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Miranda

“They’ve found us. We have to go!”

Dad shakes me as his voice pierces my sleep-addled brain. I try to process his words.

They’ve found us.

No…

My legs swing over the side of the bed, body on autopilot as I stuff my feet into my sneakers, grab the packed bag from the floor, and sling it over my shoulder. I’m already fully dressed—every inch of my body covered in clothing save for my face—and I head for the fire escape in the dark, looking over my shoulder for my father.

“ Go!” he hisses. “I’ll hold them off.”

“No!” I shout, against everything he’d taught me in the last decade. “I’m not leaving you behind.”

My vision adjusts to the darkness enough that I can see his frown. “They’re—”

He doesn’t finish what he’s about to say before the door bursts open, blinding light pouring in from the hall and the flashlight beams that dart all around the room.

“Run!” my father screams, and I don’t hesitate this time.

A sob catches in my throat as I spin around to the window and yank it open. The moment my foot touches the top rung of the metal ladder, the building begins to tremble; the ground rumbles and quakes.

My father growls, low and menacing, before letting out a bark that would bring the strongest alpha to their knees.

But I know it’s no use.

“Dad…” My voice is an airy whisper, a pitiful plea in desperation.

Don’t do this. Not for me.

Please, don’t give up your life.

“He’s one of them!” a man shouts.

I don’t need to see him to know that he’s a GBE soldier. They’re who we’ve been running from all these years. Ever since I found out I was one of the Cursed.

Ever since I’d killed my mother.

I continue my downward climb as tiles fall from the roof, narrowly missing my head. The shaking grows so intense that the ladder whines as its anchors snap and fly past my head, and then it starts to bend away from the building, taking me with it.

My jaw clenched, I jump to the ground from two stories up, trying so hard to remain quiet and unseen, my knees bending when I land.

The soles of my sneakers hit the pavement the moment another, nearer voice shouts, “She’s here!”

Fuck.

I know this alleyway like the back of my hand. Multiple daily drills conducted by my father and me ensured I knew exactly how to escape if necessary.

After slipping through the Global Beta Enforcement’s fingers for ten years, I never thought this day would finally come.

I pivot on the ball of my foot and dash toward the chain-link fence to the north, reaching it and jumping as high as I can, grasping the links with both gloved hands and using all my strength to vault over the top in one fluid motion. I don’t stop when my feet touch ground on the other side, running out of the alley and onto the street, heading east.

Multiple bodies crash into the fence behind me, the rattle audible over the pounding of my feet.

I cross the street, the blare of a car horn making my heart jump as a vehicle screeches to a halt barely a foot from me. But I don’t stop.

I have to reach the subway.

The ground is still quaking beneath my feet, and I take solace in that fact. It means they haven’t subdued Dad yet. He’s still fighting for his life.

Fighting for me. For our freedom.

“Find her!” yet another voice yells, this one just north and to the west.

They’re trying to cut me off.

Another block, and I head south, back toward where I came, and duck behind a couple of dumpsters in the alley. The scents wafting off the trash are excruciating but provide some cover, like the bins themselves.

I fight to slow my breathing and listen for whatever sounds come my way.

Unhurried footsteps. Idle chatter and a loud female laugh that echoes off the brick walls around me. Then pounding boots from the north.

They’re coming. Of course, they are.

My options are limited. I could just keep running through the alleyways as long as I can and try to avoid capture. Or…

My eyes land on a fire escape ladder down the alley.

I hadn’t heard any helicopters in the area, but that didn’t mean they weren’t coming.

I have to chance it.

Wincing whenever my sneakers audibly scrape against the wet concrete, I scurry to the ladder and hold my breath when I reach it, listening.

The boot stomps are closer now.

I grip the rung above my head and pull my body upward, propelling myself to the roof of the four-story building in three leaps.

Once at the top, I keep low in the dark. That’s when I hear chatter from below.

“No one’s seen the Cursed Omega yet,” one guy says without any urgency. “That Cursed Alpha is resisting.”

“I heard he already took out some of Blue Team,” the other informs him.

Dad…

Of course, he’s resisting. My father wouldn’t give up easily; he’d fight for his life and mine.

They won’t kill my father unless they have to, and he wouldn’t give them a reason to do so, not if there were a chance we could be together again. I know this with all of my heart and soul.

Besides, the Cursed are too valuable to the GBE. The capture and sale of Cursed nearly run our global economy.

If they catch me and find out what I’m hiding, though, they’d kill me right then, valuable Cursed commodity or not.

There are only a few places the GBE bring Cursed after capture, the most common being the Korezak Prison and the Cursedblood Military Academy.

The more you fight, the more likely you’ll end up in prison for “rehabilitation” before eventually being transferred to the Academy.

The GBE doesn’t hide what they do, either. They always create huge public showings of their captures to make an example of the Cursed and to serve as a warning to anyone who thinks about breaking the law and harboring one of us.

Once the soldiers below are out of earshot, I crawl along the outer edge of the roof, staying as quiet as possible. Another fire escape ladder is on the other end of the building, but I can’t chance moving on the ground again. Too many foot soldiers.

I need to make it ten blocks to the east and enter the subway system unseen. Down one of the tunnels is a safe house I can lie low in for a few days to plan my next move.

My father wants me to get as far away from here as possible, to keep running and stay safe. But there is no way in hell I am going to leave him behind.

I scan the surrounding rooftops.

If there is one thing I am naturally good at, it’s leaping. So I plan my route and make a mad dash for the closest rooftop, squatting down and using every muscle to spring across the gap. When my feet pound the roof, I keep moving, running straight for the next roof on my route and then the next.

Almost every day for the last decade, my Dad and I would run, lift, spar, and push our limits in every way we could. He would never let me rest, always preaching vigilance.

I was beginning to think he was overdoing it, being too cautious. I had no idea how wrong I was.

I land on the rooftop of the building I have to descend to the street from when I’m suddenly jerked backward with such violence it draws an unbidden scream from my lips.

“Gotcha,” a menacing voice declares from behind me.

I struggle against whatever is binding me, keeping my arms tight at my sides.

“Bind and collar her!” another voice shouts, getting closer.

“No!” I scream before I can stop myself, but not for the reason most others would.

The man behind me moves, and I see his bare hands holding a small device they lower over me. My body jerks to the side when he tries to touch the device to my neck, but it’s useless. The other soldier arrives and holds me down so the one who caught me can do what he’s been instructed to.

The instant his bare fingertips touch the skin of my neck and wrists, three things happen, and I don’t know which comes first.

The small device lights up, and a ring of pure golden light bursts from it, connecting behind my neck. Large enough for me to see hanging past my chin, but too small to pull over my head.

Something cinches my wrists together uncomfortably tight.

There is also a cracking and snapping sound, then a deep chill in the air as the hands of the soldier that collared me, the skin that touched me, turn to solid, clear ice.

The soldier who’d been holding me down curses and scrambles away from us, allowing me to roll away from the frozen one.

An ice sculpture. That’s what the soldier is now, like something you’d see at a fancy party. Only this was a living man up until seconds ago.

His entire body, his clothing, his weapons—everything that touched him while he touched me—turned to solid ice. Nothing living is left; no flesh, bone, or blood. Everything is snapped frozen and will remain that way until what’s left of him melts away.

I know this because I have to. My father told me how important it was to learn about my abilities, even though I never wanted to. I just wanted the power to go away.

We’d never have had to go on the run if I had never had this power.

But unlike when I was twelve and discovered my Curse at the expense of my mother’s life, no pain or sorrow invades my senses at the sight of the soldier before me.

If I could, I would kill them all.

I hear clicking noises and know that there are guns trained on me now. How many, I don’t know; I don’t bother to turn and look.

The collar around my neck can’t be removed. Officials always discuss the collars on TV and the internet; how they track the Cursed wearing them and have an explosive implanted in the device to blow off the heads of any who try to remove it or run from authorities.

They’ve shown demonstrations.

“What happened here?” a new voice demands from behind me. It’s male, harsh, and authoritative.

“She killed Adams, sir!” the soldier who’d held me down sounds both angry and disgusted at once.

“How did it happen?”

“He collared her, and she turned him into that.”

Footsteps circle around me until an older soldier, his tactical fatigues slightly different from the others I’d seen, stands before me and beside his icy subordinate. He examines the soldier briefly before turning stony eyes on me. “You only froze this man. Why?”

My jaw ticks. The explosive device around my neck compels me to respond. “He touched me.”

His next question is measured. “Did you freeze him because he touched you, or did touching you cause him to freeze?”

My eyes widen a fraction. He’s more clever than I’d give any bigoted GBE lackey credit for, but maybe that’s why he’s in charge.

Despite my racing heart and the ringing in my ears, there’s no reason to even attempt lying. They’re going to find out everything soon enough. Almost everything.

“The second option.”

His stubbled chin dips in a single nod before he reaches down with gloved hands to grab my bound arms and yank me to my feet in a move surprisingly strong for a Beta. “Do you freeze everything you touch?”

I swallow hard. “No.”

“Objects?”

“No.” My voice is air.

“I am going to loosen the binds for a moment. Try anything, and we will detonate the charge in your collar. Understand?”

My throat too dry to respond, I nod in confirmation.

“Good.” He does as he says and loosens the bindings, easing some of the pain in my shoulders and wrists. “I’m going to remove one of your gloves and place your hand on a scanner. You are to stay completely still, or else my second-in-command will blow your head off. Is that understood?”

“Yes,” I breathe.

As the soldier who’s apparently his second holds a small device in front of him, his thumb hovering over the surface, the leader’s gloved fingertips glide across my wrist to lift my sleeve and find the edge of my right glove. He slides it off with care, certainly because he doesn’t want to die. I feel the cold, smooth scanner flat against my palm behind my back for a moment before there is an audible beep, and the device is gone. Once he’s fiddled with my glove and returns it to my hand, he pulls my sleeve back down, and the bindings are again cinched tight. But not quite as tight as before.

“Miranda Amato, twenty-two years old, born in Sector Two-B,” he states as he swings back around to face me. “Your family name...”

He continues to read the screen in his hand, the blue glow reflecting off his chiseled jaw, highlighting the salt and pepper stubble there and the slight cleft in his chin. His eyes flick back up to me, narrowed.

My heart pounds, racing. What did that scanner tell him? About my mother’s death?

Those hard eyes blink twice before his head swivels to look at the soldiers around us. Then he commands, “We leave now. This one is going to the academy.”

"This one” is, but what about my father?

No matter how much I want to shout and scream, demand to know what they’ve done with my dad, I keep quiet. There’s no choice now. I’d only make things worse for him and me.

“Yes, sir,” a new voice responds, this one female.

Before I can blink, a solid cloth is placed over my head, carefully maneuvered so as not to touch me in the process. The whirring of a helicopter in the distance I hadn’t heard before draws closer. The chatter of the soldiers grows louder over the sound, and the air grows choppy, shifting the cover over my head enough that the bright spotlight from above peeks through the gap.

As I’m guided to the craft, my head pushed down to enter, my body and still bound arms wrapped in some form of harness to secure me, a new panic sets in.

They caught me. I’m going to the military academy.

I don’t know where my father is being taken, and I don’t know how I’m going to save him now that I have this infernal collar on.