That might save our lives.
We run up the stairs. A cramp eats into my right calf and hamstring. I grunt and almost fall. Holiday takes most of my weight. Her powerful neck pressing up against my armpit. Three Grays spot us from behind at the bottom of the long marble stairs. Shoving me aside, she takes two down with her rifle, but the third fires back. Bullets chewing into marble.
“They’ve got gas backups,” Holiday barks. “Gotta move. Gotta move.”
Two more rights, past several lowColors, who stare at me, mouths agape, through marble halls with towering ceilings and Greek statues, past galleries where the Jackal keeps his stolen artifacts and once showed me Hancock’s declaration and the preserved head of the last ruler of the American Empire.
Muscles burning. Side splitting.
“Here!” Holiday finally cries.
We reach a service door in a side hall and push through into cold daylight. The wind swallows me.
Icy teeth ripping through my jumpsuit as the four of us stumble out onto a metal walkway along the side of the Jackal’s fortress. To our right, the stone of the mountain surrenders to the modern metal-and-glass edifice above. It’s a thousand-meter drop to our left. Snow swirls around the mountain’s face. Wind howls. We push forward along the walkway till it circles part of the fortress and links with a paved bridge that extends from the mountain to an abandoned landing platform like a skeletal arm holding out a concrete dinner plate covered in snow.
“Four minutes,” Holiday hollers as she helps me struggle across the bridge toward the landing pad.
At the end, she dumps me onto the ground. I set Victra down beside me. A hard skin of ice makes the concrete slick and smoky gray. Snowdrifts gather around the waist-high concrete wall that fences in the circular landing pad from the thousand-meter drop.
“Got eighty in the long mag, six in the relic,” he calls to his sister. “Then I’m out.”
“Got twelve,” she says, tossing down a small canister. It pops and green smoke swirls into the air.
“Gotta hold the bridge.”
“I’ve got six mines.”
“Plant them.”
He sprints back down the bridge. At the end of it is a set of closed blast doors, much larger than the maintenance path we took from the side. Shivering and snowblind, I pull Victra close to me against that wall to escape the wind. Snowflakes gather atop the black rain gear she wears. Fluttering down like the ash that fell when Cassius, Sevro, and I burned Minerva’s citadel and stole their cook. “We’ll be fine,” I tell her. “We’ll make it.” I peer over the short concrete wall to the city beneath. It’s oddly peaceful. All her sounds, all her troubles silenced by the EMP. I watch a flake of snow larger than the rest drift on the wind and come to rest on my knuckle.
How did I get here? A boy of the mines now a shivering fallen warlord staring down at a darkened city, hoping against everything that he can go home. I close my eyes, wishing I was with my friends, my family.
“Three minutes,” Holiday says behind me. Her gloved hand touches my shoulder protectively as she looks to the sky for our enemies. “Three minutes and we’re out of here. Just three minutes.”
I wish I could believe her, but the snow has stopped falling.
I squint up past Holiday as an iridescent defensive shield ripples into place over the seven peaks of Attica, cutting us off from the clouds and the sky beyond. The shield generator must have been out of the EMP’s blast range. No help will come to us from beyond it.
“Trigg! Get back here!” she shouts as he plants the last mine on the bridge.
A single gunshot shatters the winter morning. Echoing brittle and cold. More follow. Crack. Crack.
Crack. Snow kicks around him. He sprints back as Holiday leans to cover for him, her rifle rocking her shoulder. Straining, I push myself up. My eyes ache as they try to focus in the sun’s light. Concrete explodes in front of me. Shards rip into my face. I duck down, shivering in fear. The Jackal’s men have found their backup weapons.
I peer out again. Through squinting lids, I see Trigg pinned down halfway to us, exchanging gunfire with a squad of Grays carrying gas-powered rifles. They pour out of the fortress’s blast doors, now opened at the opposite end of the bridge. Two go down. Two more step near a proximity mine and disappear in a cloud of smoke as Trigg shoots it at their feet. Holiday picks another off just as Trigg staggers back into cover, hit with a round in the shoulder. He jams a stimshot into his thigh and pops back up. A bullet slaps into the concrete in front of me, kicks up into Holiday to impact her ribs just under the armpit of her body armor with a meaty thud.