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“Keep your hands up. Everyone, let me see them.” His guns were moving back and forth. His focus intense. “Let Magnus go.”

“Give us the girl. You won’t make it out here alive.”

“Oh I will, I’ll kill all of you. Give me Magnus.”

Magnus’s face was intense, red, bloodied, his eyes wild. His neck taut, prepared to fight. Footsteps were clomping down the tunnel from the other direction.

“Give me Magnus!”

A guard dove for his gun and fired it toward us. I ducked, shrieked, and begged, “Please, no, don’t.”

Tyler fired and that guy lay still on the ground.

Magnus said, “Tis okay, Kaitlyn, daena be afeared, we⁠—”

The guard holding him pressed his gun harder into Magnus’s temple. “More guards are coming, you don’t stand a chance.”

“Give me Magnus and we’ll see if I do.”

“Nah, Samuel only really wanted this guy anyway.” The two men started pulling Magnus down the hall. He struggled against them, they were reaching the corner.

Men behind them were closing in.

Tyler said, “Kaitlyn, count of three you run.”

I was fully crying. “I don’t want to, please get him, get Magnus, please.”

Magnus, struggling, said, “Go! Kaitlyn, go!”

“No, please,” I reached my hands out toward him, “I can’t leave without you.”

“Kaitlyn, ye have tae, go with Tyler.”

“Katie, you better run, I have to hold the guns. I can’t carry you but I fucking will if I have to, one, two⁠—”

“Please don’t make me — Magnus!”

He was dragged around the corner.

His voice came to me from further down the tunnel. “Run, Kaitlyn!”

Tyler said, “Three.”

I turned and ran.

54 - KAITLYN

Tyler slammed into me at the door. “Through, go through!”

“I don’t want to, we have to go get Magnus, please.”

“Go through the fucking door, Katie, now. Right now!” He holstered one of his guns and slammed against the door and shoved me out to the rooftop.

The sky was the cool grey of almost-dawn. The helicopter was parked, spotlights were shining around the perimeter. I stumbled toward the middle.

“Get behind it!”

“I don’t want to, I don’t want to leave him!” I tried to race back for the door and Tyler blocked me, grabbed me around the waist, and carried me to the helicopter. He flung me onto my ass on the hard cold roof. “Don’t move, Katie, I swear to god, I’ll shoot you, I’ve shot every fucking other person so far.”