Page 13 of Last of Her Name

“The Kephts’ place?” I murmur. A wave of dizziness passes through me. I’ve lost a lot of blood, and my strength seems to be draining away with it.

Pol goes to a door and enters a passcode, and it opens to a dark staircase going down to the cellar. “The Kephts are part of our cell. Orwerepart of it, before the mayor betrayed us. Doesn’t look like he told Volkov about this place yet, but we have to hurry. With any luck, the direktor died in the blast.”

Why is he so calm? Why is he acting as if he’dexpectedall this to happen? He should be freaking out right now—like me. Instead, he’s collected and sensible, and that frightens me more than if he were running around screaming.

The cellar is crammed with boxes and old furniture and smells weirdly of onions, but the center of the room is open. I stare, confused; the room is huge, much larger than the house above, and built like a war bunker. The cellar must expand beneath the Kephts’ yard.

Pol clicks on a dim light and eases me onto a pile of folded canvas. He curses when he sees my leg.

Tearing my pants up to my knee, he exposes the gash in my calf. I hiss, gripping a shelf and trying to focus on the cans of slinke jam stacked there, instead of the pain. I think of how Mrs. Kepht gave me one of those homemade jams last year on my birthday. I think of how she’s now lying dead in the town hall, shot by the direktor Eminent.

“No shrapnel left in it, I think,” Pol says, dragging my attention back to the pain in my leg. “But you need a skin patch to close that up. And an antibiotic.”

“Well, I don’t think we’re going to find any down here.” I grind my teeth together as the pain travels up my leg in fiery spikes.

“You might be surprised,” he mutters. Then he rushes to pull a sheet off some sort of control panel across the room. It lights up, buttons and holos flickering in the shadows.

“Pol, what is happening? Why are we down here?”

“You weren’t supposed to get hurt,” he says softly. “No one was.”

I remember something he said earlier, about the blast being a distraction. I was too out of it to understand at the time, but now horror turns my blood cold. “Pol—are you saying—didyoudo this? Peopledied! And what about my parents? What about Clio? She could be—” Stars, I can’t finish the thought. It’s too horrible. I push up onto my good leg, wobbling a bit. “I’m going back.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You don’t give me orders! Especially not after you nearlyblew me up!”

“We had to get you out of there. A minute more and Volkov might have shot you.”

I shake my head. Volkov is the last person on my mind. Nothing matters, nothing makessense, except going back to the town hall and looking for my parents and Clio. They could be bleeding out right now.

“What’s your plan, anyway?” I shout. “You can’t just expect me to hide underground like a scared—”

“We’re not staying underground.”

He presses his hand against a pad on the control board, and suddenly the floor begins to rumble. The entire center of the room splits into receding panels, revealing a dark space below, while above, the ceiling—and the Kephts’ grassy lawn—also begins to peel apart. Clumps of dirt rain down, and with a hiss, vents below me release pale, cold mist. I press myself against the pile of canvas, eyes wide as before me a large object rises from under the floor. Blue spotlights flicker on, illuminating the shape.

I gasp.

It’s a G-Class caravel, slightly larger than a dory and the color of rust. Shaped like an almond, with retractable gliding wings and a diamantglass-sealed cockpit, the little ship is clearly several generations old, a now-obsolete model. How long has it been down there?

“Stacia,” Pol says, “meet theLaika.”

Why in the blazing stars did Pol never tell me the mayor had a secretspaceshipunder his house? A spaceship Pol apparently has clearance to access?

It’s like I’ve awoken into some bizarre alternate world. The ship is just the latest in a sequence of impossible revelations, proof that when I thought things couldn’t get any stranger, the universe is still playing me for the fool.

So I stop trying to make sense of anything. My mind shrinks away and slams the door, leaving my skull hollow. I blink at the ship, feeling wholly disconnected. Somewhere inside me, a plug has been pulled, and a wire is frayed and sparking.

As I stare, my vision begins to fade. My head swims and my eyelids drag. At first I think he might have drugged me, but then I realize I’m losing too much blood from my leg.Hypovolemic shock, I think vaguely. My mom told me about it, after I gashed my head racing the dory through the vineyard.You have tothink, Stacia, before you do these things!she’d lectured.

Think, Stacia. Think …

I try to call out to Pol, but I’m too weak. My vision begins to dim, and I raise a hand feebly, but he’s too focused on the controls to notice.

“I have to get to Clio …” I whisper. “Please …”

I slump over. The last thing I see is the hatch of the caravel slowly lowering open, and then I pass out.