Extracted

TWENTY-TWO

EMBER

Lex pulls his backpack over one shoulder and fumbles to unzip it while staring at the strange waves. In a flash of white light the sky splits, tearing open like a burst seam. Inside the gaping wound is darkness and swirling wind. For a moment we are safe, but then the vortex begins to pull us forward. Dust flows toward the cyclone, giving it substance. A bolt of lightning crashes to the ground in front of it. Loose dust and small gravel rush past my boots and are eaten by the darkness.

My hair whips into my face. I glance at the others. A tornado of sand and stone taller than a building is sucking us forward. Beside me Ethan braces himself, grabbing me with one arm and holding the other out for balance. Nobel steps up behind me, pulling me by the shoulders while Stein wraps herself in the other Lex’s arms. Lex pulls the Dox out of his pack, looks up, and sees them.

A look of unexpected pain washes across his face. Maybe no one else sees it, but I catch it, and it makes my heart ache for him. After everything he’s gone through to save the girl he loves, he still might end up without her. It doesn’t seem fair. I want to comfort him, but before I can the vacuum doubles in strength and we all skid forward in the dirt, leaving tracks behind us. In his hands, the Dox glows faintly.

“Now what?” he asks, looking to me.

I shake my head. “I have no idea. It was never tested, remember?”

The vacuum intensifies again and I pitch face-first into the dirt. Ethan’s not far behind me. I hit the ground so hard my teeth ache from being snapped together. Ethan rolls over, covering me with his body, pinning me to the ground. Something about his weight makes me feel safer, less frantic. But there’s something else, too. Another sensation I’m not completely familiar with. It’s almost… wonderful, even in the chaos. It feels like, as long as we’re together, everything will be all right.

“Whatever you’re going to do, do it fast,” Ethan orders Lex, who is violently shaking the Dox. It glows for a moment, then fades like a jar full of dying lightning bugs. Lex is chewing on his bottom lip and perspiration beads on his face. His jester’s hat is sucked off his head. He reaches back to catch it, but it’s useless. It’s gone. Vanishing into the void.

“Maybe we have to get it closer to the tear,” Nobel chimes in from where he crouches beside me. I want to slap him. The last thing I want is for Lex to get closer to the blackhole. My brother slaps the Dox with the palm of his hand. He looks to me, his eyes full of helpless frustration.

“Maybe we should have stolen the directions, too,” he jokes uncomfortably.

It’s how he hides his fear. Something he learned from our father. He looks like our father to me now. Older. Harder. And with a grim smile that tells me he doesn’t expect things to end well.

Stein screams, but the sound is eaten by the blackhole, which is now the size of a house. The other Lex has slipped from her grip and is skidding out of control toward the tear as if being pulled by an invisible rope around his ankles. His arms flail as he gropes for something to hold on to. But there’s nothing. Just loose gravel and sand.

I cry out and reach for him, but he skids past me in a cloud of dust that stings my eyes and fills my mouth. Lex leaps forward, the Dox tucked under his arm, and lands on top of his other self. His prosthetic leg emits a puff of smoke and screeches to a stop, seizing up. Losing his balance, he is pulled forward, off the other boy, and they both tumble toward the swirling vortex. Lightning streaks again, so close and so bright I have to close my eyes against the light. I feel the heat of it singe my face. The scent of burnt hair is carried on the wind. When I am finally able to blink, I see Lex holding his other self up. Lightning strikes again, but this time I force my eyes to remain open. I see the light engulf them both like the sun. For a few seconds everything is white. When the glow fades, only one Lex remains. I look down and see his metal leg. He looks stunned, shaking his head and pressing his eyes closed with his thumb and forefinger. I can feel the pressure building. Another strike is coming any moment.

“No!” I scream.

I just got my brother back. I can’t lose him now. I turn my head to Ethan, but as usual I don’t need to tell him what I’m thinking. He just looks at me and nods. In a moment of bold desperation, we leap to our feet and lunge for my brother. Ethan grabs him first and—using his momentum and the pull of the vortex—swings him around and rolls them both out of the direct path of the suction. As the boys fall, the Dox rolls free of Ethan’s hands and is sucked into the air. I lunge for the fragile glass device.

I roll the Dox behind me to Nobel. He covers it with his body. Then I scramble forward, trying to stay as flat against the ground as possible, and I stretch until I feel the muscles in my shoulders and back tearing. I’m reaching out for Lex, trying to meet him halfway, but the gap between us is too far.

The twister bellows, a thick, hollow drum sound, and we both skid toward the mouth. Behind me, I hear Nobel call my name. Looking over my shoulder, I see he’s holding up the Dox, which is glowing faintly. Nobel yells again, and I just barely catch the sound of my name as the words blow past me.

I call out to him. The word rips its way up from the bottom of my stomach and erupts out of my mouth, burning like acid. Between my tears and the hair wildly whipping around my face, I don’t see Nobel crawl to my side. I’m breathing too hard, too fast. The air is growing thin as the vacuum sucks the oxygen out from around us. Somewhere in the calmer recesses of my mind, I know it will soon engulf us all. I gasp. My lungs burn. It’s like I’m breathing through a straw. No matter how hard I struggle, I can’t get enough air in my lungs.

Nobel pats my hand and I look over to him. The Dox is still glowing, but the closer we get to the tear, the dimmer the light becomes. Then it dawns on me.

It isn’t going to work. The paradox storm is going to eat us alive. Around me, a thick fog is overtaking my vision. I force myself to calm down. Only sheer will is holding me down here. If I faint, the darkness will take me. So my body wars against itself, part wanting to relax into unconsciousness, part struggling to survive.

“I think we have to take it into the tear,” Nobel yells. The strange, white surgeon’s mask that he normally wears has slid down around his neck, so I’m not sure if I’m actually hearing his voice or just reading his lips. Everything is fuzzy.

I nod, beginning to feel a terrifying lightness in my body. I wish I were back at the Institute, surrounded by my friends, playing in the surf with Ethan.

Nobel fights his way to his feet and is immediately pulled off-balance, pitching forward onto his knees. The Dox falls from his hands, hitting the ground with a sound that echoes like the crash of lightning. It’s the sound that shocks me back to my senses. It shouldn’t be that loud, but it is, even over our screams and the gusting wind we can hear it, the sound of hope dying. The glass dome of the Dox splinters, and tiny fractures spread like spiderwebs around the container. The faint glow immediately dies.

“It’s no good. We have to get out of here,” I yell to Nobel, who is scant inches from the mouth of the vortex. I see him reach into his lab coat pocket, pull out the small Contra pill, and toss it into his mouth. Just before he can be sucked into the darkness, he shimmers and vanishes into the time stream. I glance behind me and see Stein, her face streaked with muddy tears. She opens her mouth to show me the green pill between her teeth.

“I’ll get Lex. You get out of here!” I yell.

She hesitates, shooting me a look like, you better, then she swallows and is gone too.

I begin the painful crawl to where Lex and Ethan are holding on. Wiping the hair out from my eyes, I see the boys have made a kind of chain. Lex is holding the jagged rock with one arm and holding Ethan with his other hand. Ethan is scooting toward me, his free hand outstretched. In his fingers, he carefully holds a Contra.

My palms and knees are bleeding from the crawl across the stony ground. It’s only a few yards, but I might as well be crossing the Sahara. I can feel blood dripping from my chin, but I’m too numb to feel the pain of my injuries. Adrenaline is pushing me forward now, a primal need to survive. I reach Ethan and wrap myself around his arm with both hands. He has to put the Contra in my mouth for me—I can’t even let go with one hand for fear of being pulled away. As I draw a breath to swallow, I feel Ethan rising off the ground. Lex manages to take his own pill just before he loses consciousness. Ethan still has hold of his hand, but we are being scooped up like kites as the vortex engulfs us. I close my eyes and feel the wind change. It’s no longer the relentless sucking of the tornado, it’s the sharp push of the stream on my skin. Still clinging to Ethan, I let him drag us against the current. With Lex unconscious, we are literally flying blind.

“Where are we going?” I ask, pulling myself closer to Ethan even as the wind tries to force us apart.

He jerks his head and I can just make out Nobel, who is not too far in front of us, cutting through the stream. He vanishes and I know we’re close. I take a deep breath, preparing to purge myself from the stream just as Ethan stops. With an unspoken signal, we leap out of the stream and fall forward onto the lawn just outside of the Tower.

Nobel is standing with his back to us. I only have a moment to register his tension and the cautious stance of his body before I trip over the first corpse, sprawled lifeless on the ground.