Forged

Something rocks our vehicle. Someone.

 

I see the legs of the figure climbing onto the car, crawling toward our window. He pulls on the door. I throw my weight into it, and this time, it gives. The door doesn’t swing open so much as it is heaved, a heavy grate being moved against its will. An arm reaches in, dressed in dark leather. We grab each other’s wrists. I know who I’m holding without seeing her face. I would know the shape of her anywhere.

 

She hoists me out, then fires twice into the vehicle. I spend an exhale feeling bad for the guard, and then Bree is tugging me down a narrow alley as the flames make their way into the car. I follow her black form—black pants, black hat, black leather jacket that clings to her frame like a second skin. She’s wearing a mask to protect against the smoke and runs through thick billows of it like I’m wearing the same.

 

The fight continues back in the street, gunfire against gunfire, smoke pluming in the wake of flames. We duck into a building. Bree leads the way up a flight of stairs, through a window and into a neighboring building, down several stairs and into a basement. It’s deserted, but an angry alarm blares, red light flashing. The place has been evacuated—by Bree somehow, or maybe because of the fighting outside.

 

This has all been planned. Meticulously. And she must have had help. There’s too much gunfire for it to be just Sammy and Clipper. They must have contacted other Rebel supporters in Taem after arriving at the safe house.

 

Bree spins to face me, palms out, and I barrel into them. She tears off her mask, then the hat.

 

“Your biggest regret,” she demands.

 

“Saying I doubted us.” I don’t know why she’s asking this, not when my one and only double died at her hands at the Compound.

 

She keeps pressure on my chest and pulls out a flashlight. “And the person I told you about after our first night together.” I blink, temporarily blinded. She gathers a fistful of my shirt and pushes me backward. “What was his name?”

 

“Lock?”

 

She lowers the flashlight and I realize I should have been suspicious of her, too. I know it’s her now that she’s mentioned our conversation about Lock—a private moment, a recent one—and the scar above her eyebrow only confirms it further, but how foolish of me. How dumb and trusting and naively stupid to immediately believe the first Bree I saw outside of Bone Harbor was my Bree.

 

“Do you want to check mine?” She holds out the flashlight like she’s heard my thoughts. Then she shakes her head and pockets it. “Actually, no time. Loons. Herons then, loons now. We good?”

 

“We’re good.”

 

Bree grabs a small axe from a wall lined with tools and points at a table. “Hands here.” With my back to the table, I lift my hands onto the surface, and stretch them as far apart as the cuffs allow.

 

“Don’t mi—”

 

“I won’t. Just hold still.”

 

I feel the air move as she brings the axe down, followed by a vibration that stings at my wrists and travels to my shoulder socket.

 

“One more,” she promises.

 

A whoosh, the clink of the restraint splitting, and my arms swing free. Each wrist is still cuffed in metal, but they’re no longer tethered together.

 

She throws the axe aside. “Sammy’s waiting.”

 

“How many people did this take?”

 

“Does it matter? It worked.”

 

“But—”

 

“I think someone’s following us, Gray. Explanations later.”

 

I didn’t hear or see anyone, but if she says someone’s on our tail, I believe it. We race through the massive basement, which is filled with machinery as large as the ceiling allows. At various intervals we pass medical kits mounted into the wall, emergency breakers to cut power to machines, fire alarms. This must be a factory, and by the look of the equipment we run past, we’re on the production level.

 

“Where’s the safe house?” I yell as we run.

 

“Not close.”

 

“So how the hell are we going to get there?”

 

“Sewers.”

 

Of course.

 

She takes a sharp turn, leading to a flight of stairs. “Up this, out the window, then a half block to the entrance.” She even dares a smile over her shoulder before taking the stairs two at a time.

 

The gunfire is getting louder again, almost as though we’ve circled back toward the fighting. I can see the window at the top of the stairs. The sky has nearly lost all its color.

 

Bree hits the landing, shoves the window open.

 

“Wait,” she says as I put my hands on the sill. She turns back toward the stairwell, gun poised. A few seconds tick by and she frowns. “He was right on our tail. I heard him.”

 

I don’t know how. I can barely hear her over the blaring alarm system, and she’s screaming right into my ear.

 

“We must have lost him.”

 

“Don’t.” She grabs my arm and hauls me away from the window. “Something’s off.” Her forehead furrows. She reaches behind her back and pulls a spare gun from her waistband. “We check together. You take ground level, I’ll check above.”

 

“A trap?” I ask, accepting the weapon.

 

“I’m not sure. Something though . . .”

 

We flank the window. She counts, her voice a whisper, and on three, we both pivot, angling outside. The ground is clear, no one in sight. At my side Bree yelps, and ducks back into the building. I hear her gun clatter to the floor. Right then I know it is indeed a trap, but not on the streets. No, this is worse. I move slowly, knowing what I’m going to see before my eyes actually take it in.

 

Bree is in the hands of an Order member. He has her held against his chest like a shield, a knife kissing the smooth skin of her neck. In his other hand is a gun, aimed directly at me.

 

“Put your weapon down,” he orders, and I can’t see a single reason not to comply.

 

 

 

 

 

THIRTY

 

 

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