The guard takes two steps forward, and I realize who it is. It’s the same guy who’s been bringing us our meals. The same one who’s been watching us nervously since we arrived. He’s had time to study us. And maybe that can help us, now.
“You have to let us go,” I try, soft.
“I can’t,” he says, still hoarse. He’s gripping his gun so tightly, I’m scared his trigger finger will tighten as well. His eyes flick down to the crumpled forms of his fellow soldiers on the floor at our feet, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he registers the sight of blood.
Mia speaks beside me. “You have to.” She doesn’t sound nervous, though a second ago there was utter horror in her expression.There’s no shake to her voice. She sounds as calm as if she were issuing an order she has every right to give.
The guard’s eyes are so wide I can see their whites. He has to clear his throat before he speaks, his gun swinging around to point at her. It takes everything I have not to do something stupid. Not to grab her and yank her behind me, as if I could protect her from a weapon like that.
But she’s not focusing on me right now. She’s staring at the man holding her at gunpoint. “You saw the shuttle,” she says, quiet and calm. “That’s not space junk. You know something’s not right here.” She tilts her head at Dex and Atlanta, keeping her hands still. “You know something’s not right withthem.”
The gun drifts across toward Dex and Atlanta. He’s listening to her, but he’s certainly not ready to lower it.
“The cameras are off,” she says, still calm. “That’s because we’re meant to leave. Not officially, they can’t do that—but someone up there wants us to get out and stop what’s about to happen. It also means nobody’s going to see, when you lower your gun and let us go.”
“The stuff they’re saying online about all this … it’s insane.” He shakes his head, but it doesn’t seem to put her off.
“You need to let us go now,” she says quietly. “This is what’s meant to happen.”
He gazes at her then, and I don’t know what passes between them. She doesn’t blink, doesn’t waver, but instead lets him see every ounce of her conviction. She knows that some part of him, deep inside, a part that operates on instinct, is deciding whether to trust her.
I don’t know how she projects such calm, such purpose, in a moment like this. I do know that all the years I spent growing up—in classrooms, at black tie college dinners, in the damn water polo pool—she spent on the streets, learning how to bluff, how to keep herself intact. All of it practice for this one moment in which she has to talk our way out of here.
Because if she can—no exaggeration—perhaps she’ll save the world. At the very least, she’ll keep a glimmer of hope alive. And right now, that glimmer, that spark, is everything.
Suddenly the air goes out of him, and he lowers his gun.
She nods, as though he’s pleased her, then turns away to swipe Mink’s card across the security pad again. The door slides back open and the four of us turn to run through it. The skin between my shoulder blades is twitching, waiting for a bullet, but ten seconds later the door hums closed.
We’re outside, alone, in the night air.
My gaze sweeps the compound we find ourselves in. It’s dimly lit—still not observed by cameras, I hope—and surrounded by a chain-link fence. This place really is in the middle of nowhere. To get here, we followed a rough trail that wound its way along the length of the valley, not another building in sight.
The whole of the compound is inside that fence. Beyond the lights I know all we’ll find is a swath of grassland, mountains rising on either side. No easy way to escape, but in the darkness … maybe there’s some way we can lose Atlanta and Dex. Replays of the way they took out three armed soldiers between one breath and another flash in front of my eyes like afterimages burned into my retinas.
We’ve got to get away from them.
Atlanta draws a breath as if to speak, then goes quiet. She lifts a hand, and when I follow where she points, I can make out what must be the vehicle pool. There are rows of cars and trucks under a sheltering roof, which is supported by a thick column at each corner.
But it’s not the vehicle pool that’s caught her attention. It’s the truck near the front of it. A huge flatbed, with our shuttle strapped onto the back of it, a tangle of cords flung over it like a nest of overgrown vines. The truck’s engine is still running, a low, bass rumble that rolls across the compound. And when it shuts off, the silence is keen.
As my eyes adjust to the dark, they tell me there are three or four IA personnel over there, doing some kind of shuffle with the cars, moving this one forward and that one backward, presumably trying to access one they need that isn’t in the front row.
Mia’s voice is barely more than a breath. “Those cars—” she begins.
But she gets no further. An urgent siren starts up, blasting its wail across the yard, and one by one, the floodlights begin to turn on with a softboom, boom, boom.They’re mounted along the roof of the buildings and the edge of the fence.
We press ourselves back into the sliver of shadow at the edge of the building, as the vehicle personnel go running past us to report for duty.
This time, Mia has to shout to be heard over the sirens. “The keys must still be in those cars,” she yells.
I blink at her, then remember our discussion earlier. That we could be in Prague in a couple of days, if we could … “We can’t drive it,” I shout back.
But she’s already grabbing my hand and tugging me away from the shelter of the building. “We’ll have to ram the fence to get out. Hitting things is kinda the goal there. It’s not like Ilearnedto drive, but I know where the gas pedal is.”
“Let’s shift,” Dex shouts, and he and Atlanta are running past us, straight out into the light.
Mia hauls on my hand, and then we’re just a step behind them. Part of me wants to veer off, to let Dex and Atlanta escape without us, because I don’t want to spend a second longer in their company than we have to. But if we do that, we’ll almost certainly be caught again and put back in that cell, and this time they’ll make sure we don’t escape.
