I’m mentally counting the turns.
Around the third junction, our train stops as Adrik hesitates at the head. I wait, stuck between Nix and Freya, unable to see what’s happening. When I come to the turning point myself, I realize the problem: instead of three branches to choose from, there’s four. The map we took from the archives is inaccurate.
Adrik presses ahead anyway, choosing the second branch. But I know it’s only a guess—we could be about to lose ourselves in the maze with only one tank of air each.
By the time we come to the eighth junction, which again doesn’t match the map, my heart is starting to race. We’re more than halfway through our air. We need to surface soon, one way or another.
Adrik is trying to swim faster, though that’s impossible with the tightness of the tubes. For all our sweating and struggling, we crawl through the waterways at a snail’s pace.
In the pitch black, there’s no way to know if we’re ascending or descending, doubling back or moving in a steady direction.
We’ve taken more than the fourteen turns we expected. As far as I can tell, Adrik has taken us in approximately the right direction each time—assuming these waterways roughly correspond to those on the map. But we should have reached the center of the mine by now.
At last, with less than a quarter tank left, the tunnel widens out ahead. We’ve come to an underwater chamber with a flat grate overhead. Adrik takes out his saw and begins to work on the hinges of the grate.
It’s impossible for us to tell how much noise we’re making—I’m hoping the water is muffling the worst of it. We don’t know what’s directly overhead.
Adrik saws away at the rusted hinges.
Our air dips lower and lower.
I can see that Leo is already in the red, though he’s keeping quiet about it. Anna notices too, passing him her regulator so he can take a full breath.
I check Nix’s gage. Calm and steady, she’s got plenty of air still in the tank—much more than me. I bet her heartrate is barely over 80. I smile beneath my mask.
Adrik finally cuts through the hinges. Slowly, carefully, he pushes up the grate. His head breaks the surface of the water for the first time in over an hour. He peers around, then motions for us to follow him up.
We haul ourselves out of the water into an empty stone chamber, black as the heart of a whale.
My body feels heavy and clumsy, exhausted from the swim in tight quarters. Still, it’s incredibly luxurious to be able to stretch and move in any direction. We strip off our suits and fins, trying to remain as silent as possible. Our every movement echoes in the stone chamber.
I can’t hear a thing from outside this room—not the sound of soldiers or gunfire or even the crackle of a radio.
My mother had a longer drive to the entry point of the tunnels, but I’m guessing she’s well on her way inside. She’s got heavy firepower with her. I only hope it’s enough to match whatever defenses Marko’s men have in place.
“Do you think the others made it in?” Kade asks, shaking water out of his hair.
Right at that moment, an echoing boom shakes the chamber. Bits of rock and dust rain down on our heads.
“Yeah,” Adrik says. “I’m gonna guess that’s Sloane.”
Leo unzips his bag, pulling out his rifle.
“Let’s get going,” he says. “Before we miss all the fun.”
Sabrina retrieves her own rifle.
“You know how to shoot that?” Adrik says.
Sabrina swiftly slaps a magazine into the stock, then pulls back the slide to chamber a round.
“Yeah,” she says. “I’m good.”
Nix is the only one of us without a gun.
Hopefully, she won’t need one—she should be the least likely of any of us to get shot. Assuming Marko’s men recognize her. And assuming they know how to aim.
Adrik seizes Nix by the arm, pulling her to the front of the pack. He points his rifle right at her spine.
“You lead the way,” he says. “And if you get any brilliant ideas about yelling out or trying to run off . . . I’ll cut the cord to your legs.”
I shove my way between Adrik and Nix, standing between her and the gun.
“Don’t touch her, and don’t fucking threaten her,” I snarl.
Adrik stares at me like I’ve lost my mind.
“She’s not your girlfriend,” he scoffs. “She’d shoot you in the back right now if she was the one holding the rifle.”
I look at Nix. Her stare is as furious as I’ve ever seen it. But I don’t believe she’d shoot me.
“I don’t give a shit,” I say. “No one touches Nix but me.”
Adrik shakes his head in disgust. “You’ve been Ares too long,” he says.
That stings.
Do I really seem so different to my cousins, my sister, my own parents?
Do they think I’m not one of them anymore?
“Nix goes in front,” I say, “I’ll be right behind her.”
Now it’s me with my gun pointed at her back. I see her stiffen, with hurt or with outrage.
It doesn’t matter. She’s safer this way.
Because no matter what she does, I’ll never pull the trigger.
32
Ivan Petrov
The explosion shakes my cell—a deep, booming thunder that I know could only come from underground.
I’m on my feet in an instant, running to the door.
Borys and Ihor are in a panic out in the hall, shouting to each other.
Marko’s men are not well trained. They don’t know what to do in a moment like this.
I, on the other hand, know exactly what’s happening.
My wife is here.
I don’t know where she is, or what she’s doing, but I know she’s coming for me. And these two idiots in the hall better pray they don’t get in her way.
I hear the crackle of Borys’s radio and frantic shouting in Ukrainian as several soldiers try to talk over each other.
All I can make out is:
Attackers in the tunnels!
Someone put—
Send Mikhail and Gendray to the—
Then Kuzmo comes running down the hallway with two more men. I peer through the slot, watching. I see his look of relief at Borys and Ihor standing guard, at the closed door and empty hall.
“Don’t move from your post!” he orders the soldiers.
“Are they here for him?” Borys says, the nervousness in his voice like a live wire, exposed.
“I don’t know,” Kuzmo says, stiffly. “They could be looking for Marko.”
Marko isn’t here. He received a text message right in the middle of our monthly visit, and he left Kuzmo to handle my phone call to Dom. Kuzmo has been lurking around all evening, which means Marko took the plane or chopper or whatever they fuck they used to get here, leaving Kuzmo with no ride home.
That gives me an idea.
If Sloane is coming, I have no intention of waiting for her in here.
This cell is a bottleneck, the worst possible place for a conflict.
“Kuzmo!” I call. “Bring me your phone. I need to speak to Marko.”
I hear Kuzmo’s boots crunching on the stone floor as he stops pacing, then turns to look in the direction of the cell.