[Transmission interrupted by singing in an unknown language. Screams are heard in the background. Transmission ends 36 seconds later.]

Chapter 21

THE POWER OF THAT unfiltered song stripped away rational thought, leaving me a void. I barely felt us slamming onto the rocks. I tried to fend off the magic, but it was like trying to deflect raindrops in a thunderstorm.

We’d been so close—freeing Babs and her sister, disabling the IAS before it could be deployed, stopping most of the clones on site—and it wasn’t enough. In the end, I’d been little more than an annoyance, a mosquito Lawrence McGinley would swat and forget about.

My friends would die in a terrorist attack. I’d be blamed as the “magical suicide bomber” who killed them. Sure, we’d stopped Kiyoko from spreading the broadcast to other nations, but it wouldn’t take long for McGinley to devise another way of upping the body count.

Only that wasn’t all he’d do. He’d hunt down and destroy my brother. Lex. Nidhi. Jason. Everyone who knew the truth, dead because of my mistakes. When I closed my eyes, I saw Deb staring up at me, silently accusing. I’d gotten her killed for nothing. I ground my palms against my eyes. Deb became Lena, dead on the ground, her oak rotting behind her. Lena became Toby. Toby, who had trusted me with his daughter’s life and safety.

I crawled over the rocks. I’d twisted my ankle, or possibly broken it, I didn’t know. I didn’t care. The pain helped distract me from the ghosts of everyone I’d killed, and the music offered a thread of hope. The promise of redemption, if I could reach the source.

Pain seared my right ear, delivered by what felt like a burning pipe cleaner. I rolled away, momentarily distracted. Smudge clung to my ear, until I thought he’d burn the lobe clean off. I started to pluck him free, but his whole body was on fire. I reached for his magic instead, tearing the text away and killing his flames in the process.

The little bastard bit me again. He wasn’t burning anymore, but he dug his mandibles right into the blistered cartilage of my ear. “Perkele!” My father would have smacked me for that bit of profanity. “What the everburning hell, Smudge?”

The throbbing practically deafened me . . . and in that moment, my thoughts cleared enough to dig the earplugs from my bag and cram them into place. I screamed as the earplug brushed my burnt, blistered ear, but they muffled the song enough for me to concentrate.

I saw others stumbling, searching for the source of the music. Lena was staggering toward the hospital tower. “Lena, stop!”