by Laura Legend
“Are you going to help me rescue Miranda, or not?”
Zach hesitated. “It’s not that simple, Cass. I need some time. Give me just a little bit of time to try and sort this out, to see what is really going on, before we rush in there, guns blazing.”
That sounded sensible, but it also felt like a dodge.
“Are you sure that Miranda has that time to spare?”
Zach didn’t know what to say.
“I gave you a choice,” Cass said quietly. “It looks like you’ve made yours. Get out.”
Cass locked the door behind him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cass paced the length of her apartment like a caged tiger. Save for some light from the street, the room was dark. Her emotions rattled against their cages. She felt torn between her feelings for Zach and her sense of betrayal. Even though they weren’t really a couple and there was no other woman, it felt liked he’d been cheating on her for years. She was glad he was gone.
No, that wasn’t true. And she couldn’t afford to let her head spin lies right now. The truth was, she was terrified: terrified that his departure meant the only real thing she thought she knew and understood in her life—Zach—was gone forever. She felt her breath catch as her chest tightened to the point of physical pain at the thought.
Her anger at his betrayal flared, resisting even the slightest hint of forgiveness. And she wasn’t forgiving him.
All she knew was that her powers had done nothing but affirm the truth of Zach’s own feelings for her. Which meant there were pieces in play that she didn’t understand. The pain in her chest returned.
Clearly, this line of thought wasn’t helping. She tried to push through that fog and focus on Miranda.
She stopped in front of her desk, switched on the desk lamp, and cleared away the piles of books, research, and writing that had gone into doctoral dissertation. She put a couple stacks on the floor and just pushed others to the edge. She’d hardly touched these things in months and, once she had a space cleared, she wiped away the thin layer of dust that had accumulated with the back of her hand. She stared at the grain of the wood as if she’d just wiped the steam from a bathroom mirror and expected an image to appear. But nothing did.
Cass pulled the square of paper from her pocket—the map that Amare had given her—and spread it out on the desk. She leaned over the image and instructions, both arms braced against the desk. Her arms were thin but roped with muscle. It was a map of the Underside and it sketched an abridged path through hallways and hubs from her apartment to the Shield base in Japan. She guessed it wouldn’t take more than an hour to get there.
She shook her head in disbelief. An hour of walking. To Japan. A few days ago she wouldn’t have believed it.
The world was not what she’d always thought it was.
This thought hit her hard, disorienting her. She felt dizzy and lightheaded and sat down hard in the chair that she’d pushed aside, almost missing the seat. She leaned forward into the small circle of light created by her desk lamp and squeezed her head between the palms of her hands.
“You can do this, Jones,” she said to herself out loud. “You can do this.”
But she wasn’t sure she could. Getting there wouldn’t be simple but it wouldn’t be the hard part either. Before, at the warehouse, she’s gotten just a small taste of what she would face at the Shield base. Did she really think she could sneak in, snag Miranda, and handle whatever opposition she would face along the way? One false step and she’d bring the whole base down on herself.
Cass looked up at the map, her vision blurred now by tears. She felt the tears run down her face as if they belonged to someone else. The map was clear but the job seemed impossible.
With the heels of her hands, Cass wiped her eyes. The corner of an old framed photo poking out from the back of her desk behind piles of books caught her attention.
She pulled it free and took a closer look. It was a photo Cass, Rose, and Miranda. They were all scrunched together on a couch in Cass’s childhood home. Cass was nine, Miranda was holding a glass of wine, and Rose was smiling and squeezing Cass.
Cass couldn’t just let Miranda go. She couldn’t just go back to work tomorrow and pretend that everything was fine. Even if she was likely to fail in any attempt to rescue her, she had to try. Time wasn’t going to fork on this occasion. There was no second path.
Cass pulled on some warmer clothes and grabbed her sword. She folded the map and tucked it back into her pocket.
Cass pulled a cushion of the couch, ready to step inside and head down the stairs, but the couch was just a couch. All she found inside was dust bunnies and spare change.
“Come on!” Cass mumbled to herself.
She put the cushion back and stepped back. The couch wasn’t in its usual spot. She’d kicked it when Zach was still here. She pushed it back to its normal location and pulled the cushion off again. A yawning void and narrow flight of stair opened up in front of her.
Cass stepped into the couch and squeezed down the stairs. At the bottom, she found the narrow hallway with the single bare bulb that she’d expected. She consulted her map. Two lefts and then a right.
Halfway down that first hallway, Cass passed the unmarked door, locked and flush against the wall. She hesitated for just a moment, then pushed forward. She hadn’t gone more than a couple of steps, though, before she was brought up short: someone or something was pounding on the door from the inside. The blows were loud and powerful.
Cass hesitated again—for just a moment—then took off running down the hallway.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Cass emerged from the Underside tunnel to find herself at the mouth of a cave, high in mountains of Japan. Snow covered the ground. Her breath steamed in the frigid mountain air.
The night sky was clear and, far from any city lights, the stars shone close and deep and bright. Cass shivered—partly from the cold, and partly from the intense, cosmic sense of loneliness and disorientation induced by the magnitude of the sky. She felt dizzy. She felt like she was floating upward, like she was in danger of being swallowed whole by the icy void that yawned open above her head as the sky vaulted, unbroken, from horizon to horizon.
She leaned over, hands on her knees, and looked down. Breathing deeply, she tried to reconnect with the solid earth beneath her feet. When her head finally stopped spinning, she looked out over the valley below. She found herself at the edge of the forest, positioned on an outcropping that overlooked the valley below.
She had a clear look at the layout of the monastery compound and she could observe, without danger of being seen, the movements of the guards as they cycled through their shifts and patrol routes. Amare had known what he was doing when he’d had her exit here. It was just what she needed.
The compound was walled. Its interior contained a complex of buildings arranged around a central courtyard and the courtyard itself was centered on what appeared to be a well. Cass didn’t have any trouble identifying the building where Miranda was being held. Closest to the base of the mountain, one building was different from the others. This building, clearly older and larger than the rest, presided over the compound with an air of ancient, monastic authority. Amare’s map indicated that Cass would find Miranda in the basement.
Cass watched, still and silent, for a full hour until she was confident that she knew what the guard rotations looked like and had decided how she planned to slip their defenses. When she finally took action and started down through the remaining stand of trees and into the valley, her cold, stiff, tired muscles protested. Cass, though, welcomed the burn in her thighs and she was grateful that the work of slipping soundlessly through the trees required her full attention. The flaring pain, combined with the demanding terrain, helped her to ignore the riot of emotions in her own heart and head.
Her emotions felt as dangerously close to the surface as they’d felt in a long time.
Now, though, was not the time to get back in touch w
ith herself. Her emotions wouldn’t help her, they’d overrun her. The key was to stay focused on what she needed to do to get Miranda out. And, above all, the key was to make sure that she didn’t let herself think about Zach. She couldn’t let herself get lost in the fog of anger and betrayal that accompanied every thought of him.
Keep going, Cass. One foot in front of the other. Feel the burn. Absorb the terrain.
Before she knew it, she arrived at the bottom of the slope. The compound’s western wall extended almost to the stand of trees. She waited in the shadows of the forest. If she’d timed it right, the next pair of guards should pass by any minute now.
The pair of guards emerged into view. Both were young and both were about Cass’s height. They were exactly the kind of B-grade, undersized trainees likely to get late night guard duty along the perimeter. They were huddled together against the chill of the wind that howled down the length of the compound wall. They were having an animated conversation—Cass couldn’t quite hear at first—about Cass.
“We’ve got to stay alert,” the shorter one said to the other. “Dogen will have our heads if Jones slips by us.”
“I’m not half as worried about Dogen as I am about Kumiko,” said the other. “Kumiko wouldn’t stop with having our heads.”
They both nodded in agreement.
“I’ve heard stories about her,” the second one continued, “about Jones. They say she’s a Seer. They say that even Kumiko is afraid of her.”
The shorter guard agreed again.
Encouraged, the other continued. “I’ve heard that she’s legendary with a sword, that her blade moves so fast it only appears as a flash of light.”
Cass, in the shadows, drew her sword in anticipation of their approach. She made sure it didn’t reflect any glint of light from the compound. The guards were getting close now.
“I’ve also heard that she’s more than six feet tall,” he said, gesturing with one hand raised above his head, indicating Cass’s expected height.
Cass shifted her weight from one foot to the other, drawing herself up to her full height of barely five feet, poised for action.
“Yeah, that’s true. And also I’ve heard that she’s got long blond hair and enormous breasts,” the first chimed in, a hopeful note to his voice, miming with both hands the expected dimensions of Cass’s—apparently—very svelte figure.
Cass checked that her shoulder length, black hair was still pulled tight in its pony tail. Then, despite herself, she glanced down at her slim, athletic chest. She thought it over for a moment, then shrugged.
“Yes, yes,” the other replied, “I’ve heard the same. She’s an American after all and all American women are blond with big breasts. I’ve seen the videos. And, more than that, I’ve heard that just one look at her can freeze a man in place. Men are mesmerized by her beauty and then, frozen in place, they are powerless to move as she effortlessly cuts them down with her sword.” He mimed the stroke of a sword, decapitating his companion. His companion played along, eyes wide with some combination of desire and horror at the imagined sight of Cass.
They were both nodding eagerly now, their heads bobbing in time together.
They were almost on top off her. Wraithlike, Cass stepped out from behind a tree, sword raised, onto the path directly in front of them.
Both guards immediately froze in place, scanning her from head to toe, trying in vain to make what they’d just imagined fit the reality of what they were seeing.
“I guess I’m even more beautiful than you dared imagine,” Cass said drily as she delivered a roundhouse kick to the head of one and a blow with the hilt of her sword to the chin of the other.
Both men crumpled to the ground. Cass search them for keys, gagged them, and then tied them, unconscious, to a tree out of sight from the path.
As soon as they were bundled away and she had what she needed, Cass was surprised to find that she missed their banter. If she could manage to be half of what they feared, she might actually have a shot at rescuing Miranda.
Cass slipped through a gate and along the interior of the wall. Another pair of guards, more serious and less chatty, passed by her hiding spot, oblivious. Their spears cast long shadows in the low angled light of the nearest fire burning in the courtyard.
Cass stuck close to Amare’s instructions. She circled around the back of the main building and located a ground-level window. The latch was loose and, just as two more guards turned the corner, dropped into a basement hallway. Staying low to the ground and close to the wall, she wound her way down one hallway, took a left, and down another. The deeper she went in the building, the older everything seemed. Concrete floors gave way to stone. Metal doors gave way to wood.
Peeking around the corner of Miranda’s hallway, Cass saw just one guard stationed next to the door. She fished along the seams of the uneven floor for a loose stone and found one about the size of a dime. She tossed it around the corner, low to the ground. It landed on the far side of the guard, drawing his attention. The moment his head was turned, Cass took a run at him. In full stride, just as his head was swiveling back in her direction, Cass leapt and unleashed a vicious punch, aided by gravity and the full weight of her body. The guard slumped to the ground, unconscious.
Cass sucked on her knuckle, split and bleeding from the force of the blow, and took stock of the heavy wooden door, hung on ancient iron hinges, that barred entrance to Miranda’s cell. The massive iron bolt that locked it in place required no key. It only required that you not be inside the cell.
Cass took a deep breath. Now that she was here, she was afraid to open it.
Chapter Thirty
Cass hesitated. She wasn’t sure what she would find on the other side of the door. Would Miranda be alive? Would she be wounded? Would she still be Miranda? What if Miranda had betrayed the Shield and was, in some way, in league with the Lost? What would Cass do then?
She didn’t know. But there was only one way to find out.
Cass slid back the bolt and leaned her full weight against the door. It creaked open a few inches, just enough for Cass to squeeze inside.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to darkness. When they did, Cass found Miranda where Kumiko had left her: chained to the wall, wet and freezing, the weight of her body borne by her bruised and raw wrists.
“Miranda,” Cass whispered, trying to get her attention. “Miranda, it’s me. Cass.”
Miranda’s head lolled to the side, her eyes pointed in Cass’s general direction, but she didn’t reply.
“I’m here to . . . rescue you,” Cass said, feeling ridiculous even as she said it. She put her arms around Miranda, helping her stand on her own two feet, relieving the weight from her wrists. Miranda let out a deep sigh as if she had been holding her breath all this time. Her skin was pale and ice cold. Cass leaned in and kissed her on the forehead.
“I’m so sorry, Miranda,” Cass said. “Let’s get you out of here.”
In response, Miranda mumbled a few broken phrases that Cass could only partly make out. “Go, Cass . . . get out . . . leave me . . . Kumiko is coming . . . she . . . a trap.”
“Just hang in there, Miranda,” Cass said, aiming for a tone that sounded confident and reassuring.
Cass leveraged her sword in the clasps of Miranda’s manacles and, one after the other, popped them open. Freed, Miranda wilted and collapsed to the ground. Cass slid her hands under Miranda’s head just before it would have hit the stone floor. She removed her jacket, slipped Miranda into it, and pulled her into her lap. She rubbed Miranda’s arms and legs, trying to generate some warmth and bring her back around.
Miranda’s eyes opened a crack. She recognized Cass immediately but it wasn’t clear if she understood where they were or what was happening.
“Cass,” Miranda tried again, her blue lips cracked, her left eye bruised. “I should have told you.”