Each hallway they barreled through was locking before their eyes, doors switching over to red and fences coming down from the overhead mechanism. Rosalind barely avoided getting a foot trapped under a rolling plate of metal, stumbling forward into safety by a hairsbreadth.
“Hold my hand,” Alisa huPed from ahead, extending her arm.
“What? Why?” Despite her confusion, Rosalind reached out anyway and grabbed Alisa’s hand. “Do you see something?”
“No.” They hurtled past the next hallway. “I’m oPering emotional support.”
The situation was so ludicrous that Rosalind almost laughed. Except it seemed any sort of strong response triggered the twist in her throat, because she let out another sob instead.
Alisa audibly winced. They were either near or already in the outer facility, if the change in door markings was any indication. Rosalind was relying on Alisa to lead them to the exit. Though she had memorized the blueprints too, she was hardly at capacity to identify which sectors they had already passed, especially when many of the areas were now marred by smoke and dust. The damage had been much worse in other parts of the base.
“I understand wanting to curl up and have a cry. Trust me, I really do,” Alisa said. “But right now you have to stop sniAing because it’s going to mess up your vision. And you need to see properly if we’re going to make our way out.”
Rosalind wiped her eyes hard. It cleared her sight, but not by much. At least clutching Alisa’s hand, holding on to something solid, something rooted in the real world, did help her gather her bearings. “How much farther?”
“Not much. The metal gate that almost cut you in half pushed us into the outer facility.”
The walls blurred. Smoldered. Though the worst of the overhead attack seemed to have passed, the Aoor beneath their feet would still tremble at intervals as it picked up aftershocks from elsewhere.
“Make a left.”
Rosalind turned on Alisa’s command. She could barely feel each footstep anymore. The world was made up of echoes and shadows, and she moved through it accordingly.
“We’re almost—aaah!”
They halted just before a part of the ceiling could smash directly atop them, thudding onto a pile of rubble instead. Most of the outer facility was built with steel and metal, which meant the ceiling coming down had also collapsed an entire vent in their path.
“Which way?” Rosalind said, breathless. “We can’t go through.”
Alisa tried to push at the rubble. It shifted an indiscernible inch. “This is the
only way through.”
Rosalind attempted to help push. They were trying to move a whole hallway: she wasn’t even surprised that nothing budged.
“There has to be another route out.”
“We would have to circle back.” Alisa gave the vent a kick. Something echoed on the other side, though it didn’t sound like it was made by the same motion. “Ugh. Where’s Orion when you need him?”
“… here… be patient.”
The faintest voice snuck through the rubble. Rosalind lurched close to the blockage, trying to catch the sound again. “Orion?”
A piece of steel moved out of place. A circular hole opened in the obstruction.
“As I was saying,” he exclaimed. “I’m here. Move back, please.”
Rosalind and Alisa gave the rubble wide berth at once. Orion pushed with ePort, and then a section of the vent fell loose from its cloistered pile, opening the slightest path.
“Come on,” he called.
Alisa climbed in 1rst, muttering under her breath as a lock of her hair got caught on a sharp edge of broken metal. On the other side, Orion maneuvered
her over a hefty chunk of metal, then gestured for Rosalind to hurry too.
She climbed through. Landed in the pile of debris.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Orion said, stopping her the moment she crossed to his side. He tipped her chin up, getting a proper look at her face. “What happened in there?”
Her throat constricted. She shook her head. Orion didn’t wait for her to manage an answer. He reached for her and brought her into his arms, clasping her close.
“It’s all right,” he whispered into her hair. “It’s all right, beloved.”
“Dao Feng. He’s dead.” Her tears had dried. There was only its remaining hollowness, gnawing up her insides. “He had to go and save me, that fool.”
Though Orion had no recollection who Dao Feng was, though he couldn’t
have known more than the brief few pieces Rosalind had told him to summarize their past mission, his hold tightened like he was sharing her sorrow.
“Old man,” Orion murmured, mimicking her description when she had drawn that web of names. “Pain in the ass until the very end.”
Rosalind choked out a sniveling laugh. It was pathetic and miserable, but it captured her heart exactly.
“Let’s go,” Orion said, glancing at the rubble barrier. The building trembled again. “Before this buries us.”
Rosalind nodded. It was an exhausting ePort picking through the 1nal corridor, and the exit was barely intact. When they 1nally made their way out, the air felt stiAing hot. A thin aura of red lined the night sky. The horizon appeared to glow with light.
Not light… 1re.
“Thank goodness,” Celia said. She was on the grass, kneeling beside Oliver. “I was about to pass out from fright when the passageway collapsed.”
“Was it bombed after you got out?” Alisa asked, frowning. Her head craned up, trying to make sense of the situation.
“No, the bombing has passed this area now,” Orion answered. “Everything collapsed a few minutes after we exited. There’s damage across the whole base that’s taking a while to settle.”
Rosalind clutched her arms. All the little hairs at the back of her neck were standing straight. Smoke, thick and impenetrable, clogged up the distance.
“Does anyone know what happened to Phoebe? Or how she even knew that Silas sold us out?”
Better yet—why would Silas do something like that?
Silence across the clearing. A few moments later, Alisa cleared her throat.
“I was in range by the time I came looking for you,” she said. “I heard your last exchange. It sounded like Phoebe is hiding out until things clear. We should do the same.”
Nothing made sense. But Alisa was right: they needed to go. They needed to 1nd the vehicle that Silas had left by the perimeter and leave before either the Nationalists caught them or the oncoming war incinerated them.
“How’s Oliver?” Rosalind asked.
He seemed alert enough to respond to his own name, waving his arm for an answer. His head, however, was drooped while he sat upon the grass. If Rosalind didn’t know better, she would have said he was either under extreme fatigue or drunk out of his mind.
“One bad wound at his side,” Celia reported. She winced. “It needs medical attention, but it’s still not enough to cause this state of… whatever this state is. I worry that he’s poisoned.”
“Let me see.” Rosalind hurried to him, mimicking Celia’s crouch on his other side and pressing her 1ngers to his pulse. She was an expert where poison was concerned. This didn’t resemble the symptoms of any poison she could name.
“Celia,” he mumbled, trying to push her away. “Ow.” “I’m not Celia,” Rosalind replied.
Oliver continued resisting. Rosalind held on for another few seconds, then put her hand on his forehead. Blistering hot.
“It’s not poison,” Rosalind decided. “I want to guess that it’s blood loss to dangerous levels, but…”
“I can do a transfusion,” Celia said immediately. “We’re the same blood type.
They made us test in the event of an emergency on missions, so—”
“Wait.” Rosalind peeled back his shirt slowly, taking a look at his wound. They hadn’t bandaged him up the last time they took blood from him. The circular lesion itself was angry and red, but the surrounding area was a chalky sort of blue. Celia was right: this was going to need surgery, preferably sooner rather than later. “If it was blood loss, he would be cold, not hot. And his heartbeat would be going fast, but it’s perfectly normal at the moment, which…”
Rosalind trailed oP. Which wasn’t normal for him at all, actually. “Orion, come here.”
Orion followed instructions. He kneeled down, and Rosalind put her hand to his neck, counting his pulse. Prior to Phoebe’s 1ndings, she couldn’t believe she had never noticed this detail about him. There had been multiple occasions when she had been pressed up right against his heartbeat, hearing its rapid thudding under her ear, and she had always brushed it oP to the situation at the time.
His was going much, much faster than Oliver’s. And this time, she didn’t think it was caused by the situation. It was his resting heart rate. The resting rate for their altered blood.
“I think they took too much too quickly,” Rosalind whispered. “Too much blood, but more importantly, too much of the material created in his blood by his mutated genes.” His body was reacting to the loss. The normal pulse wasn’t normal for Oliver, so everything else was overcompensating. “A transfusion isn’t going to help because his body needs to be generating more of that sera-whatever Lady Hong passed on to him, not just blood.”
Oliver’s head tipped up with ePort, trying to join the conversation. As he blinked, however, he 1nally caught sight of Orion for the 1rst time, and his brow furrowed at once, uncomprehending. “Liwen?”
Orion looked stricken. He seemed torn between a friendly smile upon
instinct and, at the same time, a snarl given what he had been told of their past history. He settled for something in between, his teeth clacking together to make a neutral grimace. “Forgive me, gē.” His grimace grew even more awkward. “I have a rather terrible case of amnesia.”
“What?” Oliver murmured. His head tipped forward again. He had expended all his energy for that short exchange.
Celia looked terri1ed. “If he’s in this state because his body lacks his mysterious genetic substance,” she said, “how do we help him?”
“I don’t know.” Rosalind searched for a good answer, for some way to put her sister at ease. She came to a complete blank. “We wait for it to replenish itself, I suppose. The hospitals must be in shambles right now. Our best bet is 1nding a safe house and bunkering down.”
Rosalind got to her feet shakily. She held her hand out to help Orion—more for something to do than because he actually needed the aid—but he took it nonetheless, rising straight.
“I’ll drive,” he declared.
