Page 27 of The Infinite Glade (The Maze Cutter #3)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Curse of Truth

T he heat inside Isaac’s gut grew, burning like real flames.

He pounded the side of the Berg with his fist. “We can’t just leave them there!

We have to go back!” But he couldn’t even see the fires of Alaska through the window anymore.

“Please, we can help!” They had crossbows, other weapons, the advantage of a Berg.

But then the worthless feeling Isaac had when he accidentally stabbed himself rushed into his mind with doubt.

There’d be no helping Sadina and the others. But that only made him feel more anger.

Ximena blocked Isaac’s next punch to the Berg’s interior. “Let it burn. The site of the Maze was never holy.” She always seemed to say the worst things at the worst times.

“This is all your fault!” He let all his frustrations out. Her predictions, her second-sight, jinxing them about the Villas burning. . . . He couldn’t take it anymore.

Jackie took a step forward to get between him and Ximena, “Isaac . . .”

“How is this my fault?” Ximena tilted her head and took a step back.

“You’re constantly manipulating. You jinxed us, or cursed us, I don’t know .

. . you . . .” Isaac felt the same way he did whenever Sadina used to say something like, Don’t get stung by a jellyfish today , and then he did just the thing she warned him about.

He turned away from Jackie and Ximena and pleaded for Old Man Frypan to join him in the argument.

“We’ve got to go back there. Please . . .

” Frypan could convince Cian to turn around.

It wasn’t too late. They could still find their friends.

Old Man Frypan knocked his walking stick against his shoes. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, son.”

Isaac couldn’t believe his ears. “Sadina . . . Trish . . . Miyoko . . . Dominic . . .” And Minho, Orange, and Roxy. “ They need our help!”

Frypan shook his head. “I’m sure Minho steered the Maze Cutter right out of harm’s way. We don’t even know if they made it to Alaska. And we’re no good to them dead, now are we?”

Isaac turned to Jackie. “We have to go back there.” But Jackie had a pitiful, sad acceptance coating her face. “Jackie?”

“Isaac . . . that fire looked like the size of our island. It was huge.” She twisted the palm bracelet on her wrist. “I don’t want to walk into a war—we’d just get ourselves killed. They’re probably not even there, like Frypan said.”

The old man put an arm on Isaac’s shoulder. “Minho and Orange have that Remnant Nation in their bones, they’ll protect the others.”

Isaac shrugged Frypan off. “What about the Godhead . . . the Cure?” He pushed against the window, knowing he’d become the biggest fool on the Berg but unable to help himself.

“Is the cure for fire, more gasoline?” Ximena asked, but Isaac didn’t have the patience for her riddles any more. “Fire will cleanse the Earth . . .” she said, and then mumbled something else he didn’t understand.

Isaac gave up on Ximena, and it didn’t matter if Frypan and Jackie were afraid. Only one thing mattered. He focused on Cian and Erros, “Turn around. You said you’d take us to Alaska, and we need to get?—”

Cian held a hand up. “Not a chance. It’s a guaranteed death trap between the crazed Pilgrims and the Remnant soldiers.” He let out something that almost sounded like a laugh. “Look, we’re saving you from what you don’t understand. There’s one hundred years of war and hate unfolding down there.”

Cian steered the Berg over open water, but the fire inside Isaac kept burning. He couldn’t accept Cian’s ‘ Sorry we can’t, ’ when he knew that they could . They could find a safe spot to land and find their friends . . . and everything would be okay. It had to be okay.

Isaac launched his whole body at Cian and the controls. He startled him just enough to wrap his hands around the yolk and pull hard to the right. “We’re going back . . .” Isaac said through clenched teeth. “We have to find them . . .” On some level, he knew he’d completely lost his mind.

“Stop! Stop it, you idiot!” Erros yanked on his shirt and everyone dipped to the floor as the Berg leaned hard. Isaac struggled to hold on. His friends. He had to find his friends. He couldn’t leave them alone in that horrible fire.

“Isaac!” Jackie screamed as she slid along the Berg’s floor, all the way to the weapon pile.

“?Dios mío!” Ximena held on to a bar below the window.

Frypan held on to Erros as he grappled with Isaac. “Come on, boy, let it go . . .”

“Stop!” Cian shouted, right in Isaac’s ear, pulling the controls back.

Isaac finally crumpled to the floor of the Berg in defeat.

He wanted to scream or cry, but he just covered his head in his hands and did neither.

He had made a promise to Sadina to always be there for her from the sea to the sky, and now, flying high above the burning city of Gods, Isaac broke the only promise that had ever mattered to him.

The Berg righted itself and they flew on.

An army of Orphans was coming at them, hard and fast.

Orange fired shots from the balcony; Minho fired from the first floor.

As soldiers fell in the front lines, Minho shot at the next in line, but it was useless and he knew it.

No matter how skilled Orange and Minho were, and how well they worked together, the numbers were against them.

And the Orphan Army marched closer, with a hunger for war that only the Remnant Nation could have.

In the darkness outside the Villa, shots sailed in both directions, certainly.

But the barrage of bullets from the Remnant Nation would never end.

Even if every single islander were a trained soldier like him, they wouldn’t have stood a chance.

It wasn’t their war to fight. And winning wasn’t an option.

“There’s too many of them,” he whispered to himself between shots. In between the trees and atop the fallen snow, Orange and Minho had downed at least two dozen soldiers of the Remnant Nation, but twenty more were behind them, and twenty more to the left of them, and a dozen more to the right.

“Orange!” Minho couldn’t hear anything from upstairs but the fire of weaponry and incessant thud of bullets.

He kept at it, downing one after another of his ex-comrades.

Back when he was on the wall, shooting trespassers, he never thought about anything he saw in the scope except the distance between their eyes.

But now when he looked through the scope, one by one, even if he didn’t recognize them, and especially if he did , he felt a twinge of something he never felt when killing anyone before.

More than the gun kicking back and bruising his shoulder, he felt something in his chest.

Back on the wall he’d never had a pain in his chest when he shot rounds. He didn’t feel this heaviness when he shot the Crank-soldiers chained together on the coast. But with each shot he fired into a fellow Orphan, Minho felt a deep loss there, on the inside.

“Dammit!” He couldn’t stop them from advancing no matter how many he shot, but he also couldn’t stop himself.

One by one, he took away from each felled Orphan soldier the opportunity to find freedom, or family, or friends.

He ushered them to death instead. The pain in his chest amplified, knowing it was all over for him and Orange, the others.

The freedom they’d known the last several months, the time away from the clutches of the Remnant Nation—it was all vanishing as the army closed in on them.

Traitors . They’d be treated worse than any enemy that ever existed.

Glass windows blew out in the Villa.

Sadina and Trish screamed.

Minho braced himself to die a traitor’s death.

Erros pulled Isaac back to his feet and pushed him against the wall of the Berg. His neck flung back and his right leg hung in the air. “You’re crazy! You could have killed us!”

Isaac thought about apologizing, but the notion seemed absurd. He wasn’t sorry for trying to save his friends. Erros pushed Isaac harder against the Berg’s interior. Rivets jammed into his back.

“We’re okay.” Old Man Frypan tried to step between the two. “The boy’s emotions just got out of hand there. He’s okay, aren’t you boy?”

Isaac nodded. He wasn’t okay, not even close, but he didn’t want to get thrown out of the Berg in mid-flight. “Please, just land and drop me off, I need?—”

“You need your head checked!” Erros let go of him, dropping him to the floor. “Get in the back and stay there.”

Isaac crawled across the floor of the Berg until Jackie scooped him up. “Isaac, what the hell? I know you want to get to them, but it’d be great if we were alive, ya know?”

“I know.” He fell into Jackie’s lap in defeat. “We can’t lose everyone . . .” He didn’t have to finish his thought, but he knew that Jackie knew. Being kidnapped. Carson and Lacy dying. And now the fires. Isaac couldn’t take any more loss.

She placed her palm against Isaac’s chest. “I know. . . . We’ll figure it out.”

He took a deep breath, fought back the tears.

Cian spoke from the controls. “Look, the fires are spreading to other islands, but we’ll find one with enough cleared brush to land—and then we’re done with you people. You can find your friends or your death, whichever you come across first.”

“Fair enough,” Old Man Frypan said in defeat.

“I’m sorry,” Isaac whispered to Jackie. He’d never felt so helpless in his life. Jackie’s hand over Isaac’s chest helped to calm him until Ximena’s words pierced through.

“How big was the Maze Cutter ? Forty feet? Sixty?”

Erros leaned forward over the front controls. “That’s a sixty-footer.”

Isaac shot to his feet. They’d seen their ship, surely. “They made it to Alaska,” he told Jackie and they rushed to the window to look for themselves.