The explosion rocked the tunnel, and Kate nearly lost her balance as August crashed into the river.
“Soro!” she called out, grabbing the cable and leaping into the dark. The cord burned her palms as she descended too fast and hit the ground hard, rolling up with an HUV in one hand and the gun in the other.
The shadows hissed around her, rebuffed by the beam of light and the metal tracery on her gear.
A second later Soro landed in a graceful crouch several feet away, no rope, nothing but six feet of long limbs and the inability to break on impact.
All Kate said was “August,” but Soro was already moving, fastening a cable to their belt as they dove through the jagged hole in the subway floor and into the shadowed water below.
Kate swung her HUV around, cutting through the clouds of dust and the deeper shadows, but there was no sign of the Malchai. She set the light on the ground and drew the gun’s clip from her belt just as something moved behind her—she heard the shift of rock on her good side, the tumble of rubble through slats, and turned.
The Malchai stood waiting at the limit of the light, a nightmarish version of Kate herself, the shape right and the details all wrong.
Red eyes instead of blue.
White hair instead of blond.
The monster was thinner than Kate, gaunt in the way all Malchai were, but she looked like her, distorted, an echo, just as Sloan had been an echo of Harker, him and not him, neither and both and something in between.
Had her father felt the same disgust, looking at Sloan?
Or had he seen only proof of his own power?
The monster pursed its lips—her lips—and when she spoke, her voice had an echo of Sloan’s melodic rise, but also an edge of grit. “Hello, Kate.”
Soro swung a wet arm out of the hole, and the Malchai glanced sideways. Kate didn’t hesitate. She drove the clip into the gun, swung it up, and fired. It felt good, felt right, the shock of the recoil, the satisfying bang-bang-bang as she fired three quick rounds at the Malchai’s chest.
Kate had always been fast.
But her shadow was faster, dodging out of the way before the first shot echoed through the tunnel. The Malchai spun with that horrible, monstrous grace and slammed a boot into Kate’s chest. She hit the subway floor, all the wind rushing out of her lungs.
The armor absorbed the worst of the blow, but it still left her breathless and wincing as she staggered to her feet.
The Malchai was already gone, swallowed up by the tunnel’s impenetrable dark, nothing but a trail of laughter in her wake. Everything in Kate said run—not away, but after. She made it one stride, two, before Soro dragged themself out of the pit, hauling August onto the subway floor.
He coughed and retched, chest heaving.
Kate crossed to his side. “August—”
“He’ll be all right,” said Soro, slicking back their hair.
“Easy for you—to say—” he gasped, spitting brackish water onto the ground.
But as Kate knelt beside him, as she helped him to his feet, as they climbed back out of the tunnel, her gaze drifted again and again and again to the dark that had swallowed her shadow, wishing she had gone after it.
August sat on the hall floor, his ears still ringing from the blast.
He had gone straight to the Compound’s infirmary, expecting to find Henry on one of the cots. Instead he’d found the head of the FTF on his feet, seeing to the wounded as if he himself hadn’t just collapsed.
“He’s stronger than he looks,” Em had said, but August could hear the static in his father’s chest, the tick of time slipping, its unsteady rhythm like a faulty clock.
But Henry wouldn’t look at him, and his hands were covered in a soldier’s blood, so August left, leaned back against the wall outside, and let himself slide down until he was sitting on the floor.
Water dripped from his hair, and every time he breathed, he felt the remains of the river in his lungs.
How long can Sunai hold their breath?
There had been a moment under the surface, before Soro reached him, when Leo’s voice had surged to the front of his mind, and told him to fall, to unleash that dark self, the one that slept within his skin.
And he hadn’t.
The August I knew would rather die.
You make it worth the pain.
You don’t let go.
His body had screamed, the pressure turning to pain in his lungs. He’d heard that drowning wasn’t a bad way to die, that at some point it even became peaceful, but it hadn’t been peaceful for him.
Would he have given in, if Soro hadn’t come?
The lights came back up, the emergency blue replaced by steady white, and August heard a nervous cheer go through the building.
The technicians had contained the damage at the power station and rerouted what power they could back into the Compound, but to do so they’d had to cut the supply from most of the FTF structures. Beyond the front doors, the light strip glowed at half strength. Beyond that, the night was dangerously dark.
Too dark to assess the damage.
Too dark to collect the dead.
They’d have to wait until dawn and hope there were bodies left to burn. Meanwhile, people kept streaming into the Compound, the population of several blocks crammed into a handful of buildings. The lobby was packed, as was the training hall, and every apartment—even the Flynn’s home—was being divvied up between Soro’s and August’s squads, so he stayed there, on the floor outside the infirmary and slicked damp hair off his face as a familiar set of steps came toward him down the hall.
Everyone was made of sounds, and August had learned hers the first day they met.
Kate slumped against the opposite wall.
She hadn’t said anything since they’d left the tunnel. Dust and debris streaked her fatigues, she didn’t look well—her skin was beaded with sweat, and the silver was threading out across both eyes.
“I keep waiting for someone to arrest me again,” she said. “Everyone seems to be busy.”
There was no humor in the words. Her tone was cool, her gaze flat, and August guessed why.
Alice.
August rose to his feet. “Come with me,” he said, reaching for her hand.
She let him lead her, but her shoulders were tense, her body coiled. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere private.”
She raised an eyebrow, as if such a place didn’t exist anymore. There was a line for the elevators, so they took the stairs, climbing floor after floor in silence. Not a comfortable silence, but the kind that grew stiffer with every step. August didn’t know what to say and if Kate did, she didn’t plan on saying it, not yet.
When they reached the top, he led her not to the apartment, but up the hidden stairs to the flat stretch of the Compound’s roof.
For months, he’d imagined showing her this view. In his mind, Kate sat beside him, shoulder to shoulder on the sun-warmed stone, and they looked out at the city. In his mind, the war was over, and there was no North and South, no monster and human, only Verity, and a blanket of stars shining through the dark.
In his mind, it didn’t go like this.
The moment they were alone, the levy broke.