CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Then—
“Evac!” someone outside shouted. My head snapped up.
One moment: Silence.
The next: Action.
Researchers outside grabbed their supplies and bolted to the vans.
“Oh, crap,” Torrance said. “The rift’s about to jump.”
“Stay in that van!” Valk yelled at me from across the highway. She sprinted toward us and climbed into the van along with the head researcher and a redheaded agent whose name I’d forgotten. The doors slammed shut behind them. I stared outside through the windows as our van jolted into motion.
The rift was moving. It angled downward as though it were sliding off a plate. It looked like a smudge distorting the world—like I only needed to wipe my sleeve over the glass and it’d be clean and sharp.
The rift tilted vertically.
It crashed into the asphalt.
That was the only way I could describe it—crashed—not because the rift shattered, but because the ground did. Where the rift touched it, the ground collapsed upward, inward, crumbling and whirling into nothing.
I craned my neck to keep my eyes on the rift as we drove. It tilted further, cutting a narrow crevice into the asphalt. The rift looked thinner from this angle—no, it was thinner—
Then it was gone.
The van slowed. I stared out the window. Where the rift had been there was now only calm air and broken highway.
The redheaded agent was the first to speak. “The drones will spot the new location soon. We’ve got a bet on where. If it’s near Camden, I’ll buy you a soda, Hazel.” He said the last part with a lopsided grin.
“Iced tea?”
“You got it.”
“Is the rift always like that when it closes?” Valk’s voice was as neutral as ever, but she looked pale.
“Nah,” the agent said. “Sometimes it’s worse. Three rifts ago, it caught one of our tires as we were driving off. Scariest moment of my life, hands down.”
The head researcher nodded. “Agreed. And I was present when the rift first went rogue.” Her cool eyes flitted over to me. “Hi, Hazel. Welcome back.”
By the time we drove onto the lawn of my house, I was half asleep.
The other Hazels climbed from a van that arrived moments after ours. I suppressed a yawn as I walked up to them. “I’ll show you around the grounds,” I said. Four had never seen this version of the house and surroundings. “They’re . . . not usually this badly destroyed.”
I looked around the lawn with a lump in my throat. The last time I’d been here had been with Red, Rainbow, and Neven, right outside that barn, on the cusp of leaving while everyone around us pleaded with us to stay.
And before that, it’d just been me and Red—frightened Red in her dress and that flower in her hair, running into the house and not knowing where to find her room.
It had been evening then. Much of the light had come from fires. Now, in the cold hours of dawn, I could see every inch of the destruction the rift had left behind. The crumbling holes in the barns, the splintered tree trunks, the gaps in the fence, the scorched grass. They’d removed most of the wreckage and blocked off gaps in the fences with metal plates, but it looked like a rush job. Security must no longer be a top priority. That also explained the lack of guards and agents in the area. The sky, however, was still crowded: Two helicopters hovered overhead, and a third in the distance.
Agent Valk trailed us as we crossed the lawn. She seemed more in her element here, away from the rift.
I cleared my throat. “The barn over there is normally Director Facet’s office. When I had my regular testing, it was usually in those neighboring barns. That one’s where we found Rainbow and Neven, and . . .”
Red and Rainbow looked grim. They’d known what to expect. Four stayed close by, glancing around nervously. Every few moments she pasted a transparent smile onto her face and nodded like she was paying attention and not at all freaking out.
“How did Alpha manage to escape this place? It’s like Area 51,” Rainbow said. “Badass.”
“Yeah.” I stared at the off-limits barns. Where had they kept Alpha? I couldn’t imagine the MGA putting her in a cell like Rainbow’s for two years. They must’ve given her more space. Made it look like a home. Right? God, I hoped so.
I shook my head to snap out of it. “And that’s”—I gestured—“the rift barn. When I was a baby, they built it around the rift to keep it contained and hidden. They expanded it into a proper research facility later.” One wall was blown out. Scorch marks painted the north side of the building.
The doors were open, I realized. I’d never seen them be open for longer than the few moments of someone entering or exiting before the doors would slam hermetically shut behind them. The area in front of the doors was a muddy mess with patches of burnt grass.
I abruptly turned. This tour was freaking the others out, and I wasn’t doing much better. “You get the idea. Let’s go into the house.”
Mom met us halfway down the lawn, fussing over us—were we OK? Were we tired? What did they have us doing?—but seemed to get the message when she was met with only wan smiles and half answers.
I took her arm and leaned my head against her shoulder. “I wasn’t sure you’d be here,” I said.
“Like I was going to leave you here by yourself.” We headed inside through the kitchen door.
“And Caro?”
“I sent her to your grandparents.” Mom shook her head. “Girls, it’s eight in the morning. Do you want breakfast or . . .?”
“They gave us pizza,” Red said.
“I need to sleep,” I confessed. “Feel like I’m going to collapse soon.”
After sleeping I might be in better condition to figure out what to do with the information I’d gotten from Torrance. I hadn’t been able to pry anything further out of her—or the other researchers, for that matter.
“Facet arranged extra beds.
