I’ll explain everything when this is over.

Just trust me.

∼ J

She felt herself tremble, not with fear, but anger. Trust? June had drugged her. Locked her in a hotel bathroom. She’d thought that June was different, that she saw Sydney as a friend, a sister, an equal. But for all that talk of trust, of independence, of letting Sydney make her own choices, June had still done this.

Syd had to get out of here.

Had to find Victor, and save Mitch.

She felt for her phone, only to remember she’d left it on the coffee table. But as she dug her hands into her bomber jacket, she felt the small metal tin with Serena’s bones in one pocket, and the cool steel of the gun in the other. June obviously hadn’t thought to frisk her. After every thing, she’d treated Sydney like a naive child.

Syd drew out the gun, fingers flexing on the grip as she aimed at the doorknob, then reconsidered, shifted the barrel toward the hinges on the other side.

The shot echoed, deafening, against the tile and marble, hard surfaces reflecting it back at an earsplitting level.

Sydney fired twice more, then threw her weight into the door again, felt the hinges break, the wood swing free.

And she was out.

XV

THE LAST EVENING

XVI

EON

THE white halls stretched in a strange tableau.

Soldiers kneeling at corners, and frozen mid-stride in halls. A woman on fire, the flames licking at the soldiers trying to approach. A man on his knees on the ground, arms being wrenched behind him. Clouds of gas lit by the red strobe of the emergency lights.

And weaving through the scenes, Victor and Dom, making their way out of EON. It was slow, agonizingly slow, the air dragging like water at their arms and legs, and Victor holding Dom’s sleeve like a blind man —and in some ways, he was blind, blind to the path through the maze.

And then Dominic dropped.

There was no warning. Not even a stumble.

He simply sank to the floor.

Victor knelt too—it was that or let go—but as Dom’s back came to rest against the wall, Victor saw the front of his uniform, black on black, but shining wet.

The bullets had torn tidy, coin-sized holes.

The shootout in the hall. In that brief instant, when Dom had surged out of the shadows and before he’d pulled them back—

“You fool,” muttered Victor, soundlessly.

He pressed his hand against the wound, felt the shirt soaked through with blood. How Dominic had stayed on his feet so long, Victor didn’t know.

Dom shuddered, as if cold, so Victor severed his nerves, and said,

“Get up.”

But Dominic couldn’t hear him.

“Get up,” he mouthed again.