Neven took off at a trot, then leaped, taking us up farther with every beat of her massive wings. “They won’t see us.”
“How can you know?” I pressed myself to her back.
“I’ve tussled with these helicopters before. These models don’t have rearview mirrors, and their equipment can’t detect me.”
The helicopter couldn’t be far; I could still hear the rotors. Underneath that noise, a hiss filled the air, like the first sputtering squeals of a teapot. Ripples of goose bumps washed over me. The rift. I was hearing the rift.
The ground dissipated below us. The higher we climbed, the more it faded into whiteness, like I imagined ships growing fainter at the horizon or a landscape disappearing into fog.
We swerved into the street. The helicopter was a fuzzy gray shape at the end of the block. Just past it, the world was splitting in two.
I’d last seen the rift that afternoon. I knew it’d grown, but . . .
The rift stretched from a dozen feet off the ground to the top of one of the two skyscrapers boxing in the courtyard. Once, the rift had been a diagonal slash, its edges fizzling and sharp. Now it looked like a deep, Y-shaped gash. Its edges smudged into the world around it. The air pulsed and trembled and shimmered. A white sky turned turquoise; gray concrete shifted into an ugly shade of yellow. The deeper into the core of the rift I looked, the more reality blurred and distorted. A wisp of starry sky unfurled and then faded. Antler-like tendrils snaked from the center of the rift toward the ground, groping around eagerly before getting yanked back into the rift and twisted up with a stretch of coiling water.
Fine sand whirled from the top of the rift into the air. A chunk of rock the size of a small building spat from the rift and smashed into the ground. Cracks burst open in the asphalt, stretching onward for another two blocks. Car alarms wailed. A newsstand collapsed. The facade of a building came crumbling down; another building groaned dangerously.
I gripped Neven tighter. Wind fluttered past us in erratic bursts. Sometimes it pulled, sometimes it pushed. A gust caught hold of a nearby tree, stripping it bare. Leaves and branches tumbled up into the air and into the rift.
Even as I watched, the rift grew. It bled into the world inch by inch, foot by foot. Windows cracked where it spread, the glass shards caught up in whirlwinds before violently spraying outward.
How long would it take for the city to be swallowed up? The state?
I might not have much more time to stop the rift.
But Four—
The ripped-off wing of an airplane flung from the rift. It missed the helicopter by a few feet, spinning in the air over a parking garage and slamming into a nearby building, where it took out the entire top floor.
The helicopter struggled to right itself. I pictured the agent inside frantically trying to steer closer to the rift, even as they swayed and tilted wildly.
The helicopter ended up rising straight up—high enough to escape the worst of the rift’s effects—before slowly continuing its approach. This time, they went unscathed.
“Hazel?” Neven said calmly. “Tell me what you want to do.”
My gaze shifted frenetically from the helicopter to the rift.
If we attacked the helicopter, they’d kill Four. Our best chance—our only chance—was to catch Four after they threw her out.
“Can you get closer? But stay out of sight.”
Neven obeyed without question. Wind yanked at my hair as we flew straight through a cloud of fluttering pink insects, right past a tree that was careening through the air on its way to crashing into what looked like railroad tracks—
The helicopter hovered directly above the rift now. It wobbled precariously. Neven slowed, angling her body toward the skyscraper. Her claws grabbed on to the granite wall to keep in place.
Behind us came the rumbling sound of something collapsing. I focused on the helicopter hovering over the city, a lonely blot on a stretch of sky so white it burned my eyes.
The door on the side of the helicopter opened.
“Get ready,” I whispered.
For several agonizing seconds, nothing happened. My heart stuck in my throat, making it hard to breathe. Maybe they changed their minds, maybe—
A body came tumbling from the helicopter.
“Go!” My voice was an unrecognizable shriek, instantly swallowed by the wind.
Neven pushed off from the building. She shot up, her wings tight by her side. I couldn’t look away from Four. She dropped headfirst. Her body turned as she fell: her back arching, her limbs fluttering lifelessly—
She fell so fast, God, we weren’t going to make it—
We came closer, closer, so close I could see Four’s hair lashing around her head, her lips parting, her eyes closed and her face slack. Below us, the rift twisted and pulsated. A vortex of color twitched at its center.
Even as I watched, a bus got sucked in and swallowed whole. I felt the rift tug at us, like gravity pulling us in—
A jerk. Neven veered sideways, away from the rift.
“Do you have her?” I clutched Neven’s neck, stretching as far left as I could and desperately scanning for any sign of Four. A gust of wind almost yanked me off.
“I have her.” Neven sounded tense.
I finally glimpsed Four’s rag doll body dangling from Neven’s claws. Her arms and legs swung limply back and forth.
“Is she—?”
“She’s breathing.”
I closed my eyes in relief, my arms tight around Neven. Her scales scraped against my skin. For a moment, nothing else existed: not the rift, not the yells from the helicopter above, not the streets tearing open below, not the knowledge that these were my last minutes on this planet. Four was alive. The others were safe on the ground. Whatever happened next, I knew Neven could get them to safety, and that I could stop the rift before it expanded farther, and—
The sound of a gunshot exploded behind us. Instinctively, I pressed myself flat to Neven. She swerved
