AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But the guard is already pushing me back into the boat, and another one starts the engine.
“Cover us!” he shouts as the boat shoots off the shore, then picks up the radio again. “Heading to the Eastside, Devil’s Caverns.”
58
ARCHER
The water isup to our chests already as we struggle to walk from one cavern to another.
Kat’s cloth is washed away, the water keeping my wound open, a bad thing, but I can’t have negative thoughts right now. Water makes it easier to move, supporting my weight.
Droga gives an update to a guard on the radio, then tosses the radio away. He loses his bulletproof jacket and lets it sink into the water. The gun goes next. Then the duty belt. He holds the flashlight between his teeth, and in this moment, I know that he’s a much stronger man than I am.
He motions to go forward. “Keep up, Crone.”
“Right behind you,” I hiss through pain, on the verge of passing out. My confidence is gone as I can feel my strength draining into the water. “How do you know where to go?”
“I don’t.”
“Great.”
Droga snorts as we move along the wall of one cavern, through a narrower arch, to another, much bigger. The light from his flashlight bounces off the walls, water all around us, dripping from above, the shadows dancing like ghosts.
“We could stay here, no? Until the tide goes down again?” I ask.
I need to rest, stop moving, and close my eyes for a minute. Everything’s blurry. I can only see an outline of Droga’s upper body against the halo of light bouncing here and there.
“We could, but we would be swimming. Which is tough to do for several hours. With your wound—impossible. So move your ass, Crone.”
I do, pushing through pain.
“I’ve been here before,” Droga says, either to calm me or distract me. We keep pushing forward, the water already at our shoulders. “Ty knows these caves by heart. He drew a map for me once. When I was hiding from you.”
He snorts.
“Right,” I murmur.
“Now I’m hidingyouin here. The irony, huh?”
He turns around and positions the light below his face, which illuminates it like a fucking scull mask.
A chuckle escapes me, which resonates with another burst of pain.
“If I die here in your arms, Droga, that would be just the cherry on the cake.”
“I don’t need a fucking cherry, Crone. Move. Don’t talk.”
The lowest I ever felt in my life was when I got the news about the crash that killed my brother and Mom.
The angriest I ever felt was the day I found out Droga had Callie in his room all night after the Block Party, and the whole campus was cheering.
The strongest I ever felt was after the Change, when we went through death toll records, grieved about the lost families, then set up Gen-Alpha and realized that Zion saved us and now was our home, and I could protect the ones who got lucky. Even if that meant establishing strict rules and not taking shit from anyone.
The most on top of the world I felt—not when I got my formula approved by the FDA that put it on the list of top five gene therapy medications, which put me in the top tenForbes Thirty Under Thirty. Not even when the most powerful leaders from the Middle East, Asia, and the US flew to Zion for a short and very discreet meeting to discuss the investments into the drug.
No.
We always think it’s the grand events that are the best, when, in fact, it’s the small things that make us the happiest.
