The explosives genius looked her way. “You’re an assassin. Can tell by the way you move. Kind of sneaky.”
“Was. I was an assassin. I’m trying to…retire.”
The girl’s brows rose. “No one leaves the Guild.”
“That’s why we need your help. We need you to lure the assassins out of their headquarters. Then I’m going to sneak in and steal one of their prized possessions to buy my freedom.”
Lala whistled long and loud. “Ballsy, girl, ballsy. I like it.”
Suddenly, a deep rumble echoed through the cavern. All three of them froze.
The ground began to tremble. A cloud of dust sprinkled down on them from the roof of the cavern.
All three of them looked upward.
“Oh, shit,” Lala said.
Rocks startedto rain down around them. One glanced off Ria’s shoulder. “We need to go. Now.”
Zayn nodded.
Lala shook her head. “I can’t leave my friends.” She took off back toward the center of the cave.
“Shit.” Ria sprinted after the girl. What friends did she have back there?
A huge boulder slammed down a few feet in front of her. Ria lunged to the right.
“Ria!”
“I’ll get her.” Ria yelled back at Zayn. “Wait at the entrance.”
She ran after Lala who was tearing boxes apart near her makeshift lab. More rocks crashed down.
“Lala, we have to go.”
“I can’t leave without them. They’re my family.”
That’s when Ria saw them. A small insect-like robot and the metal ball from earlier hovering above the first one. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Lala snatched the ball out of the air. She was reaching for the other when Ria looked up.Shit. She dived, taking Lala with her, both of them rolling across the ground.
The jagged boulder slammed into the bench.Boom.
Explosives ignited. Sparks flew, radiating out like fireworks. Ria felt something singe her cheek and smelled her hair burning.
“Fuzzy!” Lala still had the ball tucked under her arm and was scrambling to reach the insect-shaped robot. She grabbed the machine’s leg, but his body was trapped under a rock.
“Lala, leave it.”
“No.” The girl looked up, tears shimmering in her eyes. “They’re all I have. The only things I care about.”
Ria was frozen, staring into the face of a young girl. Lala might act tough and adult, but she was a child. One who was alone, yet had carved a life for herself and had managed to survive. Ria looked at the metallic arm of the robot. She’d never had toys. Nothing that had been hers. Nothing that had given her comfort.
She scrambled over a rock and then hefted the smaller one on top of Fuzzy upward.
Lala snatched up the robot and hugged it. “Thank you.”
“Now, let’s go.”
