The Darkest Legacy (Darkest Min - Alexandra Bracken Page 0,23

outside.”

Some of the tension in my shoulders eased, making it easier to breath.

“Oh good,” I whispered back, forcing a brightness into my voice. The patented Liam Stewart method of trying to defuse someone else’s fears while swallowing your own. “I was worried escaping would be too easy.”

“Too easy?” he repeated, momentarily forgetting the restraints. I was just about to explain the art of inappropriately timed sarcasm when he said, almost as if testing a joking tone for the first time, “Then…you’ll be excited to know that it looked like they were armed with everything but flamethrowers.”

I twisted to look at him again—the dirt-caked bottom of his sneakers, at least. His breathing had evened out somewhat, and even with the lack of light I could see him twisting his body to try to catch a glimpse of me. “No flamethrowers?” I said. “What kind of evil organization is this?”

“A particularly stupid kind,” he whispered back, “one that was reckless enough to try taking you and foolish enough to underestimate your ability to fight back. I think you gave them the shock of their lives.”

It was what I wanted to believe more than anything in that moment: that I was capable of both getting us out of here, and making whoever had taken us regret it. That strand of confidence wove through me. “And that’s too bad. About the flamethrower, I mean. I do know how to use one, you know.”

“You say that like it’s meant to surprise me,” the boy said quietly. “Like I didn’t watch you punch a man twice your size with a fistful of lightning.”

That’s right—I had, hadn’t I? That memory was enough to send the aftermath of the explosion crashing back through my mind. Him and the girl being beaten and slammed against the ground. The armor the soldiers wore that blocked my power. The boy shouting at me to run.

Would he have told me to go if they were involved? Would they be locked in here—wherever here was—with me? He’d held himself together after the bomb in a calm, composed way. Even as the men attacked us, he’d seemed to sink deeper into that control, as if he’d merely clicked into a different, more lethal mode.

But a minute ago, I’d heard his strained breathing. I’d felt his rising panic as if it had been my own pulse fluttering beneath my skin.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “There’s nothing funny about this.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “Humor is good for the alleviation of stress.”

Now that I could hear him clearly, my ears picked up the faint trace of an accent. Polish, maybe? Russian?

I gave a faint laugh. “That sounds like something a friend of mine would say.”

God. Chubs would be so worried. He and the others were probably losing their minds. He’d be my first call once I got us all out of here.

Get out, find a phone, make the call. It wasn’t even enough to really be considered a plan, but I clung to it. Even if there were a hundred steps that I still had to sort out, it gave me something real to start planning for. Just the possibility of hearing his voice after everything was enough to make me test the strength of the restraints again.

“I’ve been informed that I have the sense of humor of a rock,” he whispered, “which I’m interpreting as nonexistent and not surprisingly colorful.”

“I don’t know, you seem to be doing okay,” I told him, pulling at my restraints again. “We can work on it after we get out of here. You didn’t happen to notice where that is, did you?”

It was a long moment before he responded. I heard him swallow hard, the creak of leather as he tried to move. When he did speak, his voice had gone hollow. Remote. “Storage container—some kind of rail yard.”

The waves of fear rolled out, releasing the unbearable tightness in my chest, carving out pockets of paralyzing anxiety. In those places, something new bloomed.

Fury.

For the threat during the speech. For Mel. For the wounded. For Cooper. For shattering that small measure of peace we’d managed to scrape together after almost five years of struggling. For the boy and the girl caught in this dark web with me.

It had to be connected—the bombing, being taken. From the moment the Defender had walked me down the steps of Old Main, toward the second Defender with the wrong baton and the gun, to when we’d reached the lot and had been confronted by a man