My heartbeat was too loud.My breath too thin.The world moved too slow.
One second I was standing just beyond the gate, hands trembling at my sides.The next, headlights flared in the distance.A car rolled down the street at an unnaturally slow pace, tires hissing against wet pavement.
Something—it could have been instinct, or dread, or fate—forced me to look over my shoulder.
Everything shifted into that strange, syrupy slow motion reserved for nightmares and dying breaths.
The car crawled past us.The window glided down.A shadow sat inside—I didn’t see a face, or an expression, just darkness.
And then I saw a pistol.Black.Cold metal.Drawn out of the window inch by inch as if the universe wanted me to witness every second of my own undoing.
It lifted and leveled.And it was pointed straight at me.
“Neve, down!”
Zelda’s voice tore through the air at the exact second the first volley of bullets exploded.The sound was deafening—metal cracking, air splitting, the world detonating around me.Something heavy struck the ground behind me, and instinct took control before my brain did.
I hit the concrete hard.
My palms scraped open, my teeth rattled, my vision jolted.More bullets screamed past, sparking off brick and steel, hot enough that I felt the burn of the air they carved through.Then suddenly, there was silence broken only by the squeal of tires and the fading roar of an engine tearing down the street.
Sirens wailed in the distance.Too far.Too late to save us.
A fist clamped onto my collar and yanked me upright.My feet didn’t want to cooperate.They felt like they’d turned to molten lead.My legs threatened to buckle.
Zelda didn’t give me the option.
She shoved me forward, hard, down the narrow lane that ran alongside her house.
“Run!”she hissed, breath sharp with terror.
I stumbled, then moved, legs catching up to the sheer panic clawing through my chest.Gravel spit under our shoes.Rain dripped from hanging gutters.My lungs burned with every gasping breath.
Zelda’s footsteps pounded behind me, close enough that I felt her urgency drilling into my spine.
We burst out the other end of the lane, straight toward the railroad tracks behind her property.The air hummed with electricity.The distant ringing of an incoming train grew louder, a low metallic howl rolling through the night.
I stopped.I turned.Zelda was right behind me, her chest heaving.She was soaked and wild-eyed as she looked at me and flinched, as though she were watching something break slowly, beautifully, beyond repair.
We were trapped between the tracks and whoever wanted me dead.Atlas hadn’t been kidding when he told me I was in serious danger and these men wouldn’t stop.
“Look!It’s a freight train,” Zelda gasped, grabbing my shoulders like she could force the words into my bones.“The minute it passes, you jump on.You hear me?Youjump.”
The train’s horn bellowed in the distance, a monstrous warning rolling through the fog and drizzle.The tracks trembled beneath our feet, vibrating with approaching danger.
“These are not good people, Neve,” she muttered, her voice cracking.I recognised that her fear was not for herself, but for me.“Get on that train and get as far away from here as you can.”
My breath stuttered.My throat closed.“What about you?”
She shook her head once, a decision she’d already made.
“I have to go back for Paolo.”Her voice wavered, barely audible over the rising thunder of the freight line.“He’s shot.And…” Her lips trembled before she steeled them.“Just get onto the train, Neve.You have a higher purpose; run toward it.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but she cut me off with a fierce, trembling glare.
“No buts.Go!”
Her fingers dug into my shoulders, nails biting through the wet fabric.