For the first time in years, I’m not enclosed by concrete or steel or someone else’s plan.
I don’t celebrate.
Celebration gets you killed.
Marin steps out beside me, eyes wide, chest rising fast. She presses a hand over her mouth like she’s afraid the sound of breathing might draw bullets.
“Holy—” She stops herself. Swallows. “We made it.”
I don’t answer.
I look at the green.
Feel the ground with my hands.
I hug the first tree I come to anyway.
The ravine slopes downward on one side, sharp rock giving way to mud and fallen leaves. Trees crowd in close—dense enough to hide movement, sparse enough to offer lines of sight if you know how to read them.
I scan automatically.
Left: rocky outcrop, climbable but exposed.
Right: tree line, thicker cover, slower movement.
Behind us: nothing visible—but the tunnel mouth yawns open, dark and patient.
“They’ll find this,” Marin says quietly.
“Yes,” I answer. “Eventually.”
They always do. The trick is deciding what they find first—and what they never see at all.
“So what now?” she asks.
I meet her gaze.
Now, I don’t wait to be hunted.
I choose the terrain.
“We move,” I say. “But not straight.”
I pull the guard’s jacket tighter around myself, adjust thecollar, hide my face. I’m glad Marin was allowed to keep her shoes—and that I was able to take the guard’s.
Then I tear a strip from the jacket lining and toss it into the tunnel entrance, letting it snag where it’s easy to spot.
Breadcrumb.
Malenkov taught his hunters to follow certainty.
I give them confidence wrapped in lies.
We angle downslope, slow and deliberate, leaving shallow tracks where mud wants to keep secrets. I snap a low branch and scatter pine needles across our trail.
Noise.
Confusion.
