She’s falling.
AN ARCTIC WIND WHIPS DEZ’Shair. She screams, but the sound disappears in darkness. Her arms swirl, seeking purchase, as dots of pale white light zing past her.
Seconds feel like centuries. Her feet pedal. Her stomach lodges in her throat. She looks below her, but there is nothing—so much horrifying nothing—as she tumbles faster, faster, down.
She’s always falling in her dreams. It’s her deepest fear. She wishes she was one of those people who got to fly in their dreams. Instead, she’s here, inside this waking nightmare, and it feels like she’ll be falling until the end of time.
Hopelessness swallows her. She thinks of her family. Will she see them again? Will she ever not be here, falling?
She closes her eyes and gets a sudden flash of memory: Asher. The day they met. A vision of him on his skateboard, levitating. Dez has tried not to think about Asher since she got to Acheron, because she’ll probably never see him again. Because her mind is full enough with other things she wishes she hadn’t ruined. Why is she thinking of him now?
Because it seemed, even when Asher was descending on the half pipe, like he knew how to fly.
Dez can’t fly. All she can do is—
Suddenly, something catches her. Someone. Strong arms cradle Dez in a warm, protective grip. She sees nothing in the darkness, but her downward velocity slows.
The arms fold Dez into a tucked position, cradling her head.
“Hold on!” Rafe shouts, and then—
THUD.
They strike a hard metal surface with a force that reverberates through Dez’s bones. Rafe rolls into the impact, still cradling Dez in his arms. Finally they come to a stop. She gasps for air. Her right shoulder and the right side of her face throb from the impact.
She turns to face him, catching her breath, near enough to one of the dots of light to finally see the face, so close to hers it’s almost touching.
“Rafe,” she breathes.
“Are you okay?”
“Where are we?” She can feel his heart hammering in his chest. Both their breaths come quickly, mingling in the frosty air. She puts her hand against his cheek, making sure this moment’s real. His skin is warm, a little stubbly. Her thumb a millimeter from his mouth.
Slowly Dez’s eyes adjust to the cavernous space around them. The room’s as long and wide as the Vault, but it’s infinitely deeper, crammed with towering electronic servers, high as skyscrapers, stretching farther than Dez can see, humming dully, all emitting flashing flecks of light.
Dez looks down and sees that she and Rafe sit atop one of these server towers, the floor beneath them far away.
“What is this place?”
“This is our data storage center.” Rafe glances around them. “It’s part of the Vault.”
“Aren’t these places usually off-site?”
He looks at her. “Not when what you’re storing is too sensitive to entrust to a third party.”
“How did we get here?” she asks.
“I’m not sure,” Rafe says. “This is the most secure zone on campus. It has seven layers of defense. Yet somehow you managed to stumble in.”
“I was only—”
“It must have something to do with your Lens. Maybe its weight weakened a place in the floor, and you fell through the crack—”
“A crack? And you dove in after me?”
“What do you expect?” He eyes her boldly, comprehensively. “You’re my protégé.”
Heat spirals through Dez’s core. Rafe reaches out and gently brushes a cut on the side of her face. It burns.
