The car surges, feet from the couple’s legs. I reach across Doug and grab the wheel, twisting it hard with both hands. Doug slams on the brakes. The car careens off the road, the girl’s sweater a bright blue blur in the passenger-side window as we glide past her toward the bricks.

There’s a metallic crunch and the splintering of glass as my body’s thrown forward. A splitting pain pierces my forehead as the seat belt digs into my neck. I lift my head, blinking through the dizziness, catching a splash of blue through the opening in the gate, before my head falls limp against my chest.

51

To Perish Twice

JACK

We all take off at a sprint for the Crux, following Lixue and her team up a locked stairwell normally restricted to the Guards. When we reach the dormitory level, I stick close to Julio as we break off into groups. Lixue raises her voice over the ringing alarms and falling debris, shouting orders into her transmitter.

“I said open the doors in every wing! All of them!” She looks back once over her shoulder as she whips out her key card. But the one Fleur gave me is already in my hand. I give the one I stole from the Guard outside Doug’s apartment to Julio, and we both get busy opening the other ports as Lixue and her team disappear behind the ivy-shrouded gate into the east wing.

Amber and Marie shout a quick “good luck” as they race through the Autumn port.

My feet root in place as I watch Chill and Poppy dash into the Winter wing.

I’m pretty sure your guard dog—and your magic—just turned up in a stasis chamber in the gymnasium in the north wing.

Julio pauses, waiting for me at the Summer port. “Come on, Sommers! Let’s go before this whole place caves in.”

Before this whole place caves in, burying the eye with it. Without it, our whole plan to save Fleur, stop Doug, and avoid a global catastrophe goes up in smoke.

I start toward the north gate.

“Jack!” Julio shouts across the Crux.

I turn, jogging backward toward the plexiglass port. “Get everyone in the south wing to the mouth of the tunnel. If I’m not there in forty minutes, then get to the surface and find the others.”

“But Fleur . . .” Julio’s eyes say everything. Our plan to extract her through the ley lines is no longer an option. The reserve power systems are already starting to fail, and every stasis chamber in this place will be buried under thirty stories of rubble within the next few hours. But I know what she’d say. Behind Julio, through the steamy plexiglass port, Summers pour out of their dorms. Handlers with panicked faces carry their sleeping Seasons on their shoulders. Others rush from room to room, helping to evacuate those too weak to save themselves.