Gingerly, she stepped through the dismantled doorway to find a circular sitting room before her. The soldiers lay across the cream carpet, their uniforms smoking. She eyed them one by one, waiting for them to twitch or reach for their guns, but none of them moved. The ticktock of a grandfather clock floated into Zara’s ears, reminding her that she was losing precious time. Her gaze swept across the space, getting her bearings. Six doors spanned the arc of the room, each one tightly shut.
Zara tiptoed to the first door on her left, as Alene had told her, and readied a ball of lightning on her hand. Better safe than sorry, she thought as she reached for the handle.
Her fingers never met the knob.
Heavy strides thumped behind her, and Zara threw herself onto the carpet as a pistol fired into the sitting room. But she wasn’t fast enough. Red-hot pain burst through her chest, right below her ribs. She gasped, and the lightning bolt flew free from her hand. A man screamed.
Zara writhed against the floor, breathless from the pain. She almost passed out from it — she would have welcomed that, even — but the blackness didn’t take her. Her hands groped along her chest, but she didn’t find any blood, only a puncture on her vest where the bullet had stopped.
The man screamed again, and Zara forced herself onto her knees, her cracked ribs making each breath agony. Colonel Eckhart stood by the door to the residential wing, and a blackened pistol lay by his feet. A small bolt of her lightning must have hit the gun; its metal had burned the Colonel’s hand, which had ruptured with red blisters.
Zara propped herself against the wall, each breath a torture, and she tried to muster a gale-force wind to knock him off of his feet. But the wind wouldn’t come.
Cradling his hand against him, Colonel Eckhart hobbled toward her. “You filthy Mischling!” he spat. She tried to summon another lightning bolt, but he kicked her in the ribs, and the world went white with pain. Zara curled into herself, wanting to scream, but only a hoarse whimper came out. She clenched her fists, begging for the wind or lightning to hear her.
“I should have killed you weeks ago!” He lifted a blue-and-white vase from a buffet table and raised it over his head. Zara raised a feeble hand to stop him. His intentions were clear — he didn’t need a gun to kill her.
The Colonel brought the vase down, and Zara shoved her hand up to meet it, channeling every particle of air that she could. A desperate wind whooshed forward, and the Colonel flew backward, smashing into an oil painting of Reichsmarschall Baldur’s wife. Colonel Eckhart brushed off the hit, fury in his piercing eyes, and he was about to smash in Zara’s head with his fists when he stopped midswing.
“Father!”
Colonel Eckhart’s head jerked toward the doorway. Zara’s did the same.
Bastian stood in the doorway, a medical bag slung over one shoulder and a pistol cocked in his hand. The barrel was pointed at the Colonel’s chest.
Zara thought she was seeing things. Bastian was supposed to be back at the factory, not here in the chaos of the White House, pointing a gun at his father. She blinked hard to chase the illusion away, but Bastian — and the gun — remained in the doorframe.
The Colonel’s face flooded with relief at first, but then he snarled when he realized Bastian was pointing the gun at him. “Put that thing away!”
Bastian shook his head.
“Are you going to shoot me, mein Sohn?” Colonel Eckhart said in disbelief.
Bastian’s fingers trembled, so much so he used both hands to steady the pistol. “Step away from her, Father.”
“Is she the reason why you turned traitor?” His voice lowered into a growl. “This Untermensch?”
“Step away. I won’t say it again.”
Colonel Eckhart didn’t budge. “My own son, the defector.” He barked out a bitter laugh. “Are you really abandoning me and your mother over this Mischling girl?”
“You’re the one who abandoned Mother to that facility!” Bastian roared. Anger overtook his features. Zara had never seen him like this before. “And Opa. You could have asked for leniency — both Mother and I begged you for it — but you let him die.”
“That man was a poison to our family!” His cold eyes looked Bastian up and down. “This is his influence, isn’t it?”
“So what if it is?” said Bastian defiantly.
Streaks of redness climbed up Colonel Eckhart’s neck. “Look at what your precious grandfather has made you become — turning your back against your own country and now your own blood. I should have had your precious Opa killed years ago!”
Colonel Eckhart charged at Bastian so fast that Bastian barely realized what was happening. With his arms raised, the Colonel leapt on top of him, sending Bastian’s pistol careening across the floor. They grappled, fists flying. Colonel Eckhart punched Bastian in the jaw, then in the stomach.
Despite the throbbing in her chest, Zara pushed herself up and mustered a spark of lightning, just enough to stun someone. Once Bastian shoved his father off of him, she sent the spark shooting into the Colonel’s back. He cried out, his arms jerking upward, and he tumbled over. His eyes clasped shut.
Bastian stood frozen, panting hard. “Is he … is he dead?” He knelt by his father’s body and pushed two fingers against his wrist. “There’s a pulse.”
Zara couldn’t tell if he was relieved or disappointed. Ignoring the pain in her ribs, she stared at Bastian, still stunned to see him in front of her. “What are you doing here?” The question finally tumbled out of her. “You’re supposed to be back at the factory!”
“I came with the others. They needed medics, so I volunteered.” His voice was flat, and his face had emptied of color. Zara wondered how many deaths he had witnessed that night. “It’s mayhem outside. There are more rebels coming, but the Nazis already sent in reinforcements. I knew I had to find you.” His head jolted over his shoulder as the sound of gunshots peppered their ears. “We don’t have much time.”
“We? This isn’t your mission!” As relieved as Zara was to see him, she didn’t want him here. She had already watched her uncle get nearly killed — she couldn’t lose someone else she cared about. And she cared about Bastian. It was terrifying for her to admit that, but she did. The thought of seeing him gunned down or ripped apart by some sentinel made her bones shudder. “You need to go with the others before it’s too late.”
He didn’t move an inch. “Where is the Führer’s room?”
“Bastian, go.” She didn’t have time to argue with him. If the reinforcements were on their way, they had minutes at the most. She shoved him toward the doorway, but it was like pushing a wall of muscle.
Bastian caught her hands and gently placed them at her sides.
“You don’t want to see what I have to do,” Zara pleaded.
“Yes, I do.” He drew in a long, long breath. “For his sake.” His head bowed and he said, “Für dich, Opa.” For you, Grandfather.
Zara looked at him, searching his eyes. “Are you sure?”
“Where is he?” he said grimly.
There was no more time to argue. She nodded at the first door on the left. “He’s in there.”
Cautiously, she stepped to the door and summoned a bolt of lightning onto her palm. She wished she could coax it larger, but it was the best she could do with the ache in her ribs. She glanced at Bastian.
“On the count of three,” she whispered. He nodded and braced himself against the wall next to the door while she stood opposite him. “One … two … three!”
She blasted the door open with a surge of wind, and that’s when the shooting started. Instinct took over. Zara slammed to the floor and shouted for Bastian to do the same. She cradled her head as the bullets soared past her, blasting past them in a deafening roar before Zara finally heard a hollow ping. An empty magazine.
“Now, before they reload!” Bastian said urgently.
Zara flung a tornado through the door, saving her last bit of lightning for Dieter. Bastian shielded himself as chunks
of plaster and glass flew into the hallway, biting against his clothes. A man’s voice cried out from inside the room.
Crawling forward over the detritus, Zara peered inside the suite and saw an opulent living room, large enough to consume her entire house. Furniture lay toppled on its side, victims of her tornado: a silver lamp lay cracked on a plush rug while a glass chandelier swung wildly from side to side.
Bastian tilted his head. “Blood,” he said, pointing to a bright red smear on the cream carpet.
Zara held her breath and got to her feet, stepping silently into the suite. She followed the blood trail behind a mahogany-trimmed sofa and stopped cold when she saw the body.
“It’s the Medic,” she murmured to Bastian.
Lying on one side, the Medic sprawled over the carpet with a sharp chunk of wood jammed into his neck. His limp fingers had curled around the wood, maybe in an attempt to heal himself, but he had bled out too quickly.
Bastian searched for a pulse. “He’s dead.” He craned his neck over the rest of the suite. “Did the Führer escape?”
The safe room, Zara thought. The blood rushed out of her head. If the Führer had made it to the elevator and the safe room, then this whole night would have been for nothing. She hurried around the suite, yanking each door open: the bathroom, the laundry, the linen closet. Garrison had mentioned that the route to the safe room was hidden inside a closet — was this the one? She thrust her hands through the sheets and towels until she bumped into a fingerprint pad on the wall.
A red button flashed on the pad, along with an angry ERROR message.
Garrison had done it. He had snuck into the White House basement, discovered the elevator that connected the safe room to this closet, and destroyed the elevator’s control box, effectively preventing Dieter’s escape. She whispered a thank-you to Garrison, hoping he had gotten out of the building by now, and looked back at Bastian. “Dieter didn’t make it out. He must be in here somewhere.”
“Then we better find him soon.”
They stalked through a wood-paneled library and saw the main sleeping area ahead, where the Führer must be waiting for them, only footsteps away. Zara’s heartbeat launched like a rocket.
“In there,” Zara mouthed to Bastian, who had come up behind her. She conjured one more lightning bolt, wishing it would burn hotter, and glanced inside the bedroom.
Dieter was crouched next to a grand four-poster bed, which was neatly made with silk pillows and down blankets. He stumbled toward Zara with a thin cry, his hands outstretched to strangle her.
The lightning leapt from Zara’s hand. Dieter was thrown backward, his entire body twitching from the direct hit. When he stopped shaking, he clawed at his chest and struggled for breath, his watery eyes narrowing at Zara and Bastian. Hatred seethed inside his sunken pupils. His lips puckered to spit at them, but the spittle merely dribbled down his chin.
Zara stared right back. Here he was, the leader of the Empire. The great Führer himself. For years, she had mopped the floors under his portrait at the academy, under those round apple cheeks and that smear of a mustache.
But this husk of a man looked nothing like that portrait now. His corpse-white skin hung loosely off his face, and his eyes had retreated into their sharp-angled sockets. He looked as if Death had laid claim to him already. A dying skeleton.
“You must think yourself very clever,” the Führer rasped in German, “but my soldiers will hunt you down. They’ll tear you apart piece by piece.”
Faint shouts carried into Zara’s ears while piercing helicopter lights roamed beyond the windows. She yanked the camcorder from her pocket and shoved it into Bastian’s hands. “Start taping.”
“Why?” he said, taken aback.
“We have to, for the Alliance broadcast.” If it were up to her, they would kill the Führer and leave right afterward, but the Alliance needed this footage for the mission to succeed. If the Nazis had one stunt double for the Führer, they would try to use another to hide his death — unless the Alliance had proof that the true Dieter was dead.
Zara waited for Bastian to point the video camera at her and Dieter. He motioned for her to start, but she only stared at the lens, wishing Garrison was here, because he would know what to say. The shouts rose in volume down the hallway.
“Citizens of the Territories!” Zara said, the first thing she could think of. “We, the Revolutionary Alliance, speak to you tonight from the White House.”
The Führer tried to crawl away, but she stepped in front of him, her boots stepping onto his feeble fingers. He wailed, but she didn’t move. Her mind flashed with images of her mother and Mrs. Talley and Molly, who had given their lives to Dieter’s regime. Their courage sustained her for what she had to do next.
“We’ve suffered under the Führer’s oppressive rule for decades, but tonight we claim our freedom.” Zara didn’t know where these words were coming from, but she didn’t question them.
The Führer looked up at her, wheezing. “You will never get away with this. Your little Alliance will crumble under the strength of Germany!”
“Dieter Hitler.” She pointed at his head and summoned a spark of lightning, channeling everything inside of her to coax it larger. It shone brightly in the dim room, lighting the Führer’s sick countenance. “You will be punished for your crimes against us.”
“You dirty, sullied Untermensch —”
Zara released the lightning, and it rammed into Dieter’s chest, where it traveled ravenously over his frail frame. Dieter’s limbs convulsed from the strike, and he clutched tightly at his heart, choking on his breath. The wheezing stopped, and Zara knew he was dead. She blinked at his body.
She had killed the Führer, leader of the Nazi Empire.
Her heart felt cold.
“Turn off the camera,” she said to Bastian.
Footfalls pounded into the residential wing, peppered with yelling voices. German voices. Zara’s gaze leapt toward the sound. She would have to wait to process what she had done. Right now, they needed to get out of the White House.
Bastian shoved the video camera into his pants pocket. “What do we do?” he cried.
She yanked him toward the nearest window and wrapped her arms around him. “Don’t let go!” she said before blasting a window open with a gale-force wind. As the soldiers flooded into the room, she launched Bastian and herself skyward as fast as the air would take them.
They catapulted above the White House, above all of Neuberlin, until the shrine to Führer Adolf was only a bright smudge below them. Even then, Zara urged them higher, until they skimmed the lowest drifting clouds, into a current so cold that their breath frosted as soon as it left their lips. Bastian’s hands clutched around her like a life vest.
“Is anyone following us?” she shouted against the wind. “A helicopter? A sentinel?”
Too cold to say a word, Bastian shook his head.
She pointed them westward, ignoring the chattering of her teeth. Her ribs ached with every movement, but Zara pushed them onward; soon they had left the city behind.
There was no time to rest, no place to stop.
Not for traitors like them.
Not for Zara, killer of the Führer, the Mischling — the kami — who had slain the most powerful man in the world.
The next three days blurred into one exhausting pattern: run, rest, eat whatever they could forage, then get on the move again. Or else the Nazis would hunt them down.
Right after they had left the White House, Zara had used the wind to carry them over Dominic’s cigar factory, hoping to land and find a few friendly faces, but she only saw police lights blinking around the building. Their safe house had been compromised.
So they had to keep going.
Their new destination was an Alliance location in Wardensville, West Virginia. To find the small town, Bastian had broken into a car late one night and stolen a map out of its glove box. During the day, Zara and Bastian took turns sleeping and searched for water and f
ood, stealing strawberries from a farm or snatching half-eaten sandwiches from a trash bin. At night, they hurried along the side roads, their ears always perked for the chop of helicopter wings or an incoming car. They were exhausted, hungry, and sweaty, but at least they remained one step ahead of the Germans.
Zara hadn’t dared to fly again after that first night. With every sentinel and soldier searching for them, she felt too vulnerable in the skies, especially after the Nazis had released their fighter jets. So they kept to the roads, even though it would take them days to cross the hundred miles between Neuberlin and the Alliance headquarters. They didn’t know where else they could go. Despite the grueling pace, Bastian hadn’t complained, even though Zara noticed the weariness in his eyes and heard the growl of his hungry stomach. Maybe he was too exhausted to protest.
Four days in, they hid themselves in the Appalachian wilderness as a troop of sentinels circled over the forests. Zara only wanted to stay a couple of hours before heading out, but her ribs still throbbed — they had been badly bruised, according to Bastian’s assessment — and fatigue swiftly overtook her.
She awoke in the darkness, the moon hanging in the clear night sky. Around her, crickets sang and locusts chirped. She heard no aircrafts and saw no searchlights, and Zara let her senses relax, if only for a minute. But she couldn’t shut off her mind. The same thoughts invaded her head every time she had a second to breathe. Thoughts of Dieter. Of his lifeless face. Lifeless because of her.
She had killed the most powerful man in the world, and Zara’s chest felt heavy at the warring emotions inside of her. She didn’t exactly regret what she had done. No, the Führer had to die; there was no question about that. But she thought she would feel different somehow. Elated. Triumphant. Instead, Zara could only think about what lay ahead of them. Once the Alliance got ahold of her assassination tape, everyone in the Territories and beyond would know what she had done. They would know her name — and thinking about that made her a little sick to her stomach.
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