But Loren was already on her feet, sprinting for the steps of the fire escape.
“Loren!”
Her name was swallowed up by the clanging of the metal steps beneath her boots as Loren reached them, sprinting down them as fast as her legs could take her, to the ground below.
To the antidote.
—
It was pure luck that kept her alive.
Luck and adrenaline, as she barreled through the sea of people and demons, firing tranquilizer darts at the latter as she ran, her body twisting in ways it’d never moved before.
She kept a corner of her eye on that tower as the crowd pushed her, jostled her. She had to make it. Waves of power continued to ripple from the Well, shaking the ground below her feet and cascading over the square like a tidal wave of death.
Buildings trembled. Signs clattered to the asphalt, and awnings were torn to ribbons as demons scrabbled up alley walls and businesses. Streetlights burst, and car alarms were set off left and right, horns blaring, security systems chirping.
People screamed under the effects of each wave, their legs collapsing beneath its call, as though bowing to it.
And Loren kept running.
A demon divebombed for her, and she fired a shot straight for its jugular—
The trigger gave a faint click.
She barely realized she’d ran out of darts before the demon slammed into her, throwing her into the cristala tower.
—
The Well was going to explode.
Removing the reactor chamber had been a fool’s errand, for the Well had fused with the chamber, binding to it, just like it had attached itself to the ground beneath their feet and the anima mundi in the earth’s core. There was nothing they could do—nothing. It had planted itself here, rooting itself in place, and when it went down it would take everything and everyone with it. Not a single person would survive.
The tunnels shook as the final seconds wound down.
Darien kept his arm around Arthur, supporting most of his weight as they hurried through the tunnels, the others before them carving a path of destruction through the demons that were still coming. Bodies covered the tunnel floor, piling atop one another like fallen trees.
“We need to move faster,” Darien panted, sweat running in rivulets down his temples, as Jack and Conrad cut down the last two demons like stalks of wheat.“Faster—”
Lace whirled to face him, a strand of platinum hair catching in her mouth.“It’s no use!”she shrieked. “When that Well blows up, it doesn’t matter how far we’ve made it. This entire city will be nothing but ash—"
“You think I don’t know that!” Darien shouted in her face. His voice was so loud, she flinched. “They have nothing without hope!Theworldhasnothingif it doesn’t have hope.”
Tears slipped down Lace’s face, the thin line of her mouth trembling. All around them, the others didn’t say a word. Fear turned the air thick—tightened his lungs.
He couldn’t breathe.
His earpiece crackled, and Dallas’s voice drifted through the speaker. He could barely make out the words through the shrieking in his head, could barely focus enough to keep limping through the tunnel, after the others who were carrying on toward a certain and terrifying end. Arthur’s arm was trembling where it was slung across Darien’s shoulder, every heavy, pained breath the man drew as ragged as Darien’s soul.
Dallas’s broken words fell into place, forming a sentence at last.
And Darien froze, his blood turning glacial.
Loren had gone up the tower.
The others stopped walking and were now staring at him. Covered in blood and dust, they looked every bit as mortal and helpless as he knew they felt in that very second.
“Darien,” Ivyana pleaded softly, her eyes swimming. “We need to keep going.”
