The Darkest Legacy (Darkest Min - Alexandra Bracken Page 0,19

know—they couldn’t see who they were firing at.

“Stop!” I shouted. The word was ragged as it left my raw throat. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

The shots flashed in the burning smoke. The last bit of speaker exploded into black shards that cut at me, fast and deep.

“It’s me!” I screamed back. “It’s Suzume!”

The boy threw us both down, grunting as the sheet of metal absorbed the force of the bullets’ impact. It bent in, further and further, until it was a hairbreadth from his face.

“They don’t know,” I said, struggling against him. They thought it was the attacker. They thought someone was taking me hostage. He didn’t get that. We needed to find Cooper or Martinez.

The boy made sure I heard every single word as he shouted, “They know it’s you!”

I shook my head, blood exploding in my mouth as I bit my tongue. He was breathing hard, inches from my own face; I answered each gasp with one of my own. His weight wasn’t braced on me, but the heat of him was. Droplets of sweat, his or mine, ran down my chest.

He’s wrong, I thought. He has no idea—

“Are you with me?” the boy shouted. “Can you run?”

What was the protocol? What would Mel do?

“We should wait!” I said. “We need to let them see we aren’t a threat!”

“Like hell we should,” he shouted next to my ear. “I don’t want to die here! Do you?”

No.

I don’t know where the voice came from, the same one whispering the words on the teleprompter inside my mind: Someone is here to kill you. As those few agonizing seconds ticked by, the words slowly shifted, slithering and crackling like a serpent shedding its skin. They are going to kill you.

Someone almost had. But I wasn’t about to lie down and let them do it now, or take a bullet by mistake.

Do you want to die here?

I looked at the boy.

He squeezed my arm, understanding. Then we were running toward the car.

The gunfire roared behind us like an ocean wave trying to catch our heels. The girl in the yellow dress appeared in the smoke, her eyes widening as she spotted us. She motioned for us to follow, yelling something I couldn’t hear but the boy could. He looked toward me, then nodded in her direction.

I nodded back, following the path she cleared for us by shoving through the horrified witnesses and university staff on the upper steps. It was only then that the firing stopped. The boy ditched the sheet of metal he’d used to cover us.

What is happening?

A hand reached out to grab me, but slid right off the coat of dust and soot on my arm.

What is happening?

“—op! Stop right—!—ume!”

Cop cars and fire trucks tore up onto the lawn in front of Old Main, their lights blazing as they surrounded the edge of the ruined security perimeter.

They’re here to help. They’re here to take control of the situation. Finally, some kind of protocol was clicking into place. They’d search the area, make sure it was safe. They’d help the injured. They’d find whoever was responsible for…this.

It had to have been a bomb. It took out the speakers on either side of the stage and decimated the tech booth. I remembered that now—that it hadn’t been just one explosion. It had been three separate explosions, within the space of that last breath I’d drawn.

Three detonations, that same dark voice whispered in my aching ears, or a single powerful electrical current traveling through their shared conductor?

My stomach churned, the bile there roiling. Now that the authorities were here, it would only be a matter of time before they figured out who or what was responsible—and whether or not it was connected to the warning on the teleprompter.

We followed the flood of running attendees and staff until the point where they met with a line of Defenders, who caught and corralled them, ushering them to safety in groups. I let out a heavy breath at the sight, at the small touch of relief it brought.

Instead of following them headlong into the human safety net of gray uniforms, the boy and girl swung a hard right at the edge of Old Main, toward the street on the other side of the massive building.

My feet slowed, even as people jostled me from all sides. The girl noticed I had fallen behind first, and motioned for the boy to keep going as she made her way back to me. An expression of disbelief overtook her soot-smeared