"I can't," I say. "I . . . I . . ." But the boy grabs my hand and pulls me towards the fence. He makes a stirrup with his hands and nods for me to put my foot in and then heaves me up against the mesh. I grab with my fingers. My plastic shoes scrabble for a hold. My muscles are in agony. The wire is cutting my fingers. I haul myself up all the same, bound hands grabbing clumsily. And somehow I'm at the top of the fence. I drag myself over and teeter for a moment, searching for balance. I drop down off the other side, landing clumsily. My ankle twists and my foot goes instantly numb. I tumble onto my side.
Looking up at the fence I can see the boy now scaling the wire. He gets a hand on the top and then reaches down to pull one of the twin girls up after him. It's then that it happens. More rifle fire. Red mist billows through the fence and the boy's face screws up in pain. Something warm spatters across me. He drops from the fence.
I'm on my feet again, running, injured leg dragging me back. The muscles in it feel weak, as though they've come unstrung. How much longer can I run like this? How much longer can I keep being lucky? Syra's dead. The blonde boy who killed the wardens. The boy we saved. Those twin girls . . . Soon they'll get me too and it will all be for nothing.
I hear shooting from behind me, and the ground nearby jumps, spraying earth. Then I'm in among the trees, in the shadows. Roots catch at my feet, branches slash at my face. Crashing through wet screens of foliage I run and run and run. The noise of the shouts and the gunfire from the Academy compound is abruptly cut off and I'm fleeing alone with the sounds of my breath, the beat of my heart. The wretched little sobs that come unwanted from my throat.
Then from above there comes the chucking sound of a helicopter rotor. Close and closer, until it sounds like it must surely be right on top of me. A light so bright it's dazzling cuts down through the trees and a voice like God's own booms out across the forest. I don't even hear the words. I'm past hearing things, past thinking, because if I think of anything then I'll think of Syra and the Academy and all the dead children I'm running from, and if I think of that I won't be able to run anymore.
Then suddenly there's no more forest and I find myself running on sand. A beach, the sea before me crawling black as ink. Salt air whistling against my skin. So beautiful and quiet and strange that it doesn't seem real.
