by Tarah Benner
“Can you land this thing?” Soren asked.
“Down there?” Conrad shook his head. “Too many people.”
“How close can you get me?” Soren asked with a bite of impatience.
“Maybe fifty feet.”
“We’ll never get through,” said Bernie in a panic. “That mob will swarm us.”
“Conrad, you have to get closer,” said Soren.
“I can’t!” Conrad’s voice shook a little as he surveyed the mob.
“You have to!” Soren yelled.
“Soren —” Simjay’s voice was full of warning.
Soren knew he was pushing Conrad a little too far, but he didn’t care. “Lark is right down there!” he shouted, losing the tenuous grip on his self-control. “They’re killing her.”
“Holy fuck,” said Portia. “That’s Mercy.”
Portia’s eyes were wide and glassy. She was staring out the window as though she couldn’t believe her eyes, and when Soren took a closer look, there was no mistaking the woman in red lying motionless on the platform. It was Mercy Peters — queen of the women’s colony.
“Is she dead?” It was Simjay.
“Oh my god,” said Portia, sounding close to tears. “Oh my god.”
“Snap out of it!” yelled Bernie, rounding on Portia. “Conrad, see if you can get us just a little bit closer.”
“I c-can’t,” said Conrad. Soren couldn’t see his face, but he sensed the creeping panic that was threatening to overwhelm him.
But then something else caught Soren’s eye: a retractable ladder hanging from two hooks inside the fuselage.
Without another word, Soren unbuckled his seatbelt and moved toward the door. “Get me above that platform,” he ordered Conrad. “Now!”
That, it seemed, Conrad could do. A moment later, the helicopter tilted sideways, and they made a wide circle around the square. Soren threw out his good arm to stop himself from careening into a window, nearly flattening Simjay in the process.
“What’s your plan?” Simjay asked.
“I’m going down there,” Soren growled, righting himself and hoisting the ladder off its hooks.
“Are you out of your goddamned mind?” snapped Axel.
“Probably,” Soren muttered, tossing the ladder onto the floor.
“I know you got it bad for Lark an’ all, but —”
“Will you shut up and help me?” Soren yelled.
Axel’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, but he didn’t need telling twice. He hoisted himself out of his seat and climbed over the girls’ legs to get to Soren. Conrad maneuvered the helicopter over the platform, and Soren threw open the door.
The sudden gust of air rushing into the cabin almost bowled Soren over. It whipped through his hair and down his throat, momentarily stealing his air. He gripped the handle beside the door while Axel maneuvered the ladder closer. Together, they threw it out of the helicopter, and Soren took a fortifying breath.
“You got this?” Axel shouted.
Soren nodded and looked down. The bottom of the ladder was dangling a good fifteen feet above the ground. He wasn’t sure he had this.
“Can you go any lower?” he called.
Conrad shouted something that Soren couldn’t hear. The helicopter continued to move, and the ladder fluttered closer to the ground. It was dangling several feet over the crowd, but it was probably as close as they were going to get.
Soren dragged in a deep, shuddering breath and tossed his headset onto the seat. He turned and lowered himself out of the aircraft, his heart pounding in his ears.
As his foot searched for the first rung of the ladder, his good arm was the only thing keeping him from plummeting three stories to the ground. Axel yelled something as he dropped his other leg down, but Soren couldn’t hear him over the incessant chug of the chopper blades and the wind howling in his ears.
When he finally let go of the helicopter, he realized that dismounting a chopper on a rope ladder wasn’t for the fainthearted. The ladder swung forward and backward and side to side, and it was a challenge for Soren to maneuver down each rung with his injured arm hanging uselessly from its socket.
After just a few minutes, his biceps and shoulder started to burn. Every incremental adjustment Conrad made to keep them airborne sent the ladder into a wild swing with Soren clinging on for dear life.
Soon the noise from the crowd reached his ears. The end of his ladder was still dangling a good ten feet from the ground, but the women down below were reaching for it like a lifeline. They were trying to climb aboard.
Now Soren understood what Conrad had been shouting about. If he flew too low, the inmates would swarm the ladder and overwhelm the aircraft. They would all be killed in a fiery blaze.
A pang of guilt hit Soren in the gut, but he forced himself to shove down his emotions and focus on getting to Lark.
As he neared the foot of the ladder, the chopper began to move. Conrad was trying to position him directly over the platform, where Lark and Mercy Peters had been lying moments before.
Craning his neck to look over his shoulder, Soren caught sight of Lark. She had her arms drawn over her head like a protective cage, and the thickset black girl was still straddling her hips. She seemed oblivious to all the commotion and continued to pummel Lark like a heavyweight boxing champ.
Soren was twenty feet away. Then fifteen. For a brief moment, the helicopter dipped down to hover five feet above the platform, and Soren jumped.
His feet hit the wooden surface with a heavy thud, the impact traveling all the way to his kneecaps.
The momentum from the landing sent Soren flying forward. He tucked his head and tried to land on his good shoulder, but he hit the platform in a jumbled mess.
He looked up, and a searing pain shot through his neck. Women all around him were screaming and shouting. The inmates closest to the platform were trying to climb up toward the helicopter, but the women behind them were pushing and shoving.
The beefy woman stopped beating Lark and turned around to look at him. Lark still had her arms up to protect her face, but for a brief moment, her eyes latched on to Soren’s, and everything around them fell away.
He got to his feet, and Lark struggled to free herself from the girl. The girl grunted and swung out a fist, but then Soren heard a noise that struck fear into his heart.
It was simultaneously otherworldly and strikingly familiar: a quiet, deadly hum that his brain recognized instantly. It grew louder and louder until Soren could no longer ignore it. He looked up to identify the source of the noise and felt all the blood pool at his feet.
A weaponized drone was humming across the sky. It had detected the chopper, and it was headed straight for it.
thirty
Lark
Lark squinted across the platform like a lost sailor peering through the fog. She was delirious from heat and thirst, and for a brief moment, she thought she might have died and gone to heaven.
A helicopter was hovering overhead, sending the crowd into a torrent of chaos. Women were swarming the platform, desperate to reach the aircraft, and Bianca had stopped hitting her.
She looked across the platform. Bianca wasn’t staring at the chopper. Her eyes were locked on a figure less than ten feet away. He was dressed in jeans and a bloodstained sweatshirt, and he was staring right at her.
Soren.
Lark’s eyes grew wide. It couldn’t be Soren — could it? Soren was locked away in the Department of Homeland Security’s secret prison, spiraling toward insanity.
For days, he and Bernie had been all Lark had thought about. She’d dreamt about them so intensely that she’d awoken in a breathless, fearful sweat. Had her subconscious somehow forced him to materialize in front of her, or had she finally lost her mind?
Struggling under Bianca’s substantial weight, she wiggled her hips to try to pull herself free. Bianca seemed to return to her senses. She wheeled around and punched Lark in the face, and Lark felt the blow penetrate her guard.
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She blinked forcefully to keep her brain online, but then a familiar noise reached her ears. It was difficult to hear anything over the steady thuck-thuck-thuck of the chopper, but somehow her brain detected a secondary, more high-pitched hum.
Lark looked up, and terror flooded through her. It was a drone. It was zooming over Mercy’s compound, and it was headed for the helicopter.
As Lark watched, the drone loaded a missile, and then a burst of gunfire erupted from the aircraft. Axel was hanging half out of the chopper, and he was shooting at the drone.
Women in the crowd screamed. The inmates closest to the platform backed up and tried to run, trampling the women behind them and escalating the chaos to complete pandemonium.
Bianca stopped trying to hit Lark, and Lark took the opportunity to shimmy her hips free and stagger to her feet.
Axel unleashed another stream of bullets, and the drone exploded in a burst of flame. Lark stumbled across the platform toward Soren, and Soren moved to meet her halfway.
She careened into his chest like a cannon, and Soren let out a grunt of relief. His arm locked protectively around her, blanketing Lark in his familiar woodsy scent.
This is real, she thought. She wasn’t dreaming. She wasn’t hallucinating. Soren was really standing on the platform beside her. He was there to take Lark away.
The second the realization hit her, Lark felt herself unravel. She’d held it together through all the poking and prodding in the lab. She’d managed the confinement, the humiliation, the torture, and the beatings at the hands of Mercy and her crew. But the sudden rush of comfort and relief she felt in Soren’s embrace was more than she could handle.
Tears sprang to her eyes, and she leaned into him as her exhausted psyche gave out. Powerful sobs shook through her body, and she felt Soren lift her half off her feet as he guided her toward the ladder.
“We have to go,” he murmured. The hum of the chopper and the roar of the crowd was deafening, so Lark felt rather than heard his words as they buzzed against her ear.
She nodded numbly, trying to pull herself together, but it was no use. Her body was moving of its own accord, glued to Soren’s side as he guided her across the platform.
The chopper dipped in the sky, and the rope ladder dropped just low enough for them to reach. The women who’d been cowering on the ground to protect themselves from the gunfire immediately rushed the platform, and Lark grabbed hold of the highest rung she could reach.
The ladder swung with her weight, and she tried desperately to hold herself steady as she lifted her legs up behind her.
She clambered up toward the helicopter door and heard Soren huffing below. She looked down and instantly felt a swing of vertigo.
Something was wrong. Soren was only gripping the ladder with one arm, his face strained with the effort of holding his body in place. His other arm was resting at an odd angle, and Lark realized he must have been injured.
But no sooner had Soren grabbed hold of the ladder than the chopper rose up in the air. It pulled them out of reach of the inmates scrambling to climb aboard and Mercy’s daughters shouting below.
Lark’s hair whipped in the breeze, and she choked on the sudden rush of wind in her throat. She craned her neck to look up at the chopper.
She had at least twenty feet left to climb, and they were gaining elevation every second. Gritting her teeth, she reached her arm as far as it would go and grabbed on to the next rung.
Suddenly, a mess of blond hair appeared in midair. Lark gasped. Bernie stuck her head out of the chopper, and Lark saw the flash of a grin under her unruly mop of hair. Lark let out a gleeful laugh, but it came out more like a sob.
Then an arm pulled Bernie back inside the aircraft, and Axel’s ugly mug reappeared. He was firing at something Lark couldn’t see, but as soon as she turned her head, she caught a flash of light as something exploded in the sky. It was another drone.
Lark climbed faster, trying not to think about Soren struggling beneath her. Her arms and back ached from the effort of holding herself steady on the ladder, but she knew she couldn’t stop.
They had made it this far. Failure wasn’t an option. She had no idea how her friends had gotten the helicopter or where they had found Bernie, but they were so close to freedom that Lark could practically taste it.
Finally, she reached the top of the ladder, and two sets of hands shot out to pull her inside. Bernie’s lips were moving in rapid fire, but Lark couldn’t hear a word she was saying. The hum of the helicopter was deafening.
The other set of arms belonged to Simjay. His hair was mussed, he was covered in blood, but he looked happier than Lark had ever seen him.
She collapsed just inside the door, and a cannonball of fur careened into her side. A wet, hot tongue slopped all over her face, and Lark recognized the high-pitched whine as Denali’s.
He was all over her, crying in unrestrained joy as he tried to lick her face. Lark grinned and rubbed his ears, and then Bernie threw herself into the fray.
She hugged Lark so fiercely that Lark thought she might be trying to break her ribs, but then she rolled them out of the way so that Simjay could help Soren climb inside the chopper. Axel was still leaning half outside the door, firing at drones that seemed hell-bent on obliterating them.
Lark caught a glimpse of Portia sitting stiffly in one of the hanging seats, which abruptly sent her crashing back down to earth.
Portia’s face was set in an ugly scowl. She didn’t seem happy that Lark had made it back in one piece.
Lark wondered briefly who was flying the chopper, but then Soren pulled himself into an upright position, and everyone else seemed to fade into the background.
Soren’s face scrunched with emotion as he closed the short distance between them and pulled Lark into his arms. He thrust his hand into her hair, and his lips crashed down on hers.
He kissed her as though she might have died, and Lark wrapped herself around his neck. She kissed him back fiercely, trying to communicate everything she was feeling in that one embrace.
Soren’s good arm traveled back down to her waist, pulling her body flush against his as his tongue worked its way into her mouth. Heat surged through Lark’s whole body, spilling from her heart down through her core. She gripped a fistful of his hair and pulled him closer, but all she could think was that it would never be close enough.
For a moment, it was as though they were the only two people left on Earth, but then someone cleared his throat loudly nearby. Soren groaned against her lips, and Lark pulled away to see who it was.
Axel’s smug, unwelcome face appeared over Soren’s shoulder. He was hot and sweaty and panting from exertion. “I hate to shit all over this beautiful moment, but we need to get the fuck outta here.”
Bernie let out an exasperated sigh, but Axel ignored her.
“I blew up five drones, but there’ll be more.”
Soren grimaced as he released Lark, and Axel slammed the door to the chopper shut as they all found seats. Soren fitted a headset over Lark’s ears, tenderly brushing his fingers against the side of her face.
Lark fumbled for her seatbelt, and Soren leaned over to help. He seemed to sense that Lark wasn’t herself, and she felt a rush of gratitude as he helped her buckle in.
The chopper tipped forward, and the engine groaned as they pulled away from San Judas. Lark’s ears popped as they gained elevation, and a deluge of questions hit her so suddenly that they all came out in a rush.
“How are you — How did — Who —”
“Sim and Conrad broke us out of that place,” said Soren. “Bernie and Portia helped, too.”
“Who’s Conrad?” asked Lark.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” said a voice in Lark’s ear. She looked over to the pilot’s seat and saw the stranger lift his hand in greeting.
“So how did you escape?” asked Lark anxiously.
Soren glanced down at his hands, which were twisted in his lap. “It, uh . . . It wasn’t
exactly clean.”
“What does that mean?” asked Lark, dreading the answer.
“We had to take out a few guards to escape,” said Soren. “I think we probably killed one and injured several others.”
Lark sighed and ran a hand down her face. She could feel tears burning in her throat, threatening to spring into her eyes.
They’d killed someone. She’d killed Mercy. Somehow she’d managed to escape San Judas with everything the Department of Homeland Security had asked for, but their deal would be null and void. They would be fugitives again, and this time they’d be facing multiple counts of murder.
Lark couldn’t help it. Unwelcome tears prickled at the corners of her eyes, and she had to grip the edges of her seat to keep her hands from shaking.
Soren looked over at Simjay and Bernie, as if asking for their help, but Lark didn’t know what they could possibly say to make the situation any better.
“We didn’t have a choice,” Soren added roughly. “They told me you were back in San Judas, and I couldn’t stay there in that . . . that place.”
“I made a deal with them,” Lark choked. “They were going to let us go. All of us.”
“No, they weren’t,” said Soren.
She looked up at him through a haze of tears, unsure what he was trying to say.
“They were never going to let us out of there,” he said quietly. “Reuben told me.”
“But —”
“I’m sorry,” said Soren, reaching across her body to grip her knee. “It was a good plan, but they never intended to follow through. Reuben said he needed you to testify against GreenSeed if the company sued the department. They couldn’t risk letting you go.”
“Testify?” she cried. “Testify at what? The world is finished! We’re all finished unless —”
Lark broke off. A torrent of anger, betrayal, and hopelessness had been building up inside of her, and it burst out all at once with the force of a hurricane. Her chest heaved violently as she struggled to breathe, and Soren kept glancing at Bernie for help.
