Page 97 of Dissent

My brows slapped together. “What gateway?”

Wes started climbing around the wreckage. “It’s a gate into the tunnels.”

“Thewhat?”

“The tunnels…” he grunted in frustration. “The fucking tunnels. It’s how we sneak in and out of the city.”

That’s right! I remembered Jacob had mentioned that the REG suspected the Dissenters were using a tunnel system to get into Telvia. He’d been right.

“Hurry,” Matias whispered.

Climbing into the mess with Wes, I started rummaging around. “What does it look like?”

“It’s like a trapdoor in the ground, but they’re really well concealed. Like an optical illusion. You’d only see it if you knew it was there and knew what to look for.”

Well, that wasn’t much help. I started rummaging, shuffling through debris as quickly as I could without making too much noise. It felt like it was taking hours, though I knew we had only been there for a few minutes. “Don’t you know where this thing is? I mean, how did you get in here to begin with?”

Wes ran his fingers through his hair, pulling on the ends. “Fuck. It was right around here someplace.”

I searched the ground next to him. “Is there another gate we can use?”

Matias looked up and down the street before glancing back at us. “We can’t use a gate if it hasn’t been activated. I could only get a code for this one, so this is it. We don’t have another option.”

“Well, can’t you, like, message them to activate a different one or something?”

Wes piped up this time. “No.”

“There’s got to be another one we can use,” I protested again. There was no freaking way we were going to find this gate. I didn’t even know what I was looking for.

Matias hesitated, stumbling over his words. “Uh…no, not really. We…we kind of went rogue on this one.”

“What?”

Wes faced me again. “You heard the man. We wanted to come after you, Sasha said no, so we went anyway. We’re on our own this time.” He returned his attention to the floor, shuffling debris again. “Where the hell is it?”

“Rogue?” I looked at Matias. He must have sensed my gaze on him, because he turned to look at me and shrugged.

“I told you I would always come back for you. Just keeping my promise.” A weak smile curled the corners of his mouth before he continued serving as a lookout.

My heart fluttered. I didn’t know how to take that. Matias came back for me, and that thought was rich with powerful feelings of sweet love and friendship. But then, another memory crossed my mind, and I remembered what he said to Chelsea not that long ago. And just as quickly as the good vibes came, they disappeared, replaced by the sadness that made me run away from it all to begin with. Not knowing what to do with myself, I blew out a breath and returned my attention to looking for the damn gate when Wes jumped next to me.

“Yes! Here it is.” He brushed the ground.

I rubbed my lips together, staring at a patch of ground and seeing…nothing. “Uh, are you sure you found it?” There was nothing but wood panels crisscrossing in an elegant parquet design.

“Right here.” Using his fingers, he started tracing a symbol on the ground, his finger brushing away the soot. And no sooner that he lifted his finger, the boards shifted.

“Oh my god!” I jumped backwards as the boards pulled back, shifting, turning, moving, revealing a dark hole with metal rungs serving as a ladder that went down into an abyss.

Wes rubbed his hands together, trying to get the soot off while Matias ran over to join us. “Nice.”

I was still shocked. If Raúl knew how to find these things, we’d be in deep trouble. But he didn’t, and it wasn’t surprising—the way this thing was hidden, there was no way you’d ever see it.

Wes rubbed his hand against his chest, staring into the dark. “Time to get out of this hellhole.” And with that, he positioned himself over the ladder and started climbing down.

“You’re next, Mara.”

I looked into the hole as the tips of Wes’s golden locks were consumed by darkness as he descended. It was dark—too dark—just like the basement. And I could feel my heart quicken at the thought of purposefully submerging myself into it. But I didn’t have a choice. The camp was going to be destroyed, and every second I stood here was a second we had less to warn them. And then it hit me. I spun around and grabbed Matias by the collar of his jumpsuit.

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