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The three of us jumped up from our crouches. "Run! Go, Rabbit!"
The kid was ten feet from freedom when the guard came around the corner.
He was only five feet away when the bullet hit him in the back.
Nine.
Even if I lived to be a hundred, which was frankly looking less and less likely every second, I would never forget the moment when Rabbit fell. Time slowed like we were watching through water. We were so far away we couldn't hear the gun go off, but we saw the bloom of red an instant before the kid stumbled to his knees. I don't remember exactly what happened next, except that once time caught back up with the three of us, we were screaming. Dare had fallen to her knees and covered her ears with her hands. Icarus shouted "Rabbit!" and then fell ominously silent. I'm not exactly sure what I said, but I knew that my throat hurt and tears fell cold on my cheeks.
All of this happened in less than a minute. Then, down far below, a swarm of black surrounded the kid and blocked our view. My eyes searched the area, looking for something, any sign of hope. Somehow my gaze landed back on that window and the small black device still attached to the glass. I hit Icarus on the arm. "The bomb!"
He dragged his eyes from the vampires surrounding the kid and looked at me with red-rimmed eyes. "What?"
"They didn't find the bomb."
He shook himself, like a man waking up from a deep sleep and grabbed the binoculars from me. "Fuck me." He looked down at his watch. "It should have gone off by now."
Dare stood on the edge of the rise, staring at the mass of black figures. "He's alive," she whispered. She reached back and grabbed my sleeve. "He's alive!"
I stumbled forward and looked where she was pointing. The black uniforms had parted. One of the vampires pulled Rabbit up from the ground. At first, it appeared he wasn't responding, but, then, he got his feet under him and his head rolled back. I grabbed Icarus's binoculars. "Holy shit! She's right." The kid's eyes were open and his mouth was moving. I couldn't tell if he was screaming from pain or merely begging for his life. Regardless, he was alive. I rounded on Icarus. "We have to save him."
He stared hard at the unfolding drama far below. The guards were dragging Rabbit toward the center of the compound. No doubt they planned on taking him to Castor for instructions. If we could make the bomb go off before they decided on a course of action, we might have a chance for getting Rabbit away from the guards.
Finally, Icarus looked at Dare with sorrow. "It's too late for him."
She launched at him, punching at his chest and face with wild hands. "Fuck you! We're not leaving him!"
"Stop, Dare. Stop!" He struggled to get her flailing limbs under control. His scars were pale against his flushed skin. "Listen! Our only chance to save him is to set off the bomb. Stop!" He grabbed her by the upper arms and shook her. "If the bomb goes off he's dead anyway.">His chin came up. "Damn straight."
The cold night breeze carried Dare's raised voice toward us. Icarus's quieter responses were swallowed, but soon enough they both came to join us again. Icarus looked resigned and Dare looked defeated.
"All right, Rabbit, you're going to shimmy through the pipe. It'll lead you to a grate inside the compound. You'll have to sneak out of the pipe and get into that building." He took a few moments to show the kid how to engage the bomb. "Set the timer to two minutes from the time you engage it. That will give you a little lead time to get as far from the building as possible before it blows."
Rabbit practically pranced with excitement as he listened to the instructions. Dare hung back, staring off toward the river in the distance. Further downstream, the lights of Nachstadt created a surreal glow on the horizon. "You okay?" I asked, moving closer.
She shook herself and dragged her eyes from the lights. "I smell death on the air."
"Hopefully Troika deaths."
She just looked at me without speaking.
"Dare, Six?" Icarus called back. "He's ready."
Dare sighed and dragged herself out of whatever headspace she'd retreated to. "The master calls."
I looked up at the dim stars that were determined to be seen despite the city's lights and the Factory's fires. "Please." I wasn't sure to whom I was pleading or even what exactly I was asking for. I just knew that if anyone in the entire world needed help at that moment it was us.
#
Rabbit hung outside the tunnel long enough for us to take positions on a nearby rise. We needed to have a bird's eye view of the compound so we could warn him if any guards were close. Icarus held a small remote in his hand. A punch of the button would set off a small shock on a sensor around Rabbit's wrist. It wasn't the best warning system, but it was all we had. Besides, even if we'd had a more sophisticated verbal warning system, we couldn't have risked interference getting picked up by the guards' walkie-talkies.
Once we were in position, Icarus sent a quick double-zap to the kid to let him know it was time to go. We were far enough away that Rabbit looked incredibly small and very young beside the dark river and the pipe's wide mouth. An instant after Icarus hit the button, the kid looked down at his wrist and then waved to signal he'd received the message.
Dare let out a long, nervous breath. I shot her a look that I hoped was reassuring despite my own nerves. Were we really sending that kid into a heavily fortified compound alone? The list of things that could go wrong was so long, it was laughable.
"There he goes," Icarus whispered. We all tensed as Rabbit's wingtips disappeared into the hole.
Dare raised her binoculars. "The guards do a lap around the building every two minutes. If he can time it right, he'll be able to enter the outbuilding through the window in the back between rounds."
