Chapter 52

  Kaitlyn Carter

  i am dust and breath

  i am a small, bright nothing—

  a handful of sky

  - A haiku from the book of poetry, unattributed

  “D-dra-dragonfly?” said Kate.

  Leah nodded.

  “Hehe! W-why does he c-call you a d-dragonfly?”

  “I told him I want to be a dragon.” She held up Frisby to demonstrate. “But he says I’m still too small!”

  Kate giggled. “H-h-he’s p-probably right!”

  They sat on the living room couch. Kate’s crystal butterfly, the white queen of her chessboard, perched on the coffee table in front of them. It still shone with light, but it had not turned into an angel. Kate had been sure that playing music for it again would do the trick. Maybe she just had to wait for the Cascade.

  What about Heidi and Eric’s angels? She didn’t know what they were; she had never seen that in the Museum. She knew hers was a butterfly. She knew she was looking at it. It sat right there on the coffee table. But…

  “What’s wrong?” asked Leah.

  Kate smiled down at her. Leah played with Frisby Wiser. Dragons? Dragonflies? Hmm. Kate held up her scarf and examined it. Snowflakes. That was her symbol. That’s what would be on her door, if she was still alive. But she had seen a dragon too.

  “M-make sure you d-don’t l-l-lose track of him!” she told Leah, bopping Frisby on the head.

  Kate’s phone buzzed. She scrambled to extract it from the inner pocket of her lab coat, fearing the worst. But…it was from a number she didn’t know. She immediately thought back to her dream in the Museum with that strange alien girl named Zayana.

  The message read: “Cascade beginning very soon. OI will attack. You have to break it. -Christmas.”

  Christmas? What? She texted back: “How soon? Who are you?”

  Whoever it was did not immediately reply. Was it Alan on one of his burn phones? She decided to try calling Alan. The last she had heard, he was coming to Chicago. She could not reach him.

  “Very soon,” the message had said. And if she couldn’t figure out her angel before then, and if OI really did attack…

  She stood, fighting off the cold grip of anxiety, gripping her phone. Alan could track her phone via GPS; she had made sure of that. Both of her phones. But GPS might not work once the Cascade hit. She texted him the address to Eric’s apartment just in case. Then she turned to Leah.

  “C-come here, Leah!” She led Leah over to the kitchen table. “Look at this.” They both knelt on chairs around the table where Kate had piled her stuff. Kate couldn’t help but check the time. Eric and Heidi had been gone about a half hour now. But Eric had texted her (thoughtfully!) just a few minutes ago that they were both fine and would be back soon. Kate wanted them to be back soon. But she didn’t think they would be. She didn’t think…

  No!

  “N-n-now, I—”

  Something cracked. A thick, heavy crack, like the breaking of a bone. Kate knew it immediately; she had heard it before. She knew what was happening.

  She bit her lip, and fought back tears as her heart ached. “It t-towers over me,” she whispered. “I get it, Jim.”

  No! Not like this. One thing she knew about the future: it could always be changed. Just because she saw something in the Museum never meant it absolutely had to happen. Think, Kate, think! What mattered most? Leah. She had to keep Leah safe.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Leah. She reached over and tugged on Kate’s lab coat. “Kate? What was that noise?”

  Kate’s head hung over the table. Her long black hair veiled her face, but even through this veil her shattered scar glimmered with faint color. Kate stood up from her chair, extracted a back-up cell phone from her backpack, and handed it to Leah. “L-le-leah!” she said. “Y-you n-n-nee-need t-to t-ta-ta-youneedtotakethis!” She held the phone out until Leah hesitantly grabbed it, eyes wide.

  “Kate?” Leah’s voice shook a little. “What’s wrong?”

  “D-d-don’t lose it!” said Kate. She quickly checked her own pockets. Notebook about Museum, piece of paper she’d written the note on…yes. Okay.

  Guitar? Kate ran back to Eric’s room and retrieved her guitar. She paused when unhooking it from the amp. Eric had two amps together in his room; a portable amp the size of a toaster sat beside his main one. It probably didn’t sound too great, but…

  Kate brought them both out into the kitchen, and momentarily panicked when she failed to locate Leah.

  “Kate!” said Leah from the living room. “Kate, Come look.”

  Kate followed the voice into the living room and out onto the apartment’s tiny balcony. She knew what she would see out there: the sky, cracking, breaking. The Cascade. She joined Leah. The balcony overlooked the street they had walked to reach the apartment. Kate couldn’t help but scan it for Eric and Heidi. She didn’t see them. But she did see a couple of grey-and-orange trucks parked inconspicuously down the street. Not okay.

  The message had warned her that the Cascade was about to happen. It had also warned her that October Industries would attack.

  She put a hand on Leah’s shoulder and began pulling her away from the balcony. “Leah,” she said, “w-w-we need t-to go.” She practically dragged Leah away from the balcony railing and into the living room.

  She tugged at her scarf and bit her lip as she looked around. They just had to go. That was what mattered. No time. Kate marched back into the kitchen, grabbed her bass—

  The front door of the apartment exploded. The force of the explosion flipped the kitchen table and sent Kate hurtling to the ground.

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  She tumbled to a stop against the wall. Her chest hurt; pain made it difficult to breathe. Leah screamed. Kate forced herself to open her eyes. Sharp pains stabbed at her left eye, and the vision there was blurry. The lens of her glasses had shattered.

  She heard men shouting, running, getting closer. No. No, no, no.

  She still gripped her bass guitar in one hand. With what seemed like a monumental effort she heaved the guitar into position across her body and sat up. The amp cord dangled from the guitar’s base. The portable amp…there, under the flipped table.

  Leah kept screaming, or was still screaming—Kate could not measure the passage of time. She just had one chance, one idea. In the Museum, music mattered. And the Cascade bridged the gap between the Museum and reality. At least, she thought so.

  Kate leaned over, struggling to clear her head and ignore the pain, located the end of the amp cord, and reached for the portable amp. She plugged it in, switched it on, prayed that it had battery life. A red light appeared. She twisted the knob she hoped was volume.

  Kate became aware that several men had entered the kitchen and were aiming advanced weaponry in her direction. Going to kill her? Take her angel? She didn’t know. She just had to keep Leah safe. One of them shouted something at her, but she couldn’t seem to make it out. Her ears rang. It reminded her of the other explosion, the one that had given her the scar.

  Sitting on the floor, leaning against the kitchen cupboards, she placed her fingers on the frets and strummed as hard as she could. She focused on producing not merely sound, but sensation; emotion; feeling. In the Museum, a great difference existed between sound and music.

  The amp did indeed suck. It produced a thin and tinny sound when she played. Yet that sound was enough to fling the table up into the air and back toward the men with the strange weapons. The sound pressed Kate back against the cupboard; it cracked the window of the oven; electricity skittered around and around inside the microwave.

  The table attack caught them off-guard. Several of them fired their weapons, a chaotic explosion of light and noise. Kate’s hearing returned and she struggled to her feet amid the chaos. A man lunged at her - she flailed blindly with the bass and for the second time today (and in her life) it connected solidly with someone’s head. The man stumbled; Kate staggered. Leah kept screaming. The air filled with smoke and dust as parts of the ceiling crumbled. The floor beneath shook. She tasted blood.

  Someone shouted from the direction of the door—a woman, her voice rising above the rest: “Now! Don’t let her escape!”

  Something shook the room. A concussive blast shoved Kate backwards into the living room, knocking the breath out of her. In midair she focused on the guitar and plucked a final desperate chord. She put all of her anger and fear and determination into it.

  The chord resounded through the apartment. Windows shattered; debris trembled on the floor; dust and smoke swirled briefly into intricate geometrical patterns. The chord resonated in Kate’s bones. She heard it mingle with the sounds of gunfire, Leah screaming, men shouting, a strange crackling sound she did not know…and the faint sound of chimes, a beautiful, ethereal sound that seemed to hover on the brink of audibility.

  The chord righted Kate in the air, and she landed lightly on her feet in the living room. Her scarf and lab coat spun around her. Something shone with light at her feet. Her butterfly. She stooped to pick it up and saw something out of the corner of her eye. One of the men from October Industries, activating one of their strange energy weapons, aiming it at her.

  The crystal butterfly hummed in her hand, vibrating with energy. All the McFinnium in the world would be doing the same right now, she was fairly sure. Because of the resonance.

  She threw the butterfly at them. She thought about saying “resonance, bitches” because that was the sort of thing Eric would say and it seemed appropriate. She had to be content with imagining him saying it, however, because that was simply not the sort of thing she would say herself, what with her stutter and Leah being present.

  Everything exploded. Again, a wave of force pushed Kate back. She felt her bass crack in her hand. She heard Leah scream.

  Leah!

  Kate turned in the direction of the scream, struggling to see through the remaining cracked lens of her glasses. Leah had retreated onto the ruined balcony. The guardrails and half of the floor of the balcony had disappeared. Leah clutched her red dragon with one hand and pinwheeled with the other in an attempt to steady herself. She fell to her knees with a gasp, then she looked at Kate with wide eyes.

  “Leah!” Kate gestured frantically. “C-c-co-c-come on!”

  But Leah was petrified. She couldn’t move. The balcony was giving way; it shifted, groaning.

  A sense of déjà vu overwhelmed Kate. This. This was what she had seen in the Museum. She had been here before. Time, for a brief moment, stopped for her. (That was supposed to be Eric’s thing.) Leah was going to fall. The floor of the balcony would give way, and Leah would fall, nine stories down.

  Kate closed her eyes, squeezing out tears, and sprang forward as the balcony, a slab of metal and wood, tore free from its tenuous grip on the building. Two quick steps and she was there, hurtling out the balcony doors. She could hardly see, and in that moment she could not feel any pain, nor hear any sound. But she felt her hand make contact with Leah, with the fabric of her shirt.

  She seized Leah with both hands, turned, and shoved the girl back into the apartment with all her might. According to Newton’s third law of motion, this action shoved Kate out to the edge of the balcony, her feet skidding on the debris, nine stories up. The balcony fell with a final crumbling groan, and she fell with it.

  The strange thing was that, although she had known she was going to die as soon as she saw Leah out on the edge, she hadn’t thought about it at all during her jump. Only after, when gravity began to pull her down to the earth below, away from Leah, did she realize that this was it. She hadn’t found her angel after all.

  She looked up into the shattered sky as she fell, with one good eye. She saw that Frisby Wiser fell alongside her.

  Even cracked and breaking, the sky above was beautiful. It always was. All she had ever wanted to do was look at the sky.

  Jordan swore violently. That had all gone to complete shit in a hurry. Since when did this girl have a magic guitar? The apartment reeked of smoke and fire. It had been fairly wrecked by the destructive weapons her men carried. And yet…

  Jordan didn’t bother stepping over to the ruined balcony. One man stood there, looking down. “Dead,” he reported.

  “Where are the other targets?” She looked disdainfully down at the man who had, apparently, been brained with said magic guitar. He was being helped to his feet. “Get up.”

  “Other targets sighted,” the man from the balcony reported. “They’re down below.”

  Jordan nodded. “Then we still have a chance. Let’s go.”

  “What about the girl?” asked one of her men.

  “She’s dead. Leave her.”

  “No, this girl.” He pointed to a small asian child crying softly in a corner of the room, watching them with wide, fearful eyes.

  “She’s dead too. Let’s go.”

  Jordan led them out of the destroyed apartment and began jogging toward the stairwell. Couldn’t trust the elevators anymore. She reached up to her earpiece. “Mark their positions but wait to engage until I arrive.”

  In response: the sound of gunfire.