Wildcard (Warcross #2)(7)

I look around frantically. Maybe Zero’s lying to me, playing one of his games. I pull up my directory and start to place a call to Asher. If the others are still somewhere close by, they can come get me. They—

I never finish my thought. A shot rings out behind me, whizzing narrowly past my neck to chip the wall at an angle.

A bullet. A gunshot. A sudden wave of terror sweeps over me.

I throw myself to the ground. Down the street, a random passerby screams and runs, leaving me the only person that I can see. I glance over my shoulder—searching for my followers—and this time, I see a shadow moving against a building, rippling in the night. Another movement on the other side of the street catches my eye. I start scrambling to my feet.

A second gunshot rings out.

Panic hovers at the edges of my senses, threatening to crowd out everything. The sounds come to me like I’m underwater. As a bounty hunter, I’ve heard gunshots before, the ping of police bullets against walls and glass—but the sheer intensity of this moment is new. I was never the target.

Did Zero send them? But he’d warned me to run. He’d told me that I was in danger. Why would he do that, if he’s the one attacking me?

You have to think.

I flatten myself against the wall, throw my board to the ground, and jump on it. My heel slams down and the board surges forward with a high-pitched whoosh. Zero had said a car was waiting for me around the next turn. I crouch low on my board so that my hands can grip either side of it, then aim for the end of the street.

But another gunshot streaks past my leg—too close—and hits the board. Another knocks a wheel loose.

I jump off as the board veers sharply into the wall, roll, and push myself back to my feet—but my sneaker catches against a crack in the pavement. I stumble. Behind me come footsteps. My eyes squeeze shut, even as I struggle back up to my feet again. This is it; any second now, I will feel the searing pain of a bullet ripping through me.

“Around the corner. Go.”

I jerk my head to one side at the voice.

Crouched beside me in the darkness is a girl with a black cap pulled low on her head. Her lipstick is black, her eyes gray and hard as steel and fixated on the shadowed silhouettes on the street. A gun’s in her hand, and clipped around her wrist is a black cuff. I think the cuff is real for a moment before a virtual ripple of blue shines across it. She’s balanced so lightly on her feet that she looks ready to fly away, and her expression is completely still, without even the tiniest ripple of unease.

No one was beside me a second ago. It’s like she materialized out of thin air.

Her eyes flicker to me. “Move.” The word cracks like a whip.

This time, I don’t hesitate. I bolt down the street.

As I do, she rises from her crouch and moves toward one of my hooded assassins. The girl walks with a sense of calm that borders on eerie—even as the attacker shifts his arm to shoot at her, she is shifting, too. By the time the attacker fires at the girl, she has twisted her body to one side, dodging the bullet as she raises her gun. She shoots at the attacker in a blur of fluid motion. I reach the bend in the street and look back at the same time her bullet hits my assassin hard in the shoulder. It knocks him backward, clear off his feet.

Who the hell is this girl?

Zero hadn’t said anything about someone else working with him—maybe she’s not connected to him at all. She could even be one of my attackers and is trying to throw me off track by pretending to be my rescuer.

I’ve already reached the mall complex. I’m rushing past crowds of startled people as I make my way down the first flight of stairs. Basement level, the words repeat in my mind. In the distance, I hear police sirens wailing down the last street I was on. How’d they know to come here so quickly?

Then I remember the passerby who’d screamed and fled at the first gunshot. If she was using the new, algorithm-affected lenses, then her reaction could have triggered the NeuroLink to contact the police. Could that be possible? It seems like a feature Hideo would have added.

It isn’t until I reach the bottom of the stairs and burst through an emergency exit that I realize the gray-eyed girl is already here, somehow, rushing alongside me. She shakes her head when she sees me opening my mouth to ask her a question.

“No time. Hurry up,” she orders in a terse voice. I numbly do as she says.

As we go, I quietly analyze what information I can about her. There’s precious little. Like me, she seems to be operating behind a false identity, the various profile accounts hovering around her empty and misleading. She moves with single-minded focus, so intense and so sure in her gestures that I know she’s done things like this before.

Like what? Like helping a hunted target get to safety? Or tricking one into following her to their demise?

I wince at the thought. That’s not a gamble I can afford to lose. If she’s trying to isolate me from her other rival hunters or something, then I need to find a good chance to bolt away.

This basement floor of the shopping center is laid out like cosmetics counters in a New York mall, except all of the kiosks here display an array of decadently decorated desserts. Cakes, mousses, chocolates—all so delicately packaged that they look less like food and more like jewelry. The lights are dimmed, the floor long closed for the night.

I race along the darkened aisles behind the girl. She edges close to one of the cake displays and brings an elbow down hard on the glass. It shatters.