to believe that, too. But—”
“I know,” I said. “It’s a lot. And it comes at you fast.”
“It’s not just a lot. It’s insane. I’d have to be out of my mind to go with you.”
“You’ll just have to trust us,” Emma said.
Noor looked at us for a few seconds. She started nodding. Then she said, “But I don’t.” She stood up and took a few steps toward the door. “I’m sorry. You seem nice enough, but I’m done trusting people I barely know. Even if they can resurrect dead birds and make fire in their hands.”
I looked at Emma and Bronwyn and Enoch. We were all quiet. I genuinely didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to argue with her, but I knew I had to say something. I couldn’t fail this way. I couldn’t fail her, couldn’t fail my grandfather, couldn’t fail my friends. Couldn’t fail myself. But as soon as I opened my mouth to speak, the building began to shake.
The sensation was accompanied by the sound of a churning engine. There was a helicopter hovering above the building.
* * *
• • •
We traded anxious looks, waiting for the roar of the helicopter to pass. Seconds ticked by, but it only grew louder. We knew what it meant without anyone having to say it. But I said it anyway.
“They tracked us here.”
Noor’s eyes flashed at me, angry and frightened. “Or did you lead them here?”
Noor grasped Lilly by the arm and speed-walked her out of the room. We followed, pleading with them.
“We didn’t lead them anywhere!” Millard said. “Not purposely, anyway—I’d swear on an ymbryne’s life!”
We came into a larger room and stood looking up through an unglassed atrium that was open to the sky. Suddenly the helicopter lurched into view, blocking the sky and filling the room with noise and whipping downdraft from its rotors.
A spotlight blasted down, blanching everything and casting stark shadows onto the floor. Noor stared straight up into it, her eyes fierce, seemingly ready to make a stand against these people, whoever they were, rather than follow us.
“You’ve got to come with us!” I shouted. “There’s no other choice!”
“Sure there is,” she shouted back, and she reached up with both hands and tore the light out of the air. The room around us and the space overhead went black, so that the only illumination came from a pinhole of sky above us and a glowing orb in Noor’s hands.
Something dropped down from above, a small hissing object that tumbled through the blackness before bouncing with a sharp metal ting against the concrete floor. It began spraying a cloud of white smoke—tear gas or something similar.
“Hold your breath!” Emma shouted.
Lilly started to cough. Bronwyn scooped her up. “This is Bronwyn! I’m going to carry you!”
Noor nodded her thanks to Bronwyn. “This way,” she said, and started at a run down one of the blacked-out hallways.
We practically rode the back of her heels. Nobody wanted to be left behind in that unnatural dark. Sprinting to the end of the hall, we arrived at a T where we could go either left or right. Noor headed right and we followed her, but a second later we heard voices and heavy footsteps and two men wielding a bright light came around a corner up ahead.
They shouted at us to stop. We heard an echoing pop and another canister came flying down the hall, landed near us, and sprayed gas everywhere.
We all started to cough, then ran in the opposite direction. They weren’t trying to kill us, that much was clear. They wanted Noor alive. Maybe, at this point, they wanted all of us.
“We need to get out of the building,” I shouted as we ran. “The stairs. Where are the stairs?”
We rounded a corner and came to a dead end. Noor spun around and looked behind us.
“Past those men,” she said, pointing in the direction of the footsteps.
“We’re screwed,” I said. “I’ll have to use our Happy Meal prize . . .”
I slung the duffel bag around to my front and started to reach inside for the grenade, but Noor didn’t seem at all fazed by our lack of escape options. “In here!” she shouted, ducking through a doorway and into a small room.
We followed her in. There were no windows, no doors—no other exits.
“We’re trapped in here!” I said, my hand inside the bag, gripping the grenade. I didn’t want to use it—what if it brought the building down on our heads?—but if given no