Prodigy

“Day,
jump
!” she yells up at me, snapping me out of the moment.
    I force myself to turn away from Tess and jump into the hole. My boots splash into shallow, icy water right as I hear the first Patriot reach us. June grabs my hand. “Go!” she hisses.
    We sprint down the black tunnel. Behind us I hear someone else drop down and start running after us. Then another. They’re all coming.
    “Got any more grenades?” June shouts as we run.
    I reach down to my belt. “One.” I pull the last grenade out, then toss the pin. If we use this, there’s no going back. We could be stuck down here forever—but there’s no other choice, and June knows it.
    I shout a warning behind us, and throw the grenade. The closest Patriot sees me do it and scrambles to a stop. Then he starts yelling at the others to get back. We keep sprinting.
    The blast lifts us clear off our feet and sends us flying. I hit the ground hard, skidding through icy water and slush for several seconds before coming to a stop. My head rings—I press my palms hard against my temples in an attempt to stop it. No luck, though. A headache bursts my mind wide open, drowning out all of my thoughts, and I squeeze my eyes shut at the blinding pain.
One, two, three . . .
    Long seconds drag by. My head throbs with the impact of a thousand hammers. I struggle to breathe.
    Then, mercifully, it starts to fade. I open my eyes in the darkness—the ground has settled again, and even though I can still hear people talking behind us, they’re muffled, as if coming from the other side of a thick door. Gingerly I pull myself up into a sitting position. June’s leaning against the side of the tunnel, rubbing her arm. We’re both facing the space we’d come from.
    A hollow tunnel stood there just seconds ago, but now a pile of concrete and rubble have completely sealed off the entrance.
    We’ve made it. But all I feel is emptiness.

W HEN I WAS FIVE YEARS OLD, M ETIAS TOOK ME TO SEE OUR parents’ graves. It was the first time he’d been to the site since the actual funeral. I don’t think he could stand being reminded of what had happened. Most of Los Angeles’s civilians—even a good number of the upper class—are assigned a one-square-foot slot in their local cemetery high-rise and a single opaque glass box in which to store a loved one’s ashes. But Metias paid off the cemetery officials and got a four-square-foot slot for Mom and Dad, along with engraved crystal headstones. We stood there in front of the headstones with our white clothes and white flowers. I spent the whole time staring at Metias. I can still remember his tight jaw, his neatly brushed hair, his cheeks damp and glistening. Most of all I remember his eyes, heavy with sadness, too old for a seventeen-year-old boy.
    Day looked that way when he learned about his brother John’s death. And now, as we make our way along the underground tunnel and out of Pierra, he has those eyes again.
    * * *
    We spend fifty-two minutes (or fifty-one? I’m not sure. My head feels feverish and light) jogging through the dark wetness of the tunnel. For a while we’d heard angry shouts coming from the other side of the mountain of twisted concrete that separates us from the Patriots and the Republic’s soldiers. But eventually those sounds faded to silence as we rushed deeper and deeper into the tunnel. The Patriots probably had to flee from the oncoming troops. Maybe the soldiers are trying to excavate the rubble out of the tunnel. We have no idea, so we keep going.
    It’s quiet now. The only sounds are our ragged breathing, our boots splashing into shallow, slushy puddles, and the
drip, drip, drip
of ice-cold water from the ceiling that runs down our necks. Day grips my hand tightly as we run. His fingers are cold and rubbery with wetness, but I still cling to them. It’s so dark down here that I can barely see Day’s outline in front of me.
    Did Anden survive the assault?
I wonder.
Or did the Patriots manage to assassinate him?
The thought makes the blood rush in my ears. The last time I played the role of double agent, I’d gotten someone killed. Anden had put his faith in me, and because of that, he could’ve died today—maybe he
did
die. The price people seem to pay for crossing my path.
    This thought triggers another.
Why didn’t Tess come down with us?
I want to ask, but oddly enough, Day hasn’t said a word about her since we entered this tunnel. They’d had an argument, that much I know.
I