Mistrust of rogue agents was too deeply in-grained for them to dismiss us automatically, but eventually what I’d revealed would give some of them pause. For now, the weaponless rogues fended them off with a mixture of crafty defense and a good head start, though they made sure I was safely away before falling back.
What really saved us, though, was the troop’s shock at our numbers. Almost a dozen rogues existed in the valley? For the agents of Light, this revelation was akin to discovering me a year earlier. There were as many rogues as agents of Light…and they didn’t even know of the other four who’d left the valley. Thus, we numbered more than even Shadows, who boasted a full troop, one agent for each star sign on the Zodiac.
So, with a head start, and clear knowledge of where we were headed-whereas the Light had to fan out, cover and cut off all angles, and try to anticipate our direction-we made it over the city line, crossing the invisible boundary so abruptly I didn’t even know we’d done so until Buttersnap’s gait slowed and she circled widely to return to Carlos’s side. He was breathing hard but his face was alight. One by one every gray who’d entered the tunnels returned, safe, and Carlos laughed so long and loud the sound threatened to rip the sky.
I climbed from Buttersnap’s back, giving her a tight squeeze around the neck, earning a giant, sloppy kiss as the others joined Carlos, whooping wildly into the night as Warren and company paced the invisible barrier like they were straining against leashes. I listened to the joyous laughter ringing about me and could almost scent the perfume of their giddiness at this unexpected victory. It would smell like fresh baked meringue, I decided with a small smile. Bright vanilla, morello cherries, a dessert served first after a miles-long marathon.
When Kimber fired a dart in an attempt to reach us despite the known boundary, I laughed along with the other rogues as the little missile dropped harmlessly to the desert floor. In fact, fatigue, relief, and the spent embers of righteous anger had me so wound up that I found I couldn’t stop. I knelt on the desert floor, arms wrapped around my core as I tipped over. Gareth found this hilarious, and together we howled into the night, almost burping up jagged laughter as the agents of Light fumed only feet-yet miles-away.
Eventually, Carlos and Gareth helped me up, and I sent a final giggle spiraling over the invisible barrier while giving a fury-pale and trembling Kimber the finger.
Sure, the hubris might cost us all dearly later. But right now? The giddiness was amazing, the satisfaction at seeing Warren thwarted and fuming complete.
However, the celebratory mood was quelled once back at Frenchman’s Flat. Io met us in the atomic anteroom with reports of Alex’s deteriorating condition. Sure, he’d only lost an arm, and sure, even mortals recovered in time from such an injury. But Mackie’s magical blade was working quickly, and by her estimation, he wouldn’t make it through the night. I thought of Tripp’s leg wound, festering like gangrene. Maybe Alex was lucky.
“He wants to see you,” she told me, brows raised over those full-moon eyes. “All of you.”
So we proceeded to his sickroom in a funeral march, spirits dampened, the silence weighty. Yet we found Alex sitting upright in bed, a meal of chicken and rice on a tray before him while candles burned around and above him like he was in a cage of flame.
“I understand the Tulpa and I now have something in common,” he said, glassy-eyed, but with enough bite to allow he knew how drugged he was…and that he would soon die. For now, though, it seemed he’d decided to feast.
And so we all did. With the candlelight casting shadows over the beaten floor, we pulled chairs to his bedside, using it as a table as we told tales of the full battle in Xavier’s study and of in the stinking tunnels where the grays faced off against the Light. Roland and Gareth re-enacted particularly good blows, while Vincent fended them off with a plastic spork, pretending to be Mackie. When they settled, Oliver mentioned his surprise that Vanessa would stand up for me against Kimber. I shrugged, uncomfortable with talk of my old troop, and it wasn’t long before the subject returned to Mackie and his rampage as they led him away from the mansion. There was also collective awe expressed at the injury he’d inflicted on the Tulpa’s hand. What kind of magic could defeat the most magical being of all, a tulpa?
Alex was drinking as well, throwing back tequila and beer chasers faster than any of us, and why not? He didn’t have to worry about the hangover. He howled with laughter, doubling over as Gareth mimicked the reactions of the Light when the grays rushed the tunnel in my defense.
Oliver, in particular, did an award-winning imitation of Warren’s face as Carlos pinned him against the wall, and though Carlos professed not to be their leader, their affection and regard for him as such sat bare on each face.
I looked around at the roomful of outcasts and outlaws, awed how a group of people who were so powerless, and who had so little compared to those aboveground, could find joy in the smallest victory. Yet the feeling was addictive, probably because I too had been living in lack. So I smiled and, as I licked the warming beer from my lips, enjoyed the moment. We were like medieval warriors come back from war-Vikings anchoring in some great northern port, celebrated as heroes by our loved ones, and returning with stories of battle and adventure.
“To Tripp!” Alex yelled, and the others took up the toast, lauding a man who’d been a part of this rogue group for mere weeks. Carlos had tears in his eyes, and even Vincent sniffled in the corner, head tucked against his broad chest. They didn’t see Tripp as separate from themselves, I realized. His struggle as an outcast, a rogue, was theirs…and so was mine.
It was how the agents of Light should have treated me. I sank back into my seat, trying to tuck the emotion away before it could taint the air-Alex deserved to celebrate in his last hours among friends-but once the despondency took hold, I couldn’t shake it. Maybe because only weeks earlier I’d lain in bed as helpless as he. Maybe it was because my troop had never gathered to celebrate my battles and heroism and
Maybe I was drunk.
I picked up my bag, and mumbled something to Io-closest to the door-about the bathroom as I backed from the room. Then I grabbed an oil lantern, and as Carlos and I had done only a day earlier, exited the rogue lair to seek privacy upon the desert floor. This time it was night, and I was as alone as I felt, so when I looked at the sky, wounded with stars, tears welled.
I couldn’t figure out why I felt so deflated as I wandered across the brutalized terrain, but I wanted to sit down in some radioactive crater and be swallowed up.
Instead I found what looked like a moon rock, though it’d probably once lived deep beneath this desert floor, and was as surprised to find itself sitting upon this ablated surface as I was. The lantern wobbled atop it, then steadied, and I got right to business, doing what I knew I’d come all the way out here to do. I pulled out the manual with Hunter on the cover. He was penciled in silhouette, a hulking figure outlined against the tunnel that would ferry him to another world. I flipped it open to where I’d left off and read the rest.
The story Tripp had told me was all there, so obvious in black and white that it made me wonder how I hadn’t seen it before. Solange had put scales on all our eyes, I supposed. A too-pretty face could do that. But the real reason this manual was stripped of color was because Solange had moved through Hunter’s life-or Jaden, as he was known then-like a Nordic winter: dark, cold, fierce, and relentless.
After they’d met as children, after Solange tried and failed to rectify that night’s choice to let him live, and after becoming his lover instead…she decided to use him. Love him or not, he was Light and she was Shadow, which meant a child between them would be this world’s prophesied savior: the Kairos. Of course, in a matriarchal society this person’s mother would be exalted.
How ironic that to bring the child safely into the world, she had to leave it. The Light would want to destroy it, the Tulpa would use it, and Solange wanted the power solely for herself, and so she used Hunter one last time.
Entering Midheaven required payment-a third of an agent’s soul…or all of a mortal’s. The manual didn’t say why she didn’t use Jaden’s soul-maybe she thought it too risky. He was too big, too strong. Maybe she really did love him in part. However, the other part stole the soul of a child who’d trusted Jaden, using it to cross into Midheaven. She killed the innocent, escaped from everyone else, and had been ruling Midheaven in the way the mother of the real Kairos would-utter omnipotence.
Meanwhile Hunter had lived with the guilt and consequence of her betrayal, just as he must now be living with the consequence of helping me escape.
I glanced back down at the closed manual and rubbed a thumb over his profile, then closed my eyes and imagined Solange sucking on a sliver of his soul; cold and diamond-shaped, like a sparkling lozenge.
Then I took a deep breath, picked up the lantern and headed back to the bunker, shaking. Yes, it was cold, but
