The Unbound: An Archived Novel Part 35

"What hard part?"

"All eyes are on you," he continues. "Waiting for you to mess up or make a move. So that's what you're going to do. And then you're going to run, and Crew will chase you. And when they catch you-and they will-you're going to fight back, with everything you have, to the very end."

My mind spins. This isn't how it's supposed to go. We are supposed to go into the Archive together. I am supposed to return him. How am I supposed to do that if I'm being executed?

"You don't want a diversion, Owen. You want a sacrifice."

"Don't be dramatic."

"I am not a martyr," I snap.

"I won't let them erase you."

"Oh, well, if you won't let them..." I say sarcastically.

"I'll save you," he insists. "Trust me."

I scoff. "You want me to put my life in your hands."

In an instant, Owen has me back against the brick wall. "Your life has been in my hands since the moment I stepped out of that void," he growls.

A sickening realization dawns on me. He's already set the scene. He doesn't need my consent to make me a diversion. But the only way he'll come for me is if he thinks I'm worth saving.

But the ledger is on the desk at the very front of the Archive. What's to stop him from walking in and taking it and leaving without me?

"I won't," he says, reading the thoughts through my skin. "I will not leave you behind. I still need you. We are the bringers of change, Mackenzie. But I need you to be the voice of it."

His hands fall away. He turns toward the festival, and the lights cast shadows across his pale skin. "Change is coming," he says quietly. "Either the Archive will evolve or it will fall."

And watching him in that unsteady light, it hits me.

It's all a lie. His promise of an Archive without secrets, his dream of a world exposed-Owen doesn't expect the Archive to survive this. He doesn't want it to. He wants the same thing he's always wanted: to tear it down. And he thinks he's found a way to do that-by letting this world do the work.

He doesn't want change.

He wants ruin.

And I will do whatever it takes to keep him from it.

My mind is spinning, but I cannot afford to let him see my panic. I take a short, steadying breath. "You should have told me sooner," I say. "For someone who scorns secrets, you sure keep a lot of them."

He frowns. "I didn't want you to overthink it," he says. "But our fates are bound in this. If you fail, I fail; and if I fail, you fail. We are like partners."

We are nothing like partners, I think, but all I say is, "Don't you dare leave me there, Owen."

He smiles. "I won't."

And then he crouches and lifts the end of the fuse from the gra.s.s. A lighter appears in his other hand. He looks up at the clock tower beside us. Five minutes till eight p.m.

"Perfect," he says, sliding his thumb over the lighter. A small flame dances there. "Five minutes from the spark." He touches the flame to the fuse and it catches, a hissing sound running down the line. No turning back now, I realize with a mixture of terror and energy.

"Find the spotlight." Owen steps out of the shadows and onto the path, but I linger against the building and pull the phone from my pocket. There's a text from Wesley...

Where are you?

...and I answer back...

Science hall.

...hoping I can at least get him out of the way of whatever's about to happen. And then I swallow and dial home. Mom answers.

"Hi," I say. "Just checking in. As promised."

"Good girl," says Mom. "I hope you have a great time tonight."

I fight to keep the fear out of my voice. "I will."

"Call us when it's over, okay?"

"Okay," I say, and I can tell she's about to hang up, so I say, "Hey, Mom?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you," I say, before ending the call.

Four minutes till eight p.m. The clock tower looms overhead, fully lit. I watch a minute tick past as students dance and laugh beneath the colored canopy. They have no idea what's about to happen.

In all fairness, neither do I.

Three minutes till eight p.m. I tell myself I can do this. Tell myself it isn't madness. Tell myself it will all be over soon. When I run out of things to tell myself, I step out of the shadows, expecting to see Owen, but he's not there, so I head toward the quad. I only make it a few strides before a large hand wraps around my arm and drags me back into the dark and thought you were clever can't get past me thought I wouldn't see the pattern ricochets through my head. Before I can try to twist free, a metal cuff closes around my wrist, and I crane my neck to see Detective Kinney behind me.

"Mackenzie Bishop," he says, cuffing my hands behind my back, "you're under arrest."

THIRTY.

"DON'T CAUSE A SCENE," he orders, pulling me away from the festival.

"Sir, you're making a serious mistake." The clock strikes one minute till eight, and I twist around, desperately searching for Owen as Kinney drags me down the path.

"Do you know the last name entered into Coach Metz's computer?" he says. "Yours. And the last number to call Jason Pinter's phone? Yours. The prints on Bethany Thomson's necklace? Yours. The only place you didn't actually leave evidence was Phillip's, but you broke into his house, so I'm willing to bet we can tie you to that, too."

"That's circ.u.mstantial," I say. "You can't arrest me for it."

"Watch me," says Kinney, pus.h.i.+ng me toward the front gates. His cruiser is waiting, lights flas.h.i.+ng, on the other side. But the gates are closed. Not just closed, I realize-locked. And I can smell the gasoline from here.

"What the h.e.l.l?" he growls.

His grip slackens on my arm, and I wrench free, making it three steps back toward the festival before Kinney's hand comes down hard on my shoulder.

"Not so-"

But he never gets a chance to finish. The clock tower chimes eight, and the fireworks start. Not in the air, but on the ground. Several high whistles, followed by the heavy booms as ma.s.sive spheres of color, light, sound, and fire explode across campus. The blasts are concentrated in the quad, but one goes off much closer to where we stand, and the force is enough to send Kinney and me to the ground. My ears are ringing as a pair of hands pulls me to my feet.

"Can't leave you alone for a moment, I swear," says Owen, soot dusting his cheeks. Behind him, the Hyde front gate is engulfed in fire.

"Where the h.e.l.l were you?" I snap, ears still ringing as he strides over to Kinney, who's still getting to his hands and knees, clearly disoriented from the blast.

"Busy," he says, pulling the gun from Kinney's holster. He spins the weapon and brings the b.u.t.t down hard against the detective's temple. Kinney crumples to the path. Back at the quad, another round of explosions goes off. People are screaming. Owen finds the keys on Kinney's belt, unlocks my cuffs, then drags me back toward the blossoming inferno.

We pa.s.s through a wave of smoke and into a world engulfed in fire. The blasts are deafening, and the streamer ceiling of the dance floor burns and breaks, dropping flaming strips onto the students below. Everyone is running, but no one seems to know where to run because the blasts keep going off. It's a blanket of chaos.

Owen storms through it, scanning the smoke-covered ground.

"What are you looking for?" I have to shout now over the noise of the falling festival.

"I left him right-"

Just then a body slams into Owen hard, his gun skittering toward me as they both go down. Another blast goes off behind me as I scoop up the weapon, Owen and his opponent a tangle of limbs on the burning ground until he manages to snake his arm around the man's throat and pull back and up, and I see his face.

Eric. One of his eyes is swelling shut, and a bad gash carves a path against his s.h.i.+rtfront, and when he sees me standing there, he tells me to run. And then he sees the gun in my hand and confusion lights up his blood-streaked face.

"Shoot him," orders Owen.

I stare at him in horror. "He's Crew!"

"Right now he's in our way," growls Owen, as if this is just an unfortunate turn of events. But it's not. This was always his plan.

I'll take care of the hard part.

The fireworks were nothing but a smoke screen. They could have been an accident. But killing a member of the Archive...there would be no question. No hesitation. The Archive would hunt me down. They'd erase me.

"You have to commit, Mackenzie," orders Owen, struggling to gain leverage over Eric. Another firework goes off, showering us in red light. I lift the gun, mind spinning. I've come so far and risked so much. I can't lose Owen, not now. But I can't do this.

"Commit."

I pull the trigger. But I aim wide.

The blast sounds, sharp even in the chaos, the bullet zinging past them both, and between my shot and Owen realizing I missed, Eric twists free and spins. Run, I think, run. And I'm about to level the gun on Owen-it might not stop him, but it will slow him down-when he slams his fist into Eric's jaw hard enough to crack bone. Eric crumples, and before he can recover, Owen takes his head in his hands and snaps his neck.

The world slows. The smoke thins and the fire dims, and in the instant just after I hear the crack and before the light goes out of his eyes, I see Eric's life unravel. I see him sitting beside me on the patio wall, telling me to stay out of trouble; questioning Dallas in the hospital; leaning up against the yellow wallpaper, chiding me for trying to slip away; checking my hands in the park for broken bones; standing on the sidewalk, nothing but a golden shadow, a glint of light, and then gone.

I stifle a cry as Eric's body slumps lifeless onto the charred earth. No. This isn't happening. This can't be happening.

"Run, Mackenzie," comes Owen's voice as I stare down at the corpse. My fingers tighten on the gun, but by the time I manage to drag my eyes away from Eric's body and up, Owen's already gone, and I'm alone. I look around and realize that I'm standing at the very center of the chaos. There are sirens in the distance, and people are still running, shadows in the smoke and all I can think is please let Wes and Cash and the others be among them be safe.

And then, through the chaos, I see her. Everyone else is running away. But she is running toward me.

Sako.

And I know from the way she's looking at me that she heard the gunshot, that she can see the weapon in my hand...and Eric's body at my feet. The gun tumbles from my grip as two more Crew-the third I saw earlier and a fourth-appear behind her. I don't have a choice. There's only one way out now.

I take a stumbling step backward.

And then I turn and run.

THIRTY-ONE.

THERE'S ONLY ONE of me and three of them, and they are all fast.

The third drops to a knee beside Eric's body but the other two don't stop. I sprint across the quad, not toward the front gates like everyone else, but deeper into campus, cutting through the doors of the language hall only moments before I hear them cras.h.i.+ng through behind me. I don't look back, don't sacrifice a single step of my lead as I sprint through the building, all the way to the opposite exit and back out into the burning night.

You're going to run...

Smoke billows up from the burning lawn as I cut hard down the path toward the Court. I'm almost there when I realize that one set of footsteps has vanished behind me; an instant later, the third Crew steps into my way. I can't change direction before he swings, catching me across the face with his fist.

And when they catch you...

I go down hard, tasting blood as the world rings in my ears.

...and they will...

Just as I'm getting to my feet, Sako grabs me from behind and throws me down on the dirt path, kicking me hard in the ribs.

...you're going to fight back...