Page 76 of Siege of Shadows

Someone dead.

“Oh my god,” I breathed, my chest heaving. Rhys and Brendan whipped around, training the gun at the dead security agent with the tiny hole dripping blood out of his head. His corpse was suddenly rising to its feet, his eyes rolling back.

“What the hell?” Brendan yelled. “What...what?”

They shot at him, several rounds each splitting the air. The guard twitched and jerked but kept stumbling forward. The same as in the tunnels. Jessie... Jessie was—

“Maia. Look at me.”

I turned back around to find Jessie holding up a tiny black phone—the one I’d almost picked up for her in that hallway. It stopped buzzing.

“Listen” was all she said before she clicked the button.

That noise... sounds like interference....

That was the last thought I had. My mind went blank.

The door burst open.

“What’s going on in here? Naomi?”

Blackwell. I didn’t register the terror in his eyes as he saw the guns, the dead security guard lurching toward two freaked-out agents and their equally spooked mother. But then, I didn’t register much of anything at all.

The interference. Its hellish screeching tore through my brain as I picked up the gun at my feet and shot Blackwell in the stomach.

“Maia!”

It was a bad shot, or maybe Blackwell didn’t react quickly enough. It hit the left side of his gut. Gasping in pain, he fell back against the doorframe.

People were yelling various things I didn’t care about. There was a shot through the window that shattered the glass and hit Jessie’s shoulder. I took care of the agent who fired the bullet, swinging my arms fast, letting the flames dash across his face. Now he was screaming.

The back of my neck was burning. It was out of control now. But my feet carried me away nonetheless, as fast as I could run in heels, my gun still in my hands, even when Rhys yelled at me to stop. Jessie and I were out the broken window, my dress tearing a bit from the shards of glass. Together we ran down the grassy courtyard off the cobbled path.

“It’s not so bad, right? You get used to it.” As we trampled flowers underfoot, Jessie panted and giggled like the adrenaline had made her delirious. “Mine’s Grunewald’s very latest model.”

Grune... wald...The name echoed in the vacant chamber of my mind.

“They put it in all us ‘silent kids.’ Doesn’t need a trigger ’cause it’s always working. It even helps me mask my frequency as long as it doesn’t degrade. But yours is an earlier model, a one-shot activation. Doesn’t work that good. It’s definitely gonna crap out soon, so we gotta do this fast.”

“Stop!” Rhys’s voice, tense from the chase, called out to us in the night.

We were heading toward the river bordering the south end of the estate. A shot rang out. Jessie lost control of her body and crashed into mine, pushing us both down to the floor. She’d been hit. Her right leg was bleeding just above her knee.

Grabbing the gun from me, she rolled over onto her left hip and pointed the weapon at Rhys. I looked from one to the other, from Jessie to Rhys, both their guns trained on each other under the moonlight. But I felt nothing. My body was cold, hollow, my mind blissfully clean except for the lingering echo skidding across the surface of my consciousness:Listen to Jessie. Escape with her at all costs.

The command I’d been given.

“Maia, come with me.” Rhys reached to me with his free hand still wrapped in its sling. “Please.”

Despite the pain, Jessie laughed at him. “Nah, that ain’t happening.”

“Shut up,” Rhys said. “Or next time, I’ll take a kneecap.”

“Mm, sexy.” Jessy gave him a wry grin before turning to me. “We need to go. Vasily’s waiting for us.”

“Vasily?” Rhys spat. “What have you done? What the hell is going on?”

With her gun still aimed at him, Jessie pulled out her black phone. “I was waiting for a call and I got it. It’s confirmed.”

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