Sherry Ficklin - Extracted

“You okay, sis?”

She sets her jaw and glares at me. It’s a face I know all too well. One that says don’t poke the bear or it’ll rip your arms off. It was a face our mother made sometimes. It used to scare the crap out of me. Still kinda does, actually.

I pull my jester’s hat down a little more.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

She crosses the room, puts her arms around my neck, and hugs me tightly. “I need you to be nice,” she whispers, her voice exhausted.

“I know. But I don’t trust him.”

She sighs and pulls back. “I know. But I need you to trust me.”

I look over her shoulder. Nobel is tinkering with something on the desk, trying to hide a smirk, and Ethan is standing there looking confused. “Can I hit him, just once?” I whisper.

She grins.

I take that as a maybe.

I head back to my room, grabbing my gear and a spare shirt for Ethan. It’s a black T-shirt, nothing as nice as what he has on, but it’ll have to do. I’m not sure exactly why he gets under my skin so badly. I ball up the shirt and stuff it under my arm. It might have something to do with the monumental butt-kicking he laid on me the last time we met. Or it might be the way he looks at my sister. It’s arrogant and possessive. Like she’s his. I sigh. It might also be the fact that she looks at him the same way. If she has to choose between us, I can’t help but wonder which of us would win out.

Ugh. Now I’m just being stupid. I grab my cane, wishing Nobel could have perfected the gear spores sooner so that we could grow my leg back before the mission. This fake leg will slow me down, and with only half a team, I can’t afford anything going wrong. I have to leave some of my best people here in case more unexpected visitors show up.

I argue with myself on the way down to the common room. Should I just leave Ember and Ethan here? Ethan was right about one thing. She came for me. She risked her life and the lives of her friends in order to get here. And as for Ethan, well, he could at least be counted on to protect Ember. I suppose he was right about that, too. It’s really just my selfishness that took her up on her offer to help. I can’t stand the idea of not having her close.

When I am done getting my stuff, I head to the common area to meet Ethan and Ember. Most of the Hollows are still asleep. Nobel and Journey are on the half-pipe, saying good-bye, it looks like. Ink Spot is doing some rifting stripes for Chernobyl, who rifted back twenty minutes ago. He looks like he got into some gnarly stuff.

“Hey, Chernobyl,” I say, walking over to them. “What happened out there?”

“Aw man, it was like a storm out there. It was the first time that anyone had rifted into the American Civil War. We weren’t taking anything this time. Gloves wanted us to follow the train that was carrying the Union’s payroll, all in gold, of course. The thing was, when we got there, most of the soldiers were gone and in their place were these little dome-headed geared creatures that tried to take us out.” I look down at my leg.

“Those are Gear Heads. One of them sawed off my leg.”

“Those guys did that?” Chern asks. “I had no idea, sorry.”

Ink Spot slaps him on the neck to indicate that he’s done. Chern flinches.

“Well, I got to go,” he says. “Gotta return this stuff to the lab. I’ll catch you later.”

“Okay,” I mumble, staring at my geared prosthetic.

I walk to where Nobel, Ember, and Ethan are sitting. They are congregated in the same spot we were in earlier.

“Hey, something is going on. Chernobyl said that he ran into a bunch of Gear Heads during a mission.”

“Not a surprise. The Peacekeepers can track Contra. That’s how they find you guys in the stream,” Ethan says.

“Yeah, but we’d never rifted there before. They predicted where we would be and got there before us. That team walked right into a trap.”

Ember puts her hand on my shoulder. “Lex, I don’t mean to sound harsh, but has it occurred to you that your friends are stealing? The Peacekeepers were trying to prevent them from taking something that didn’t belong to them.”

I shrug her hand off. I’m about to say something nasty when Ethan cuts me off.

“I’m worried more about the how than the why right now. This means they’ve somehow figured out how to use Tesla’s predictive algorithms to predict where the Hollows will strike. This will make it very hard for you and your friends to smash and grab. They could have these things waiting for you anywhere at any time. Always one step ahead.”

“True,” Nobel agrees. “So our immediate problem is finding a way to disable several Gear Heads at a time. Like some sort of electromagnetic pulse?”

“Like the one I used in The Institute?”

Ethan nods. “That might work. You could try to isolate the correct harmonic resonance to shatter their glass domes—”

“It doesn’t matter right now,” I cut them off. “We’re wasting time. We are going to save Stein.”

“All right,” Nobel interrupts. “Let’s go. Here, take these.”

Nobel hands each of us two small green pills.

“You got the Dox?” Ember asks, rolling the Contra between her fingers.

“Sure thing,” I answer, tapping my pack.

“What are these?” Ethan asks, holding the green pill up to the light like some rare jewel.

“This is how we rift,” I answer. “No fancy tech and no practice missions. Take this baby and you’ll be hooked on rifting for life.”

Ethan looks to Ember, who shrugs. They both remove their Tethers and toss them on the table.

“Okay.” She pops the capsule in her mouth. “Let’s do this. We just rift from right here?”

“Yep. Part of the deal we had with Gloves was that he would have Claymore set the date and time of the mission in these capsules so we would show up at the right time, just before Stein falls. So just pop the pill and hold on tight.”

I adjust my jester’s hat, put the capsule on the back of my tongue, and swallow.

Rifting is second nature to me now. I can feel the Contra pumping in my veins, making me lighter than air but also more solid than I could ever be in real life. Colors swirl, and as we approach the spot where Stein dies I can feel the stream thinning. It’s like pressing against tissue paper. I push forward and the stream shreds around me. I’m spit out onto the sandy ground.

We have come out just behind an outcropping of rocks. I peek over them as the others orient themselves. Ember and Ethan look a little pale, but otherwise fine. I see the blimp overhead, cut ropes flailing in the wind. To the right I see two Gear Heads, the red liquid sloshing around in their domed heads as they scramble up the loose rocks in our direction.

“We’ve got to move,” I order.

Everyone follows me as I manage my way down through the boulders where the blimp is still tied. Two Gear Heads have taken position near the other me. I see Stein trying to distract them. For a second the urge to run to her is overwhelming. I am barely able to keep my feet planted.

Then I see myself.

Stein screams. The Gear Heads have nearly pushed her over the edge of the cliff.

My alternate self runs to the cliff. Tripping on the tether, he falls, fighting off Gear Heads while grabbing for Stein. Another crazy little geared-ninja rolls agilely to the side and takes its position on my calf. I wave my hand, giving the others the signal to intervene.

Like a horde of barbarians, we rush the cliff. Ethan and Nobel busy themselves by smashing whatever Gear Heads they can get hold of. There are more of them than I remember.

“Stein, look at me,” the other Lex orders. He screams and I remember why. I can almost feel the muscles tearing under his skin. As if by reflex, I bring my hand to my own shoulder and squeeze to make sure it isn’t happening to me.