The Fifth Healer

79.

Catching up to the ledge, I see she's jumped off the outer edge of the Kastro and landed across a narrow alley onto the roof of an apartment building. The apartment building is one story shorter than the Kastro, so she had to drop about ten feet. Ainsley appears to have cracked a piece of the red Spanish tile on landing, but jumps to her feet, unharmed.

I look back and see the Gnomons haven't made it to the roof yet. But I expect to see black suits appearing at any moment.

"Come on!" Ainsley calls up at me. "Go now! If they see you jump, they'll know where we went."

She's right. This is one of those rare circumstances, per our conversation earlier, where I actually would really, really like to have a second biological leg. Just for landing. Because I'm far more concerned about the prosthetic leg breaking than my real one. Wood is more fragile than bone.

I take a couple of steps back, run, and leap off the edge just as I hear the sound of Gnomons yelling on the roof behind me. I land briefly on my prosthesis and let my body crumple into a fire role into the slightly-upward slopping roof. The tiles make crunching noises as I roll over them. We slide our way carefully down the room and then drop over the side to balcony on a top floor apartment. The sliding glass door is wide open, a mistake I'm sure the family inside will never make again, not after two strangers tear through their living room, drawing screams from two small children playing on the floor and a mother folding laundry at the kitchen table.

We bound out their front door and down the steps and out into the narrow alley.

"Where to?" she asks.

"I say downhill."

Just then, a Gnomon turns the corner, not six feet away from us. She reaches for me but I roll out her grasp and take off down the alley, jumping around pedestrians, leaping stray cats, hopping down a small flight of stairs and taking a longer staircase with only leaps. Ainsley's two steps ahead. My legs and lungs burn. I worry I may pass out from the exhaustion. But what's the alternative? Getting caught? Spending thousands of years imprisoned as a husk underneath this city?

We race into the mass of spectators gathered along the final mile of the marathon that runs through the historic area of Athens, forcing us to slow to a walk. The Gnomon will be right behind us, but a crowd this thick will be easy to disappear in. I grab Ainsley's hand and cut sideways through the crowd. We hop the waist-high blockade at the edge of the course.

"Hey!" shouts a policeman in Greek. "Stop!"

The Gnomon hears the commotion and looks over to spot us as we dodge the runners struggling toward the finish line and then hurdle ourselves over the barricade on the other side, trying to disappear before she can cross the road. We work our way up the course, away from the finish, always staying within the crowd, trying to keep our heads down and catch out breath.

"What do we do now?" asks Ainsley, her voice loud to get over the cheering spectators.

"What do you want to do?" I ask.

"I want to help all those poor shriveled people trapped underground."

"We can't go back. Besides, what can we possibly do for them?"

She shakes her head. "I don't know."

As the crowd of spectators thins out along the course, we cross a street into a retail district of street-level shops and restaurants. Not tourist places, regular stores for regular people-a pharmacy, a small grocer, even a wig shop. I don't mention the wig shop, but I know she must notice it.

"The only thing we can do for them," I say, "is tell the Chronarchy. The governing body that oversees all the guilds."

"Where is the Chronarchy?"

I see someone wearing a black suit with a white tie up ahead. I pull Ainsley into a storefront. But it turns out to be just a guy in a suit. Not a Gnomon.

"It's in Rome," I say quietly.

"We have to go," she says. "Let's tell them what's going on here. It's gross and inhumane. There must be a better solution."

I can't help but chuckle.

"What is it?" asks Ainsley.

I shake my head.

"Tell me."

"It's just that-well, that's exactly what my parents had wanted me to do. Get evidence of the Guild's corruption, and take it to the Chronarchy."

"I guess you'll make them happy after all."

"I'm happier doing it with you."

She stops and grabs my arm. "But how will we get to Rome? We don't have any money. Or phones or passports or anything."

"You don't need a passport to cross borders in the EU zone. As for money, do you still have your quarter Eagle coin?"

Twenty-one minutes later, we are up four thousand euros (not a great price, but we're in a hurry), and we are on the subway toward the train station, where we will begin the journey to Rome.

"Can you imagine being one of those-those people?" asks Ainsley. "Sidenote, I don't like husk. Dehumanizing. And reminds me too much of corn."

"It's horrifying. A fate far worse than death," I say as we get off the subway at the train station. The words feel like an echo.

A fate far worse than death.

Did my parents use that phrase?

"And just imagine," says Ainsley, "that was what I had wanted to-"

The color drains from her face.

"What?" I say.

She's frozen speechless.

"Ainsley, what's wrong?"

"My hair is in that vial in the drawer," she says. "Tomorrow at noon, I won't just be healed and stripped of my power. I will be committing narcisside. I'll be cursed with ammortality."