by Meli Raine
Philippa maintains her stance.
A sneer transforms him. “You were the weakest in your class. I don't know how you made it through The Test. Sheer luck. Or maybe you blew all the guys? You don't have it in y–”
Those are Smith's last words as Philippa takes him out with a bullet to the eye.
Sally flinches but doesn't move, her arm broken by Callum's shot. “Hokes! Get Cal–”
Hokes centers the barrel of his handgun on her forehead, the flicker of her eyes the last movement she makes before he blows her brains out.
“Get OUT!” he says, swooping down to pick up Jay, running with us to Janice, who is now on a grounds-crew vehicle, overloaded, Callum on a four wheeler.
We pile everyone on.
And hope.
29
Callum
Someone is going to die.
If it's me, I'll do my damnedest to get as many of them as possible out of here first.
Duff is on the other side with Foster, Gentian, and some guy named Mark Paulson, who Duff swears has inside contacts here. This is a development I have no choice but to trust as I race through the woods half blind, Kina's arms around my midsection. I push the vehicle as hard as I can, engine revving, system straining, two tweens who haven't hit puberty hanging onto Kina, one of them overloaded with diaper bags.
A mile is an eternity when you don't know what comes next.
And a mile is nothing when Svetnu issues a termination order. We're about to have everyone left in the compound come after us with shoot-to-kill orders. They were going to terminate all of these children tonight anyhow.
And I didn't know.
A completely new level of anger washes over me as it hits me–I didn't know.
They did this behind my back.
What else did they hide from me?
It's a skeleton crew here. The compound termination order has been underway for the last day or so, people leaving quietly under my nose and without my knowledge.
I'm terminated, then. I'm collateral damage.
Which changes the entire game.
Hokes is crazy for helping us, but like Janice, he has the cover story I fed him:
Glen made them do it.
If we succeed, that'll be enough to save them serious torture from interrogations. Kina's more than convincing enough as Glen. The camera footage will show Glen's face everywhere, confusing the analysts and investigators, maybe just enough to get this to work.
A long branch hits my face hard, scraping along my jawline, the sting of torn flesh making me grimace. Kina gasps as the ricochet whacks her, the kids hunching over.
No one at the compound will set off alarms. It draws too much attention. People are racing through the woods toward us now. We're magnets.
They're iron shavings.
If we can get under the fence, we escape the pull.
Duff better be there, though, with a new hole dug under the fence.
Otherwise, I've led a massacre. A massacre of children.
I surge ahead of Janice, who is carrying twice the weight on her vehicle, an old battleaxe of a Jeep with pesticide tanks on the back of it. Two teens sit on top of them, clinging for dear life.
Literally.
There’s a thicket of scrub pine, then a clearing, between us and the fence.
I see shadows on the other side. Three ATVs.
And hopefully, a big truck somewhere in the woods.
I pull up to the fence, Kina and the tweens clambering off. All in black, the guys over there are ready.
My brother may save the day.
The man my superiors ordered me to kill may be our last hope.
“Over here!” a man's voice urges, a red laser point focused on a spot. I see the hole. It's big enough to shove a kid through.
Kina does just that with the smallest tween. He pushes the diaper bags under first, then belly crawls without comment to a form in black, who ushers him into the woods.
Who is that?
What are they doing with us?
Where are they taking this child?
I have to let go of control. This is beyond my authority, far outside my sphere of influence. All I can do is shepherd. I cannot manage the flock.
“Next!” That's Duff's voice. Kina repeats with the other tween, just as we hear a vehicle grinding toward us. It brakes and the motor cuts, the wail of crying kids making clear who it is.
Kina and I run together to Janice's Jeep, plucking off toddlers like inanimate objects.
“I've got her!” Duff says as Kina approaches the fence, bending down, working with a writhing, frantic little girl with long blonde hair. Lots of shushing, then the sound of Kina turning firm, her voice harsh, unlike anything I've ever heard from her.
“Get your fingers out of that fence NOW, Hayley! You have to go through.”
“I don't want–”
And then the screech of a kid in pain.
“They're not kids,” Kina says to herself, grabbing the next one. “They're not kids. They're not – ”
“Cargo,” Duff snaps at Kina, who nods. “We're securing the cargo. We can assess the situation later. Can't soothe a dead kid. Keep them coming.”
She shoves another child, this one compliant, right under the fence. Two more in a row and we're at four out of seven secure. The trainees are crouched down, waiting their turns.
And then a bullet whizzes past my head. A second. A third.
Too many to count.
“SHIT!” Janice screams, in mid-move with the last three little ones clinging to her. She's turned into a toddler sherpa, about twelve feet from the fence, which suddenly ripples from the impact of a Jeep that comes from behind, ramming into a spot right next to us.
Gunfire erupts, two figures in suits piling out of the Jeep as Kina and I work to take them down, her aim steady, her hands strong and sure as she fires. For someone who hasn't worked in the field with a firearm, she's damn good.
“GET DOWN! INCOMING!” someone from the other side of the fence screams.
An automatic weapon fires out of nowhere, hard and steady, like death rain.
Both figures drop hard.
Janice is at the fence now, the hole bigger from pushing kids through. She gets the three under and Duff pulls them out as Jay shrieks, “KEEEEEEEEENNNNN!”
“Sela! Philippa! Go!” Kina orders.
Sela wiggles her way through, jolting suddenly as a bullet whistles by, her elbow cocking at an odd angle.
“I'm hit!” she cries, legs still moving forward, someone in black moving to her.
“We got her,” Duff says to Kina, who shoves Philippa forward as Sela's torso slides under the hole, her heels dragging in the dirt, leaving two long, bloody grooves like tire tracks in mud.
“What about you?” Philippa shouts, her head shaking from side to side, blood matting her hair on one side, angry scratches raking her cheek.
A single gesture, a wave that says go, hurry, is all Kina gives.
“How many more?” Duff shouts as ATVs rev up and disappear on the other side, any hope of tracking long gone. We have to trust them now.
Kina watches as Philippa and Sela slide under, then turns to me and Janice. “That's it. We're–”
Machine-gun fire again.
It's coming from our side. The wrong side. The Stateless side.
Wait. Who is the right side again?
“GET DOWN!” Duff screams. He’s spraying the woods from his side of the fence. In between his bursts of fire, the roar of engines in the distance grows louder, closer. And then a massive explosion booms, huge firecloud rising up through the foliage like a volcano, a burst so majestic that we can't help but watch.
We're all on our bellies now, flat and stuck.
I pull Kina up to a crouch. “Get through! We're done! It's just us and Janice.”
Who picks off a figure in black, unadulterated glee on her face, the shaky hands on her gun what I would have expected from Kina, but Janice is–
&nb
sp; Hit.
Her knee explodes, flesh and bone splintering in a chunky spray, her astonishment visible as she aims but falls. Unable to stay upright, she rolls over, brain neurons misfiring as they try to control her leg.
Her next bullet shatters the invading car's windshield, showering a guy on the ground with glass as she closes one eye with a ferocious squint, aims, and gets him hard enough to elicit a grunt and a twitch.
Then nothing.
Not even the sound of pain-filled breath.
I pull myself up and look to find Janice in a pool of blood, her guts shot out, glistening lines of bowel like a teen slasher film.
Much, much worse.
“No,” I whisper in unison with Duff. I grab Janice under the arms, pulling her to the hole and then pushing her down. Duff reaches through. She tries to help but gets caught on the fence wire, head on the other side of the fence, torso on ours.
“At least I finally got to leave the compound, even for a few seconds,” she gasps, voice ending with a rasp, her grip loose. Using all his weight for leverage, Duff gets her through and onto the grass.
“GO!” she rallies, putting everything she has left in that one word. Then: “I'll cover you. Give me a gun.” Duff looks up to assess the threat level, unshoulders the automatic weapon strap, giving it to her with a reverence that makes my stomach twist.
I force Kina through the hole, the dirt now a slurry of Janice’s blood and guts. She gets unsteadily to her feet and stares down at her old friend, frozen and unemotional, until I shove her in the direction of the vehicles and she stumbles off. Duff stays on the ground next to Janice, watching for attacks, giving her a few seconds of... something.
Something in her waning moments.
“You did a good thing,” he tells her, breaking my fucking heart, because all I can do is look ahead at the departing ATVs, Kina on the back of one of them, clutching Philippa as their hair flames behind them in the wind.
“She's a goner,” he hisses in my ear. “Let her die knowing we made it.”
Janice mutters a last unintelligible word as Duff grabs my arm and yanks hard enough to bruise, the pain a welcome distraction from the cacophony of it all.
We bolt.
By the time we catch up to the rest, there’s a small convoy of four different cars leaving, a variety that makes sense if your goal is to blend in. A junky compact car, red with dents. A new-model Mercedes. An American SUV, black and sleek. A soccer mom minivan. I see kids in there, along with Philippa, Drew Foster driving. We're down to the last car, the red clunker, Kina, Duff, and me piling in.
Duff starts the car and it jerks forward as if pure adrenaline fuels it. I turn around, gun at the ready, primed to cover.
I look at Kina. She grins at me. Her mouth reminds me of that bizarre blow job earlier, my rage pinpointing as I feel twelve emotions at once.
“We did it,” she says, one corner of her mouth going up in a salacious smile, the grime on her eyebrow as it hikes up making her invincible, feral and hard, ripe and dangerous. “We beat them.” Sheer pride mingles with an unadulterated joy, ecstasy flowing off her like she's stoked, excited, vibrating with victory.
“We did it, Callum,” she repeats, eyes flaring, tongue poking out between red, raw lips, one corner of her mouth torn, blood caked there.
Cold dread fills me.
God, does she look like Glen right now.
Exactly like Glen.
—
Continue the trilogy with the final book, Fateless, coming December 26! Preorder now, with the audiobook narrated by Andi Arndt and Joe Arden.