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He shakes his head, looking completely befuddled. "It's nothing. It's just ... There are a ton of empty cars and not a single person in sight. It's so crammed, yet it's not."
I step to the side of him and sneak a glance around the corner. Then my jaw nearly smacks against the pavement.
Broken and crooked glass and metal buildings of various sizes crowd the streets and block the sunlight. Rusted cars and trucks form a maze down the road; garbage, glass, and debris litter the torn-up ground; and a tangled mess of vines has overtaken almost everything. One thing is missing from the scene.
"There's nothing alive out there," I mumble, turning back to Blaise.
"Yeah, I noticed that, too." He reclines against the wall with his boot propped against the brick. "They could just be hiding. People do that a lot in the Broken City."
My pulse quickens as I frantically peer around. "Hiding from what?"
He shrugs. "I don't know. I mean, in the Broken City, I know people hide from the Grim. But this place doesn't look the same at all. It's too quiet."
I gulp. "What if this place has something like Trackers around, and that's why everyone's hiding?"
He straightens from the wall and inches toward the end of the alleyway while pushing me back behind him. His spooked behavior instantly puts me on edge and leaves me with a heavy sense of dread.
"Blaise, what happens if you get hurt or die in the Oblivion?" I whisper. When he doesn't respond, I gulp. "You die in real life, too, don't you?"
He doesn't look back at me but nods his head once.
I swallow the lump swelling my throat, wondering if the laws of the machine apply to someone who heals rapidly. Since the Kiss of Death is currently killing me, I question if other things exist that can kill me, too. Maybe I'm not as invincible as I thought.
"We'll be fine," he promises, as if reading my mind.
I pick at my fingernails. "Maybe you should go back, just in case there's something bad here."
"I can't. Not until you wake up." He pushes off the wall and faces the street. "And even if I could, I wouldn't." He signals for me to follow him. "Come on; let's go see what this place is. Just make sure to stay close to me."
I nod, though he can't see me, and remain only a step behind him as we leave the shelter of the alley and enter the desolate streets of what I'm assuming used to be a city.
Fragments of glass and charred metal crunch under our boots as we proceed cautiously up the sidewalk.
When we reach the first car blocking our path, Blaise reaches behind him and threads his fingers through mine. His steady hold brings me a drop of comfort until I peer inside the missing windows of a car.
Sitting in the driver's seat is a woman, her clothes filthy and torn, and her skin covered in dirt and blood.
"She's dead," I whisper in shock.
Blaise moves back to see what I'm looking at, then his fingers spasm. "She died pretty recently."
I press my hand over my aching chest. "How can you tell?"
"Because her body hasn't started rotting yet." His head snaps up, his gaze skimming the cars around us. "The question is: what killed her?"
Sparks of shock zap across my flesh as I whirl around and scan the street. The cars and buildings are too thick to see very far, but I'm overpowered by the strangest sensation we're being watched.
"Blaise ..." I say in a low tone as my gaze darts from the vehicles to the buildings to the rooftops. "I think someone's watching us."
His back goes rigid as he wiggles his hand from mine. Then he moves in front of me, backs me up until I'm pinned between the car and him, and spans his arms out to the side, using his body to shield me. From what?
"You can't remember anything about this place? Nothing at all?" he asks in a low tone, his eyes trained ahead of us.
I shake my head. "Why?"
He reaches back and protectively places a hand on my hip. "Because I want to know what we're up against."
My heart slams against my chest. "You have the feeling that someone is watching us, too?"
He shakes his head. "No, but I can smell it."
I shut my eyes and take a measured breath as images stab at the back of my mind.
Steel skeletons with glowing red eyes wreak havoc through the streets, collapsing roofs, shattering windows. So much blood. On the streets. The cars. The buildings. Me drenched in blood from head to toe. But it's not my blood.
"What does it smell like?" I whisper, opening my eyes.
"Like rust and fear and death ..." He breathes in then out. "Like murder."
Chapter 8
The Orders
He smells murder? Oh, God.
For an insane moment, I fear he's somehow smelling me. Then I take a whiff of the air and the stench of rotting, potent blood floods my nose.
"What do we do?" I whisper, clutching Blaise's arm.
His muscles constrict underneath my hands, and I start to pull away, worried the reaction is from my touch. Then his head whips to the right, and he snags ahold of my hand.
"Run," he says, then hauls me with him as he races off in the direction we came from.
Our boots slap against the ground as we wind between the cars and hop over fallen lampposts.
"Blaise, what did you see?" I ask, struggling to keep up.
Instead of answering, he quickens his pace. So, summoning a restless breath, I dare a glance behind me, and immediately regret my curiosity.
Jumping along the tops of the cars at an alarmingly inhuman pace is a herd of steel figures with glowing red eyes, all locked on me. They dent the roofs with each spring of their feet, the pavement vibrating from the impact, concaving.
I spin back around, my eyes wide. "I've seen those things before."
Blaise dodges around a giant hole in the ground. "So have I."
"Where?" I ask breathlessly.
"Back in the Broken City. They're called Grim's Orders, and they're kind of like the Watchers justice system. They keep order in the streets. And by order, I mean, they kill anything and anyone who does something the Grim thinks is unfit."
I bang my arm on the front bumper of a car and wince. "Why are they here, then?"
He skitters around a motor wedged between two cars and pulls me around to the side of him. "That's a good question." He increases his pace as his gaze zeroes in on a large, silver bus. "We need to hide until I can come up with a plan."
He screeches to a stop in front of the bus's door and kicks it open. Then he ushers me inside, rushes in after me, and locks us in.
"I need to find something to put in front of the door ..." He trails off as he grabs one of the seats, ripping it from the floor and tossing it in front of the door.
I know I've seen his strength, yet my jaw still hangs agape as he repeats the action again with two more seats. Once he seems satisfied the door is barricaded, he snags my hand and tows me down the aisle. I try not to look at the dead bodies in the seats, the blood pooling the floor, or breathe in the stench of decay in the air, but my senses are assault by death.
Death everywhere.
"What do we do now?" I say, out of breath.
Blaise releases my hand as we reach the back door, checks the lock, then turns in a circle, as if searching for some hidden answer in the walls. "I'm not sure yet."
I rack my brain for a plan. I've been here before, in this place, which means I've survived these creatures, right?
No, maybe not. I could've died and came back to life.
"Maybe I should just go out there," I suggest, wiping my damp palms on the side of my jacket. "They were looking at me. I don't know why, but it felt like they wanted me."
He gives me a blank stare. "Yeah, that's not happening."
"Why not?" I grasp the back of a nearby seat as a cluster of Orders collide with a window and the bus rocks from the impact. "I probably won't die."
"Unless you can give me a definite, I'm not going to agree to that. Ever." He scratches the bronze plating on his chest. "And I probably w
on't die, either, so if anyone should go out there, it should be me."
I flinch as more Orders bash against the windows. "You can't go out there. Besides, they want me."
He looks at the Orders banging their heads against the glass, all their eerie red eyes fastened on me. "I could lead them away from you, like I did with the Forsaken."
With my other hand, I grip the back of the seat as the bus tips back and forth like a teeter-totter. "I don't like that idea. You could get hurt."
His gaze melds with mine. "I should be fine. This is what I do--have done for years now."
I hate that he's being self-sacrificing for me, as if my life means more than his, which it doesn't. Plus, this is my memory, my mess. I need to be the one who fixes it.
