“Because loss drives you, too.”
There was no disdain or taunt in her voice. Only genuine empathy. Somehow, Penelope could sense it in Sydney, the wounds that she worked so relentlessly to fill. Their conversation before the concert flashed back to her. Maybe people like them were always drawn to each other.
The first of Penelope’s guards lunged at Sydney. This time, when she darted away from his hit, he pivoted with her and caught her on the jaw with a glancing blow.
Stars exploded in her vision, and pain lanced through her jaw. She whirled, knocking against the bridge’s console board.
Sydney didn’t try to attack him again. She was running out of time and strength. Instead, she scrambled up onto the board—her hand found the sliced phone and she slammed it against the window as hard as she could.
Once. Twice.
The glass shattered. As the guard reached for her leg, she pulled herself through the opening, ignoring how the broken glass slashed her hand as she went.
“I know what you’re feeling,” she called back at Penelope, her voice straining.
Penelope’s jaw tightened, offended. “You don’t.”
“I do.” She met the girl’s eyes steadily. “And this isn’t going to earn you the peace you want.”
“And did you find your peace?” she said.
“I left my nightmares behind me.”
Penelope turned her head up at Sydney. She looked sad. “I think you just brought them with you.”
Then Sydney was on the outside of the bridge and sliding down to the deck. Cold wind streamed through her hair.
She hit the floor and scrambled up quickly enough to see Penelope turn back inside. The girl must know that Sydney was heading for the signal flares—and sure enough, Penelope burst out of the bridge’s door and headed toward its back side, where the signal flares were likely kept in a watertight container.
She was going to destroy them.
Penelope’s guards rounded the bridge and charged at her. She struggled up to her feet—but one of them had already gotten hold of her leg. In a single move, she was swept off her feet. Her chin hit the edge of the bridge window, and her vision went blurry for an instant from the impact. She kicked out blindly.
Now the man swung her, sweeping her across the floor. She gasped as she felt her ankle twist the wrong way. Her body went tumbling across the deck. Her lungs pulled taut—she was having real trouble breathing now. Instinctively, she rolled—and felt a bullet ping off the metal of the deck right next to where her face had been. The guard pressed the trigger down at her again—Sydney’s hands flew up in vain to her face.
The gun clicked empty this time. Out of bullets.
He snarled and lunged down for her.
Sydney kicked up with her good leg—her boot connected with hisgroin. The man’s eyes bulged; his entire body went stiff. Sydney kicked him again, this time striking him hard across the face. The light blinked out in his eyes, and he crumpled to the deck.
Sydney pulled herself up, gasping for air, her chest pain making her double over with each labored breath. She thought of a past mission where she’d been captured and trapped in a prison cell, where a guard had kicked her so viciously in the stomach that she’d felt like she was drowning. Her eyes swept across the grid towering around her, the silhouettes stark against the lengthening evening and the artificial lights that now flared up. No sign of Winter.
He was dead. The realization of Penelope’s earlier words to her now stabbed straight through her chest. The casual tilt of his face, the mischievous, sidelong grin he sometimes gave her.
He was gone. He must be.
Why the hell did she get attached to someone like him? Why did they have to take him away from his perfect life and put him in danger? What would they tell the world? His mother?
Would she care? Would she be relieved?
She never should have let him go. He was wounded. He never should have been climbing—
No time. No time. Sydney forced herself to her feet again, tearing her eyes away from the grid and back in the direction that Penelope had gone. A new, white-hot rage engulfed her. She ignored the agony from her throbbing ankle and started hobbling as fast as she could around the bridge. Her focus narrowed into a bright tunnel. Her breath wheezed loudly. Her lungs screamed for her to stop.
Contact Panacea. Contact the outside world.
Right as she reached the wall where the flares were located, her lungs finally reached their breaking point. They seized—and Sydney collapsed, struggling for air. She was lying in a prison cell again, gasping like a fish.
