Page 125 of Siege of Shadows

Up the stairs, through the corridors. They were shooting at us the moment the door slid open. We ducked behind a corner as the bullets whizzed over our heads. Belle was groaning from the impact, covering her head feebly with shaking hands.

“Someone do something!” I said, trying to call forth fire, but while I felt the energy swell inside of me, it wasn’t powerful enough to even make my fingers spark.

“Trap and release, trap and release, trap and release,” Lake muttered furiously under her breath before she let out a cry. “Ugh, I’m tired of all you people!”

A spontaneous burst of wind funneled through the room and crashed into the security. I got to my feet in time to see their bodies smashing against walls, landing at odd positions across the room, their weapons flying several feet away from them.

Lake blinked. “I guess my powers are coming back.”

“Well, you were always better at it than us.” Chae Rin picked Belle’s arm up again. “Let’s go. Come on, Ice Princess, heal fast. We can’t carry you around forever.”

Belle muttered something incoherent as we went through the scanners and out the entrance. We were free, for the time being. Only problem was, we had no idea where to go.

“Hello.” I tapped my comm as we turned a corner into an empty hallway. “Eveline? Howard? Anyone?”

“If we can find the parking lot, maybe we can swipe a car. I know how to hot-wire,” Lake said. And when we all stared at her, she shrugged her shoulders, indignant. “What?I can’t know how to hot-wire cars?”

“That won’t be necessary. We have a car waiting for you.”

In the middle of the hallway, I froze at the sound of her voice in my ear. I couldn’t believe it. “S-Sibyl?”

“Duck!” Lake hissed, and pulled me into the nearest corridor while some agents came around the corner.

“Sibyl,” I whispered. “Where are you?”

“Later.” She was all business as usual. I didn’t have time to question her. The agents disappeared into another room without seeing us, but it would only be a matter of time before we were caught. “Nathan, tell me their coordinates.”

Too many things had happened in the past few minutes, and I wasn’t sure if my mind was just playing tricks on me. That couldn’t have been my uncle who’d answered Sibyl with a calm and assured voice.

“They’re in the east wing of Building A-4.”

“Uncle...” My breath hitched in my throat. “Uncle Nathan...”

“Later,” Sibyl repeated, and I knew how much she hated having to do that.

“Maia, take the emergency stairwell three doors down until you get to the basement floor.” It sounded like he was reading off of a computer screen, monitoring our movements. “Then go out exit two into the parking lot. We have people waiting for you.”

I wasn’t having it. Even as we made our way through the exit and down the stairwell, I didn’t stop until I prodded an answer out of them.

“You know as well as I do, Maia,” Sibyl said. “There’s something going on inside the Sect. I set up this communication line for only those people I knew I could trust.”

“Wait,you’rethe one who set this line up?” Lake stumbled under Belle’s weight. Belle muttered something, but no one heard her.

“You didn’t think I was back home twiddling my fingers this entire time, did you?” For the first time maybe ever, I was happy to hear the twang of bossy annoyance in Sibyl’s voice. “The Sect is a very large organization, girls, and if it’s compromised, then the world has a reason to be afraid. If we’re going to fix what’s happening, we’ll have to work together on this.”

“That’s why she sent someone to pick me up in New York and take me to her safe house,” said Uncle Nathan. “Someone from the MDCC was onto me. Sibyl intercepted a message they sent the Sect.”

“So there really was a leak at the MDCC.” I grasped the baluster tightly.

“More like leaks. Saul couldn’t have gotten all those APDs down with only one person helping.”

“Saul’s in Oslo right now,” Chae Rin said. “We’ve got to stop him. How do you plan on getting us there, Langley? Or do you have a jet waiting for us too?”

“You’re not going to Oslo,” she said. “You’re going to Communications. You have to stop Director Prince Senior.”

Rhys’s dad?

Lake stumbled again, earning an angry grumble from Chae Rin, who had Belle’s other arm around her neck. It was Belle herself who gently pushed them both away, waving her hand to stop them when they approached her again.

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