Angel didn’t show them what had happened days and weeks after—the death and famine, the raids. They already knew all about that. There was just one more thing they didn’t know.
The Remedy did this, she told them. This, and much more. He dropped bombs, unleashed a virus. He tried to wipe all traces of humans off the earth.
The field of people was silent. They looked up at her with damp, desperate eyes, asking her what to do.
We have to fight, she answered.
Angel winced as a bolt of pain shot through her temples and a vision flashed behind her eyes—a split-second glimpse of this same field, littered with the wounded and the dead. She knew she was leading many of these kids to their deaths, but she had no choice.
The world doesn’t have very many people left, but it has us. You’ve survived. But is just surviving enough?
“No!” a few eager kids shouted, but others still looked uncertain.
The Remedy drops bombs and builds superhuman androids to do his dirty work, but he’s never gone to battle, Angel said, her words gaining force. The Remedy stole our planet, murdered our families, and destroyed our homes, but he’s never seen our faces. Are you going to let him walk away?
“NO!” the crowd roared in unison.
Angel fluttered down until she was just a few feet off the ground. She wanted to see the dirt on their faces. She wanted to be able to meet their eyes. All she had was these kids, and all they had was her, and whatever they’d grabbed from the rubble. Her fighters were armed with barbecue forks, baseball bats, broken crutches, lengths of rusted rebar, pitchforks, tree limbs, junior archery sets… their bravery humbled her.
“The Remedy thinks he has won,” she said aloud, her voice strident and clear. “But he can’t see the future. I can. And I swear, if you follow me, we will see him fall.”
Right there, Kate fell to her knees in the dirt, her dark hair hanging as she bowed her head. Beside her, Ratchet knelt as well. One by one the others followed, until over a thousand kids were kneeling before Angel, ready to serve.
79
ALL I’D WANTED was to fight the Remedy. But as the troops were finally moving out, I was pushing backward against the tide of bodies, searching for blonde hair and white feathers.
I needed to talk to her first.
“Angel!” I yelled, elbowing my way through. “Ange!” I grabbed her hand and turned her around to face me. “What was that?” I demanded. I could still see the imprint of the explosion behind my eyelids, a sudden camera flash. I felt the heat, as real as if it were flaying my own skin. “Tell me what that was.”
In the middle of all this chaos, with people bumping past us and shouting directions, Angel had the stillness of a monk.
“You know what it was, Max. The day the sky caught fire—it was Armageddon.”
“But that doesn’t tell me anything!” I said, more frustrated than ever. Everyone was acting like Angel had given all the answers, but all I had were more questions. “How do you know it was the Remedy? And what about the bombs, and the Horsemen?” I was shaking her now. “How do you know what you saw is even real?”
“Because I know!” Angel shouted, wrenching free of my grasp. “Because I saw it, just like I saw Fang’s death—before it happened!” She looked up at me with watery blue eyes, and in that moment, I finally saw Angel for what she really was.
Not just a psychic or a mind reader. A prophet.
She was also a seven-year-old who’d been carrying around the most terrible secret in the world, all by herself. I noticed the ragged cuts around her fingernails where she’d torn the skin away, the dark circles around her eyes, and realized how much I had failed her.
“Oh, honey,” I said. When I put my hands lightly on the outsides of her arms, she tensed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because,” she said, her small bow lips quivering, “you never wanted to listen.”
“Of course I—” An image of Fang’s face flashed in my mind, and I winced.
Fair enough.
“I’m listening now,” I said gently.
We walked to the edge of the clearing, away from the rest of the kids, and Angel sat back down on the stump and pulled her knees up to her chest.
“The visions started after they altered my eyes at the school.”
My chest tightened, remembering that awful time after Paris. We’d all believed Angel was dead for weeks before finding her in one of Jeb’s corrupt labs.