If she meant Belle, she didn’t have to wait long. Soon, she emerged out of the darkness, her body veiled only momentarily by sudden gusts of wind carrying tufts of sand into the air. As her blond ponytail fluttered behind her, she lifted up her goggles to reveal those icy blue eyes, tired but steady as they found us in the night.
My body instinctively seized when I saw her, a tinge of fear that months ago would have been unimaginable. Back then I would have been fangirling in the truest sense of the word. The coldly beautiful but aloof Effigy whose years of experience had hardened her into a badass warrior. This was the girl whose posters and collecting cards were still somewhere in my New York apartment, probably in my bedroom closet along with all the other stuff I hadn’t brought with me to London. For so many years, I wanted to be her.
It wasn’t until I actually met her that I realized I never really knew her at all.
Chae Rin rolled her eyes. “Took you long enough,” she said once Belle was near us.
Belle stopped in front of us, and I twitched. Just slightly. I didn’t even notice at first, but once I did, I berated myself. There’s nothing to be worried about, I told myself. Just stop thinking about it. I steadied my body.
“Wanted to make an entrance, eh?” Chae Rin continued to prod her, but Belle wasn’t biting.
“These devices are specially made by our R & D department for missions,” Belle said, ignoring the comment—a slight that did not go unnoticed by the visibly annoyed Chae Rin. “But their power is limited, which means this electromagnetic field is too. We’ll have to work quickly.”
“You mean, I’ll have to work quickly,” Chae Rin muttered.
“You’re both right,” Sibyl said through the comm. “You’ve got fifteen minutes before the field gives out. But once you go underground, we’ll lose contact. Make sure you keep track of the time from your visors.”
The countdown started at the top right hand of my goggles’ translucent screen.
“Roger that.” Belle lowered hers back over her eyes.
It was hard not to look at that straightforward fearlessness without feeling an awkward mix of awe and insecurity. It was almost reassuring seeing her focus back in full force, even if it was confined to the battlefield.
It always was, these days.
Chae Rin cracked her knuckles. “All right, then. Clear a path.”
Belle, Lake, and I made sure we were well behind Chae Rin as she brought her hands low. Effigies didn’t necessarily need to use their hands to manipulate elements, but it was just easier to—like our limbs were a lightning rod, the perfect conduit for such immense power. As she lifted her arms, the earth rose with her.
She did good work, moving away the sand, but I couldn’t help worrying. Saul would surely hear the sands shifting above him, wouldn’t he? And then just disappear. There were so many risks in this mission, but it couldn’t be helped. Sibyl wasn’t the only one under the world’s pressure to deliver a terrorist—we were too.
Sand slid away from us in sheets and billowed up into the night sky with the wind Lake summoned. It wasn’t long until we saw the white metal hatch, dirtied around its perfect right edges, big enough to fit only one of us at a time.
The four of us stood facing each other, exchanging steady glances. This was it. We were to work together. Beat the bad guy. That was the reason why the Sect gathered us, after all. We were an uneasy alignment created out of necessity, forged through a shared destiny.
The Effigies.
Sometimes, if I let myself, I could feel it: that unspeakable force linking one to the other. A connection. A bond. Or maybe it was just me. We’d already fought together and bled together. That may not have made us friends, but it made us something.
A team.
Yeah. And it wasn’t all that bad.
“No time to waste.” Chae Rin rolled up her sleeves. “If he’s down there, let’s go.”
“Wait—” Lake put out a hand to stop her. “Director Langley . . . are you one hundred percent sure that Saul is in that bunker?”
“We can still detect his frequency at the below location,” responded a Communications techie.
“He’s there.” Sibyl’s voice was solemn.
“We can only climb down one at a time,” I said. “He’ll definitely hear us coming. If he hasn’t heard us already.”
“I’ll go first,” said Belle. “I have more experience. I’ll neutralize Saul quickly.”
Bending down, she gripped the handle and, with care, lifted the heavy hatch.
“Belle—” I started, but she put up a finger to silence me, nodding meaningfully toward the open hatch.
Her foot hit the steps swiftly and silently, maneuvering down each rung until she disappeared into the darkness.
We waited. Chae Rin watched the dark open hole grimly, ready to react to any sign of trouble. Lake’s legs fidgeted, but not too much to shift the sand beneath her feet. Still nothing. I rubbed the sweat and dirt off my face and sucked in a quiet breath.
A blast shook the ground beneath us. My head snapped up. That was as good a signal as any. Each of us lifted up our goggles.
“Let’s go.” Chae Rin leapt down the hatch. After a slight hesitation, Lake climbed in next.
It was now or never.
I descended through the hatch last. The metal bars were greasy and dirty—easy to slip on. I made sure I didn’t. The moment I hopped down onto solid ground, I felt the chill. And when I turned, I found a forest of ice blooming in the small bunker. Frost sparkled under the dim lights, speckling the hot, humid air of the dingy room—a room empty but for a single cot covered in dirty white sheets. Belle’s ice crawled up to the ceiling, covering the black shadows on the wall.
Black shadows. Shadows of people. They were drawn in black spray paint against the red brick. Long and short, they lined the walls, their limbs thick and crudely sketched as if by a child.
And maybe Saul was the one who’d painted them. His form was distorted behind Belle’s cocoon of ice as he stood suspended inside. In a navy-blue armored bodysuit and black boots, he almost looked like a soldier. But his face was obscured inside a pure white metal helmet. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before.
“He looks like a cyborg,” Lake said.
I could see that too. The wide, dark slits where his eyes would have been looked like they would suddenly light up bloodred at the slightest computerized command.
“Has he said anything?” Chae Rin paused. “I mean, did he say anything? You know, before you literally iced him?”
“No.” Belle put a hand on the ice gently with her fingers, just over Saul’s face. “It was strange. He didn’t say a word. But he made a move toward me.”
Lake clutched her chest. “He attacked you?”
But Belle shook her head. “No. He just . . . moved toward me. At first I thought it was an attack, but there was something about his demeanor. As if—”
I stepped closer to her. “As if what?”
Belle paused. “As if he’d already been defeated.”
With a tap of her hand, she melted the ice just enough to create a hole through which he could fall into her arms. His limbs dangled limply, but I could tell from the way his head twitched that he was still alive. And his left hand was clutching something desperately.