Page 58 of Fifth
“How?” The word slipped out sharper than she meant, edged withfear.
“We will break their will. Or the headman will call them back when the odds change.”
“When do the odds change?” Her thoughts raced, counting wounds on his back, her own shaking hands. It seemed impossible.
“They already are.” His mouth tightened. “He is angry.”
She blinked at him, confused and impatient for answers. Angry? How could he pick up onthat?
“How do you know?” she asked.
“He is talking too much.” His steady answer only made her skin prickle, and she realized he was reading the headman’s voice like a weapon, atell that she would have missed withouthim.
The loudspeaker cracked. “Daybreak bounty,” the headman sang. “Fifty thousand if you deliver the girl alive for a private show at dawn.”
Her blood went cold.
Locus’s face hardened to stone. “No,” he said, and the word traveled through her like avow.
“You can’t promise that.” Her chest clenched as the words left her. Promises were fragile things, and in this place, they were like lies waiting to break. The thought of him swearing something he couldn’t keep filled her with equal parts fear and longing.
“I can. And I will.” His reply landed with the force of a promise etched in fire. She wanted to argue, to demand how he could be so sure when everything screamed impossible, but some buried part of her wanted—needed—to believehim.
They reached the top of the ridge as the sky washed gray. From there she saw the camp beyond the fence, fever-bright with lights and smoke. Men moved around a command post. The loudspeaker crackled with the headman’s morning voice, ugly and cheerful.
She turned back to Locus. Blood darkened his back. Wire wounds had clotted, not closed. She touched torn skin with her fingertips.
“You need a med unit.” The words came out sharper than she intended. Her stomach turned at the sight of blood streaking his back, each wound a reminder of how much he’d already endured forher.
“Affirmative. Iwill have one after you are safe.” His calm dismissal only twisted the knot inside her tighter. How could he think of her safety when his own body was tornopen?
“What if we don’t make it to after?” The question clawed its way up before she could stop it. She hated giving voice to her fear, hated how small it made her, but the thought of him collapsing was worse.
“Then I will not need a med unit.” His attempt at levity startled her, afleeting crack in his usual iron tone. For an instant it almost made her want to laugh, though the sound stuck hard in her throat, fighting with tears. “But we will make it. Iwill carry you if I must.” His certainty pressed into her like iron, steadying even as it threatened to smother, and she was struck by the sharp ache of wanting to believe him completely.
“I can run.” She needed him to believe it, needed to prove she wasn’t just a burden he dragged through fire andwire.
“I know,” he said softly. “You have.” The gentleness in his tone caught her off guard, leaving her both steadied and raw, wishing she could trust that promise as much as he seemedto.
“What now?”
“We move,” he said, and she heard the word inside her bones.
The world narrowed to motion, heat, and the certainty of his hand. The last ten yards to the ravine might as well have been a mile. They reached it and fell together down the leaf-slick slope, sliding to the bottom in a tangle of limbs and dirt. She rolled and fumbled for the pistol Locus had shoved into her hands when they fled the sniper’s nest in the barn, acold heft, both alien and necessary. Locus rose with a broken branch he wielded like aclub.
“Run,” he said. “Now.”
They ran.
They broke through the last stand of trees. The fence cut the world ahead, more razor wire bright as fishhooks. The same sluice of rock waited. Dawn caught the wire and turned it to knives. Hunters spread wide, arguing about angles and who’d get the grab if the quarry bolted.
“Now,” Locus said.
He put his shoulder to the sagging wire and shoved. Barbs bit. He held it without a sound. “Slide.”
She slid. Stone kissed her cheek, then spit her out on the other side. She turned and reached back, hands catching his forearms as he forced through. The wire tore fresh lines across his back. He dropped beside her in a controlledfall.
Floodlights flared. Hunters surged, shouting, each claiming the prize. Rough hands seized Hannah’s arms, yanking her upright. Others slammed Locus to his knees. She kicked and struggled, but there were toomany.
