“Good for you, man, but I have no intention of dying today.” I grasped my helmet and shoved it over my head. “Doyou?”
He put his on too. “We might have to.”
What the fuck. I grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him into the leg of the jet. “This isn’t a fucking kamikaze mission, King. You’re not gonna throw our asses at them.”
His lips pursed. “If you’d seen what I’d seen—”
I shoved him harder. “This isn’t time for your personal revenge!”Fuck this.“I’m flying. You’re copilot.”
I shoved away and sprinted for the stairs.
“You can’t do that!” he shouted behind me, but I was already jumping into the cockpit.
“Watch me.”
Remy
I blinked and pushed up, then screamed when I tried to stand. The siren was still ringing in my ears, and the direness of the situation hit me with a surge of panic. How much time had passed? I turned onto my hands and knees and crawled. A rush of adrenaline drowned out the pain in my knees, head, and legs as I scrambled down the concrete path to the door. I grabbed the handle and pulled myself up. I couldn’t see from one of my eyes, and when I reached up I realized I’d cut my head. Blood covered my eye. I wiped it with the back of my hand and blinked.
I yanked the door open. In the distance, I saw one person running, and a plane was pulling out of the hangar. They were leaving! Sheer, blood-stopping panic filled me.
“Wait!” I screamed.
The person running, who was now halfway to the hangar, spun and looked at me. I couldn’t make them out with one clear eye, but I definitely heard her voice say, “Fuck!”
I tried to run to her, but oh my gosh, that foot—I couldn’t put pressure on it without collapsing—so I dragged it as I moved forward. Linette got to me and shoved a hand under my arm.
“One of the choppers is waiting for me. We’ve got to move!”
We’d gone about five quick steps when she halted and my breathing stopped. On the left, a group of people in all black with dark weapons were coming around the side of the old bio warfare building, all stealthy-like. I knew instinctively they weren’t with us. Linette yanked me back against the side of the greenhouse. We stood there two seconds, hoping they’d move along, but they didn’t. I think we both came to the same conclusion. There was no way we could get past them to the hangar. And it would take less than half a minute for them to shift this way and see us.
“Psst.” The quiet sound came from the side of the building across from us. A shadowy figure stood with his back against the wall, gun up. I froze until his head peeked out to glance back at the DRI figures in black.
Tater! Why wasn’t he on a plane? He motioned to the bunker’s cellar doors.
“Back down,” Linette whispered. And although her voice and body were fluid and confident, I saw a shadow of fear across her face when she turned back to the bunker doorway and moonlight hit her.
An ear-splittingwhooshvibrated the air around us—our fighter jet taking off like a rocket. A blur.
The three of us rushed forward, crouching, and were down the hatch in seconds. Linette locked the door and we followed her as she ran down the once-forbidden hall. The farther we went, the more trapped I felt. Our situation came crashing down around us. We’d missed the planes, and Baelese were swarming the area. How could we possibly survive this?
A blast shook the ground beneath us and I choked on a scream.
“Bye-bye spaceship,” Linette said.
I followed blindly through the twists and turns of the underground maze. Linette whipped a door open and shoved me in. I stopped, stiff at the sight of jail cells before us. I looked and saw a man in a pile on the ground in the last cell, lying in a puddle of blood.
“Go! Come on!” Linette rushed me into a cell and I backed against the wall, holding myself around the waist.
I tried so hard not to look over at the man in the other cell. Who was that? The blood was shiny and fresh. Linette handed her gun to Tater, who ran over and put both their guns on a table, before running back to us. Why were they getting rid of their guns?
Tater closed us into the cell, locking it with aclick, and then stood, listening.
“Why are you locking us in?” I hissed.
Linette crouched before me and took my chin. “Listen to me. You’re about to have to put on the best damn act of your life. The three of us are prisoners of the troop that was here, prisoners because we were on the side of the DRI. We were on the side of change. We didn’t want to go against them. We didn’t believe they were bad, and so we were locked up. Following me so far?” I was too stunned to nod.
“They’re coming,” Tater whispered. “They’re opening and closing doors down the hall.”
