Forged(59)

I hear him struggle with the door, curse about his injuries, struggle some more.

“Help me with this,” he growls.

“Take off my blindfold.”

“Forget it.”

“Do you want to die in here?”

He swears again, then pulls the blindfold free.

The car is a disaster. What would be the left side is flush with the ground, but by the buckled state of the roof and doors, I’d say we rolled more than once before coming to a stop. The driver—Pete—has split his skull open on the steering wheel. The second man up front isn’t moving either.

Beyond the cracked windshield is a fading twilight sky. All I can make out is thick smoke and the shadowy outlines of a few buildings. We could be anywhere—Taem or Haven or even some town I’ve never heard of. Visibility’s too poor to determine if there’s a dome overhead.

The world reeks of fire and fuel. I’ve never forgotten that sharp smell—not since Sammy used diesel from the Catherine’s engine room to help me light my arrows on fire last December. The smoke is thick outside, a few licks of fire behind it. Those flames can not meet us. Not if what I’m smelling is our vehicle leaking all its fuel.

I throw my weight against the door with the guard, but it doesn’t budge. The fire creeps closer, tearing up the road. More gunfire echoes from somewhere beyond the spiderweb of cracks on the windshield.

While the guard holds the latch, I throw my weight into the door again. Nothing. Again. Still jammed.

Something rocks our vehicle. Someone.

I see the legs of the figure climbing onto the car, crawling toward our window. He pulls on the door. I throw my weight into it, and this time, it gives. The door doesn’t swing open so much as it is heaved, a heavy grate being moved against its will. An arm reaches in, dressed in dark leather. We grab each other’s wrists. I know who I’m holding without seeing her face. I would know the shape of her anywhere.

She hoists me out, then fires twice into the vehicle. I spend an exhale feeling bad for the guard, and then Bree is tugging me down a narrow alley as the flames make their way into the car. I follow her black form—black pants, black hat, black leather jacket that clings to her frame like a second skin. She’s wearing a mask to protect against the smoke and runs through thick billows of it like I’m wearing the same.

The fight continues back in the street, gunfire against gunfire, smoke pluming in the wake of flames. We duck into a building. Bree leads the way up a flight of stairs, through a window and into a neighboring building, down several stairs and into a basement. It’s deserted, but an angry alarm blares, red light flashing. The place has been evacuated—by Bree somehow, or maybe because of the fighting outside.

This has all been planned. Meticulously. And she must have had help. There’s too much gunfire for it to be just Sammy and Clipper. They must have contacted other Rebel supporters in Taem after arriving at the safe house.

Bree spins to face me, palms out, and I barrel into them. She tears off her mask, then the hat.

“Your biggest regret,” she demands.

“Saying I doubted us.” I don’t know why she’s asking this, not when my one and only double died at her hands at the Compound.

She keeps pressure on my chest and pulls out a flashlight. “And the person I told you about after our first night together.” I blink, temporarily blinded. She gathers a fistful of my shirt and pushes me backward. “What was his name?”

“Lock?”

She lowers the flashlight and I realize I should have been suspicious of her, too. I know it’s her now that she’s mentioned our conversation about Lock—a private moment, a recent one—and the scar above her eyebrow only confirms it further, but how foolish of me. How dumb and trusting and naively stupid to immediately believe the first Bree I saw outside of Bone Harbor was my Bree.

“Do you want to check mine?” She holds out the flashlight like she’s heard my thoughts. Then she shakes her head and pockets it. “Actually, no time. Loons. Herons then, loons now. We good?”

“We’re good.”

Bree grabs a small axe from a wall lined with tools and points at a table. “Hands here.” With my back to the table, I lift my hands onto the surface, and stretch them as far apart as the cuffs allow.

“Don’t mi—”

“I won’t. Just hold still.”

I feel the air move as she brings the axe down, followed by a vibration that stings at my wrists and travels to my shoulder socket.

“One more,” she promises.

A whoosh, the clink of the restraint splitting, and my arms swing free. Each wrist is still cuffed in metal, but they’re no longer tethered together.

She throws the axe aside. “Sammy’s waiting.”

“How many people did this take?”

“Does it matter? It worked.”

“But—”

“I think someone’s following us, Gray. Explanations later.”

I didn’t hear or see anyone, but if she says someone’s on our tail, I believe it. We race through the massive basement, which is filled with machinery as large as the ceiling allows. At various intervals we pass medical kits mounted into the wall, emergency breakers to cut power to machines, fire alarms. This must be a factory, and by the look of the equipment we run past, we’re on the production level.