Page 164 of The Last Hope

“We have to get out of here,” Court agrees as he rips a blanket off the bed. He bends and ties it around Stork’s gnarled wound. Franny looks to Stork’s severed arm, the one lying detached on the ground.

“Leave it.” Stork groans as Court helps him stand.

“Are you sure?” Franny wonders. I imagine she’d carry it for him. For however far and however long. She’d do that. I know she would.

“Leave it,” Stork repeats. “Let’s go.”

The five of us step out into the hallway, and just as we move toward the stairwell, the door bangs open. Kinden sprints withintense urgency. Like he’s been searching for us. We turn back to follow him, and he waves his hands. “Not this way!”

Hurriedly, Padgett and Gem emerge from the stairwell behind him, and the sisters slam the door shut. Boots thud on the stairs like a roaring army. The Soarcastle sisters must’ve been able to break into that electronic drawer because a slim keycard is pinched between Kinden’s fingers.

Quickly, with the master keycard, we’re able to open the nearest vacant suite, and we all slide inside. Kinden locks the door behind all eight of us.

My pulse is racing and my arms ache with Zimmer’s weight. Our silence is strained with panting and heavy breathing. Padgett removes a mechanical cube from a satchel on her hip. I recognize it instantly. It’s the device that she and Gem had been tinkering with and creating back in the barge. She presses the cube against the small sliver of space where the door meets the wall. It makes a whirring sound and locks in place. No one had bothered to question what they’d been building.

But it’s looking useful.

“What is that?” Court asks.

“A better lock,” Gem says with a grin and a nod.

“But it won’t last long,” Padgett tells us.

The footsteps grow louder and then someone starts banging on the door. The suite is small. Four walls. One door. Rushing to the window, I look out at the city below. My stomach sinks.

HundredsofRomuluscadets are storming the entrance to the hotel. Others barricade the building, pushing back people from getting too close.

It doesn’t take long to realize…

We’re trapped.

FORTY

Franny

Court, Stork, and I don’t have time to explain what happened in the hotel suite. Time travel. Zima. We’re running out of seconds. The eight of us fall into tense silence, all of us thinking of an exit. An escape. And maybe even coming to terms with what might actually happen.

We’re going to die on Saltare-1. Court, Mykal, and I. We’re going to die here, and our friends will be sent to a fate even worse than death. A prison out in the middle of the ocean. To serve a lifetime sentence.

And this baby… my baby…

I’m not sure what will happen to her. I think that scares me the most.

The air isn’t nippy, but my skin chills and sinking dread heavies me. Court carefully passes Zima to me, and I hug her close to my chest. She reaches up with her tiny hands like she wants to grab my nose.

She’s mine. And Stork’s.

It hasn’t sunk in yet. I don’t know when it will.

“They’re everywhere,” Padgett says, angling her head to the window. “We’re blocked in.”

Gem has gone pale at the sight of Stork. He’s drenched in blood, eyes fluttering. The sight of blood has never made me queasy, but my belly twists seeing him in such agony.

Court quickly tends to Stork’s wound, trying to tie the blanket tighter. Stork grimaces and lets out a low yell between histeeth. His reddened eyes catch mine and then drop to the baby. When he looks up at me again, he mouthsours.

Ours.

She’s ours.