ALTERNATE
RED QUEEN ENDING
The shield explodes to life above us, a purple dome of veined glass like the one in the Spiral Garden. Not to protect us but the crowd. Sparks of lightening pulse through the monstrous ceiling, teasing me. Without Arven, the lightening would be mine and I could fight. I could show this world who I am. But that is not to be.
Cal shifts, putting out his arm. The
air ripples around him, distorted by the waves of heat rolling off his body. He
angles himself toward the others, protecting me.
“Stay behind me as long as you can,”
he says, letting his own heat push me back. Flames crackle between his fingers,
growing up his arms. Something in his shirt keeps it from burning and the
fabric doesn’t smoke away. “When they break through the wall, you’ll have to
run. Evangeline’s weakest, but the strongarm’s slow. You can outrun him.”
“What about you? Osanos will—”
“Let me worry about Osanos.”
The executioners keep moving, not
quickly, but steadily, like wolves stalking prey. They spread out across the
middle of the arena, each one ready to advance. Somewhere, machinery groans and
a piece of the arena floor slides away, revealing a sloshing pool of water at
Lord Osanos’s feet. He smiles, drawing the water up to him in a menacing shield.
I remember meeting him long ago, when he was a jolly father in blue leather
boots. Now that man is gone.
All around, the crowd jeers, baying
for blood. Ptolemus roars with him, letting his famed temper take over. He
smacks at his armor, ringing it like a bell. At his side, Evangeline spins her
knives, sliding them over her knuckles with a grin.
“This won’t be like before, Red,”
she crows, her eyes on me. “No tricks can save you now.”
Tricks.
Evangeline knows my abilities better than most; she knows they weren’t tricks. But she believes. She ignores the truth for
something easier to understand. Just like all the rest.
The Haven son, Stralian I think,
grins to himself. Like his sister Sonya, the girl from Training, he is a
shadow. When he flickers out of being, disappearing even in the bright
sunlight, Cal moves faster than I thought possible, swinging out his arm in a
wide arc like he’s throwing a haymaker punch.
A roar of flame follows his arm,
burning up the sand, separating us from them. It’s surprisingly weak, like a
campfire fed only by twigs. The sand will
barely burn.
I can’t stop myself from glancing
back at Maven, wanting to scream at him, only to find he’s still staring at me
with that insufferable crooked smirk. Not only has he taken away my abilities,
but he’s limiting Cal’s as much as he can.
“Bastard,” I curse under my breath.
“Cal, the sand—”
“I know,” he snaps back, igniting
more bits of the ground with every wave of his fingers.
Directly across from us, the line of
flame seems to separate, followed closely by a bitter scream of pain. Through
the dying fire, I can just see Stralian fade back into sight, his hands batting
flames from his arms. Osanos douses him with a lazy gesture, putting out the
fire with a wave of water. Then he turns his startling blue eyes on us, on
Cal’s wall, and in a single motion, draws water across the weak fire like a
lapping wave. The wall explodes in thick clouds of steam. Trapped by the dome,
the steam settles through the arena, shrouding us in a ghostly white fog.
“Be ready!” Cal shouts, a hand
reaching for me, but Ptolemus charges out of the steam in a roar of flesh and
steel.
He hits Cal around the middle,
knocking him to the ground, but Cal doesn’t stay down long enough for him to
stab out with his knives. The blades dig into the ground seconds after Cal
leaps, his hands on Ptolemus’s armor. The steel melts beneath his touch,
drawing a scream from the berserker. I can only stand back, barely able to
breath, as Cal tries to cook a man in his own armor.
“I don’t want to kill you,
Ptolemus,” Cal says through the screams of pain. Every knife, every shard of
metal Ptolemus raises to stab Cal melts away from his intense heat. “I don’t
want to do this.”
Three sparkling blades sing through
the steam, barely flashing blurs. Too
fast to melt in midair. They hit Cal’s back, stinging through his shirt
before melting away. He yells in pain, losing focus for a second as three
identical spots of silverblood stain his shirt. The knives were too small to
cut deep, but they weaken him still. Ptolemus takes his chance and in the blink
of an eye, his knives meld into a single monstrous sword. He slashes, meaning
to slice Cal in two, but Cal dodges, earning a scratch across the belly. Alive.
But not for long.
Evangeline appears through the
steam, knives and throwing stars swirling around in a glinting display. Each
one sails at Cal but he dips and dodges, throwing blasts of fire to knock her
off course. He duels them both, hitting some insane rhythm that allows him to
fight off the two magnetrons, despite their strength and power. But blood
stains his clothes, new wounds appearing with every passing minute. They’re wearing him down. Slowly, but
surely.
My
lightening, I think mournfully, looking back to Arven at our gate. He’s
still there, a black presence to haunt me. A gun hangs at his waist; I can’t
even try to fight him. I can’t do
anything.
When a massive chunk of concrete
sails out of the steam, heading directly for me, I barely have time to move. It
shatters against the sand where I stood seconds before, but before I have time
to think, another comes hunting, howling through the air. The sky is raining
concrete, all of it aimed at me. Like Cal, I find my rhythm, scurrying through
the sand like a rat, until something stops me short. A hand. An invisible hand.
Stralian’s grip closes on my throat,
choking me. I can hear him breathing in my ear, though I can’t see him. “Red
and dead,” he growls, tightening his hand.
My arm swings out, digging an elbow
into what I suppose are his ribs, but he holds firm. I can’t breathe, and black
spots dot my vision, threatening to spread, but I keep fighting. Through the
haze, I can see the Rhambos strongarm prowling, his eyes locked on me. He’ll pull me apart.
Cal still fights the Samos siblings,
doing his best not to get stabbed. I can’t scream for him even if I wanted to,
but somehow he manages to throw a fireball my way. Rhambos has to jump back,
stumbling on his massive feet, buying me a few more seconds. Gasping, choking,
I dig my nails back, reaching for a head I cannot see. It’s a miracle when I
feel his face and then his eyes. With a gasping scream, I dig in, thumbs to his
eye sockets, blinding him. Stralian roars, letting go of me. When he falls to
his knees, he flickers back into being. Silverblood trails from his eyes like
mirrored tears.
“You were supposed to be mine!” a
voice screams, and I turn to see Evangeline standing over Cal, her blade
raised. Ptolemus has wrestled Cal to the ground, the two of them rolling
through the sand with Evangeline haunting over them, her knives peppering the
ground around him. “Mine!”
It doesn’t occur to me that running
headfirst into a magnetron might not be a good idea until I collide with her,
my arms around her waist. We fall together, my face scraping along her armor.
It smarts and stings and bleeds,
dripping red for all to see. Though I can’t see the screens, I know every one
blasts the image of my blood through the entire country.
Evangeline shrieks, lashing out with
her dancing blades. Behind us, Cal fights to his feet, blasting Ptolemus away
with a blaze of fire. The magnetron collides with his sister, knocking her away
seconds before her knives slice through me.
“Duck!” Cal shouts, throwing me to
the sand as another slab of concrete flies over us, shattering against the far
wall.
Rhambos stares us both down as he
rips up another piece of the arena wall, meaning to beat us to death with it.
His weapon is deadly, but as he hurls another block, I realize his aim is
terrible.
“I’ve got an idea.”
Cal spits at the sand, and I think I
see a few teeth mixed in with the blood. “Good, because I ran out about five
minutes ago.”
Another block sails by, forcing us
to jump apart, and just in time. Evangeline and Ptolemus return with a
vengeance, locking Cal into a chaotic dance of knives and shrapnel. Their
powers shake the arena around us, calling up more metal from down deep, forcing
Cal to watch his footing along with everything else. Shards of pipes and wires
poke up through the sand, creating a deadly obstacle course of weapons. One of
them stabs Stralian where he kneels, still screaming over his eyes. The pipe
goes straight through him, popping out through his mouth to silence his cries for
good. Through the wreckage, I hear the arena crowd scream and gasp at the
sight. For all their violent ways, all their power, they’re still cowards.
My feet pound through the sand,
weaving and lunging as I circle Rhambos, daring him to attack me. Cal’s right, I’m faster, and though Rhambos is a
monster of muscle, he trips over his own feet trying to chase. He rips the
jagged pipes from the ground, throwing them at me like spears, but they’re easy
to dodge and he roars in frustration. I’m
Red, I’m nothing, and I can still make you fall.
You
are also forgetting something.
The sound of rushing water brings me
back, making me remember the fifth executioner. The nymph.
I turn just in time to see Lord
Osanos part the steam like a curtain, clearing the arena floor. The domed
ceiling comes back into sight, still pulsing with the electricity I burn for.
And ten yards away, still dueling hard, is Cal. Smoke and fire explodes from
him, beating back the magnetrons, but as Osanos advances, the water trailing
his wake in a swirling cloak, Cal’s flames recede.
“Cal!” I hear myself scream, but
there’s nothing I can do. Nothing.
Another pipe sails past my cheek, so
close I feel the cold sting, so close it makes me spin and fall. The gate is
only yards away, with Arven still standing in its mouth, half-shrouded by
darkness.
Cal sends a blast of fire at Osanos,
but he smothers it quickly. Steam screams from the clash of water and fire, but
water is winning.
Rhambos advances on me, pushing me
back toward the gate. Cornered, I let him
corner me. Rocks and metal break against the wall behind me, enough to
shatter my bones. Lightning, my head
screams. LIGHTNING.
But there’s nothing. Not even the
little tingle, not even the buzz that’s become such a deep part of me. There’s
just the dark smother of dead senses, suffocating me.
All around us, the crowd jumps to
their feet, sensing the end. I can hear Maven above me, cheering with all the
rest. “Finish them off!” he yells. It still surprises me to hear such malice in
his voice. But when I look up, his eyes meeting mine through the shield and
steam, there’s nothing but anger and rage and evil. The king of wolves.
Rhambos takes aim, a long jagged
pipe in hand. He’s going to spear me right through, to kill me like some kind
of wild animal. Death has come.
Over the din, I hear a roar of
triumph: Ptolemus. He and Evangeline
step back from a swirling orb of water, and the cloudy figure deep within. Cal. The water boils, his body strains,
trying to break free, but it’s no use. He’s
going to drown.
Behind me, almost in my ear, Arven
laughs to himself. “Who has the advantage?” he sneers to himself, repeating his
words from Training. My muscles ache and twitch, begging for it to be over.
They called me a liar, a trickster, and they
were right. I have one more trick left up my sleeve.
Rhambos hurls his spear with such
strength, it seems to burn the air. And I drop, hurling myself to the sand,
almost knocking the wind out of me.
A sickening squelch tells me my plan
has worked.
The scream of electricity surging
back to life tells me I might win. Behind me, Arven collapses, a pipe speared
through his middle.
“I have the advantage,” I tell his
corpse.
When I get back to my feet, thunder
and lightning and sparks and shocks and everything I can possibly control
spitting from my body, the crowd screams aloud, Maven above them all.
“Kill her! KILL HER!” he roars,
pointing down at me through the dome. “SHOOT HER!”
But the dome holds firm under the
spray of bullets from the guards above, all directed at me. Overhead, the video
screens go dark. But I’ve already been seen. They can’t stop what’s already
happened.
Rhambos takes a quivering step back,
his breath catching in his throat. I don’t give him a chance to take another.
Silver
and Red, and stronger than both.
My lightning streaks through him,
boiling his blood, frying his nerves, until he collapses in a twitching pile of
meat.
Osanos drops next, falling to his
knees. The liquid orb splashes to the ground and Cal collapses to the sand,
sputtering and spitting up water with hacking coughs. Two against three now. Better odds.
Despite the jagged metal spikes
punching up through the sand, trying to run me through, I break into a sprint,
dodging and vaulting over every obstacle. They
trained me for this. It’s their own fault.
Evangeline waves a hand, sending a
steel beam flying at my head. I slide beneath it, knees skimming through the
sand, before coming up beside her, daggered bolts of lightning in both my
hands.
“Not a trick,” she breathes, taken
off guard. Her eyes fly between my hands as she backs away, bits of metal
floating between us in a hasty shield. “Not a lie.”
Red blood stains my face and shirt,
dripping from my many cuts and bruises. I can taste it in my mouth, sharp and
metallic and strangely wonderful. Overhead, the blue sky darkens through the
shielded dome. Black clouds gather, heavy and full with rain. The storm is coming.
“You said you’d kill me if I ever
got in your way.” If feels so good to throw her words back in her face. “Here’s
your chance.”
Her chest rises and falls, heaving
with each breath. She’s tired. She’s wounded. And the steel behind her eyes is
almost gone, giving way to fear.
She lunges and I move to block her
attack, but it never comes. Instead, she runs.
She runs from me, sprinting at the
closest gate she can find. I want to follow, to hunt her down and make her pay,
but Cal’s roar of frustration draws me back.
Osanos is on his feet again, dueling
with renewed strength, while Ptolemus dances around them, looking for his
opening. Cal is no good against nymphs,
not with his fire. I remember how easily bested Maven was in his own
training so long ago.
Ptolemus sees me coming and tries to
stop me, but he isn’t fast enough. My hand closes around the nymph’s wrist,
shocking him through his skin, forcing him to turn his anger on me. The water
feels like a hammer, knocking me backward into the sand. It crashes and
crashes, making it impossible to breathe. For the first time since I entered
the arena, the cold hand of fear clenches around my heart. Now that we have a
chance of winning, of living, I’m so afraid to lose. My lungs scream for air
and I can’t help but open my mouth, letting the water choke me. It stings like
fire, like death, and I try to focus through the fear, to send shocks through
the liquid.
The tiniest spark runs through me,
but it’s enough, shocking through the water and up into Osanos. He yelps,
jumping back long enough to let me scramble free, slipping through the wet
sand. Air sears my lungs as I gasp for breath, but there’s no time to enjoy it.
Osanos is on me again, this time his hands around my neck, holding me under the
swirling foot of water under his command.
But I’m ready for him. The fool is
stupid enough to touch me, to put his skin against mine. When I let the
lightning go, shocking through flesh and water, he screams like a boiling
teakettle and flops backward. As the water falls away, draining into the sand,
I know he’s truly dead.
When I rise, soaking wet, shaking
with adrenaline, fear, strength, my
eyes fly to Cal. He’s slashed and bruised, bleeding all over, but his arms rage
with bright-red fire and Ptolemus cowers at his feet. He raises his hands in
defeat, begging for mercy.
“Kill him, Cal,” I snarl, wanting to
see him bleed. Above us, the lightning shield pulses again, surging with my own
anger. If only it was Evangeline. If only I could do it myself. “He tried to
kill us, kill him.”
Cal doesn’t move, breathing hard
through his teeth. He looks so torn, eager for vengeance, consumed by the
thrill of battle, but also steadily fading back to the calm, thoughtful man he
used to be. The man he can’t be
anymore.
But a man’s nature is not so easily
changed. He steps back, flames fading away. “I won’t.”
The silence presses down, a
wonderful change from the screaming, jeering crowd who wanted us dead moments
ago. But when I look up, I realize they aren’t staring. They aren’t seeing
Cal’s mercy or my powers. They aren’t even there at all. The great arena has
emptied, leaving no witnesses to our victory.
From his box, Maven begins to clap.
“Well done,” he shouts, moving to
the edge of the arena. He peers at us through the shield, his mother close at
his shoulder. Unlike him, she doesn’t look amused at all.
The sound hurts more than any knife,
making me cringe. It echoes over the empty structure, until marching feet,
boots on stone and sand, drown him out.
Security, Sentinels, soldiers, all
of them pour onto the sand from every gate. There are hundreds, thousands, too
many to fight. Too many to run from. We won the battle, but we lost the war.
They surround us, guns raised, waiting for an order. So many bullets, I doubt
they’ll be anything left of us.
Ptolemus scrambles away,
disappearing into the crowd of soldiers without so much as a backward glance.
Now we’re alone in a steadily closing circle, with nothing and no one left.
It’s
not fair. We won. We showed them. It’s not fair. I want to scream, to shock and rage and fight, but the
bullets will get me first. Hot tears of anger well in my eyes, but I will not
cry. Not in these last moments.
“I’m sorry I did this to you,” I
whisper to Cal. No matter how I feel about his beliefs, he’s the one truly
losing here. I knew the risks but he was just a pawn, torn between so many playing
an invisible game.
He clenches his jaw, twisting and
turning as he looks for some way out of this. But there isn’t one. I don’t
expect him to forgive me, and I don’t deserve it either. But his hand closes
over mine, holding on to the last person on his side.
Slowly, he starts to hum. I
recognize the tune as the sad song, the one we kissed to in a room full of
moonlight.
Thunder rumbles in the clouds,
threatening to burst. Rain begins to fall, hitting the dome above us. It shocks
and sizzles the raindrops, but the water keeps coming in a steady downpour.
Even the sky is weeping for our loss.
At the edge of his box, Maven stares
down at us. The sparking shield distorts his face, making him look like the
monster he truly is. Water drips down his face, but he doesn’t seem to notice
at all. His mother whispers something in his ear and he jolts, brought back to
reality.
When he raises his hand, I think he
might be shaking.
Like the little girl I am, I squeeze
my eyes shut, expecting to feel the blinding pain of a hundred bullets ripping
me apart. My thoughts turn inward, to days long past. To Kilorn, my parents, my
brothers, my sister. Simple times, full of their own pains and complications. Will I see them all soon? My heart tells
me yes. They’re waiting for me, somewhere, somehow. And like I did that day in
the Spiral Garden, when I thought I was falling to my death, I feel cold
acceptance. I will die. I feel the
Leaving, and I let go.
The storm overhead explodes with a
deafening clap of thunder that sounds like a bomb, so strong it shakes the air.
The ground rumbles beneath my feet and, even behind my closed eyelids, I see
the blinding flash of light. Cal grabs me by the shoulders, throwing me
sideways, as a sudden, giant bolt of lightning flashes down out of the sky. It
shatters through the shield, sending purple shards down on us like falling
snow. The gunmen cower, ducking to cover their own heads, forgetting us for a
split second. Cal tries to drag me, but I’m barely aware of him. Instead, my senses
buzz with the storm, feeling it churning above me. It’s mine.
Another bolt strikes down, pounding
into the sand, and the Security officers scatter, running for the gates. But
the Sentinels and the soldiers are not so easily frightened, and they come to
their senses quickly.
I can’t hold the storm for long and
it drains me, leaching my energy away. My knees buckle and my heart beats like
a drum, so fast I think it might burst. One
more bolt, one more. We might have a chance.
When my feet stumble backward, heels
jutting out over the empty chasm that once held Osanos’s water weapon, I know
it’s over. There’s nowhere else to run. Cal holds me tight, pulling me back
from the edge in case I might fall. There’s nothing but blackness down there,
and the echo of churning water deep down. Nothing but pipes and plumbing and
darkness.
The guns rise again, and this time
they won’t wait for Maven’s order.
The shooting thunders like my storm,
ringing out across the empty arena. But strangely, I feel nothing. When the
first line of gunmen falls, their chests peppered with bullet holes, I don’t
understand.
Feeling numb and sick and tired all
at the same time, I blink down at my feet, only to see a line of machine guns
poking out over the edge of the chasm. Each barrel smokes and jumps, still
shooting, mowing down all the soldiers in front of us.
Before I can yell, before I can even
understand, someone grabs the back of my shirt and pulls me down to fall
through the black air. We land in water far below, but the arms never let go of
me. I hear Cal splash down with me, sputtering and choking and thrashing, but
I’ve lost the will to fight.
The water takes me, down into
darkness.
When I open my eyes again, the
flickering torchlight burns my sight. It takes me a moment until I realize that
not only is the torch moving, seeming to follow me, but it’s not a torch at
all. Cal holds up his hand, fingers alive with flame, to light the way through
an empty drain tunnel. Strange, but when his eyes meet mine, I find we’re the same
height. Even against the dim memory of the storm and the arena, that seems
impossible.
“You awake yet?” a voice says, and I
can feel it rumble inside me, so close and so familiar. “You’re not exactly
light, Mare.”
My eyes widen like I’ve been shocked
by my own lightning and I flail, almost falling to the ground. As my head
clears, I realize I’ve been slung over someone’s shoulder like a sack of
potatoes. Someone with a voice, hands, even a scent I recognize.
I shift, pushing back from his broad
shoulder, wanting to see his face with my own eyes. Green fire, sparkling in
Cal’s light, looks down on me with a crooked smile.
Before I can shout or cry or scream
his name, I press my face into his chest. My hands clench, gripping fistfuls of
his shirt so he can never leave me again.
“I’m right here, Mare,” Kilorn says,
holding me close.
“I thought you were dead.”
He scoffs, brushing off my worry.
“We both know I’m a hard guy to get rid of.”
“I’d like to keep moving, if you
don’t mind. It won’t be long until they figure out where we are and flush the
pipes.” That voice, sharp and stern. I know it too.
Whirling, I find her blond hair in
the semidarkness. “Farley!”
She barely turns, giving me a grim
little salute. “You can hug me later.”
Kilorn shoves me along, keeping me
moving. The sounds of our feet echo against the walls, too loud to be just the
four of us. I squint down the pipe, only to see more figures, shadows I can’t
place, leading us somewhere.
A thousand questions fly through my
head, but none of them matter right now. Kilorn is alive. Farley is alive. Hope is alive.
“How many tunnels did your men
collapse . . . before?” I look back to Cal, still silent as he marches with us.
He looks more than a little anxious about present company, but keeps his
thoughts to himself.
“Many. And I’m sure Maven finished
what they started,” he replies, raising his voice so Farley can hear him.
She shrugs her shoulders, not
bothering to stop. “What you people know about the tunnels could fill a shoebox.
Keep moving.”
Cal bristles at her tone, but one
look from me keeps him quiet. They did just save our lives, after all. How, I’m
not exactly sure, but it must have something to do with the black harnesses
they still wear. Farley even has a coil of rope at her side.
Our destination is not far away,
barely another quarter mile down the pipe, through a service door, and a crack
barely big enough to squeeze through. Cal nearly doesn’t make it, his broad
shoulders scraping on stone, but finally we make it out to another train
platform, where a gleaming silver engine waits to take us away.
My stomach turns at the thought of
another shaky ride, but I can’t be more happy. We’ve made it. We’ve escaped.
Farley’s hand reaches for the train
door, wrenching it open, but the metal suddenly stops, frozen in place. Stuck. It’s no wonder, with all the
rust. But, strangely, Farley doesn’t pull or push or try to budge it. She
doesn’t move at all.
“What’s wrong?” I take a step
forward, expecting her to have a smart retort to throw at me, but nothing ever
comes. “Farley?”
My voice echoes more than it should,
the only sound on the platform. I can’t even hear the drip of water or Kilorn’s
steady breathing. There’s nothing but me and my beating heart and my feet
twisting on the cement floor.
When I spin around, back to Kilorn
and Cal, a horror like I’ve never known fills me up. Both of them stare
straight ahead, frozen in place, locked midstep.
Cal’s left foot hovers over the ground, inches from pressing down. Even his
flames have stopped dancing, still as a photograph. The others are just the
same, unmoving statues, staring at Farley or each other. Even a cloud of dust
hangs in the air, moving only when I make it. It’s fascinating and strange and
frightening and impossible. Time has
stopped.
“What is this?” In the silence, my
voice echoes all around, almost answering itself. But the noise dies away,
replaced with nothing.
“Mare.”
I almost trip over myself, I spin so
quickly to the new voice. The figure is familiar, his hands clasped in front of
him in a calm manner. His face makes me fall. The shock is simply too much for
me to bear.
“Am I dead? Are we dead?”
He’s
come to take me away. I died in the arena. We all did. This was a
hallucination, a dream, a wish. We are all dead.
But my brother shakes his head
slowly, staring at me with his familiar, honey-colored eyes. Shade was always
the handsome one and death, execution even, has not changed that. There are
wrinkles and scars I don’t recognize and he looks older, much older than he
should be, but I’m not thinking properly at all.
“You’re not dead, Mare,” he says,
his voice as smooth as I remember. “But you need to come with me now.”
When he extends a hand to me, I
flinch, scrambling away. My back bumps against something solid—legs.
Another voice, the most familiar one
I’ve ever heard, the voice I know better than any other, rings out. I am definitely dead.
“We don’t have time for this,
Shade,” the voice snaps. The voice is
mine. Shaking, confused, afraid, curious,
I look up into my own eyes. The face stares down at me, harsher than my usual
reflection, but undeniable. Me.
I can’t move. I can’t think. And
when Shade grabs my arm, I don’t fight.
“Don’t be stupid, Mare,” he replies,
speaking over me, to me. My head hurts. “We have all the time we
need.”
Then the world disappears, suddenly
gone. It was there and then it’s gone, all in a single heartbeat. For all I
know, it’s the last one I’ll ever feel.
