A—
Panic burned hot in my chest. Memories flooded back, and for a moment I was frozen by the sensationsof pain and cold and the knowledge that death was inescapable.
No. I was on a bus. I wasn’t in a car.
I was still alive.
“Shit.” The word slipped out before I could bite it back. One of Shin’s toddlers looked up at me, her small mouth silently framing the curse. I hastily took two steps away before I could accidentally teach her more new vocabulary.
“You do have a way of summing up these situations,” said Prefect, a slight edge in his voice. He had a good poker face, but his words always became a little more clipped when he was anxious.
“What’s your ETA?” I asked.
“There’s a helicopter headed for you,” he replied. “It’s about twenty-five minutes away.”
I gritted my teeth. “That long?”
“You’re in the middle of nowhere, Augusta.”
“How long until we hit the river?”
Prefect hesitated.
Prefectneverhesitated.
“Ten minutes,” he finally said.
And again I was there, in that place I only visited in my nightmares.
The plunge and the jerk of impact—the cracked windows, water streaming inside.
I pinched my wrist hard. The pain drew me back to the moment. “Okay, then.”
“Augusta, what are you—”
I hung up on him. It wasn’t the first time and hopefully it wouldn’t be the last. Then I set my phone to silent. I couldn’t have Prefect buzzing in my ear, not when I needed to think. I turned to face the driver. He was still unconscious, one arm dangling limply by his side. For a moment, I felt an angry stab of envy. He got to sleep through the chaos behind a layer of bulletproof plexiglass. If he was conscious, maybe he could stop this. Maybe he could reprogram the destination. He’d be motivated to help; the front windshield would probably shatter on impact when we plunged into the river.
A thought snagged in my brain.
The windshield. It wouldshatter.
I sucked in a sharp breath.
Well. That was a plan.
It was a bad plan. But I didn’t see any better ones.
Hastily, I returned to my seat. There were a few tools I always kept in my backpack: Edgar, some food, a solar charger for my ringware, fingerless gloves with reinforced knuckles, my bump keys, and a window breaker.
Peter watched me as I pulled something out of my bag. “What’s that?”
“Hopefully a way out,” I said.
And before anyone could think to stop me, I hurried to the front of the bus. The doors were all tinted glass, sleek as the rest of the vehicle. I touched the window breaker to the surface. Inside was a spring-loaded trigger. All it would take was one good, hard press.
I jammed the window breaker against the door. In a fraction of a second, the glass frosted over, cracks spiderwebbing over the surface. The glass door shattered and hot summer air rolled into the bus. A few people cried out behind me, but I ignored them.
Chunks of glass fell to the road below, scattering along the pavement and vanishing.
