The world around her seemed to slow. Her field of vision tunneled.Winter wasn’t here. He didn’t make it.
No. She didn’t know that for sure. Stairs first. Her mind lurched back to her task. She was pushing her lungs past their abilities, and she felt them protest, her breaths turning rapid. Still, she hopped up the steps, then slammed herself against the door leading into the bridge and burst into the space.
Penelope Morrison was already here.
She stood with her arms behind her back, watching Sydney with a deadly calm. A few of her men stood around her, their guns pointed at Sydney. And behind Penelope was the bridge’s control board, the lights flickering on and off against the lengthening evening.
Stabs of pain shot through her chest, sharp enough to make stars explode across her vision. Sydney could see the phone behind the girl, her signal out to the rest of the world, her chance to alert Panacea to their location and their status.
But the phone’s line was already cut.
Her link to the outside world was severed.
“Shoot her,” Penelope said simply.
Sydney threw herself to the floor as the first shots fired. She reached into her pocket, found her pen, and shut her eyes. Then she slammed it against the ground.
Light exploded everywhere. Penelope flinched back with her hands up, partly shielded from the blinding glare by the bodies of her men. They cried out, their hands flying instinctively to their faces.
Sydney could see the glare even through the lids of her closed eyes. The world flashed a searing red. She knew it was bright enough to leave spots in her vision for a while.
Memorize every room you ever walk into,Niall had taught her.You never know when you’ll need to escape it blindfolded.
She didn’t have time to wait around for her vision to steady. Now she thought of where each person had stood and where their cries came from. She rushed toward the first guard—before he could blink the glare from his eyes, she hit him hard in the throat. He made a choked sound before crumpling. She rammed into the second, then used the momentum of his body to knock into the third.
He cracked his head on the floor and went limp.
The phone was out. Her mind raced, urging her to stop lest her lungs seize.
If you can’t be fast, be smart,she reminded herself.
The ship’s signal flares.
She felt the cold barrel of a gun press against her temple.
“Stubborn as me,” Penelope grumbled, her firing arm steady.
Where was Winter?
They’d caught him. He was dead.
The thought rushed through Sydney in a blitz of grief. She’d been on missions before where agents had been killed. But Winter—
A burst of rage hit her. Sydney jerked to one side and flung a fist out at the same time. She struck Penelope’s arm right as the gun fired.
The blast sounded like an explosion, so close that Sydney felt the heat of it against her skin.
Penelope swung the gun back toward her, but Sydney brought her head back and butted her as hard as she could.
Penelope stumbled backward. Sydney lunged at her, aiming to knock the gun out of the girl’s hand—but Penelope had already recovered and turned to one side with surprising speed. She looked dazed, though. The girl wasn’t trained for combat, not with that fragile body.
But that didn’t mean her guards weren’t still ruthless.
Already, Sydney saw the men recovering, two of them dragging themselves onto their feet and the third up and facing her. The spasms in her lungs pulled her breathing tight—once, twice, so acutely that she hunched forward for a second. She couldn’t keep fighting so many of them. Sydney turned her eyes toward the bridge’s windows.
“It’s too bad,” Penelope said to her as she circled in an attempt to get closer to an exit. “I think we could have been friends.”
“And why’s that?” Sydney shot back, her voice thin with pain.
