If I keep Piper hidden, people will die. People who have nothing to do with Vale or ISD or the shadow wars being fought for people’s identities. Just people in the wrong apartment building at the wrong time.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Augusta,” says Piper again. “I can’t—I can’t let her hurt anyone. Please.”
She doesn’t have to ask the full question.
Fix this.
Find a way.
In my pocket is the radio.
Carefully, I release the handhold with my left hand and pull out the radio. I press down theSENDbutton.
“Vale,” I say. “I know you’re listening.” I take a moment to consider my words. “I’ll bring her to the lobby, by the pool, in fifteen minutes. But you kill a single person, and you’ll never see your daughter again. Understand?”
I release the button, waiting for a reply. There is nothing. Moments drag like hours, like days, like eternities.
A crackle. “Fifteen minutes,” Vale agrees, and the line goes dead.
27
Surrounded by darkness, I do the only thing I can.
I climb out of it.
Adrenaline has Piper and me scrambling. I can hear her small breaths above me, feel the brush of cobwebs, smell the old-building dust of the elevator shaft, and feel the cool metal under my hands. I focus on the sensory details so fear cannot consume me.
Above me, the tear in the art print lets in the barest slant of light.
Piper reaches it first, her fingers fumbling for the next handhold. “We’re there,” I say, flicking off the night vision setting. “It’s an art print. You can just push it off.”
Piper touches the print hesitantly, then gives it the tiniest of shoves. The print falls away, and the dim emergency lights of the hallway seem like the glow of the sun. Piper reaches for the edge and heaves herself up. The last thing I see is her bare feet scrambling over.
“Augusta?” she says.
I pull myself upward—
I freeze.
Before me, the shadowed hallway of the third floor is familiar.
The gun pointed at me is new.
Consul stands there, one hand on Piper’s arm and the other holding her weapon. She looks terrible—there is a bruise blooming on her jaw where I hit her, smudges along her clothing, and her eyes are bloodshot from the smoke.
I don’t move, for fear that she will take any twitch as an attack. But this is fine, it’s fine. I’ve been in worse situations than hanging off the edge of an elevator shaft with a murderous wraith handler pointing a weapon at me.
Have you, though?some rebellious part of me thinks.
“You got here fast,” I say. My arms are burning with the strain of holding myself up. “How’d you know where we’d come out?”
“Well,” she says, her voice silky smooth, “the criminal always returns to the scene, right? I knew you’d return to the third floor. To that old woman who’s been helping you.”
My gaze darts around the hallway. There’s no sign of Vale or Corey.
“Where’s your boss?” I ask.
