“Oh,” I whispered.
Jake shook me once. “Bike. Now.”
Tris was already running for the truck, sobbing into her phone or maybe just sobbing. Naya—no, not Naya, there was no Naya here, just faces, too many faces—someone screamed my name behind me. Maybe Brielle. Maybe the desert. Maybe my mother.
I stumbled toward Edge’s bike.
The fire made everything too bright. Red strobed across chrome. Smoke stung my eyes. My burned palm throbbed now, pain rushing back in waves. My head spun so hard the ground tilted.
Jake grabbed my shoulders. “Can you ride?”
“Yes.”
“No, you can’t.”
“I said yes.”
Tris appeared, face streaked with tears. “Destiny, come with us in the truck.”
“No.” Panic surged through me, sudden and huge. “The bike. Edge will know. I have to get the bike back.”
“Edge is the least of your problems!”
“He’s my father,” I snapped, and then my voice broke. “He’s my father.”
That shut them both up for one fatal second.
In that second, I swung onto the bike.
Jake cursed and lunged, but I kicked it alive. The engine roared under me, louder than screaming, louder than sirens in the distance, louder than common sense. Tris shouted something I couldn’t hear. Jake slammed a hand against the handlebar, trying to stop me, but I twisted away.
The bike shot forward.
Too fast.
Wrong angle.
The world smeared.
Fire on my left. Bodies on my right. Headlights swinging. Smoke burning my throat. The desert rushing up black beyond the clearing.
Someone screamed, “She’s leaving!”
Good.
Let me leave.
Let me vanish.
Let me get the bike back before Edge knew.
Let me crawl into my bed and wake up in a world where none of this happened.
The road out of the clearing was not a road.
It was a dirt trail cut between brush and stone, rutted from trucks, half-hidden by dust and night. I knew that. Some part of me knew that. But knowing and reacting were different things, and my hands were numb, my vision bending, the bike too powerful beneath me.
A siren wailed behind me.
