Page 139 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

He’s already shaking his head no. “Atlanta base. It’s gone.”

Atlanta.

Just the biggest base—and prison—on the continent. Attached to the actual school of the college, the place she—and Maison, and Gurlien, and hundreds of others—were trained. The place where they spend their early teens, all figuring out themselves, figuring out the way their magic worked, the propaganda they were fed.

Students still stay there until around age fifteen. There were probably a hundred or so there at any given time, ranging from age three to teenage.

Where prisoners—political, innocents, dangers to society—were kept, locked in stasis or locked behind bars. By the hundreds.

“Do you know if people got out?” Chloe whispers.

At one point, Maison’s mother had been kept there.

Killian turns his eyes to her, still blank, with just a frisson of terror trembling through his shoulders. “I don’t know.”

Chloe breathes out, careful, measuring the time.

This wouldn’t go unnoticed.

This is bigger than the Toronto base. This is far bigger than the small base in Minnesota.

This would be felt around the world.

In her pocket, her phone beeps, but she doesn’t move her hand to it.

“The college isn’t going to…be okay with that,” Chloe says, and after a second realizes she’s afraid.

She’s afraid. Fear trembles into her fingertips, racing up and down her spine, curling into the pit of her stomach. She’s seen—too many times—the destruction that the college has wrought when it’s felt entitled to do so.

And this…this would be all out war.

Her phone beeps again, and again, filling up the wide space.

Killian’s jaw twitches, like keeping himself still in front of her is an effort. Like the only thing keeping him from explosion is his iron control.

“Who would…” She trails off, her sentence hanging unsure in the air between them.

Her first instinct is to ask who would have the ability. Who would have the manpower. Who would have the knowledge.

But then again, she was part of the group that took down Toronto with just four people.

Chloe pulls out her phone, and Killian watches her with blank eyes.

GURLIEN (12:38 PM): Check in now. Check in.

AMBRA (12:38 PM): Chloe, are you okay? I can’t find you.

GURLIEN (12:38 PM): Ida Grove. Check in.

MAISON (12:38 PM): They just exploded the entire demonology ward underneath Atlanta. I can’t tell who died and who escaped.

DELINA (12:39 PM): Everyone’s freaking out. Are you okay? All I can tell is you’re not dead.

GURLIEN (12:40 PM): Check in. Chloe, where are you?

“They can know,” Killian whispers, though his voice is somewhat wrecked. “You trust them, they can know.”

CHLOE (12:40 PM): Walnut Grove. I’m okay, somewhere in Europe. Is everyone else okay?

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