And off he goes. He barrels down the sidewalk while letting out another shout. I urge my legs to get moving again as sunglasses guy turns to look in our direction. He steps to the side to let Atlas pass. When he does, I glance down at the Marshal’s shoes. They are black—not boots, but not quite high-tops, with thick soles and buckled straps. A cross between a running shoe and something worn in military movies.

“Come on,” Atlas shouts as he increases the distance between himself and the man. “You can do better than that!”

I’m trying, but I’m not sure I can. Every part of my body is quivering with fatigue. But this isn’t the time to give up. I pump my arms and legs and am just closing in on the Marshal when a sedan zooms around the corner behind me and zips down the street. The man in front of me starts to run as the shiny black-and-silver car screeches to a halt just in front of where the girl in the blue hat is walking. The back passenger door of the car swings open and the girl spins.

Even from a distance I can see the fear on her face as a big man in a gray suit jumps out of the car and starts toward her. The Marshal in sunglasses is closing in as Atlas reaches into his bag, pulls out a handful of papers, and sends them flying in the man’s face.

Sunglasses Marshal grabs at the papers, as if trying to pluck as many of them out of the air as he can. The gray-suit dude turns to reach for one of the pages sailing past his face and never sees Atlas spin and kick the man square in the chest.

The man in gray flies back into the open car door. He hits metal and crashes to the ground. Papers flutter in the air around him. The gray-suited Marshal grabs one that floats against his face, crumples it, and immediately climbs to his feet—feet encased in the exact same military-style running boots as the man who had been following the girl.

Sunglasses Guy slows and reaches behind him, under his shirt. When he pulls his hand back out, I see the sunlight glinting off the dark metal of what can only be a gun.

“Watch out!” The warning I choke out is barely more than a gasp of air.

A third man jumps out of the driver’s side of the car and races toward the blue-baseball-cap girl, who is running toward the end of the street. Atlas kicks and blocks as he fights with the man in the suit. He ducks under a fist and isn’t paying attention to the Marshal with the sunglasses. But I am, and that one is lifting the gun and taking aim.

I push myself to run faster, even though I know I will never reach the man in time. I’m still half a block away.