27

We run like our hair is on fire through the wreckage of Dominion’s tin-can neighborhoods. Block after block blurs by before Jared lets us slow to a fast walk. It’s early enough still that there aren’t many Lasters on the streets, save a few pushing carts or those handful of humped bodies, wrapped in blankets. Finally we get off the sidewalks and streets. Threading me through a small apartment complex as he surveys dilapidated balconies piled high with junk, Jared just stops and tucks me against a wall so I’m not exposed.

“Stay here. Don’t move. Please.” He needn’t waste his breath. I’m so tired from our flight I have to fight the desire to sink down to the ground. But from the glittering fire of his eyes and the stubborn set to his jaw, I know he’ll haul me to my feet again. So instead I push my head back against the concrete frame, hands on hips as I try to bring my heartbeat back to normal. Jared disappears into the shadows to emerge once again on the far side of the courtyard. He leaps, his body lengthening as he grabs on to the balcony above him and pulls himself up, hand over hand, one floor, then another, until he stands on a fourth-floor balcony blocked by clothes drying in the breeze.

He rifles through some of the laundry, then tosses down a few items, pale, bodiless arms and legs, before he climbs down a story or two and jumps bonelessly to the ground. He joins with the shadows again after gathering his bundle, reemerging before me.

I pluck from his arms a shirt hardened from drying in the air. “How do you reckon they found us?”

He pushes me back into an alcove. “Probably put a tracker on one of them. They likely didn’t know they were putting us in danger, if that’s what you were wondering. Here, change your clothes.” He tosses a few more pieces at me. I must look crazy because his lips quirk up and he tuts at me. “Don’t be difficult, Princess. I don’t want to have to strip you myself. A lot of people got a good look at us. We need to change our clothes. I promise not to peek.” He winks.

He’s right, I realize with a sigh. Despite the lack of privacy, it’s our best option for getting around the city. Seconds tick by as I look around for Peeping Toms. The yard appears empty at the present, but that doesn’t mean there’s nobody watching.

“Before midday, please, Princess?” Jared’s face has gone stiff, his neck frozen as he holds up a towel to guard my privacy. “What’s the matter?” He gives me a wicked smile as he drawls the word out. “Scared?”

I snort. “Not likely. Just… make sure no one can see, all right?” As I push the fabric of my soiled gown down over my shoulders, though, something changes. I’m no longer worried about anyone in the yard watching. Just Jared. A muscle twitches in his jaw, leaving in its wake deep dimples. His eyes rove from my shoulders to my mouth, where I realize I’ve been biting my lip. A low sound rumbles through the air. It takes a moment for me to connect the sound with Jared, who stares at me with the intensity of a true predator.

After a long, wavering beat I slowly bend to pull on a pair of trousers under my long slip. I pull the silky fabric of my slip up and over my head. Jared’s knuckles grasp the towel so tightly they turn white. His face is a mask of quiet intensity. But it’s his eyes that grip me, so alive and filled with fire they could burn a house down. I take a quavering sip of air into my lungs. Another. The world stands still as we take each other’s measure.

“Jared.” The words are still on my lips as his mouth comes down on mine, hard and solid and hot. His lips part mine, his tongue scraping against the tender flesh and teeth as he drinks me in. The world spins in vertigo color as he backs me up against the concrete wall. His hands cover me in the towel but then traverse down my length, fingers dipping below the waistband of the too-large trousers.

Jared’s teeth abandon my mouth. I’m bereft until I feel them scrape along the tender skin of my belly under the towel, inching up to my collarbone, inciting a riot of flesh each step of the way. I shiver and press a hot kiss against his shoulder. Power rips through me as I feel his huge, solid body shudder and draw me closer. Closer.

Just as suddenly as a storm, he stops and rests his forehead against my own.

“Lu.” He presses the word against my flesh with a tender kiss. His voice sounds ragged, as though he’s been fighting. “Lu, this isn’t right. We can’t. We’ve got to keep moving.”

He’s right. Still, I can’t help but feel a tiny part of myself grow smaller as I pull on the long-sleeve shirt Jared has found for me. And I’ve done it again. I’ve given in to my hunger for the True Born knowing full well I should be backing away. I have been proposed to. It’s not the same as being promised, not really. But I do feel like I inhabit a strange limbo state almost as strange as death since Storm’s request. That twilight state is constant for me now. I’m but a ghost of my former self. The mere thought of my twin leaves me feeling itchy dread, tingling with cold.

I should be in the ground with her. We promised.

But Jared—Jared pulls me back to the living. His fingers restlessly hike up the fabric over my shoulder, his gaze hungry on my flesh. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Lu.” He flashes a grin and strips off his own shirt. My mouth waters as I take in the carved muscles of his torso. “But I think we need to keep your clothes on. You are way too distracting.”

The knot forming in my throat dissolves. Jared locks on my mouth. I swallow. The True Born tracks the movement with the concentrated attention of a hunter. The air between us grows heavy, weighted.

Kkkk-rrr—ooo! The long, shrill croon of a rooster in the yard pulls us to our senses. Jared pounces as I turn, only to watch the small, uninterested bird strut across the courtyard.

“They keep chickens?” The rooster sounds his alarm again, wrecking the silence of the early morning.

Jared shoots me a puzzled look. “How else do you think the Lasters survive?” And then, finally in a new gray pullover that settles too tightly across his shoulders and abs, he tugs me into action.

Still, I continue to hear that rooster’s cry long after Jared winds me through the labyrinth of streets.

…

It is somewhere near sundown when Jared’s phone pulses, rousing me from sleep. At first I can’t tell where I am: the air has become a wash of fog, with objects disappearing in the white mist. Jared’s arm, tucked close around me, jerks as he reaches behind him for the gadget.

“Yes.” He says it quietly enough, turning his head away to help me stay asleep. But the restless heat of our bodies pulls me further into wakefulness. Too hot, too hot. Every inch of his body had been pressed against mine, and where he pries away now, coolness seeps. I shiver feverishly. He’s been gone just for a brief second, but already I miss his arm. Most of all, I miss his light, tickling breath against my neck.

And it’s wrong, all wrong, I remind myself. I reach out, feeling the still, empty cord that marks Margot’s absence as the familiar litany takes root. She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone.

I stuff back tears, deciding to focus instead on the taut lines of Jared’s back and our makeshift campsite. We’re bedded down underneath an eroded iron bridge, black with age and covered in thick trails of rust. In front of us flops a boulder-size concrete block. Part of it has crumbled away, giving it the appearance of a chipped tooth. Another, with a rusted broken pipe sticking out from it, guards us on the other side, offering us a convincing illusion of privacy.

The bridge skips across the water but sags so low in the middle it looks like it’s sticking a toe in the water. The air is still and quiet, the water’s trickle a lullaby, and something about the emptiness of the place had rocked me into the first deep, healthy sleep I’ve had since before Margot and I were captured.

“Uh-huh, okay,” Jared murmurs beside me while sweeping the area like a proper merc. When he feels me watching him, he fastens his gaze to mine. “Uh-huh, okay,” he says again. I watch his lips, the perfect full arc of them, and lose myself in a daydream about them rifling over my neck.

If I thought a life with this True Born was impossible before, it’s nothing to how impossible things seem now—now that Margot is gone, now that my father wants to murder me. Now that the leader of the True Borns has expressed a desire to marry me.

What would we be like if we’d met in some ordinary way?

“’Kay, Doc. I said okay… An hour.” Jared flips the phone shut. My stomach rumbles loudly. It feels as though a week has passed since we’ve eaten.

“What’s happening?” The overhang makes my voice echo and sound tinny.

“We’re going to take a little field trip to Doc Raines’s.”

I absently clutch at the front of Jared’s now soiled dress shirt, feeling hot and dizzy. “Jared. Be serious for once.”

Jared stares at my hand as though he’s never seen its like. His fingers worry at my nail, chipped in the dash from our safe house to here, and filthy to boot. “Lu.” There’s something soft and open to Jared’s face as he seemingly plucks my thoughts from my mind. “What if all this stuff wasn’t happening? Do you think— Would we still want to know each other?”

My mouth gapes open, but I have no words. What would my life be like without him? Awful, I reckon. But…had my life continued as before, a princess of the Upper Circle? A small finger of doubt prods me.

Had my life continued as before, would we even have grown to care about each other? My parents would have made sure we never became friends no matter how often we were thrown together. And me? I likely would have been more than happy to do my duty by marrying whichever of the rich elites my father chose for me.

The silence goes on just a beat too long. But by then it’s too late. Jared turns his head and pulls our bodies apart, ripping my heart in the process. He sniffs and turns away. “The doc’s expecting us, and it’s a long way off. We’d better get a move on.”

…

We pluck our way through the ruins of unnaturally quiet streets. No faces appear at the windows of the car motels, where people sleep in burned-out automobiles stacked four and sometimes five high. There are no preacher men, nor their followers. No one. Yet the staccato beat of gunfire sounds somewhere to the west, not far from where we snake past buildings that could have been bombed for all I can tell.

Jared flattens me to the side of a building. I frown at him as I try to catch my breath. My chest feels crushed, not just by his arm but by the terrible sadness brewing in me. His nose twitches as he pins me, murmuring, “You need to take a shower, Princess.”

My frown slides into a glare. “That’s so…so…impossibly rude!”

Jared tilts his head with a charming smile, as though we’re at a garden party. “And you’re so easy to rile.” He leans down and moves his iron bar of an arm from my chest, only to take me in his huge hands. His lips brush the soft skin of my ear, sending shock waves through my protesting body. “Keep it together, Princess,” he whispers, nipping softly as my stomach tumbles. “We’re almost there.”

Our eyes meet then, electric and fierce. It wouldn’t matter.

The realization hits me like a Flux storm. It wouldn’t matter if, in another life, Jared and I had never crossed paths. We’ve met. We’ve met, and now nothing will ever be complete again without the arrogant, beautiful True Born. I don’t know when my hands snake out and grab at his, holding on as for dear life.

“Jared.” I want nothing more than to tell him, no matter the cost to me.

I take a deep lungful of air filled with ash and smoke and death. I cough and can’t continue. There must have been a fire, I reckon, as plumes of smoke begin to fill the sky in earnest.

A shout fills the emptied streets. Gunfire erupts. Jared’s eyes swing to the left, his body flattening against mine. His lips crush against my ear, the words so quiet I’m not sure I hear them. “When I say so, we’re going to roll into that alley. Got it?”

His body is tight with tension as he waits for me to respond. With a gulp, I nod and try to peek over Jared’s broad frame. But in the falling dusk I can see nothing, none of the dark-clad bodies of the army. Nothing but emptiness, though I hear the bullets ricocheting across the alleys. Dust spills down on our heads from a bullet that hits the wall above us. And the steady metallic hum of a large vehicle. The ground shakes as it nears, more dust raining down on us.

As much as I want to ask where it’s coming from, what’s heading our way, I can tell from Jared’s tense, sober expression that now is not the time. Now is the time for—“Now.” He snarls fiercely and pulls me close as he pitches me to the ground. We roll against the wall and nearly fall as we round a corner. The gunfire immediately sounds further away—

And we are faced by the stuff of nightmares.

…

I’ve never seen one on Dominion’s streets, though I’ve heard of them. Robbie Deakins has told us often enough about Dominion’s military might over the years that I’d know it by sight. The metal carapace the size of a car motel stitches its way through the streets on rotating tracks. With every inch it takes, its canon gun zooms around, looking for a fight. And it’s loud, so loud I can’t hear myself think.

Nash has loosed tanks on the streets of Dominion.

Jared doesn’t wait for the tank to find us. He pulls me into a crouch, and in seconds we’re trailing through debris-strewn streets. We weave past a Plague-bit body, and Jared tugs me toward a narrow gap between buildings.

…

By the time we arrive at the stately brick townhouse, deep in the section of Dominion where the rich doctors and lawyers live, clustered like bats in a cave, we’re breathless and bedraggled. I’ve worn a hole in the knee of the Laster breeches Jared stole for me. My shirt is filthy. There is something stuck in my hair I’d as soon not ask about.

Jared fares hardly better than me. A streak of dirt smears across one cheek, making him look even more dangerous as he glowers at Doc Raines’s tall oak door.

“You need to push the button,” I remark drily as he continues to stare at it.

“Sass?” Jared quirks up an eyebrow at me. “At a time like this?”

He’s joking, but that’s all it takes, just those five little words and my knees start knocking together. I’m scared—and not for myself. What if they’ve taken Doc Raines?

The door flies open, and a springy set of locks bounds out toward us. Glancing around like a merc, Doc Raines wordlessly extends her skinny white arms and hauls us both inside.

I open my mouth, about to ask her what’s happening. She shuts me down with a finger to her lips. She turns, still silent, and bids us to follow her up a set of floating wooden stairs. We pass a large drawing room on the second floor, the expansive white walls rising at least forty feet covered in large, bright canvases.

She continues past these, not even glancing back, and, with her thumb, opens another wooden door with an Identi-pad. The door leads to more stairs, narrower than the last, and as auto lights come on when we head up the stairs, I smell what has become familiar to me these past few months: sterilizer and chemical soup overlaid with the steady purr of fridges and cell separators. We pass through another set of doors, another Identi-pad, and enter Doc Raines’s personal lab.

It’s the longest, brightest lab I’ve ever seen. Six floor-to-ceiling windows, rounded at the tops, line one wall. Doc Raines touches a small pad near the door and the windows tint, masquerading the room from clear light to dim.

“What?” I begin to ask. Doc Raines shushes me quietly. Her hand goes to the panel, and she enters in a series of numbers. A light noise filters through the room, sounding a bit like the crackling of paper.

Beside me, Jared raises an eyebrow, impressed. “You’ve got an interceptor system, Doc?”

“I’ve learned that a healthy dose of paranoia is not a bad thing,” Doc Raines drawls. The mechanical hum fills the room as the doc turns and strides quickly down the long bank of bench space filled with whirring machines. She opens a walk-in fridge, her frizzy halo of curls peeking out. “Well? Come on. We don’t have all day.”

When Doc Raines returns a few moments later, there’s a small specimen tray balanced in each hand. She closes the fridge door with her foot and a blast of chilly air puffs up like smoke. I rub my arms against the cold of the lab. Wordlessly, Jared walks over to the wall where a line of white coats hangs like bodies in the breeze. He grabs one, examines the tag briefly, and comes back to shake it out over my shoulders. “Thank you,” I murmur, just as Doc Raines turns her attention to a screen and lights it up.

“Yes, get cozy,” she says absently. “We have a lot to talk through and I suspect we don’t have long.”

“What do you mean?”

“That buffoon Nash has declared a civil war on the True Borns. It’s only a matter of time before one of my colleagues turns me in for being so closely associated with the True Borns. I’m certain they’ve already bugged my house.”

My heart begins to pound as I jump to my feet, looking for the exits. “We have to get you out of here.”

Doc Raines levels me with a quiet, determined look. “There are more important things to discuss right now. Sit down, Lucy. We need to talk about the new genetic mutations your body is producing.”