Page 79 of Ashes of Gold
People are hardly listening. Ears don’t work the same amid panic. I spot Bri standing still, her feet twisted around each other, her hands out like she’s trying hard to balance. Zora’s next to her, balanced on one foot to avoid the other touching a hot spot. Her spear tip is on the ground and her lips are a thin line.
I hurry over. “Bri, Zora, I need you all to find the end of this chain. It goes as far as I can see to the west. But check how far it stretches on either side.”
They nod.
“And look out for any eyes, anyone behind this mess.”
Bri takes a tentative step. Zora stabs the ground with her javelin to rear herself in the air and leaps over several squares at a time. She stabs, leaps again, and lands with the litheness of a panther, so poised.
“Wait up,” Bri says, hopscotching between the live wires of magic tic-tac-toed along the ground. “Zora, wait for me!”
Julius is straddling two feisty streams of magic crackling between his feet. “You did not tell me this was going to involve screwing up my Js. That was not in the travel memo, Rue.”
The soles of my shoes look like chewed bubble gum, and my heel is practically on the pavement. “It’s getting hotter, we have to move. Now!”
Some heads nod, brows cinched, and I can practicallyheartheir thoughts asking, “Which way, Rue?”
Uhm. We can’t go west, we can’t go back, so that leaves north and south. Bri and Zora went south, so that’s the way we’ll go.
I point. “That way!”
The masses move in that direction in a wave, pops crackling at their feet to a chorus of screaming. This is a nightmare. I dig mynail into my palm. Find an opening, Zora, find something. I glance behind me, north, the opposite way I just told everyone to go, and it leads to a tree line. I squint but can’t tell if the chain stops at the edge of the forest or keeps going. Could that have been the better way?Shit, I don’t know!
“Ahhhh!” I spin and find the wheels on the Seer’s cart melting into a puddle of bubbling metal on the street.Oh my god!
I run.
Julius spots her too. “Shit, man!” He hightails it to the Seer like the track star he was in high school, scooping her up from her cart before I even make it to her.
“Run!”
We sprint. My lungs cry for breath and I urge Julius to go faster, praying we reach the end soon. The cries of pain become white noise and I keep my eyes ahead, focused, running as fast as I can. I glance backward and Taavi is stepping over one stream of energy, then the next. She’s far too slow. With the way the ground is heating, she’ll boil before making it to the end.
I fall back to run beside her. “Come on. Left, right, left, right, left, right,” I say. “Get the coordination down. We gotta move quick.”
“Left, right,” she says, her feet hesitating. “Right, no, left.”
I loop my arm around hers and hold her tight to my side, showing her the motion, as if we’re running the obstacle tire course at school. She plants her next foot firmer and the switching comes more naturally. Her coordination improves at lightning speed as I chant with her.
“That’s it. Now go! As fast as you can. Get out of here.” I turn back once more, with the distinct feeling something’s off.
The girl.
Where’s the girl with the shaved head? It’s a ton of us, but I’d expect to spot her. She’s the only kid in the bunch.
I spot the tiniest blip in the distance. There she is, ankle deep in some hole in the street, wincing. I rush over. “It’s okay. Arm over my shoulder.”
She holds on tight and I wiggle her ankle, which is turned in the complete wrong direction, out of the hole. She bites down, her nails digging into my back, but she doesn’t utter a sound.
“Almost.” I yank again; the smell of my flesh burns my nose. Her foot gives. I pull her up over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry and take off in the direction of everyone else.
When I catch up with them, the group has outrun the trap. They sit pressed against the side of a building at least a mile from where we triggered the trap. A mile of running scared. Bodies hang over one another, panting, worn-out. Shoes are in pieces; heels are calloused and bloody. I walk, wincing with each step. At least I can walk. Many are struggling to stand.
“It looks like the trap was set for one point five square kilometers radius,” Bri says, studying a round gadget in her bag. “North would have gotten us out of the hot zone much quicker.”
Her words cut like a dagger. She sets a hand on my shoulder. “You couldn’t have known. Seriously.” She tucks away the device and is latching her bag when Zora comes up. Her leg is bleeding, and her feet are covered in blisters.
“There’s an access point to the Web this way,” she says. “We should get off the streets as soon as we can. Traveling underground is probably safer.”
