Dane stood there, the original Carlo and Jen on either side, weapons drawn and aimed at us.
Dane’s gaze slid right past me to the night guard. “Report.”
“Sir,” the guard said. “Greg Alling is dead. One shot, center mass, laid out in the lab like one of his gutted rats. I don’t know what happened to the men he had with him. The fire department is inbound, but the suppression system seems to have prevented damage beyond the lab.”
It seemed the security guard was on Dane’s team. Infiltrating an enemy’s organization? Point to Dane. Maybe he hadn’t been lying after all about keeping Mom safe, though what this one guy could’ve possibly done against Alling and his goons, I don’t know.
AndI’dput out the fire, not the suppression system, but I wasn’t about to tell Dane anything about what I could do. I’d learned that lesson the hard way.
“You didn’t see anyone else during the extraction?” Dane demanded.
The guard answered, “The women extracted themselves, sir.”
Aw, yeah. Lotsa points to us.
“Are you here to help,” Mom cut in, “or are you more trouble?”
Uh-oh, she was using her you’re-in-big-trouble voice. Dane better run.
“Watch out, Dane. My mom won’t take your shit.” I was feeling a little punchy. But I had to warn my mom not to trust this guy either. He might not be the stone-cold killer I’d feared, but he wasn’t on our side.
The darkness was coming back, fuzzing the edges of my sight and bleeding into the figures before me. Dane and his people turned into shadowy silhouettes, color leaching out of the world, and they stretched tall and then squished into fat blobs. Only the neon behind the video of BantaMatrix’s trailblazing founder glowed crisply in my vision.
“I’m here to help, Ms. Taylor,” Dane answered.
Or at least I thought it was him. The voice warped into the same static hiss as the lobby waterfall as I was on my way to the floor. I don’t remember hitting it though.
And then I was flying through the air, but on my back. Which didn’t make sense. Superheroes—and I thought I qualified—flew with their bellies down so they could see the ground and look out for baddies.
But like a dumbass I was facing upward, the night sky overhead. Stars twinkled down at me.
Closer and colder, Dane’s half-lidded gray gaze met mine as he carried me out of BantaMatrix. At least his hands were warm.
Mom was jabbering about something. “…amphetamines and methylphenidates…”
She should’ve been a doctor. She sounded like one. She could’ve been, if she hadn’t had me when she was right about my age now. I was lucky, so lucky, to have her.
With a lurch, I was loaded into the back of a vehicle. Oh, an ambulance. So not flying, but still a dumbass. But a heroic one, maybe.
“…B vitamins, creatine and tyrosine…”
A soft rumble like faraway thunder reached me. My vision whirled again. Wait, no, not my vision—distant whirling wings.
A helicopter, almost invisible against the night sky. Alling’s exit strategy making its own escape?
“Dane.” I pawed for him, but he was already turning away. He stepped down to the street and didn’t look back as the ambulance doors closed.
Darkness grabbed me again, and its embrace was cold. I didn’t have the energy to shiver though. It pulled me down down down down, and I thought this was it. Dunzo, but I’d gotten Mom out—we’d done it together—and I was okay with that.
I let out one last breath and I swear it was tinged purple.
When I woke, I was in a hospital bed. My arms were stretched neatly at my sides on top of the scratchy blanket, wrists still cuffed. I tried to make a fist, to pop the hive awake too, but my muscles were like juiced celery stalks, completely drained.
“Is she going to be all right?” Mom again, boss voice still strong. She was standing in the gap of the curtain around my bed, like she was guarding the passage. “That other man said that those things. The nanos…?”
“Nanobots,” Dane rumbled, somewhere just out of sight.
“That the nanobots would kill her. He told me the only way to save her was to get them out.” Her take-no-shit tone faltered. “He…he hurt her.”
