Chapter 32 · What I Let Out

Maya's got the black heart in her hand and she's folding in half like paper.

"Eli." It comes out wrong. Too many voices layered under hers.

I'm already moving.

"The core's destabilizing!" Rachel's shouting behind me but I don't care. The subway platform's shaking apart. Chunks of concrete drop into nothing. The bodies piled around the core are sliding toward the center like water circling a drain.

Maya's eyes are black all the way through now. The thing in her hand is still beating. Actual beating. A heart made of compressed dark and it's pumping something into her arm.

"Let it go!" I'm ten feet away. Five.

She looks at me. For half a second it's still her. "Can't. It'll spread."

"I don't care."

"Liar." She smiles. Blood runs out of her nose. "You always cared too much."

Then her knees buckle.

I catch her before she hits the ground. The heart's still in her hand. It's cold. Everything in the zones runs hot—burns through light and heat and life. But this thing is freezing and it's spreading up her arm in black branches under the skin.

"Drop it," I say. My hands are on her wrist. "Maya, drop it."