I froze, icing over. Shade stopped with me, turning back.
I suddenly felt light, but that was just the effect of my blood pressure dropping like a stone.
Fighting dizziness, I spoke over my shoulder, spoke toward the door. “No, please don’t,” I begged.
“I can save you from him,” Bridgebane said, his voice tinny through the wall, “but you have to give me something to go on. My position is not a given. If I go, I can’t protect you—or Starway 8.”
My stomach roiled. I always knew I would do whatever I had to for this place. My whole life was tied up in it. My past. My present. My future. There was nothing that mattered to me more.
“Mareeka or Surral,” he repeated. “Who can the orphanage live without?”
Neither. They were the heart and soul of Starway 8.
Tears welled in my eyes, and I screamed, slamming my fist against the tunnel wall.
Shade spun fully around in the tight space and took my face in his hands. I saw the fear in his eyes, illuminated by the low light that ran along the metal shaft.
He shook his head. “No. No, baby. You stay with me.”
My breathing turned fast and pounding.
“Just give him some blood,” Shade said, still holding my head. “That’s what he wants, right?”
I nodded, swallowing hard.
“Blood exchange,” Shade called through the wall. “Ten days from now at the Grand Temple on Reaginine. No goons. Six bags of her blood, and you leave the women here alone.”
Shade had taken over the negotiation, but he still looked at me for confirmation. It was my blood, after all.
I nodded. What else could I do?
But the Overseer had the formula. He would make the enhancer again.
But now…we had it, too.
A clash of monsters rang before my eyes. The spray of blood I saw in the future sickened me.
“They’ll be unstoppable,” I whispered. “They have this formula… It makes this super soldier stuff.”
Shade swept his thumbs over my cheekbones. His eyes searched mine. “But if they don’t have you, can’t you make your side unstoppable, too?”
“But what does the wrath of two unstoppable forces make?”
Even in the shadows of the ventilation shaft, I saw the grimness that came over his features. “I guess we’ll find out.” He turned again. “And I think I just joined the fight.”
“Be there, Quin,” Bridgebane ordered. “Or I come back here, and one of them goes to Hourglass Mile.”
“I’ll be there,” I growled loudly. After I delivered the enhancer to the rebel leaders. My uncle had just forced my decision. I couldn’t destroy the rebellion’s chance of making super soldiers while handing over that same weapon to the Overseer.
“And Ganavan! I’m transferring her price to your head. Don’t get too attached, Quin. He won’t be around for long. And the bounty hunter had better keep his hands to himself!”
I snorted. As if that man had the right to… What? Parent me?
Bridgebane shot at the door. The bullets didn’t come through, of course, or even ricochet off. They stuck, because we had really cool walls.
Chapter 28
“Not that way!” I criedwhen Shade took my three-second breather as incentive to strike out first again. He pitched forward and started sliding down a near-vertical shaft.
