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But can a story like mine ever have a happy ending? Does somebody like me ever deserve one?
reoccurring sentiment alex expresses at the beginning of each book: wonder if the pattern will continue through to the last book.
“Not if my parents hide me,” he said. “Or if we all go away together. They’d do that, I know they would. They’d just get in the car and we could all drive somewhere nice, somewhere out of the way. Yours would do the same. We’re their kids.”
Zee seemed to read my mind. “Well, mine would. You could come too; they’d like you.” The last few words were so quiet they were almost unrecognizable. Zee’s chin slowly dropped until it hit his chest, his breathing growing heavier and steadier. “Dream on, Zee,” I said gently. “We’re on our own now.” I lifted a hand and rested it on his shoulder, shaking him gently.
No, not empty … They were full of darkness, not just shadow but something heavy and substantial that thrashed and spilled inside them like they were two cups of oil. I looked at Zee and felt as though all the goodness in the world had been extinguished.
There was a rush of light so bright that it seared through my eyelids and burned into the flesh of my brain. At the same time a sharp crack of noise seemed to reduce my eardrums to pulp. The world disintegrated, spinning furiously as my senses were ravaged. I tried to move but it was like running inside a spinning globe—every step cartwheeling me into oblivion. Before I knew it I felt myself thump into something, sprawling onto the ground.
every description this author writes is so brilliantly done ohhh my gosh
“Twocking, TWOC, taking without consent. I’d boosted a few cars. Nothing serious, just here and there. We’d take them for a spin around the park near my house, after dark.” “And here’s me thinking you were one of the good guys,” I said, the idea of Zee committing any sort of crime throwing me. He just grinned.
Zee pulled his head back in, his hair wild and his cheeks blazing from the wind, then turned and grinned at us both.
“Punch it!” I yelled. “Get us somewhere safe. We need to lose them and ditch this thing.” “What do you think I’m trying to do, genius?” he retorted, steering around a station wagon hard enough to rock it on its wheels before taking us up to eighty. “Can’t escape the eye in the sky, though.”
Of course, the logical part of my mind knew that the train lines wouldn’t pass anywhere near the bowels of Furnace. The prison was too deep, still a mile or so beneath us. But I could feel its touch on my skin, filthy fingers pawing at me, pulling at me.
ptsd
Now it stood empty, the quiet unnerving, weighted, as though we’d caught it doing something it shouldn’t have been.
Had we really just been outside? Had that really been the sun? Right now my mind was too ravaged to be able to give a straight answer.
The sight of them on the lines made me remember Zee. I scrambled across the concrete on my knees, peering over the edge of the platform to see a motionless shape below. The lower part of his face was a mask of blood, but I could tell by the pale blue eyes it was Zee. They were open, and they weren’t blinking. He must have hit the electrified rail. I knew it. For a second I didn’t feel anything, then a blinding flash of white light popped in the center of my head, expanding hot and fast like a supernova. Not him, I screamed inside. Not him, not Zee. NOT ZEE! With each plea the flare of the
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my eyes had teared up by the time i reached the "NOT ZEE!" and i was full crying once it reached the sentence before "The body that was moving." then my tears were of joy but basically this affected me very strongly
“Anyone know where we’ll come out?” Simon asked as we traveled slowly toward the level above. “Twofields,” Zee said unhelpfully. He noticed we were all looking at him and added: “Um, it’s in the financial district, I think. By the banks and all that. I’ve never been around here, sorry.”
Zee is peak
“That looks bad,” said Simon from behind me. “Is it real?” I thought it was a stupid question, but I could see why Simon had asked it. I’d seen this city attacked a hundred times—blown up in films, invaded in computer games, blazing on the cinema screen—that it was easy to believe what was taking place in front of me was make-believe, nothing but special effects and acting. Except that wasn’t how the news worked.
They couldn’t be berserkers because I knew one of them. He was called Bodie. I’d talked to him no more than a few hours ago, just before we’d made our bid for freedom up the elevator shaft. He’d been a boy then, not a wild, slavering beast hammering across the hot tarmac too fast for a human, hands like claws held out to our throats, eyes promising not just violence but a painful and bloody death.
My ears began to ring, and for an absurd moment I swore I could feel that building searching for me, like a giant eyeball scouring the city. The ringing grew more intense, unbearable, like a high-powered drill working into the flesh of my brain.
and perched on the throne of its sloping roof a monstrous, merciless creature that howled into the flames, claiming victory over the world.
Kinda hope we never come face to face with alfred furnace in a way....
edit: finished the book. oh my . love this book
I’d been here once before, years ago on a school trip—memories of cold stone, uncomfortable pews, and beating up a kid called Andrew Spragg in the shadows behind the pillars until he’d handed over the money he’d brought to buy a souvenir. I felt my cheeks redden, wondering—not for the first time or the last—whether I even deserved to be saved from this nightmare, whether I should have just stayed in Furnace, accepted my punishment for who I used to be.
“Come on,” said Zee. “It looks safe enough.” “Yeah, like that’s all you’re concerned about,” Simon replied with a smug smile as he followed. He put on a falsetto, clasping his hands to his heart. “Oh, Lucy, wait for me, I’ll look after you.” Zee turned and scowled, the blood rushing to his face. And, incredibly, we were all laughing as we entered the vaulted doors of St. Martin’s.
Cute but i was offput when lucy was introduced because i knew stuff like this was going to happen
“Are you children of God?” he asked. I almost burst out laughing, managing to bite my tongue before it erupted. The air was thick with incense, the smell making me sleepy, sitting on my eyelids and pressing them down. “You may rest here, if you are. Each of His flock is welcome.”
She looked at Zee and offered him the ghost of a smile, which almost knocked him off his feet.
Frown
Simon pushed through into the gents, holding the door open for me. There were two urinals and I took one, surprised when he squeezed himself in next to me. “Um…” I said, suddenly self-conscious. “You want me to use the cubicle?” he asked as he went, grinning that lopsided grin of his. “Too late. Come on, don’t be shy. Unless…” he leaned in even closer. “The warden didn’t experiment on your you-know-what, did he?”
At this the man’s eyes—so wide, so motionless they could have belonged to a corpse—rotated in their dry sockets toward her. There was no expression on his face, but beneath that, in the way his jaw muscles danced, the way the tendons in his neck bulged, I could see a fury of insanity and delusion fit to burst. “No,” he said, “I am more than that. I am God’s servant, called here today to lead His flock into the new world.
The image was still there, the tower layered over reality like a transparency. And I saw it again, that creature perched on the spire, a beast that could have been a devil, or maybe a god, baying at the flames, preparing to unleash a nightmare upon the world.
Zee came and sat next to me, his head in his hands. It took me a moment to notice he was crying. “It’s never going to end, is it?” he said, wiping his face with his sleeve. I slung my good arm over his shoulders, feeling them heave. Before I knew it I had tears of my own, Zee’s frustration and fury contagious. He lashed out at the pew in front, his bony fists not budging it. “It’s never going to end. Not now.” I wanted to reassure him, calm him, but what could I say?
The sensation of being so high—almost as far above the ground as we had once been below it—made my heart sing. It was so powerful that it took me a while to make sense of what I saw. At first I thought I was hallucinating again, Alfred Furnace filling my head with terrifying visions. But this was no nectar-inspired nightmare. The golden glow came not from the sun but from a thousand fires. The entire city was burning.
it was there, somewhere, the house I’d grown up in, the house where my parents lived. If I’d had a telescope and a little more time then I’d have been able to find it. I wondered if they were there, sitting on the worn-out green velvet sofa in the living room, watching the news on the tiny television Mom had won at work in a Christmas raffle. I wondered if they thought I would be trying to get home, trying to find them. And in that instant I wanted nothing more than to do just that, to get home, to sit between their feet on the dusty carpet like I’d done as a kid, my dad ruffling my hair and
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He switched his right hand for his left and I shook it, realizing that it was the first time I’d ever done so. His hand was small and warm, but strong. And I never wanted to let it go.
I wondered whether they’d make it through this, whether it would bring them together. I pictured them in ten years’ time, or twenty, married, living miles away from here. I wondered whether they’d tell their kids stories about me, about what happened here. I hoped so.
i hate when things like this are mentioned with like. 14-17 y/o characters LEAVE THEM BE !!
Zee had his head ducked down, making him look even smaller than he already was. Right then he didn’t look as if he’d survive for more than a minute out there in Furnace’s new playground. I almost set off after him, but Simon grabbed my arm, knowing me too well.
“Furnace?” I asked, wondering when the trap would be sprung, when the guards would start shooting. But they didn’t even seem tense, leaning against the pillars or resting on the reception desk as if this was their day off. “You know they’ll be coming for you,” I spat, fear growing into anger. “The army. They know you guys are behind this now.” The blacksuit shrugged then shook his gun, gesturing toward the bank of elevators that sat behind the desk. “He’s waiting,” he repeated. “Penthouse.”
Oh my god im so excited....... Oughhh
I was gripped by panic, wanted more than anything else to tear off this impostor’s skin, to flay the flesh from my bones just so I wouldn’t have to feel its filthy touch. But I closed my eyes, gripped the handrail and tried to breathe—in, out; in, out—as deeply as I could, until the moment passed.
