The tools were right where Master Talik had left them, scattered across the base of the Distributor, beside the open vault panel. I dropped to my knees, grabbed them and stuffed them into the pockets of my coat. My hands didn’t shake. My eyes barely blinked.
The floor beneath me hummed harder, but that was okay. I was already on my feet again, body light as a feather, and I pushed the panel closed, too, before I turned for the door.
Silas and Mimi were right there, waiting, and March was right behind them, a sword in his hand, both the soldiers spread on the floor at his sides, unconscious still.
“Move!” he said, and I didn’t hear him, but I read the word on March’s lips.
I was moving. I was running.
Twenty feet.
Fifteen.
Ten—it was my heart that counted the steps, and my legs held me. My body was strong and my blood rushed and my mind was clear and the tools were in my pockets.
I was fast. I was careful. I didn’t stutter, didn’t hesitate.
Yes, I did everythingright—exceptonething.
I forgot to watch the floor.
A second too late, Master Talik’s voice echoed somewhere in the back of my mind. A second too late my foot faltered and my mind ordered my body to fall back. A second too late my eyes noticed the crack on the floor, right there in front of the door like it was its threshold.
It hadn’t been there before, but it was now. And when I stepped on it,the crack expanded beneath me like a mouth.
Darkness, then light.
Warmth, then cold.
A hand wrapped tightly around my wrist—March was there, somehow. March was always there, his face red, his eyes bloodshot, his teeth gritted.
The strangest thing, but he was holding me up. He’d caught me—his grip iron, desperate, absolute. My fingers locked onto his sleeve on instinct. For one impossible second, we held on to one another.
But it wasn’t enough.
Or it was—but it was that second too late.
His sleeve tore. March’s fingers slipped.
The last thing I heard was him screaming my name.
Then I was falling.
34
Ifell.
Not like you fall from a height—not fast or violent or with the wind screaming past your ears and the ground rushing up to meet you.
No, this was different. This was slow.Gentle, almost, if gentle could also be terrifying. It was like sinking into warm water—except the water was made of light, and the warmth was made of time, and there was no bottom at allever.
The Distribution Room disappeared above me so fast. The doorway, March’s face, his hand still reaching for mine, the way he called my name—it was all gone, replaced by nothing in a blink. Not darkness or light, no—nothing,the way the space between seconds is nothing—and I was suspended inside it, turning slowly, my arms out, my hair floating upward around my face like I was underwater.
Curiouser and curiouser.
The tools slipped out of my pockets. I watched them with my mouth open as they fell—or rose or drifted?—away from me, until they were too far to even make out anymore.
It occurred to me that I should have been afraid. I shouldhave beenscreamingat the top of my lungs by now, thrashing and trying to get to the top—but that was the thing. Therewasno top, just like there was no bottom here in the nothing. It was so quiet, so impossibly still that my body forgot how to panic.
