“You’re the one who stole the blueprints of this place. You said yourself there were no other secured rooms in these buildings.”
“But what if—”
Lai. Go. Now.
I choke back my aggravation. With heavy feet, I turn to the empty doorframe. “Let’s go.”
Erik and I make it about five steps before shouts of discovery ricochet through the hall. No use for stealth now. We run.
Our boots pound over rocks and glass, the noise echoed by the guards pursuing us.
Jay, how many behind us?
Four for now, but more converging on your location.
The words have barely entered my head when a blaring alarm rings through the building.
“Great,” Erik mutters. “Just what we needed.”
“Better look alive,” I say as two guards rush in front of us from an intersecting hallway. I pull a black metal cylinder from my belt and click the button on its side. Metal pieces unfold from inside it and snap into place until I’m holding a double-headed spear. I don’t slow down, just keep running until I’m right in front of one of the guards. She thrusts her sword forward, but I duck to the side, grab her wrist, and twist it until she drops her weapon. A knee to her gut, and she’s on the ground clutching her stomach. The other guard swings an axe toward me, but before it gets anywhere close, he’s flying back through the air. He crashes against the wall with a whoosh of lost breath.
Erik rolls his wrist easily as he runs past me. “No sweat.”
I roll my eyes as I fall in beside him. “Must be nice to have such an overpowered gift.”
“You would know.”
We keep running, stopping only when guards stand in our way, and only long enough to dispatch them.
You’re going to be surrounded soon. You have to get out of the building.
That would be ideal—the only problem is finding an exit.
Why find one?
I pause, almost taking a fist to the face before I use my spear shaft to sweep the legs out from under the guard in front of me.
“Erik, you wanna make us a way out?” I ask.
Erik glances at me as he dodges back from a guard’s sword swing. He grins. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”
We switch places as he runs a little farther ahead and I take on the guard. The guard’s sword comes down on my spear shaft. I tilt the shaft so his blade slides down it and he loses his balance. He backsteps, but I rush in at his side. His sword swings up to block, but I strike his knuckles with my shaft and the weapon drops from his grip with a clatter. A kick to his stomach and he’s down. After facing the rebel Nytes, fighting a bunch of Etioles feels like beating up children. As if they could hope to match a Nyte’s enhanced speed and strength.
When I look for Erik, I find him standing ahead with a bunch of broken furniture pieces and beams hovering in the air. With one shove of his hands, the clump of parts thrusts through the concrete wall all at once. A groan like an earthquake rocks the hall as dust showers down. The guards pursuing us freeze as the building shudders.
“C’mon!” Erik shouts as he races through his makeshift exit. Like I need telling—I’m already sprinting after him as fast as my feet will take me.
We break out into the cool night air and keep running. Shouts surge up around us into the night, along with an ominous creaking, but we don’t stop. A few guards break off to try to detain us, but Erik deals with them with a wave of his hand. As soon as we’ve jumped the gate, Jay and Al are there waiting for us. We don’t say anything as we disappear into the maze of streets beyond the warehouse grounds’ perimeter.
* * *
We manage to make it back to the safehouse without incident. Our hideout is a tiny apartment, one just like every other in the area: rickety, old, and barely standing. The inside is sparsely furnished, with just one main room, a kitchenette in the back, and a small bathroom. A landlord in the Order owns it and lets members use it as needed, whether it be for secret meetups outside our home base, screenings of new members, or anything else. Like when some of us need a place to hide.
“So that was a waste of time,” Al says as soon as we’re inside. She throws her jacket into her self-chosen corner of the room with more anger than the thing deserves. Without it, the scars on her muscular arms catch the dim light, faint streaks against her dark brown skin. She runs a hand over her close-shaven black hair.
“And just whose fault is that?” I twist the door’s lock with a snap. “What part of small fire didn’t you understand? We could’ve had more time to investigate if you hadn’t been so obvious. But no, you just had to make it huge and flashy like always and blow the fact that we were there.”
“Oh, what, so it’s my fault the place was empty?” Al spins on her heel to come back and stand right in my face. She lifts her chin. “My fault the rebels stole whatever was there? My fault your stupid plan was pointless?”
“Like you had a better plan in mind?”
“Stop,” Jay says. He sets a hand on each of our shoulders. Al jerks away. “We’re all disappointed, tired, and stressed. It’s been a hard couple of days and an even harder week. We need to stick together at a time like this, not blame each other.”
Jay’s usually tidy black hair is a ruffled mess. His thoughts drag with exhaustion, but even so, he’s trying to keep everyone together. I want to smooth his hair down, take off his glasses, look him in his gentle brown eyes, and tell him it’ll be okay, we’ll be okay. But I can’t. I don’t say empty words.
“Whatever,” Al says. She’s already heading for her corner. There’s only one mattress in the place, and tonight is Erik’s turn to use it.
Erik himself is staring off into space. An unsettling new habit he’s picked up since our prison break.
I’d been worried about Erik after the High Council turned on us and declared us traitors, and while he’s mostly gone back to his old sarcastic self, my anxiety increases by the day. How long until he decides staying in the sector that betrayed him isn’t worth it? How long until he gets tired of our rapidly disintegrating team? How long until he wants to know about his past badly enough to return to the rebels?
Stop that, I tell myself. Erik isn’t going anywhere. He’s our friend.
“Look, the warehouses were a bust,” Al says, still with her back to us. “That’s finished. We can’t just sit around doing nothing, so we need to pick a new direction. A more useful one.”
“Such as?” Erik asks.
But Al doesn’t have anything to offer. She knows she’s right—we all do—but no next step comes to mind. Well. Not to Al’s or Erik’s mind.
I feel Jay watching me. Don’t you think this is a good time to tell them about the Order?
Jay’s gaze is steady when I meet his eyes, but that just makes me look away again.
I still haven’t told Al and Erik about the secret organization seeking peace between gifted and ungifted that I helped found with several old friends. I need to. They’re already suspicious about me just happening to know a place for us to hide out. But I don’t want to. The four of us can barely hold a conversation for more than ten seconds without it dissolving into a fight anymore.