The other guard runs toward me now. I manage to get my hands on the gun, but the first man’s leg kicks up at me.Better to let the gun go instead of falling. The thought flashes through my head and I snap backward, giving up on grabbing the weapon. I race toward the entrance.
But I’m weaker than normal right now, and my swinging of the chair has sapped more of my energy than I thought. I stumble in my steps.
One of the guards catches up to me and points a gun at me. Gritting my teeth, I thrust the chair at him. The chair leg hits him in the face—just enough time for me to whirl and dart out the door. I’m temporarily in the open.
Running—nowthatI can do. The hall before me is long and narrow, cutting through several rooms, and I race down it. At the end of the hall stand a couple of guards who don’t yet realize I’m coming. I won’t be able to go around the bend, but there’s a window against this wall. The first window I’ve seen.
The guards at the end of the hall turn toward me for the first time. Behind me, the others let out shouts. A bullet pings near my leg.
My breath runs shallow. The lack of water holds me back. Spots appear in my vision as I go, but I force myself to push back against it all.
As I reach the second set of guards now trained on me, I slide against the marble and turn my feet at the last instant. I lunge for the window, my bloody hands nearly slipping against the windowsill, but they catch, and I’m swinging myself through the window and out of the hall.
One glance out this window tells me that this building is entirely underground. High ceilings rise multiple floors over me. The complex is sprawling. And far ahead, I see what looks like a construction site and part of a large, circular machine.
Eden. My heart lurches. The guards had said he was working on somesite. Was that where it was?
It’s all I have time to see. Then I’m twisting my body up, myboots pushing off against the windowsill and propelling me up toward the roof. My hands catch the edge of the roof and pull me up. I land in a firm crouch. Below me, I can hear shouts coming from inside. A spotlight starts to sweep across the estate.
This must be just one of Hann’s many hideouts. How many other places does he have? I duck behind a chimney as the spotlight sweeps close. My eyes narrow. As if bred out of years of muscle memory, my body knows exactly how to avoid the light, thinks it’s in Batalla Hall again and trying to find a way out. Thinks it’s on the Colonies’ airfield again and searching for a way to get close to their parked fighter jets.
I dart across the roofs. The construction site nears.
Then a bullet scrapes the roof nearest me. It misses me—but it chips the roof tiles hard enough to shatter them into fragments. My boot catches in just the wrong way against the breaking tiles.
I slip.
My hands scramble to grab the edge of the roof, but they’re too slippery with blood. I tumble off and to the ground.
Immediately, I try to scramble up again, but now a guard has reached me.
A Republic soldier, seizing me as a bullet shatters my knee. My scream, hoarse with rage and grief.
The memory is like a flint in me, lighting up the dark. A vicious growl rumbles in my throat, and I whirl on the guard, catching him hard in the jaw. I hit him once, twice—
—and then my strength gives way again, and I fall, dizzy from the exertion.
The guard stands over me. Several others rush to join him. I look back down to the ground and realize that I’m not sweating at all. There’s no water left in me.
That’s when I hear one of them say something above me that I swear I must have hallucinated.
“No,” one of the guards says to the others. “Let him go.”
“Hann’s order just came in. We’re to take him back up to the surface.”
I look up, thinking that maybe my weakness has left me too delirious to think straight. They’re letting me go.
I must be dreaming.
But then they’re taking me by the arms and dragging me up and throwing something dark across my eyes. I struggle with all the strength I have left. I’m misunderstanding what they’re saying, I tell myself. That’s the only way this makes sense. They’re not going to let me go. Hann has ordered them to kill me instead.
But I wait for the bullet through my head and it doesn’t happen. My feet drag against the floor. My consciousness is flickering in and out now. I can’t even tell when I’m awake and when I’m gone because, in this suffocating darkness, it’s all the same.
Eden. I have to find where they’re keeping him. My mind struggles to remember the path we’re taking.
I don’t know when they drag me into what seems to feel like an elevator. All I can do is try to remember how long we’re in it.Five seconds. Fifteen. Thirty.
My mind starts to fade. The guards’ voices above me are still talking, barking sharp orders at one another, but I can’t tell what they’re saying anymore.
