to mourn later,” I said. “We need to get as far way from here as possible, without leaving tracks.”
“And then what, what’s your big move?”
I looked around at my companions. They were looking to me for answers, but I couldn’t meet their eyes. Instead I stared at the pile of bones that used to be Thomas.
I couldn’t feel shame or remorse, just a coldness deep in my bones. We’d killed an elite. April was right, things were going to get worse. He’d taught me to fear our masters. I’d never paid him much attention, but now I wondered, how many girls had he accosted, in dark meadows outside the citadel, where nobody could hear them scream. Surely I wasn’t the first. And now he was dead. I wondered how many others would fall.
“Three chosen against three elite,” I said. “And it wasn’t even close to a fair fight. Even with Trevor and Penelope, we may not have survived, if we hadn’t used the elixir as a distraction.”
“So?” Luke asked. “What’s the game plan? Jacob said you had some kind of top-secret mission.”
I glanced at April, and she nodded. It was time to tell them the truth.
“More elixir isn’t a solution, not long term. We’ve got to find the antidote, for real. You saw Nigel’s eyes, the way they panicked. Take away their abilities, turn them human again, and they’re nothing but cowards. Imagine a weapon like that, in our hands.”
“You know where it is?” Luke asked.
“Not exactly. We’re going to try and find Damien’s childhood home. His dad had a lab there, it’s where he made the first elixir. We think there might be a cure as well. We have a map, but it’s far. I don’t know what we’ll be facing. We’ll need to work together, to trust each other. It’s the only way we make it there alive.”
“We can stop in Crollust,” Penelope said. “It’s where I’m from. It’s on the way to Sezomp, only a few days away. If we make it, there may be more elixir.”
“You want to break into a compound?” Luke frowned.
“We won’t be breaking in, we’ll be visiting.”
“But... they think you’re dead,” Camina said. “Right?”
“Probably. But maybe not. News from the citadel doesn’t always reach the compounds quickly. They’ll have heard rumors, they won’t know what’s true. We can at least rest up, gather supplies, before we make our next move. I would literally kill for a shower right now.”
“So just to get this straight,” Luke asked, “You want to lead a group of outlaws, an elite and a slagpaw, and three exiled chosen terrorists across open country, loot a compound for supplies when the entire kingdom is probably on high alert looking for us, then track down an ancient laboratory that’s probably buried in ruins from before the Culling, to find a magic potion that will turn elites human again?”
“Just the king,” I corrected. “We turn him human, then we kill him. It’ll change everything. Any objections?”
“After what he did to me?” Penelope’s eyes flashed with anger, “I’ll kill him myself.”
16
We pushed forward until long after dark. My legs were burning, and the tickling in my lungs meant I’d inhaled some ash, despite the heavy mask and thick scarf wrapped around half my face.
I stopped periodically to check behind us; at least the falling ash covered our tracks. Luke made us walk along the widened roads. He said it would be harder to track if we didn’t leave broken branches behind or sink into the dry soil. I felt exposed, with the veiled moonlight shining over the white streets. We were going too slowly.
I thought wistfully of my trips with Damien. I wished we had a bike, or even a horse and carriage. Before leaving Algrave, I’d never ventured more than a mile outside the compound. Now the landscape seemed to unfold before us, taunting us with its sheer scale.
Small clusters of abandoned buildings emerged like oases between long stretches of tree-lined road. A few times Luke made us fan out, criss-crossing through a settlement or taking different forks in the road and then circling back to meet up again later.
It seemed like overkill but nobody complained. Maybe we were just too scared to speak our worries into the near pitch-blackness. It was enough to focus on avoiding the roots that tripped our feet, and the dark branches that scraped against our jackets.
More than once, the shaggy outline of a slagpaw stalking us from the shadows quickened my pulse, before I recognized