Once I’m sure Logan is sound asleep, I slip out of the bed.
I plant a soft kiss on his forehead. “I love you,” I whisper again. No matter what happens, no one can take that from me.
I leave my comm-band on one of the dressers. Dean said there’s a tracking device inside it, so I’d better not take it with me. I change into the clothes I’d set out earlier, grab the knapsack from the closet, and slip out the door into the hallway. It’s still early enough in the night that no one should think anything strange of me leaving right now. But I have an excuse prepared in case I run into anyone who asks questions.
Every step I take, I remind myself why I can’t change my mind: Beechy, Sandy, Uma, and thousands of other innocent people will die if I don’t do this. The vul army will be destroyed. Even Logan could die. We don’t know for sure if the bomb Fred’s building will truly allow the Core to escape unscathed.
And even if it did, we would all remain subject to the rule of the Developers. The ruthless leaders who see us all as test subjects and pawns for their agendas. They’ve slaughtered thousands of innocent people in their time, sending too many girls and boys to the kill chambers every year. If the bomb goes off and the Core becomes a battle station, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to overpower them.
This is my last chance to put an end to the war on my own terms, or die trying.
* * *
The flight port is quiet when I arrive. A faint echo of footsteps and voices comes from the far side. No one’s shipping off to war tonight, so the only people in here are mechanics busy refueling ships and fixing engine parts.
I pause in the doorway, looking out over the spread of transports. I need to take a small ship, preferably a hovercraft, so it’ll have some firing power.
There’s a transport about twenty yards away that looks promising. All I have to do is slip aboard it without being spotted by anyone and use the clearance code Dean gave me to start the engine. If someone sees me and asks questions, I’ll pretend I belong here. I’ll shoot them if I have to. Whatever it takes to board one of the ships and get it in the air.
I pull out my gun, swing my knapsack over my shoulder, and move out of the doorway. I can glimpse the mechanics from here, walking between transports on the far side of the port. I duck behind a toolbox on wheels as one of them turns in my direction.
Once I’m sure they didn’t see me, I continue walking, my hand glued to my gun. I pick up my pace. I’m almost to the transport. Just a few more steps.
I reach it and quickly search for the panel on the back of the hovercraft that’ll lower the boarding ramp. It doesn’t take long to find. The ramp lowers with a loud creak that makes me flinch. Luckily, the mechanics are drilling something on the other side of the port. I don’t think they heard anything.
Inside the hovercraft, I set my gun on the flight dashboard. Now all I have to do is enter the clearance code, start the engine, and get out of here before those mechanics realize what I’m doing and raise the alarm.
I settle into the pilot chair and switch on the dashboard. The screen asking for a clearance code comes up right away. I enter the digits Dean gave me: 4-8-2-7-5-0.
The screen takes a moment to compute the code.
CLEARANCE: GRANTED
I exhale in relief.
“There you are,” a voice says behind me. “I was afraid you were gonna duck out of here without me.”
I whip around, grabbing the gun from the dashboard. It’s Skylar, out of breath and pressing a hand to her side like she was running to get here.
I lift my gun and click off the safety. “Get out or I’ll shoot you.”
“Whoa, steady there,” Skylar says, freezing with her hands over her head. “I come in peace.”
“Like hell. Get off my ship. I’m getting out of here whether or not you already alerted Charlie.”
“I didn’t alert anyone. I figured you could use some backup on the Mardenite battle station. Not to mention getting this piece of work in the air. You really had to pick the crappiest ship in the bay?”
I don’t believe she didn’t alert the Developers. She’s still on their side, isn’t she? Or has she suddenly decided to switch sides again?
“Who told you where I was going?” I ask.
“Who do you think?”
Dean is the only person I told. Clearly he trusted her enough to tell her what I’m planning on doing, but I don’t trust her. She’s the last person I would’ve asked to come with me.
“Get off my ship. I don’t need your help.”
“Listen, you don’t have to forgive me for what I did,” Skylar says.
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
“You have every right to be angry. But I can help you, if you let me. I want to help you.”
“Why?” I demand. “You betrayed all of us to the Developers. Why would you want to help me kill them?”
“I know what I did,” she says. “But I don’t think their bomb is going to save us. I don’t think they’re going to give up, and if we let them keep making all the decisions, we’re going to die. I think it’s time for a change of leadership. That’s why I came here. Okay?”
We’re running out of time. I need to get the ship in the air before someone figures out I’m taking the transport. Otherwise there won’t be time to escape the Core. All of this will be over before I’ve even had a chance to try.
Skylar could easily be lying to me again. But as much as I hate to admit it, I’m afraid I’m getting into something bigger than I can handle on my own.
Leastways, if something happens to her, she’s one of the only people I wouldn’t feel guilty about losing.
“I want you to know I have zero reservations about shooting you,” I say, not lowering my gun. “If you try even the slightest thing to slow down my plans, I’ll blast your brains open without a second’s hesitation. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Skylar says.
“Then close the air-lock doors and buckle in.”
She turns around to close the doors, and I sit back down in the pilot seat. I haven’t flown a ship since Skylar and I copiloted a Davara jet back at the Alliance compound, but thankfully everything she taught me comes back to me. I do a quick pre-check of the flight systems. Everything looks good; fuel levels are high. We should have plenty to get us to the Surface, anyway. I’m not sure there’d be enough to get us back to the Core, but we can’t return without the vul army anyway. The Developers would execute us for treason.
I start the engine as Skylar buckles into the copilot chair beside me. I wrap my fingers around the control clutch and ease it back, lifting the hovercraft off the ground.
Through the cockpit window, I see the exact moment the mechanics realize what’s going on. They drop what they’re doing and wave their hands in the air as they run toward our transport. It looks like they’re shouting.
“Get us out of here,” Skylar says.
I point our transport in the direction of a tunnel in the wall ahead, which will take us to the Pipeline. I accelerate a little, enough to get us to the Pipeline faster, but not too much. I don’t want to crash the ship before we’re even out of the Core.
The comm box on the dashboard starts beeping. A voice comes through the static: “Pilot, turn your ship around. You are not authorized to take your transport out of the Core hangar—”
Skylar presses a button to shut it off, rolling her eyes. “Yes, we know we don’t have clearance.”
We’re coming up to the Pipeline. I tighten my grip on the control clutch, preparing to turn us in the right direction.
“Which way are we heading?” Skylar asks.
“To the mountains,” I say. “Not the city. The entrance to the Surface is blocked on that side, not to mention the vul might assume we’re part of another squadron of troops and blast us out of the sky. From the mountain side, we can plan a better approach to one of their settlements.”
“Good plan.”
We come to the Pipeline, and I turn the ship in the direction of the mountains on the Surface. Now it’s safer to pick up speed, since it’s a straight course ahead. Unless something slows us down, we should reach the Surface in an hour.
As if on cue, two dots of ships appear on our radar screen, emerging from another hangar in the Core, about a mile behind us. They’re moving fast in our direction. They must’ve been dispatched to chase us down.
“You can lose them,” Skylar says. “Jam the thruster forward and give us more speed.”
I do as she says, but my hands are unsteady. Flying doesn’t scare me on the Surface when we’re out in the open, but in a tunnel like this, I’m terrified I’m going to lose control and veer into one of the walls. Especially when we’re going so fast.
The transports are still gaining on us. One of them sends a stream of gunfire past our ship. It’s far enough away that it’s clear they weren’t trying to hit us; they’re trying to scare us into turning around. But it isn’t going to work.
Skylar grips the clutches that control the firing weapons and sends a blast in the direction of the transport that fired. I watch through the rearview monitor: the fire nearly hits the hull, but the ship jumps aside at the last second.
Without a pause, Skylar sends a barrage of fire at the transports. One of them is hit this time, hard enough it is knocked off course and forces the second transport to veer too close to the Pipeline wall. I see a burst of flame and smoke through the rearview monitor. It grows smaller and smaller as we get farther away.
I feel a pinch of guilt for the pilots on board. But I’m sure they’re okay; the crash didn’t look deadly. And it was necessary. We can’t have anything stopping us from reaching the Surface.
“Nice job,” I tell Skylar.
“Same to you,” she says, letting go of the firing controls. “We should be in the clear now. We’re far enough away they wouldn’t be able to catch us if they sent anyone else after us, so I doubt they’ll try.”
We’ve made it out of the Core. But there are still miles and miles ahead of us, and many more steps of the plan to be carried out before Fred finishes building the bomb and the Developers set it off.
I check the time on the dashboard. Twelve hours to go.
Skylar kicks up her feet on the dashboard, apparently less worried about the ticking clock than I am. “Please tell me you brought food.”
“It’s the middle of the night,” I say. “Didn’t you just have dinner a couple hours ago?”
“Of course. Doesn’t mean I’m not hungry now.”
I snort, but I toss her my knapsack. She digs through it and pulls out one of the meal bars I grabbed from the cafeteria.
I keep my hands on the control clutches, my mind wandering back to Logan in the Core. The coin he won for me in the pod race burns a hole in my pocket. I am doing this for him, for everyone.
We need to survive, for Logan and for Kiel.