Page 53 of Shadows of Stardust

This is it.

If the last time I tried to break out of this place was my one best chance, then this is my lottery win, my pardon from the prison of being under Zandrel’s thumb.

Back at the bungalow, I bound up the front steps and unlock the door. I’m across the room and into the bedroom in a few quick strides, and even knowing I don’t have access to the fancy tech Zandrel has to keep the security system from tripping when I leave, I don’t slow down for a second.

Either he’ll stick to his guns about not wanting to turn me in by rigging the security system and keeping the cameras off me, or he won’t, and I’ll be cooked. And while I can logically recognize testing those possibilities might not be the smartest move here, logic really isn’t in charge right now.

Desperation is.

Desperation and fear and an out-of-control, self-destructive instinct that has me throwing open the bedroom window and hauling myself up and out of it.

I hit the soft ground behind the bungalow and take off. Keeping low and staying away from the main pathway, I pick my way through the jungle toward the pool and the perimeter fence. There’s no one else around, no hovers tailing me, and my confidence in Zandrel’s need to control the situation, to keep this game going so he doesn’t lose his way back to the Aux, grows by the moment.

And yet, with each step, I’m also plagued by the same nagging thread of doubt that’s been tugging on me since the night we made our deal with Marva.

It’s the doubt that whispers maybe it still would have been a better bet to trust him, to partner with him, to use whatever skills he could offer to help me find Savvie. The doubt that warns I’m going to push my luck too far, that there’s no way I can pull this off all on my own.

But I can’t think about that right now.

I can’t think about anything but Savvie and the mission in front of me.

Step one, get up and over the fence, outside the production zone, squarely into restricted Eritin territory.

The pack I brought with me last time—filled with some food, a canteen, and extra clothes, the only sparse supplies I could bring in my luggage without rousing suspicion from the production team—still waits in the bushes where Zandrel pulled it off me and tossed it aside. It’s a little soggy and sand-crusted, but there’s nothing I can do about that now.

I scoop it up without breaking my stride and lunge for the fence. Grip steady, feet sure, I haul myself up, up, up, with only a slight twinge in my bad shoulder as I heave over the top and scramble down the other side.

Again, my feet hit soft, sandy earth, and again, a shot of reckless confidence floods through my vein.

Onto step two.

Moving faster now, bolstered by that recklessness, I break into a run.

All the time I spent studying maps and satellite images and every bit of information I could learn about Eritin II comes into crystal-clear focus in my mind. I know this jungle. I know where I’m headed beyond a shadow of a doubt, and after a couple ofshort minutes of moving through the trees and underbrush, I find my target.

I reach the edge of the yard where production keeps their hovers, and the sky finally opens up. Lightning cracks, thunder booms, and pelting sheets of rain coat the world in silver.

Not that it bothers me, not in the slightest.

Rain is another mark in my favor. Production always slows down while everyone heads inside to wait out the frequent afternoon storms, and with any luck, I’ll be long gone by the time this one passes.

Darting across the yard, I spot my target.

A small hovercraft just big enough for one or two people, used to transport the crew around the beach to different production locales. I’m sure they keep the keys somewhere in the production offices, but that’s not a problem, either.

I sink to my knees in the sand beside the hover and dig into my pack. A metal nail file won’t do as well as I’d like for popping the control panel open, but it sure as hell raises fewer questions than bringing some other tool in my luggage.

It takes a few minutes of poking and prodding around the panel covering the ignition mechanism to get it to pop off, and I feel each passing second all the way down to my marrow.

Wherever Zandrel is, I’m sure he’s stewing, monitoring whatever he’s hacked into on his fancy ass watch, and no doubt ready to come after me as soon as he’s able to do so without blowing his cover.

Maybe he’s already on his way here.

I’ve got no idea how long his meeting with Brivik will take, and knowing I might have mere minutes to pull this off spurs me on.

Panel open, I carefully study the craft’s internal workings, trying to remember what goes where to get this thing hot-wired.

It took hours and hours of watching old episodes of Mate Match to get a glimpse of a similar-looking craft in the background of a shot, and even then, it was from a season filmed five years ago. There was no telling whether or not they’d still have the same hovers in rotation today, and even though this one definitely looks to be an updated model, the general layout of the controls seems to be the same.

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