision. Maybe we should hear him out.
I shook my head. No. Not doing it. But I wasn’t leaving her here, either, which meant she could force me to stay just by remaining behind herself.
“You can go back to your normal life,” Alling continued. Closer now.
We didn’t have time for this.
But Mom’s eyes had lit with hope. Normal life for her meant art school for me.The dream.I’d only been planning it for the last four years of my life. It seemed as if it had become her dream too. Of course it had. All her dreams were about me.Forme.
“And I think you know now that we can help your mom,” Alling said. “We’ve already had the breakthrough. You’re proof of that. Imagine what the technology could do for her spine!”
His voice was getting louder. Clearer. This delay was costing our escape.
Except…more than anything I wanted my mom to be free of pain. I wanted her to live a normal life too. Maybe date Mr. Morales. Hell, marry him even.
“That opportunity will be lost—and who knows for how long?—if you run away now.”
Oh God. Alling had me. It was as if the man had reached out and grabbed my heart. Yeah, sure, I fought with Mom all the damn time about what I was doing with my life. But I loved her more than anything. She wasmy mom.
And I could finallyreallyhelp her. Not just with some rent money and microwaving buckwheat packs after therapy—she could be healed.
Back the way we’d come, a glimmer of scarlet winked through the fog. The suppression system had slowed but not stopped the fire.
“This must all be so terrifying,” Alling said, softening to his fatherly voice.
He was only one row of ruined server racks over now.
“Come out, Imogen,” he went on. “And we can work this out together.”
Yeah, that Daddy tone put my teeth on edge. Woke me up. I didn’t trust him. Couldn’t afford to. I was a loose end, just like Brayden had been. Mom was, too. I seriously doubted that he could get every last one of the nanobots out of my system. And, fuck it, I didn’t want him to. If I had to die, bug burnout was a way better way to go than a bullet to the head.
