I tried to get up, tried to keep fighting, but I had nothing left. I lay there, my arm throbbing, one eye swelling shut while the other filled with blood. My consciousness slipped in and out. I thought I heard gunfire and sirens coming from somewhere nearby. Hill stepped through the blur of my vision and fell on top of me, his legs pinning my arms to my sides. He found the knife by my side and held it over me.
“No one can stop what God has put in motion,” he said, barely out of breath.
I closed my eyes as Hill lifted the blade, but there was a crash by the door. Hill turned toward it, and three sharp reports rang out across the room. His body jerked and he collapsed over me. His chest struck mine. His face fell by my cheek. Streams of his blood poured down my sides.
I forced myself out from under him, scrambling until I struck the far wall. I coughed and wiped the blood from my eyes as someone staggered into the room from the open doorway. The knife was lying by Hill’s body. I grabbed it and held it out toward whoever was coming. A gun clattered onto the floor and a body came into focus.
James fell to his knees beside Hill’s feet. He stared at the body in front of him, his arms limp at his sides, his eyes wide. His chest began to heave.
“James?”
I dropped the knife and reached for him as several small explosions shook the walls of the office. There were shouting voices just outside, followed by the back-and-forth chatter of small-arms fire.
“We have to go,” I said, reaching for Hill’s gun, which lay beside James. “James?”
The door to the ops center flew open and three black figures appeared. I scooped up Hill’s weapon and fired half blind. Three shots shredded the door frame and forced them back. I stuffed the gun into my waistband and took James by the shoulders.
“Come on,” I said, but James didn’t move. “Get up!”
I grabbed James’s shirtfront with my one good hand and hauled his limp body up. My muscles screamed and the effort sent me crashing against the wall beside me. There were more gunshots out in the hall and fire alarms began to wail. I wiped the blood out of my eyes and dragged James toward the door.
There were bodies strewn across the ops center, generals and their servants torn apart and still. The computers and the communications gear had all been destroyed and were smoldering, filling the room with a haze of smoke. My eyes stung as we made it through and into the corridor outside. Weapons fire seemed to be coming from all directions. Somewhere there was the boom of a grenade.
I searched through the gloom and saw a door just past the mess. The glass was shattered and I could see streetlights shining on the other side. The way to it was clear, but we couldn’t leave. Not yet.
“Where would they keep a prisoner?” I asked, trying to shake James out of his shock. “James?”
He nodded down a hall across from the mess and I moved toward it, pulling him along, trying to ignore the pain that came with every step. The battle sounds grew louder, the deeper we ran into the base. I followed James’s direction, ducking into doorways at any sign of the soldiers who stalked the hallways, never knowing if they were Path or Fed. We passed bodies, fallen singly or in groups, torn, bloody, eyes open.
James pointed down a corridor where a young Path corporal was collapsed over a small desk, a pool of blood gathering around his temple. Behind him was a hallway lined with close-set rooms.
I set James down in the hallway, then searched the corporal for his keys. I found them and moved down the line of rooms, opening door after door, only to find the rooms empty or their occupants dead.
I stuck the key in the second door from the end and when I opened it, a body flew at me from a far corner. A fist connected with my jaw and I hit the floor in a heap, fireworks lighting up my vision.
“What are you doing here?”
Nat was leaning over me, one hand grasping my collar, the other ready to strike.
“We came to get you out,” I said, and when her glare didn’t soften, I shoved her away from me. “Trust me or don’t. You’re free. Do what you want. James, let’s go!”
I pushed us both into the hallway just as another volley of fire erupted. James flew out of my hands with a grunt, slamming into the wall and hitting the floor.
“James!”
He was sprawled on his back. His right side was gushing blood and he was breathing in ugly gasps. His skin was the color of paste. I pressed my hands into the wound to stop the bleeding and James screamed. I was dimly aware of Nat pulling Hill’s gun away from me. There was more gunfire and then silence. James’s eyes had gone wide and dark and then began to close.
I draped James’s arm over my shoulder. He cried out as I took a halting step forward. My knees went weak and I began to fall but then the weight suddenly lessened. Nat was beside us, James’s other arm around her shoulder.
The building was a maze, corridors blocked by bodies and collapsed walls. There were fires everywhere and clouds of smoke that burned our eyes and tore at our throats. We blundered through, coming to dead end after dead end. James hung between us, barely conscious, his lips moving soundlessly as he prayed.
“This way!”
Nat turned us down a hallway and I saw it. The door by the mess. We were almost there. Nat threw her shoulder into the door and we collapsed on the other side, coughing the smoke out of our lungs.
“James?”
His head lolled back and forth on the pavement. His eyes were closed and he was mumbling silently, incoherently. Buildings and wrecked vehicles burned all around us. Bodies littered the ground, and soldiers ran in and out of the darkness, firing constantly.
“Get somebody,” I said to Nat. “Get anybody. Please.”
Nat ran out of our small circle of light and disappeared down the street. There was a dead soldier facedown on the ground nearby. I took his combat knife and canteen and returned to James. His torso was slick with blood. His pants were dark with it. I stripped off his shirt and washed away as much as I could, revealing the ugly tear of a wound on his side. When I pressed the wad of bandages into his side, blood flowed between my fingers, but James didn’t make a sound. He pawed at my hands and I knocked them away.
“It’s okay,” he said weakly. “I’m okay.”
His eyes opened, shockingly bright. The sky lit up nearby and the pavement shuddered.
“Where are we?” he asked, in almost a singsongy kid’s voice. “It feels like we’re on a train.”
I smoothed the hair off his brow. His skin was hot and wet. “Yeah,” I said. “We’re on a train.”
“Where are we going? We going home?”
“That’s right,” I said. “We’re going home.”
I lifted the canteen to his lips and poured a stream of water across them. He gasped and drank. When he was done, I set the canteen down and took his hand in mine and squeezed. A strange smile rose on his face.
“Why is my brother holding my hand?” he said dreamily. “And when will he stop?”
I searched the dark of the base for Nat and saw nothing. A scream was rising in my throat, but I swallowed it.
“My friend is looking for help. She’ll be back any time now.”
“I killed him, Cal. I was looking for you, and then I heard the fight. I just saw someone on top of you. I didn’t know who it was. I didn’t—”
“You saved my life.”
James shook his head, and then his eyes narrowed like he was searching for something in the sky. Across the street three figures emerged from the dark and were coming our way fast. I gripped the combat knife and leaned over James, but when they moved into the light, I saw it was Nat followed by two soldiers. I waved them over frantically.
“James, we’re going to get you out of here, okay?”