Page 21 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

It’s gone, too, of course, along with her orange scarf, and her holster swings empty at her hip.

She has her wallet with three fake IDs and a bank card, a single battery, and two loose lock picks.

And her compass.

Her heart jumps.

She lets her fingertips rest against the compass, still buzzing with magic and a little bit of hope.

So not all is lost.

She exhales, blinking past the sudden tears crowding into her eyes. That even with her research gone, even without the ability to call for help, she can find the next place to go. She won’t have to slink back home, to a group that told her not to go, not empty-handed.

Careful, Chloe stands, avoiding the creaking wooden beam just in case, tiptoeing to her closet. The closet she left behind, with most of her clothes and earthly possessions.

Quickly, she shucks off the bloody shirt, pulling on a warm flannel instead, then grabs an extra backpack from the corner of the closet and shoves as much of her clothing as she can. Grabs her spare locksmith set, the one that didn’t fit into the car, her old broken watch, then the pocketknife that had fallen behind her shoe rack, then an extra pair of shoes.

Out of instinct, even though she doesn’t quite feel out of power, she chugs one of the five-hour energy shots she kept in a box in the closet, so Gurlien didn’t get into them.

It’s awful and warm, but it’ll help if she has to do anything to get out.

Her heart still pounds, and she can’t tell if there’s anyone else in the cabin. The floral curtains are pulled tightly shut, and though it’d be quick to flick them aside and peek out, when they left the college had probably set up motion scanners around and that sort of thing would absolutely trip them.

Gurlien left behind some small items, she knows, but she doesn’t know the state of his room. How much they went through, what they destroyed, all of that.

There are guns in the attic and electronics in the basement, and she has no clue what she can find. What’ll still be there, what she can gather…

What she can run away with.

Careful, she shoves her old clothing into the back of the closet, where hopefully someone won’t find them until she’s long gone, then gently lowers herself onto the floor, just enough so she can see the thin sliver of light from underneath the door.

It’s night outside, that much is obvious, and the blue plastic door to the front still stands on its hinges.

And someone crosses the room, just the shadow of their footsteps making its way to her, before they obviously putter around the kitchen.

Shit.

She briefly squeezes her eyes shut, counts to ten, then opens them again, just in time to see another pair of steps, these ones in combat boots, follow into the kitchen.

So at least two people. Given the unraveling of some of her protections and the relatively untouched status of her mundane items, she doubts it could be anyone but the college. Squatters wouldn’t leave her watch without pawning it off.

She scoots away from the door, glancing up at the window. It’s small, but she’s a tiny person and could easily squeeze through it if necessary, but there’s a drop outside, of course, as this is the side of the cabin that is above the slope, and half off the wall to the basement is above ground.

She could open up the wall near the floor, less of a drop, but way more attention-grabbing for any alarms. She could blast open her door, knock out the two people in the kitchen, stumbledown the gravel path in the back until she reached the road, walk the twenty minutes to town, borrow a car…

And it’s all a bit too far-fetched. Too reliant on everything going right. Too reliant on there being no one else watching the cabin or any outside patrols.

She really doesn’t want to cause too much damage to the two people in the kitchen, either. It’s probably a boring assignment, to guard an abandoned cabin, and she doubts that they really want to be there.

And Chloe tries really hard to not kill people who are only there because someone ordered them.

A pair of footsteps pace towards the hallway again, and Chloe lets her hand rest on the soundproofing spell, untwisting it just enough.

“…Ottawa base, just gone,” a female voice says, with the air of someone gossiping. “Wiped off the face of the earth, just a few smoldering bricks.”

“Bullshit,” replied another female voice, this one substantially less interested. The voice paces close to the bedroom, matched with the combat boots.

“No, that’s what they said! First email that loaded once I got a signal!” the first insists, and the second scoffs.

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