Find Me Where the Water Ends (So Close to You) (22 page)

Wes moves forward so slowly that at first I don’t even notice. If we can just stall Faust for another minute . . .

“There’s always hope,” I say quickly, and Faust’s attention swings back to me.

“You think so?” He smiles, a teeth-clenching grin where it looks more like he’s in pain. “How about now?” He points the gun at Wes and pulls the trigger.

“No!” I shout, or maybe breathe, or maybe think the word. One minute I am standing near the door and the next I am in front of Wes, pushing his body out of the way.

Wes gasps as he falls to the side and slams into the corner of the desk, his head whipping back to stare at me in horror. I hear the bullet leave the chamber of the gun, I watch it cross the room in slow motion, and I feel it when it rips into me, tearing through skin and muscle, leaving only blood and burning in its wake.

Chapter 25

“L
ydia!”

Wes’s voice. Screaming.

I fall to my knees, clutching my elbow. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” I whisper. “Stop him.”

Wes takes half a second to see the neat hole in the flesh of my lower arm, spilling blood across the white floor. But it’s not enough to kill me and we both know that.

He flies across the room, before Dr. Faust figures out that the weapon is automatic. He raises it in Wes’s face at the last second, but Wes spin-kicks him in the chin. I hear the bone crunch, watch the doctor’s face twist. By the time Wes lands on his feet, Faust’s mouth forms a distorted O that he cannot reshape. He tries to speak, but only moans, incapable of moving his jaw. Wes kicks the gun across the floor, grabs the doctor’s arm, and drags him over to the TM, throwing his body into the base of it as soon as the door opens.

I crawl across the cold floor on my knees and grab the gun, holding my other arm tight against my body. The bleeding is slow, but the pain is so strong that I’m pretty sure the bone broke when the bullet hit it.

“You’ve earned yourself the prehistoric age,” Wes says to the doctor.

Through it all, the banging never stops, as if the guards outside are using a battering ram to try and push their way through the metal door of the chamber. The table and chair are holding for now, though there is a large dent forming in the middle of the door.

I stand up, holding the gun high and pointed at Faust. Wes turns his back on the TM and keeps his eyes on me as he walks to the consul and pushes a button hard. Faust scrambles to his feet, ready to throw himself out of the machine. I step forward. When he sees the gun he cowers against the metal wall, whimpering as the door closes in his broken face.

Wes and I both ignore the rumbling and the lights and the smoke as the doctor is torn into fragments, hurtled through the wormhole. He has sent so many other people to this fate—lost in time, no thought to where they would end up or how it would destroy their lives. Now he is the one displaced, and hopefully he will die in some forgotten era, if the TM doesn’t kill him first.

Wes strides over to me and carefully grabs my shoulders. “Are you okay? Tell me you’re okay.” He has to shout over the banging from outside, over the constant buzzing of the machine.

“I think my arm might be broken, but I’ll live.” I glance at the door. “We don’t have much time. We need to rig the bombs now.”

He nods, but doesn’t let go, his gaze roaming over my face. “Don’t ever do that again.”

“Save your life?” I try to smile. “Shouldn’t you be a little more grateful?”

“I’m grateful. Believe me.” He leans down and presses his mouth to mine. His lips are hard and the kiss is more harsh than pleasant, as though he is trying to convince us both that we’re still alive. He pulls back, then leans in again, and this time it is softer, a graze, a promise, his hands cradling my face, his nose brushing against mine. I wrap my good arm around his bicep and tilt my head up, and we kiss as the TM dims, then flashes, the light so powerful it would blind us both if we let it.

As soon as the TM quiets, Wes rips off part of his shirt and wraps it around my arm as a makeshift bandage and sling. I feel my vision blur when he touches the bullet hole and shake my head to focus it.

Together, we yank open Wes’s knapsack and pull out the bombs. I lay them on the table as Wes gets the timers, and together we start to fit them into the pipes.

The pounding on the door echoes the pounding in my chest, and the fingers of my good hand slip around the delicate wires.

“I’m done,” Wes says.

“I can’t . . . my hand.”

“Let me.” While he finishes, I grab the two bombs that are ready and set them on the floor on either side of the TM. Each bomb has a small timer attached to it manually, with a long wire connected to a master timer that sits on the desk.

Wes grabs a screwdriver from the bag and fiddles with the back of the larger timer. I take Tesla’s notes and Faust’s journal and place them on the floor, right next to one of the bombs. The small blasts will be enough to cave in this room and demolish the TM, though the outer wings—where most of the officers, scientists, and kidnapped children are—should remain unharmed.

“Done,” Wes says again. He sits back from the desk and wipes his forehead.

“Wait.” I put my hand out, still crouched down next to a bomb. “Do you hear that?”

He turns to look at me. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Exactly.”

“The banging stopped.”

I glance over at the door. The dent in the middle is more pronounced, a concave point, but the guards weren’t able to break through.

“They must be trying to find another way in.” I straighten from my crouch, my bad arm suspended against my chest. The bleeding has stopped, but the pain hasn’t, and I fight the urge to throw up as I move toward the door.

Wes stands, placing the final bomb on the floor in front of the TM. “We’ll only have two minutes to get out of here before the bombs start to go off.”

A loud cracking noise cuts through the room, and I twist my head to see a small spiderweb of lines appear in the middle of the blackened two-way mirror.

Wes quickly turns to me. “I think it’s time to unblock the door.”

I push the table out of the way, but then I hear another crashing noise. The fracture in the mirror is getting bigger, spreading across the thick, bulletproof glass.

Wes concentrates on the main timer, and I stare at his back as he sets it for two minutes from now. “Ready?” I ask.

He nods and pushes a button. Nothing happens. He pushes it again. The analog clock on the front should start counting down, the small hand sliding slowly backward. But it isn’t working.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Wes answers, but I can tell he’s lying. “The clock is jammed, but it’ll be fine. I’ll reconnect the wire.” Another crash. The spiderweb of cracks now covers the entire mirror. “You should go, Lydia. I’ll be right behind you.”

I don’t turn away from Wes. “Do it now. Reconnect the wire now.”

“Lydia . . .” He smiles at me over his shoulder, but he can’t quite hide the panic in his eyes. “It’ll be fine.”

“Just do it now!” I shout.

He turns back to the timer. I see a drop of sweat slide down the side of his bent neck. His arms move quickly. Another crash, and a tiny piece of glass falls from the mirror, hitting the floor with a pinging noise.

“They’re coming, Wes,” I whisper.

“I know. I know. I almost have it. Go. Get outside.”

“Not without you.”

Thirty more seconds pass. He throws the timer down in frustration. “It’s not working. The master timer’s broken. We’ll have to set the other timers. It’ll take a little longer.”

“We tore out that function when we connected them to the main timer, remember?” I can’t keep the horror out of my voice.

He stares down at the useless clock in front of him. “Then the only way is to light the fuses manually.”

“Wes.” More glass falls to the floor, sparkling against the white tiles. “That won’t give us any time to get out of here. We won’t be able to leave before the bombs go off.”

He turns to face me, his expression grim. “I’ll have thirty seconds. I could get out.”

“Why are you saying
I
? What happened to
we
?” My voice is shaking, my hands, my body, everything is shaking. I step toward him.

“Go, Lydia. If I don’t—” He stops, swallows. “You still have your family here. This is your only chance.”

“I can’t leave you. It’s not enough time. You’d die.” My voice is as jagged as the broken glass, and suddenly I am on that field again, watching the blood fall from his shoulder and thigh, abandoning him when he needed me most.

“Go!” He shouts the word, his hands balled into fists at his sides. “Let me set the bombs. Let me know you’re safe.”

Another crash. Glass trickles down. The hole is getting larger, and I can hear the guards now, yelling in the opposite room.

“I’ll set the bombs. You leave.” I don’t know how he hears me over the falling glass, but he does, and then he’s right in front of me, his hands clasped around my upper arms.

“We’ll both leave. We’ll abandon the mission. We can find another way.”

“No. We can’t.” My voice is hard, unyielding. “You know we won’t get another chance to stop the Project. We have to do it now.” I reach up to cover his hand with mine. “We’ll both stay. Thirty seconds, right? We can make it, I know we can.”

His eyes scan my face and he opens his mouth to respond, but then a louder crash echoes through the room, and we turn our heads to watch a large chunk of the mirror fall, splintering into pieces when it hits the floor. The guards can’t get through, but they see us now, and one raises a gun.

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay.” I try to smile at him. Thirty seconds is a suicide mission and we both know it. But I would rather die here with Wes than know that I’d left him here to die alone.

“You pull the chair away from the door,” he says quickly. “There’s a lighter in my bag. I’ll set the fuses and then we run.”

“Got it.” I take my hand away from his so he won’t feel me shaking.

Wes steps away to light the fuses and I pull the last piece of furniture away and put my hand on the doorknob. Bullets fly into the room, but the angle is bad and can’t reach us. I hear the shots ricocheting off the TM, see the tile floor cracking and breaking.

“Now,” Wes says from behind me.

I rip the door open. The hallway is empty, the guards all in the room with the two-way mirror. But they see me open the door and I hear shouting as they order some men into the hallway after us.

“Hurry!” I yell at Wes. I step into the empty corridor and turn back to make sure he’s following me.

He is standing in front of the doorway. Behind him, I see that the fuses haven’t been lit yet, the bombs lying quietly in front of the TM.

“What—?”

“I love you,” he says, his eyes wet and locked on mine.

“No,” I whisper as I realize what’s happening—and then he shuts the door in my face.

“Wes!” I throw my body at the door, but it will not budge. “No! Wes!” I pound on the warped metal. My arm throbs and the wound starts to bleed again. I slump forward.

“She’s there!” a man’s voice shouts from down the hallway. I keep my hands pressed to the door.

“Please,” I whisper into the metal, tasting copper and salt. “Don’t do this. Wes. Open the door.”

The guards are running toward me. I hear their footsteps getting louder. But then the first blast erupts in the TM chamber, flinging me away from the door. I hit the opposite wall and sink onto my knees. My ears are ringing, a sharp noise that will not fade. “Wes.” I crawl forward, but the second blast blows the door off, and I see into the room beyond: fire and ash and debris. The TM is destroyed, a hollow burning chunk of metal, and the ceiling melts down around it, the flames so hot they make my face burn. There is no way Tesla’s papers survived in this room. There’s no way anything could have survived. “Wes!” I scream his name.

The guards who were after me sprint past, but one slows, grabs my arm, and pulls me to my feet. I fight against him, trying to run back into the room, but he tugs me forward. “The ceiling!” he shouts. I look up. The tiles in the hallway are starting to crumble, the dust floating down to coat our hair. “We have to get outside!”

He pulls me to the end of the hallway. I wonder why he’s helping me now, when moments ago he thought I was the enemy. I push his arm off, trying to get back to the chamber, to Wes. But then the third and final blast goes off, and I watch the hallway fill with flames.

“There’s nothing left!” the guard yells, and he yanks me forward. I stumble after him. He’s right. There’s nothing left.

Outside is chaos: soldiers and shouting and trucks and smoke. I see Dr. Bentley in the crowd and he runs for me. “Lydia.” He wraps his hands around my shoulders. I know he is jarring my elbow, but I can’t feel the pain anymore, not with my heart broken open and bleeding like this. “What are you doing here? Are you okay? What happened to your arm?”

“Wes. Wes. Wes.” His name is a mantra. “He was inside. He’s—he was—the fire—I think he’s—” I fall to the ground near the door of the bunker the guard just dragged me out of. It was the same one I traveled through the very first time I wandered into the Facility.

Dr. Bentley crouches down next to me, his face lined and tired. “Are you saying Wes was in there? The whole ground caved in. I think there was some kind of underground explosion. The army base is trying to rescue people now. If Wes is still alive, we’ll find him.”

But they won’t find Wes. I was in front of the exit. The only other way out was through the two-way mirror, filled with guards who wanted to kill him.

Wes is gone. After everything we went through, it’s over. Just like that.

“Lydia?” Dr. Bentley shakes my arm. “You look like you’re going into shock.” All I want is to curl up in a ball like my grandfather did in his cell, rocking back and forth and trying to forget what just happened. But I can’t. I won’t let Wes’s sacrifice be for nothing. We came here to stop the Project, and it’s not over yet.

“The children.” I lift my face, tear-stained and covered in soot, to look up at Dr. Bentley. “We have to get the children out.”

“What are you talking about, Lydia?” he asks. “Let me fix your arm.”

“The navy. Call the navy and ask for help. Not the army. I don’t know how much they know. We have to get people in there before they cover everything up.”

“Lydia—”

“Just do it!” I scream. A few more soldiers in black tumble out of the bunker. One is clutching his shoulder, another has blood dripping from his forehead. They melt into the crowd, ignoring the doctors who hover around them.

Dr. Bentley releases my arm and stands up again, his face creased with worry. “Please, Lydia, let me look at your arm, and then I’ll do what you want.”

“No.” I force myself to stand too. My legs feel like water, but I have to do this for Wes. There will be time to fall apart later. “If I stop now I won’t start again. My arm can wait. We have to save the children.”