see me? I couldn’t tell. Her face was filthy, and tear-streaked.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” I said. “I know your friend Clete…” Her face scrunched together, and I could see her fighting fresh tears. Now was not the time. “Anyway, I was so worried about you.”
“I could use patching up,” she said, and she looked it. She was covered with blood and bruises, one eye almost swollen shut, her lip split and puffy.
“Have you seen the vidscreens?” Nudge asked. “The feed is frozen—McCallum’s not saying a goddamn thing! Something happened!”
“I did that,” Phoenix said, but not proudly. More, like, sad. Like a soldier at the end of a long battle. “I think my friend Pietro is dying, back there. He was the one who showed me where McCallum was broadcasting from.”
“Dying, but not dead?” Nudge asked.
“I don’t know.” Phoenix seemed whipped, her head hanging low.
“Tell me where,” Nudge said. “I’ll go check him out.”
“Thank you,” Phoenix said gratefully. She gave Nudge directions, and Nudge took off, her caramel-brown wings smooth and powerful.
“So where’ve you been all this time?” Gazzy asked Phoenix as we flew south.
“Um, I was in the tunnels for a while, then in the basement of the Pater estate.”
“What?” My heart dropped into my stomach. “We bombed that to smithereens! Is that why—why—I mean, were you there? Did you get bombed?”
My daughter looked at me. “No—I escaped by climbing up a chimney.”
“Oh, thank god,” Gazzy said, putting his hand over his heart. “I remember seeing the basement, after our second or third round.”
“I must have just missed you guys,” Phoenix said, sounding bemused.
“What’d you do to McCallum?” I asked her, and she told me.
“Reeeaaallly?” I asked, an idea popping into my mind. “I think we should be able to take care of that voice permanently!”
“I’m in!” Gazzy said.
“You got a plan, Max?” Iggy asked.
“Yep!” I lied. But I lied with confidence, as I poured on the speed.
CHAPTER 108
“Remember that place we tried to have the peace meeting at?” I asked Fang as we flew. He was matching me stroke for stroke, our wings just a few inches apart, as if we’d been flying together every day for the last ten years. I felt Phoenix watching us.
“Yeah?” Fang said.
“They didn’t pick that at random,” I said. “Those guys—all of ’em—knew that place well. Especially Giacomo Pater. I’ll bet you a tattoo that he’s hiding out there, watching his world implode.”
“I bet you’re right,” Iggy said. “That place is probably full of fake walls and secret escape holes.”
“It’s been around forever,” Phoenix said, actively listening. I liked that about her. It reminded me of me.
“You know something that could help us?” I asked.
She thought, two fingers pinching her lip, exactly the way Fang does when he’s running his little brain hamsters especially hard. “It used to be on a subway line,” she said. “I don’t go there much because it’s full of guys with guns. The subway’s been shut down for… six years. But the tunnels are still there.”
“Good to know,” I said. “Okay, my plan is that me and Iggy will go through the front door, try to find Giacomo Pater. Gaz and Fang, run interference from above.”
“Got it,” Gazzy said, unsnapping his backpack so he could pull it around front, see what explosives he still had.
“I’ll back you up on the ground,” Phoenix said, all no-nonsense.
Of course I wanted her a thousand miles away, or at least back at Tetra, wherever she’d be safe. But she wasn’t a stay-safe kind of kid. I was going to have to accept that, if I wanted her to let me keep calling her my kid.
“Let’s do it!” I said and angled myself to rocket downward.
From above we saw at least twelve guards around the place, including three snipers on neighboring roofs.
“Ooh, ooh! Let me!” Gazzy said excitedly, pulling a tube out of his backpack. “I’ve been practicing and practicing!”
I nodded, and Gazzy put the forty-centimeter tube to his lips. Phoenix watched him, studying Gazzy as he judged wind speed, our speed, wind direction. Stuff any of us could do in a second. Stuff she hadn’t learned yet.
He loaded it up, aimed, then blew as hard as he could. A dart hit a sniper’s back, and he sank to his knees, probably still wondering what had hit him.
“Way to be!” I told Gaz.
“I’ve always said he was full of hot air!” Iggy said, which Gazzy let pass because he was aiming for the second sniper. He hit her in the back of