The vent was deep and dark, and I had to shove my hand light into my pocket so I could move more quickly on my hands and knees. I heard Leo shouting my name behind me, telling me to wait, but I ignored him, scrambling after the precious snatches of light ahead of me, where the boy and Tian were forging ahead. The sounds of rattling ducts and pounding feet filled my ears, thunderous and disorienting, but I kept my eyes on the bursts of light in the darkness, trying to keep up with them on my hands and knees. I didn’t have the flexibility to run in a hunched position like they did, so this was the only way to make sure I didn’t lose them.

The metal shuddering under my palms told me Leo and Quess were behind me, and I quickly netted Maddox.

I stayed behind with the stuff. What is going on? she demanded, the line connecting immediately. Should I call for backup?

No, I thought at her, pausing as a cross-breeze hit me, signaling that I was in a junction. I searched intently for a second and then plunged forward when I saw another flash of light. We found an undoc boy. I think he might be with a larger group, and I want to find out. They might be one of the groups your mom mentioned, and possibly know of other undoc groups roving around the Tower—like our legacy friends. The boy spooked when he saw me, but we’re in pursuit. Go ahead and get a loader to move those boxes. We’ll be fine.

Okay. I’ll gather a few nearby Commanders anyway, just in case. If it turns out to be nothing, I’ll tell them it was just an emergency response exercise.

I sent an affirmative and then killed the connection, focusing solely on following the flashes, which were beginning to draw farther and farther away. They were getting too far ahead, in fact, and if they didn’t reach their destination soon—and stop—I was going to lose them.

I stopped when another breeze hit me, this one cold and biting, and strained to find the light. My eyes blinked rapidly in the darkness, and I twisted my head around, searching for it. Panic curled around my heart as heartbeats passed with no sound or visuals, and then I heard something to the right, in the direction from which the wind was coming, and plunged after it, worried that Tian had gotten too far ahead.

I’d made it a few feet down this new duct when I suddenly heard her cry out in pain, the sound carried from somewhere deeper in the tunnel. I scrambled toward it and heard scuffling, followed by a masculine bellow of pain that was too deep to belong to the boy we had been after. It seemed the boy wasn’t alone. He was with someone—and they were hurting Tian.

Frantic to get to her before they could harm her any further, I surged forward. I had made it several feet—how many, I couldn’t tell—when the floor suddenly vanished, and I fell down a few feet into a small, curved shaft, my face smacking on the metal.

I heard Leo frantically cry my name again as I slid downward, my hands and face scraping along the metal until if felt like a line of fire was burning its way across my cheek. When I stopped, I blinked dazedly, wincing against the bright light that was shining just feet from my face, and then scrambled upright, adrenaline pushing aside the cobwebs.

“What was that?” an alarmed voice snarled, and a shadow crossed the opening. I coiled up as I realized it was a set of legs, already bending into a squat, and then launched myself forward through the hole, tackling whoever was on the other side. I didn’t care if there were twenty people behind him. If he was the one who had harmed Tian, I was going to break his knees.

I got a flash of blue eyes, and then I was plowing at him, my already-hurt cheek and chin slamming against his collarbone. He made an “oof” sound as I hit him hard enough to slam the air out of his lungs, and we went down.

I heard someone shout and tried to sit up—only to find my arm twisted up under the guy I had landed on. I started to jerk my arm free, my mouth already forming Leo’s name to warn him that there were more people here, but strong fingers grabbed my face and slammed the side of my head into the floor. I jerked back up, adrenaline surging, and pushed against my attacker, trying to get their hand off my face with my free arm.

I found the soft flesh of an elbow and clawed at it, but I was still pinned in place by the guy I had slammed into, and didn’t have much leverage. They jerked my head up and back down again, and this time the lights went out.

I lay there for several seconds, convinced I was unconscious. My vision was black, and I was spinning in circles that I could feel in my stomach. Then something pressed against my face. Fingers, strong and forceful. Something struck my cheek, but I barely felt it, and I heard a muffled “Hey” cut through the whooshing sound in my ears. I opened my mouth, but then my cheek began to burn where I had been hit. A hand was on my face again for a second, and I tried to lift my arms. One was trapped under something, and the other one might as well have been because I couldn’t seem to lift it. The fingers tightened on my cheeks for a second, and then suddenly went away. The weight on my arm followed, and needle pricks exploded in the deadened limb as the blood began to flow more easily, causing me to gasp.

So I was wrong. I was aware of every bump and bruise, and they hurt—which meant I wasn’t knocked out.

Then why couldn’t I see? Had I gone blind?

Suddenly I heard voices that weren’t mine or Leo’s or Quess’s, and zeroed in on one of them.

“I got the lights,” it whispered, and I knew it. It was him—the man from the catwalk. I’d never been unconscious at all. They’d just shut off the lights in this section. But I had my hand light—it was still in my pocket. I flexed my fingers on my good hand and then tried to lift it. I had no idea if it was working, but a moment later I felt my limp hand thump against the front of my suit. “How did they find us?”

“She spotted me when I was grabbin’ breakfast,” came a younger voice, and I realized it was the boy. “I didn’t see nobody when I went in, I swear it, but I—”

There was a sharp smack followed by the boy’s soft cry of pain. “Idiot,” the man from the catwalk snarled. “The boss is going to do worse than tan your hide this time.” I felt a surge of anger at the guy. It wasn’t the boy’s fault he didn’t notice us. I fumbled my fingers around, searching for the pocket the light was in, and smiled when I felt the zipper tab.

“What do we do?” cried a feminine voice. “The boss told you not to—”

“You let me deal with the boss,” the older male voice snarled. “Run, quick. Her friends are right behind her.”

They were? I strained to hear, and had to wait for the sound of someone running away to fade, but then I heard the telltale rattle and thump coming from where I thought the vent hole was. I continued to work on the zipper, and finally made my wrist and hand force it down a few inches. Light spilled out from the gap, and I winced as the sudden brightness caused an immense pain in my eyes, pain exploding in my brain like pinpricks.

“What are you going to do about her?” the woman asked sharply, and I pressed my hand flat over the pocket, worried they were now looking at me. For a second, I wondered if they could even see me, but as I heard a shout go up in the distance, I realized that they had to have some way of seeing—because the sound of what must have been hundreds of feet running filled the air.

It was so loud that I almost missed the male’s response of, “Give me the bag. I’ll handle it.”

I didn’t hear what happened next. I was already moving my hand down to where my baton was in my belt. I’d gotten more control of my arm and hand, and I gripped the handle tightly and tugged up. My vision was still splotchy, but I felt the baton begin to slide free.

A second later, my wrist was seized by a strong hand, and I gasped as a gray patch of my vision suddenly cleared, revealing the man from the catwalk leaning over me, trapping one of my wrists under his knee. I tried to hit him with my other arm, but sensation hadn’t returned, and he caught it easily with one hand.

“Don’t struggle,” he spat, shifting his weight to one side to pull my hand out from under his knee.

“No!” I shouted, as he slowly lifted my hands over my head. I pressed against him, but he was impossibly strong, and my limbs still weren’t working right. The best I could muster was a weak shove. His jaw tightened, and then he slid his leg over my stomach, straddling me.

Panic burst over me, covering me with a dull sweat, when he reached between our bodies. A thousand nightmarish ideas as to what he was doing went through my head, but to my relief, all he did was pull the light out of my pocket, placing it on the ground next to my head after cranking it a little brighter.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my heart pounding in my chest.

I didn’t expect an answer, but to my surprise, he started talking as he reached into a bag over his shoulder and awkwardly rummaged around. “Slowing your friends down. If they really care about you, they’ll stop to save your life.”

A second later he was pulling out a silver canister that I recognized as bio-foam—the pink foam used for sealing cuts—and a package of some sort. I watched, wide-eyed with terror, fearing what he had in store, and tried to will more strength into my limbs. He barely seemed to notice, just placed them next to the light and then looked over his shoulder again, all the while holding me firmly in place. I lifted my head, listening, and I heard them—Leo and Quess.

“Guys, here!” I shouted. “Over here! I—”

The man whipped around and backhanded me, and the impact felt like he had smashed right through my face. My vision went dark, and I gasped and gargled against the pain. For several seconds, all I could do was lie there in agony, my head splitting.

I returned to awareness slowly, the darkness clearing like curtains being drawn. Half my vision was filled with dark, corrugated metal, the other half the silver canister and package, telling me I was looking right. Even though my head felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, I slowly swiveled it to peer at the man above me.

“Liana!” Leo’s voice was close, but still felt too far away as I stared at the man above me.

“Are you the one who killed my mother?” I asked hoarsely. His blue eyes met mine, but he didn’t answer. A moment later, I felt something sharp press against my throat. “Wha—”

His hand went down, and something sharp punched into my throat. I gasped—but instead of pulling air, a wet, gurgling sucking sound erupted from my throat. I gagged as thick, hot wetness flooded my throat and I tried to cough it out. Dark red splatters landed on his face, and I realized that I had just expelled blood.

No, I was drowning in blood. Panic set in, and I began to struggle. The weight left me, and, working on instinct alone, I grabbed at my neck. Wetness, hot and thick, splattered against my hand. My blood, I realized. I clapped my hand over it, trying to stem the flow. Panic came over me as I continued to choke and cough, trying to clear the blood from my throat so I could breathe, but it didn’t work. The blade had gone all the way through the carotid artery and punctured my airway, and I was suffocating on my own blood.

He cut my throat, I realized belatedly. I needed help. Now.

“Le—” I tried to make the sound, but only coughed up more blood instead. I was gagging, choking for air, drowning.

Hands grabbed me, and I panicked as they reached for the hand on my neck. No, I tried to tell them. I have to keep pressure there or I’m going to die!

I was going to die. My vision was already going gray, and blood was still spurting from the hole in my throat, forced out by each beat of my heart. The very act of living was killing me… and I was powerless to stop it.

Anger slid into me—too little, too late—and I struggled against the hands, fighting them for every second of life. I thought about all the people I was about to leave, and told myself I couldn’t let them down, couldn’t—

The hands wanted me dead, it seemed. They pushed my own away, and the next thing I felt was the blade of another knife, sharp and cold, pressing into my throat. I wished I could spit at them.

My thoughts grew broken, then, and I thought of Leo. I wished he was with me. I wished he would hold me and tell me that I was going to be okay. I would know it was a lie, of course. I already knew it was.

And then I thought of my mother. It seemed I had been right: I was going to join her in Twilight sooner than I’d thought.

Then something was shoved down my throat, but I felt weightless now, untethered by my body, which was growing cold as blood poured out of my carotid artery.

Then I coughed—once, twice, a third time—and something wet and thick forced its way upward from my stomach and lungs. I was turned, and for several seconds, all I could do was retch out blood.

Then I reflexively breathed in. I coughed when I felt something wet crackle in my lungs, and then even more came out.

The hands held me and stroked my hair, oblivious to the blood covering me. I shook violently as soon as it was over, and then reached up to touch my neck. The area was wet with blood, but when I felt the skin there, unbroken and whole, my shaking intensified.

I turned to look back and saw Leo and Quess looking at me, their faces ashen. And then I saw the silver canister in Quess’s hand, and realized he had inserted it directly into the wound to seal the hole. The blood was on both their hands, blending in with the crimson of their uniforms. Their expressions were a mixture of horrified and worried, and told me how close I’d just come to death.

I pressed my palm against the spot the knife had gone in and broke down, sobbing as the reality hit home that I’d almost died. If they’d been even a second later, I’d have been dead. Nobody said anything, but Leo’s arms went immediately around me, wrapping me in a cocoon of his warmth and strength, and he stroked my hair while I sobbed against his shoulder.