"It's active!" another called back.
"Shit," Sin breathed, pulling his second gun. "We need to make a gap!"
As one, both he and Caleb stood, firing with weapons in both hands. Rissa couldn't see, but she heard the sounds of feet running amid the bangs. Then there were harder thumps as if bodies were dropping.
Her heart was hammering, but she had to keep her head down. The concrete was solid, and there had to be at least two feet of dirt inside it. That made it a viable berm no bullet would get through. As long as she kept her head low, she'd be ok, right? At least she hoped she would, and yet Sin didn't seem to agree—or Caleb.
They looked like heroes standing like that. Sin's exo-armor was molded to his body. Caleb's trench coat flared out behind him with each movement. The two men were so completely different, and yet they were fighting back, standing bravely like something from a movie.
Until Caleb simply dropped.
Rissa's hands flew to her mouth, but there was a pool of red growing under his head. The man's eyes were open, and there was a hole just above his left brow. Dead. She knew he was, and yet her mind refused to accept it. She simultaneously wanted to rush toward him and curl up behind the flowerbed, too shocked to know what to do—so she locked Sin's orders to stay in place.
"Rissa?" he called.
She couldn't pull her eyes away from Caleb. "He's dead."
"I know, Princess, but we need to go." He'd stopped shooting somewhere in there, but she hadn't even noticed. When he crouched down beside her, however, she managed to pull her eyes away from Caleb's body and look at Sin. "Stay with me, Riss," he begged.
She nodded. "Is it safe to move?"
He grabbed her hand, pulling her up. "Yeah, it's time to run again."
She scrambled to her feet, not even trying to be graceful. Sin was only a step behind her, pointing back towards the exit, so that was the way she ran.
"Get away from the building," he yelled. "I think they set a?—"
The sound and the impact hit simultaneously. She felt her feet leave the ground, and then it all came crashing back too fast for her to process. After that, there was only darkness.
Chapter Forty-Five
The wind was ripped from Sin's lungs as the oxygen in the air burned, the sound ringing in his ears long after it was over. He'd hit the concrete. He didn't remember falling, but he'd been slung at least ten feet, one of those decorative concrete boxes stopping his body. Everything was dark, but a few yards in front of him, a still form in blue cloth lay crumpled on the ground.
"Rissa?" he called, crawling toward her. He couldn't hear anything except the ringing. Not even his own voice. "Riss! Damn it, Rissa, I can't hear you!"
She didn't move. Shaking his head, he tried to find his feet, but the world was spinning, so he dropped back to his hands and knees. She shouldn't be lying like that. Something was wrong.
Which was when he remembered the punks in the security room of the station. Belatedly, Sin looked around, trying to identify where he was. Unfortunately, all of his landmarks were gone. Over there was a pile of rubble. Beside him was a mound of dirt. On the other side were mangled bars of metal—the tracks. Whipping his head from side to side, he couldn't quite tell where he was, but one thing was clear.
Nothing else was moving.
Sin aimed for the jumble of blue cloth. That was all that mattered, and she was further from the blast than him, but she wasn'tmoving.Something didn't look right, but he refused to accept it, so he kept crawling. He would not give up on her. Not now. Not when she was so close to finally being free!
He made it almost to her side before he realized it was her hair he was seeing. The hood had been slung away from her face, leaving only the veil still attached, and only barely. He crawled the last step and shook her, but she didn't respond.
"Don't be dead," he begged her. "Please, baby, don't die on me."
Fuck her modesty. He yanked the veil away from her face with one hand, pulling off his glove with the other, and pressed his fingers to her throat. A slow thrumming beat against his hand. She was alive. He was so relieved a laugh escaped, the sound muffled yet audible in his own ears. With each second, the ringing lessened as he watched Rissa's chest rise and fall. She was breathing. She had a heartbeat. She was alive. He didn't even stop to think about the carnage behind them.
"Hey." He shook her again, but when she didn't respond, he reached up to pat her face, and paused.
Her black hair pooled on the ground like spilled ink. Delicate silver circles peeked through it like ornaments against the side of her head, but that wasn't what shocked him. It was her face.
"Rissa," he said again, leaning over her. He wanted to see what she looked like with her eyes open.
She slowly lifted her lids. "What happened?"
That silver gaze landed on him and Sin had never seen anything more beautiful in his life. Her lips were cracked and pale. Her skin was pallid. Beneath all of that was the most beautiful woman he'd ever imagined. He felt his heart stumble in his chest as he realized that all this time, the woman he'd grown so fond of wasn't simply brilliant. She was fuckingperfect.
