I slammed the handheld into my pocket and ran.
All I could hear was my own breath and the crunch of ice beneath my feet. All I could think about was Joseph and Deshi running just like this, hearts pounding and breaking together.
I arrived at the gate to Este’s compound and fumbled around for the handheld. I knew they would be able to track me, that didn’t matter. I knew they would catch me. I just needed to get there a few minutes before they did.
Pulling up the photo, I prayed it would work. I held it under the scanner, turning it back and forth, trying to get that beep. My body was ready to press itself through the wires if it didn’t hurry up.
Beep!
I exhaled in absolute relief and pushed through the gate. It locked after me. I took a rock and smashed the scanner on the other side, hoping it would slow them down.
Please let something be on my side today.
Quickly, my toes pressed down in their shoes and I sprinted for Este’s house. Crunching. Sweat dripped down my neck from fear, from exertion, I wasn’t sure. I let the cold air in like it was medicine. It was. It filled me with lost freedom. With hope.
As I rounded the curve, Este’s home came into view. The giant, two-story stone villa looked different in the light. Beautiful and too old for this world. I hugged the zoo wall and waited for the guards to pass the gate. There was just one. He strolled down the drive rather than marched, casually arriving at the iron bars and grabbing a set of keys from his pocket.
I felt like slamming my head through the concrete wall of the zoo. A lion roared and echoed my frustration. The padlock. I’d forgotten about the padlock.
The guard opened the gate. I prayed he would forget to lock it after him, but he didn’t. The lock clipped back into place, and my hopes were squashed and splattered all over the gravel. I inched closer, my eyes squinting for another way in.
The guard stared at his feet, hands behind his back, bored from what I could tell. My foot slipped along the gravel, the grazing sound causing him to look up. I sighed. It was over. My short escape was pointless. Gwen would die and I would be executed for assaulting Master Grant.
The guard took a couple of steps in my direction and froze, his warm eyes meeting mine in recognition. Harry. He glanced away just as quickly, reached into his pants, and got some gum. The keys fell from his pocket and hit the ground, heavier than an asteroid. He didn’t retrieve them, though he must have heard them fall. He put his hands behind his back and sauntered around the corner away from me.
I didn’t think, I sprinted for the keys, scooped them up, and collided with gate, which shuddered from my impact.
As I flayed the keys and picked, one red ribbon rippled across my eyes and slid down my arm. Death markers. I remembered them from Pau. When someone died, there was no funeral, or occasion like the Survivors had, but people would tie red ribbons to the tree in front of the deceased’s house as a show of respect. You’d think a Superior’s house would be drowning in ribbons, but there was just this one. I picked it up off the ground where it lay like a streak of blood and wound it through the bars.
After three keys, the padlock opened.
The sound of footsteps shoved me in the back and urged me to keep moving. I slammed the gate shut and locked it, throwing the keys in the rambling garden. As the group of guards came around the curve, I managed a grin through the bars and then I took off.
Este’s house was a tomb. As I approached the door, the soundlessness of it hit me. The place was as empty as a robbed grave.
I didn’t even bother trying the door. I picked up a rock and smashed a window to the right of the giant, wooden entrance. Instantly, alarms squealed like an arrow shot through my ears as I turned to see guards shaking the gate and yelling at me to let them in.
I screamed, “Jump up and down four times and turn in a circle!” Which made them pause for a second, before rattling the great gate again. I slipped into the darkness of a home deserted, avoiding the broken glass, and ran to where I remembered Deshi’s office to be. My hands clapped over my ears, which felt like they must be bleeding.
This was the site of my death, the undoing and breaking of so many things. I drew my breath in small, panicked bursts as I crept across the rug. I had minutes, at best, before they got another set of keys and came after me.
I left the room and entered the hall, my hands running along the tapestries, searching for pictures I remembered. I poked my head down one hall, and it didn’t look familiar. Sweeping my finger along a dark, mahogany hallstand, I was surprised how much dust gripped my fingers.
I turned again. This house was a maze of halls and doors.
The alarm sound switched from squealing to a low whooping noise.
I moved faster, my head snapping back and forth, searching. And then I caught it—a flash of white snow, brown-grey fur against burdened pines. I ran to it like I could save its life.
The deer in the snow.
I was close.
I couldn’t stop to stare. I cut a sharp corner, my shoulder bumping hard into the stone wall, and was faced with Deshi’s office door. A dead space, echoing voices of the ones who left me behind.
The keypad blinked in front of me. I punched in the only code I knew that would mean something to Deshi—Hessa’s birthday.
The green light gleamed happily, and I felt like laughing hysterically. Pushing inside, I locked the door behind me. I switched on the light and the scene flickered to life. It was an uncomfortable feeling, like the air was not mine to breath. I climbed onto the wheeled stool from his desk and stretched to pull the camera from the wall, though it didn’t look switched on.
I took one very brief moment to be shaky, to miss them and want them and then, I ransacked the office.
I emptied the drawers and tipped them on floor. Papers covered in numbers and symbols I would never understand rained down and covered the entire floor. I pushed at the ceiling squares and pulled down the piping that wound its way between the metal support bars. Reaching my arms, I desperately flapped my hands over the top surface of the bars, hoping he’d taped them up there, but there was nothing. Nothing.
Damn it.
“Damn it!” I screamed and kicked the stool across the room.
It landed on its side, the wheels swinging uselessly back and forth, trying to grip the air. I pulled at my hair in frustration, tears burning. These would be my last tears. Gwen was going to die. I would never see Orry or Joseph again.
I walked over to the stool and picked it up, slamming it down on the floor in anger. Over and over. “Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!” I screamed until my voice felt tiny and wasted.
As I slammed it again weakly, my anger giving in to fear, the wheels cracked. I lifted it up to throw it and one wheel fell out of the leg and onto to floor, a small tuft of plastic protruding from the hollow leg. I teased it out. Little white pills danced before my eyes, and I cackled like a crazy person.
Bang!
“Miss Rosa, open the door immediately!”
Bang!
I took four pills from the plastic bag, shoved the rest back in the leg, and replaced the wheel. Placing the pills in my sock band, I rolled it over, shaking my pant leg down to cover it.
Bang!
I righted the stool, placed it under the desk, took one deep breath, and opened the door.
SUPERIOR GRANT