For how long, I don’t know.
A siren is pulled. I should’ve expected that. Flashing security lights go off as the cavern is filled with the alarm’s shriek. The high walls of the cave only amplify it.
I take off again, choosing a tunnel at random.
I pass other cells like mine, then steel doors that probably hold more prisoners.
I wish I had time to help them. But all I can do is run, and keep running, as long as my invisibility will hold.
I dodge left off the tunnel, passing a large, glass-windowed room to my right. It is illuminated by bright fluorescents. Inside hundreds and hundreds of computers in rows hum and sift data, no doubt looking for signs of my fellow Garde. I keep running.
I pass another laboratory, also glass-windowed, this one to my left. Mogadorians in white plastic suits and goggles stand inside. Scientists? Bomb chemists? I am past them before I have a chance to see what they’re doing. I can only assume something awful.
My brain is split by the siren, and I want to close my ears. But I need my hands to keep my balance as I run, to keep my footsteps dainty and soundless. I have the strange thought that for all my bluntness, my tomboyishness, my warrior’s training, I now find myself calling on such a feminine skill—being lightfooted, like a ballerina.
The tunnel feeds into another center, this one even larger than the other. I had assumed that what I saw earlier was the heart of the complex, but this is truly it: a cavernous hall half a mile wide and so dark and murky I can barely see across to the other side.
I am covered in sweat, out of breath. It is hot in here. The walls and ceiling are lined with huge wooden trellises keeping the cave from collapsing in on itself. Narrow ledges chiseled into the rock face connect the tunnels dotting the dark walls. Above me, several long arches have been carved from the mountain itself to bridge the divide from one side to the other.
I catch my breath and wipe my brow, to keep my own sweat from blinding me.
There are so many tunnels, none of them marked. My heart plummets. I realize I could run and run through this complex for days without finding the way out. I imagine myself like a rat in a laboratory maze, scampering and weaving to no avail.
Then I see it: a single pinprick of natural light, up above. There must be a way out up there. It will be a steep climb up these walls, but I can do it. As I grab the trellis to hoist myself up, I hear it.
“She will be found.”
It’s him. Katarina’s executioner.
He is speaking to a few guard Mogs, on a walkway above me. The guards tramp off. My eyes pin to the executioner as he takes a detour back into the complex.
I must choose. Between escape and vengeance. The light above beckons me like water in a desert. I wonder exactly how long it’s been since I last saw sunlight.
But I turn around.
I choose vengeance.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I follow him through the halls on tiptoe, careful to maintain my invisibility—I’ve learned enough about my Legacy by now to know that any surprise or break in concentration can cause me to fade back in.
I watch as he ducks into a cell. I sneak in behind him as the door shuts.
Unaware he has company, he walks to the corner of the room and begins to tidy up. I look down. There is blood on the floor, his weapons are out. He has tortured and killed others.
I have never killed a Mogadorian before. Not counting the Mogadorians who died trying to kill me, I have only in my entire life killed a rabbit, and a piken. To my own shock, I realize I am thirsty for murder.
I grab a razor from his desk and approach him. The blade feels good in my hand. It feels right.
I know better than to give him a chance to beg, or plead, to shake me from my resolve. I clutch him from behind and slit his throat with one clean slice. His mouth gurgles and spews blood across the floor, against my hands. He falls to his knees and then bursts into ash.