I race toward the small carport that’s tucked away in the shadows. It looks like an abandoned shed, nothing but broken wood and debris, but Mako said there were two bikes here. I’m almost on top of them when a figure emerges from behind a stack of abandoned supply crates.
My rifle slides upward.
“It’s me!” Poppy blurts out.
I lower the gun. “What are you doing here?” I snap, unable to contain my anger. She was supposed to be in the truck with Mako, damn it.
“I told you I’m not leaving without my mom.” She looks past my shoulders. “Where’s Mom?”
“Poppy,” I start, regret flooding my chest.
“Where is she?”
“She took a fatal hit in that gunfight. She didn’t make it.”
Her face collapses. “And youlefther there?”
“She was gone when I left.”
“I need to get her!”
Poppy tries to bulldoze past me, but I intercept her, grabbing her arm. “We have to go. Now.”
“No! I need to get her!”
“If you go back down there, you’ll die. Is that what you want? Because I know for a fact that’s not what your mother would want. She asked me to get you out of here, and that’s what I intend to do. Please don’t make me knock you out and throw you on the back of that bike.”
Her body is trembling wildly, tears running down her cheeks, but then she sucks in a deep breath and follows me. I’m pulling one of the bikes upright when I hear them. Motorcycle engines.
“Someone’s coming,” she says anxiously.
“I know. We need to move.”
But the approaching vehicles are speed bikes. I’ve barely gotten our own bike started when the Command is upon us. Instantly, I shove Poppy behind those supply crates and fire at the incoming soldiers. One of the figures falls off their bike, which goes fishtailing across the pavement and smashes onto its side. The other rider divesoff the second bike before my bullet can connect with his chest. It pings off the handlebars instead.
A bullet whizzes past my own ear as the soldier gets off a shot even as he rolls onto the ground. This guy has no fear, and my stomach suddenly clenches, because that was a very Cross move. What if he’s—
No, this man is shorter than Cross, I realize in relief. He jumps to his feet, his gun aimed on me.
Mine is trained on him, too, as I calculate the odds of getting more than one shot off.
“Don’t move.”
I recognize the voice.
Not Cross. But Iknowhim.
When he pulls off his helmet, I immediately recognize him from Silver Elite. Theo. He was there when I was training, acting as one of my fake captors during a unit called Resistance to Interrogation. He knocked me around and then we had to work together. He was funny.
And now we’re here squaring off in the dark, guns pointed at each other.
“Darlington?” Recognition fills his eyes.
“Hey, Theo.”
We didn’t work together on any ops, but I liked him. Cross said he was a good guy.
I really don’t want to kill him.
