Meridian Six

The impact knocked me off my feet and sent my body flying toward the spot where Icarus had stood a moment earlier. A high-pitched whine filled my ears and my eyes stung and were wet. I swiped at them and my hand came away bloody. Despite the pain and confusion, a single thought screamed inside my head: RUN!

The chain reaction hadn’t spread through the Factory’s pipeline. But it was coming. If I didn’t get us out of there now we were going to burn. Even though my eyes hurt like hellfire, I squinted through the smoke and located Icarus a couple of feet away. I groped toward him. "Icarus! Can you hear me?" I couldn’t hear myself, but judging from the way my throat ached, I was screaming. He rolled over and blinked once, twice, three times before he jerked into motion.

"Dare? Rabbit?" he mouthed.

"There!" Dare was lying on top of Rabbit over near a wheel of the rover. Together, Icarus and I leaned into each other, supporting each other’s weights. We stumbled to the ground by Dare and pulled her off him. A trickle of blood glared red beneath her left ear and her eyes were shot through with broken capillaries.

Icarus grabbed her off the ground, supporting all of her weight when she didn’t do it on her own. He jerked his head toward Rabbit. I leapt toward the kid and hauled him up to my shoulder with strength borne from fear and adrenaline. When I turned to follow Icarus, I saw Astyanax’s smoldering body nearby. His large body had taken most of the brunt of the explosion and it showed. A quick look around revealed dozens of other burning bodies, but I didn’t detect Castor’s among the injured.

Shaking myself, I sped up to follow Icarus onto the open door of the rover. I prayed he knew how to fly it because we didn’t have time for a tutorial. The ground was shaking as explosions occurred in the pipeline underground.

I lay Rabbit on one of the plush benches inside the rover and went to hit the button to seal us in. The sound of the engines whirring to life filled the cabin. Icarus had dumped a shell-shocked Dare into the co-pilot’s seat and taken the throttle. "Hold on!" he yelled.

The world tilted wildly. I grabbed onto a handle and held on with white knuckles. As the earth fell away below us, it felt like I’d left my stomach behind. Through the front window I could see the stars getting closer, which meant we were getting farther from The Factory. The last ten minutes had felt like an eternity.

"Shit, Six." Icarus’s warning came a split second before The Factory went boom. The concussion rocked the rover, causing it to dip and stutter in mid-air. A sensor started beeping furiously.

"Hang on!" Icarus yelled. He didn’t have to tell me twice. I braced my feet and grabbed onto handholds on the ceiling.

Finally stable, I turned to look out of the rear window of the rover. Where The Factory had stood now looked like the mouth of hell. We’d done it. We’d destroyed the Troika’s dragon before it could consume any humans.

The sensor stopped beeping and the rover’s altitude leveled off. For a moment, I allowed myself to just breath easy.

Rabbit groaned from the bench. My short-lived respite over–I moved to check on him. The bullet had gone straight through his shoulder. Not a lethal wound, but blood loss could pose a major problem. His skin was pale and clammy, and his mouth worked like he wanted to scream, but he didn’t open his eyes.

"How is he?" Icarus called.

"Alive, but he needs medical attention."

Before Icarus could answer, the door to the rover’s electrical closet burst open.

Castor launched at me looking like something straight out of hell. His once-elegant face was bloody and patches of skin were charred beyond recognition. I fell back into the bench where Rabbit lay as Castor’s weight slammed into me. His fangs snapped like a beast’s toward my neck. To heal his wounds, he’d need an infusion of blood. My blood.

"Icarus!" I screamed. But I knew he couldn’t help me. Someone had to fly the rover.

"The Prime should have killed you when your brat turned out to be a low blood!" he snarled.

I fought and scratched at the vampire’s face. I kicked with heavy, sore legs. I screamed my rage at his horrific, burned face.

Movement from my peripheral vision. Then Castor’s weight lifted off me. Dare had shaken off her shock and come to the rescue. She and Castor faced off. Her yellow eyes flashed and she hissed, flashing those empty fang sockets. Despite being a eunuch, she looked every inch the fearsome predator capable of murder.

"Six!” she snarled. “The door."

I lunged at the wall and punched the button. The door slid open. Air wooshed in like a cyclone, whipping my hair around and pulling my body toward the opening. I grabbed a seatbelt from a nearby bench and held on.

Dare shoved Castor with every ounce of strength she had. The male vampire stumbled back toward the door. He fell back against the benches along that wall. He was up again in a blink. Knowing Dare was the stronger foe, he lunged for me this time. But just as his clawed hands snagged my shirt, the necklace the Chatelaine gave me sprang from the neckline. One of his hands brushed against the red disk. He hissed and pulled away as if he’d been burned.

“Where did you get that?”

Confusion held me frozen. Before I could answer, Dare ran and flew at his midsection with a kick.

Castor’s eyes went wide. His hands wind-milled wildly and then the air current took hold of his body and sucked him through the door. His screams were swallowed by the wind.

Before any thoughts of celebrating the death of Castor could sink in, Dare’s body flew toward the opening. I grabbed her arm just before her body was vacuumed into the night, as well. With one hand holding on to the seat belt and the other wrapped around her wrist, I struggled with every ounce of strength in my body to reel her back inside. But my hands were sweaty and my strength was gone. She was starting to slip away.

I screamed from exertion and frustration. Her eyes were wide and she scrambled to hold on. I was losing her.

A warm arm wrapped around my waist and a hand appeared to grab Dare’s wrist next to mine. I looked up to see Icarus’s grim face as he pulled both of us out of harm’s way. I fell back onto the bench. Sure that Icarus had Dare safely inside, I slapped a palm on the button to slam the door shut.

The silence that followed was punctuated with gasps and curses. I looked at Dare’s wild hair and her trembling body, and at Icarus’s dirt-streaked and scarred face. "The rover?" I asked.

"Auto-pilot. We’ll land in the Badlands and ditch it. We can’t go back to Book Mountain, but maybe Jeremiah and his squad will take us in."

"They’ll have us," Dare said. "We have Meridian Six on our team."