Infinity Reaper (Infinity Cycle #2) - Adam Silvera Page 0,152
of each other, you got to know something,” says a low voice I’ve never heard before. “Those of you who weren’t incarcerated until after late January will remember that a senator’s son was one of six-hundred-something people killed during the city’s Blackout. Except he wasn’t. Eduardo Iron lives and breathes in this prison. He became a specter for the Blood Casters and will be standing trial for acts of burglary, trespassing, selling hallucinatory drugs, aggravated assault, identity theft, and terrorism.”
In other words, I’m here for life, if they let me live.
I’m fighting back tears on how corrupt this place is.
“Eduardo has the power to shift,” the voice continues. “He can look like anyone—a stranger, your cellmate, even yourself. If you’re looking for an extra challenge while blowing off some steam, whoever hunts down the shifter before dawn will be rewarded with thirty minutes on the roof this morning.”
I don’t doubt the lure of that grand prize. Breathing in the air before being banished back to this darkness could be as welcome as a hug from a loved one.
The red lights stop flashing as the speaker says, “Happy hunting.”
There are shouts and cheers, even a roar, echoing through the halls.
A bald man with a three-headed hydra tattoo on his forearm is talking with someone while staring at me. There’s one clear tell that I don’t belong here: I’m not wearing one of the lime-green jumpsuits. I charge the opposite way, hearing them call after me.
I fight through the pain of my stinging wound, glowing gray midrun and giving myself the jumpsuit and a new face before blending into a crowd of celestials beating each other to death.
A lot of people mistaken as me in disguise will die tonight.
Sixty-Eight
Firefly’s Flames
EMIL
“Hide-and-seek with the shape-shifter just got infinitely harder,” Wyatt whispers as we hide in a stairway.
“And he doesn’t even know that we’re trying to find him,” I say.
Just when I thought this place couldn’t be more monstrous, the guards are siccing the other inmates on Ness as if this is some acceptable practice. More than ever I’m terrified to be here though I have zero regrets. Ness might think he’s alone in this fight, but I’m going to back him up.
“Perhaps it’s time we regroup.” Wyatt tugs at his whistle.
“No, someone might think we should bounce.”
“Not the worst idea.”
“I’m not leaving without Ness,” I say, staring Wyatt in the eyes. I’m indebted to Ness for saving me over and over even though we were strangers who only met less than a month ago.
“Of course,” Wyatt says, though it’s clear he knows the dangers he’s risking for a cause he doesn’t believe in. “What do you propose we do to find him? Shout his name over and over?”
“No, but you’re on the right track. We don’t go looking for him. We make him come to us.”
“How do we do that?”
I conjure two gold and gray fire-orbs, hoping to draw Ness to my flames.
Sixty-Nine
Solitary Confinement
MARIBELLE
Ever since the announcement, Tala and I have failed to travel through the Bounds unnoticed.
My fire-arrow collides into the chest of a woman trying to touch me with her electric hands. Tala kicks off a wall and drives the butt of her crossbow into someone’s forehead, laying him out. She fires an arrow into the shoulder of another inmate charging toward her, and he collapses in agony. I skip over a couple of the ten or twelve bodies piling up and we continue our hunt for Luna.
There have been over one hundred steps spiraling down from where we began, as if solitary confinement is in the center of the earth. There is every possibility in the world that we’ll get caught by the guards and buried away in one of these cells too, but the memory of this alliance with Tala will make me feel less alone. Grief can be so isolating, and Tala and I have been united by revenge over the murders of our parents in ways that Iris and I were driven apart.
Luna may not have gotten her hands dirty, but the monsters she created are the reason we all lost our loved ones. We’ll slay the monsters next.
We reach the lowest level. I light our way through what feels like a dark cave. There’s a woman shouting and banging on a door, and it isn’t until we get closer that I realize she’s not locked up. Tala aims her crossbow, but I stop her from taking a shot through the darkness, like when she killed Kirk.