No one caught our wagon on the way up, but news about our escape has beaten us to the warfront.
I duck lower into the grasses, my heart racing. The defense compounds usually have lookouts with telescopes, scanning the area for Federation troops and Ghosts, but no doubt they’re now also searching for us.
“Now what?” Adena signs.
Jeran nods toward the woods, where the valley leading into the Federation’s territory begins to slope. “If we can make it into those trees,” he answers, “we should be able to get over the border before they can catch us. We just have to cross this grassland first.”
“The snipers will be aiming to injure us,” I add.
Adena nods back at Red. “Not him. He’s valuable.”
I’m not even sure if snipers can hurt Red, not with his unnatural, armored skin and his weaponized body and mind. He may move so quickly that he can dodge the snipers’ bullets, could kill everyone at both defense compounds. But massacring our own side is not the goal we have today. Mara can’t afford to lose more Strikers.
Red. I nod at him, speaking through our link, and brush my fingers against his arm. He turns his dark eyes to me, and my chest tightens in fear for him. I’ll go first. Stay beside me.
He seems to know what my intentions are before I can properly articulate them. Stay beside me; shield us with your body so the snipers don’t try to hit us. Help us get through the valley into the Federation’s territory, while I keep an eye out for Strikers or guards that spot us. I can see the understanding in his eyes as he takes in my thoughts and makes sense of them as if our minds are one.
His gaze turns to the woods ahead. We begin to move.
It’s slow going through the grasses as we try not to move through them quickly so that the swaying grasses draw attention. But as we go and no responses come our way, I begin to hope that we can pass through uneventfully.
Then, abruptly, something shines from one of the compound’s towers. I freeze in my tracks like a deer. My heart jumps. It’s a sign to the second compound.
They’ve spotted us.
No later than I think this, a shot grazes through the grass and zips past me, dangerously close to striking my neck. The bullet hits the dirt so hard that mud splatters onto my face.
Instantly, Adena flattens herself to a low belly crawl and speeds up. “Move,” she signs back at us with a cutting hand gesture.
We copy her and cut through the grasses as quick as we can. Even now, our movements barely register a sound. But when I glance up, I can see the first hints of figures emerging from the nearest compound gates. Strikers with their masks up.
I’ve been hunted before by Ghosts and by Federation soldiers, but never by Strikers. Never my own. So now, for the first time, I’m on the receiving end of the terror of seeing those sapphire coats heading silently in my direction, and the Strikers’ dark, ominous eyes above the veil of their masks. Friends and allies I’ve sat with in the mess hall. Killers trained in everything I know. One and the same.
“They see us,” I sign to everyone. “It doesn’t matter now if we hide. We just need to move fast.” So I straighten and start sprinting.
The others do the same. We cut wildly through the grasses, keeping our heads low and bodies tucked in close so that the snipers firing at us have a harder time. A second bullet hits a foot away from me, a third so close to Red that it grazes his arm, leaving a burnt streak. He doesn’t even flinch.
The Strikers are closing the distance between us. I wipe sweat from my brow and keep my eyes ahead.
Then the clearing before us suddenly parts, widening abruptly into a valley thick with trees. We dart for the dim paths of the woods—
—and run right into a patrol of Strikers.
If we’d been hunting Ghosts, Jeran, Adena, and I would never have stumbled into enemies like this. We’re trained to track Ghosts and Federation troops, know the sounds and mistakes they make. But pitting Strikers against one another is something else entirely. I didn’t hear them coming, and neither did they hear us.
There’s the smallest fraction of a second in which we all look stunned at the