Page 69 of Jump or Fall
She sensed Gordon’s discomfort, but she replied, “Sure.”
Gordon shed the armor in exchange for his riding gear, then he said to Mara, “I’ll take your armor to Crux later. Doubt you want to put it all back on right now.”
“Okay,” she said. He was right—walking back to Crux fully armored would be uncomfortable and attract too much attention.
The stairs leading down were steep and shook slightly beneath their weight. Earlier, when they had run through, Mara had barely noticed. Everything had blurred together in a haze of lights and sheets of rain. Though the storm was beginning to taper off, the city remained drenched. Water trickled from overhangs, dripping onto their heads.
The winding pathways of Eight were disorienting, yet Gordon navigated them with ease.
“How many times did you get lost before you figured this place out?” she asked.
He snorted. “I still get lost. There are virtually no rules for construction, and they just keep adding on more levels when space runs out. Beck occasionally threatens to tear it all down when they breach the boundary, but this is where he keeps all the undesirables.”
Glancing upward, she searched for the dark sky but couldn’t find it. “So they just keep building up?”
“And down.” They turned again, entering a large stairwell. Water whooshed through a channel dug into the ground beside the stairs, diverting somewhere into the distance.
The ride on his motorbike, after she finished dressing in Crux, was overshadowed by a growing sense of foreboding. Gordon’s offer to run away together became more tempting with each passing minute.
Why should they sacrifice for this place? Why should they risk their lives? Surely, a life with Gordon somewhere far away, in a place she had never heard of, would be better. Smarter, even.
She thought of their scars, the irreversible damage inflicted on their bodies and minds. She tightened her grip around his waist and felt the reassuring weight of his hand over hers.
The Silvers needed to suffer. She wanted to see them butchered into a thousand pieces and their remains scattered across the very streets they terrorized.
Maybe she didn’t truly care about saving anyone. Maybe revenge was enough.
The bike slowed as they pulled into a shadowed section of the street, close to her apartment.
Gordon cupped her face, tilting it upward for a long kiss while his fingers wove through her hair. “It isn’t too late to change your mind.”
“We will run away into the night together. Just not yet. I don’t think we could ever sleep soundly with them still out there.”
A pained smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I don’t think we ever sleep soundly, Mara.”
She buried her face in his chest, inhaling deeply. He smelled like armor and gunpowder, but underneath was him—the one that made her feel safe and whole.
“Keep your key on you at all times,” he said. “Please. If something happens, then I can find you.”
“I will.”
They held each other for a long moment.
And then, she pulled away to walk down the narrow alley that led to her apartment. The cold settled in again where his warmth had been. A terrible, sinking feeling buried itself in her bones.
She should’ve run.
Chapter 23
Mara - Ten Years Earlier
Mara’s fingers swiped absently over the inventory screen, scrolling through the lists she already knew by heart—fabrics, threads, connectors, plates. Everything was in its place. She’d checked it all already. Twice.
Her arms and fingers ached from disassembling and cleaning one of the joiners, and the acidic solvent left the inside of her nose feeling raw. She wasn’t allowed to craft armor yet, but Geller said her time was coming soon.
She started a couple of months ago, and the first few weeks had all been lessons: “this fiber does this” and is made of “that”. At first, she found it fascinating, but the repetition had gotten old. There were only so many times she could watch someone slash aramid with a knife or see a close-up of hexagonal ceramic plates shattering.
At least now they had moved on to doing the demonstrations themselves. She loved the satisfyingcrackof hitting a chestplate from twenty-five yards away.
