Chapter 26
Forty miles of Captain Finley’s games and tall tales later—I’m sure it was the alcohol.
We retired to our rooms that night, reward car and all, and Lucy and I undressed and held each other to sleep.
Despite our fervor for one another, we were too exhausted to do much of anything except sleep.
Can’t complain about falling asleep and waking up next to the most beautiful woman in the world, but now we’re in this ridiculous car and Finley apparently cannot stand the sound of silence and must fill it any way she knows how—chatting, inquisitions of her companions, singing bawdy songs, or doing a particularly inane humming.
The car Finley won is a wagon of sorts, with enough seats for everyone but it is as cramped as she described.
Mason drives and Delilah sits in the passenger seat.
Lucy, Cassie, and I sit in the middle row, squished together.
Roxana and Finley sit in the rear, facing the back windshield.
Many of the seat belts do not work, so we place our lives in Mason’s capable hands.
Out of our window passes by more unremarkable factories and flat land, but it isn’t long before we see the harbingers of New York City: grand skyscrapers that have stood the test of time.
Lucy rests her forehead on the glass and digs her thumbnail into her pants. The tense gesture does not pass me by, and I take that hand and smother it between my own. “It is still your home.”
She doesn’t answer for a long while but lets the city grow taller as we near the entrance to the tunnel. I can’t begin to imagine what’s going on in her head, seeing the place she grew up in from afar, detached from it but also hopelessly tethered. “No, it isn’t my home. It was a place I lived.”
“And that’s different?”
Lucy regards me with her eyes soft and slightly watery. “Home is where your heart is at rest. My heart was never in the city. My heart is with you. My home is wherever you are.”
Too touched to respond, I lean my head on her shoulder and hope that it speaks for me in reply. It’s quite a lovely moment, only to be ruined by Finley pretending to barf in the back seat.
Roxana smacks her in the leg. “Finley, be nice.”
“Ugh, you know, it isn’t fair to play favorites. We just met her.”
Roxana peers at me over the seat and I turn slightly to look at her. With a single nod from me, she understands. “So, you know how we discussed that I used to be with the Order? And how I was betrayed and my husband killed?”
Finley squints in suspicion. “Yes?”
“Well…around that time, I gave birth. That baby was left in the care of the Order, and I never saw her again. Until recently.”
While Finley apparently doesn’t get it, Cassie slowly turns to me. Very quickly she looks between Roxana and me, as if trying to match the resemblances between us, or figure out how she didn’t see it before. “Holy shit. No freaking way.”
“Cassandra, language,” Delilah chides from the front seat.
“Wait, Mini Boss is your long-lost daughter?” Finley finally catches up and chuckles. “Well, that explains the shared no-fun factor—it’s genetic. But I’m with Blondie Junior—holy shit.”
Again, Delilah speaks up. “Shea, language.”
“Sorry. I’m learning I’m not an only child.”
Beside her, Roxana chuckles and nudges her with an open palm. “Shea, I would have perished trying to raise you.”
A rundown city greets us off an exit from the highway as Mason circles toward the tunnel. “We’re almost there.”
“Park us away from the entrance. I don’t want to give anyone a reason to follow us inside.” Mason gives me a positive hand signal and bumps over a curb to park the car on an overgrown grassy island in the middle of the road. “We can come back for it later.”
“We hope, unless Theia has us lasered on the spot by her big robot friends.” Finley opens the back door and climbs out, stretching her limbs. “I do not want to go out at the hands of one of those guys.”
“How do you want to go out?” Cassie asks as we gear up. “Big cool soldier’s death? Or at home in your comfy bed, a hundred years old?”
“Definitely not in battle, and definitely not against a humongous robot. If I get shot, I get shot, that’s the risk you take when you shoot people.
Using big robots is cheating.” As Finley speaks, I realize how much she reminds me of Hunter.
Brash and sarcastic, instantly comfortable with others.
The big difference between them is that Hunter can appreciate the value of silence.
“Yeah. I think in a comfortable bed, a hundred years old, hand in hand with the woman I love? That’s the way to do it. ”
Her unexpected earnestness clearly catches everyone off guard, including even Roxana, who pauses as she swings a gun strap over her shoulder.
The desire to die of old age is one we all have, but it is sobering to realize most of us will not reach that goal.
The lives we’ve chosen, or the lives that have been thrust upon us, have made it nearly impossible.
Plus, we know what lies on the other side of this tunnel.
Possibly death by big robot, or some other undignified end.
I pretend to retch.
Finley gives me a huge, extremely sincere grin and chuckles as she tosses a box of ammunition both at me and to me. “Okay, you’re at least marginally funnier than Big Boss.”
Roxana sighs. “I have told you on many occasions how I do not like being called ‘boss.’”
“You didn’t like ‘Mama Guns,’ either, and I’m running out of nicknames.”
As we venture into the tunnel, Roxana moves up to walk in step with Lucy and me. She looks down at our joined hands and smiles. “You never did tell us the tale of how this happened. An assassin and an heiress.”
I blush and hold Lucy’s hand tighter. I have never experienced this maternal embarrassment, save for a few times with Delilah, but this is different. She’s teasing, and she’s also sizing us up. Or, at the very least, seeing if Lucy measures up to the kind of partner she imagined I would have.
“Taylor stalked me for a while.”
I roll my eyes. “Oh, come on. For the last time—”
Lucy chuckles and nudges me as we walk. “The story seems complicated, but ultimately, it’s pretty simple.
I met an extraordinary girl at a party and I fell in love with her.
I met her several more times over the course of a few months—I met an assassin, a soldier, a loyal friend, a leader, a vulnerable young woman—and I fell in love with her over and over. ”
“That’s lovely, Lucy. You two seem well suited.” She nods in approval. “I’m happy for you both.”
Lucy smirks. “What, no shovel talk?”
“Oh, please,” Roxana replies, laughing. “It is abundantly clear my daughter kicks way more ass than I ever could.”
The phrase “my daughter” makes my heart flutter. I’ve never belonged to someone, never been tethered by blood. It is strange, but welcome. I don’t know what to do with that, so I squeeze Lucy’s hand again and bring her closer to me.
About a half mile into the tunnel, the smell of rot and stagnant water becomes harder to bear.
The walls have stood the test of time, but clearly the tunnel flooded on many occasions and left both mechanical and mammalian debris.
It’s quite putrid, and Mason gags about five times before I shoot him a look.
“What? It smells like the worst kind of shit in here, Lil’ T. This is some rank-ass bullshit. It’s like someone took twenty latrines and set them on fire and then covered them in more shit.”
I glare at him. “Yes, I understand. We are all smelling the same smell. Yet nobody else is gagging like a child, are they?”
“They wanna act tough? Good for them. Me? I’m gonna gag.”
We are at a point in the tunnel where no light exists—the sun cannot reach us in these catacombs until we’re nearer the other side. Roxana and Finley switch on the flashlights attached to their rifles, which help a bit by illuminating the obstacles on the ground to avoid. “Wait.”
Everyone halts. The echo of our footsteps stop. Only the creak of old pipes and the drip of water remain. But I heard something. A click, like a weapon. Ahead, only barely, I see a tiny flash of silver.
“Everyone get down.”
The words are barely out of my mouth when a bullet pierces an overturned truck near us.
We scramble behind over debris, and Mason grimaces as he squats above a pool of some horrible-smelling liquid.
Another single gunshot rips out and I realize it’s a sniper.
Who in their right mind would be sniping inside a defunct tunnel?
Theia must know we’re coming. That greatly complicates things.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
That teasing voice is one I’d know anywhere. Mason and I lock eyes, and we both look over to Delilah, who shares our concern and realization.
“Hunter?”
“The one and only. You can stop hiding, I’m not going to shoot anybody,” she calls from wherever she found a place to hide. It’s brave of her to stray from the path—she’s liable to get covered in goop.
“Okay, but you realize that’s hard to believe since you shot at us twice in a pitch-dark tunnel?” Finley shouts back. “But let me go ahead and trust the word of a stranger with a big gun whose name is literally Hunter.”
“Please believe me, if I wanted any of you dead, I’d have scoped you when you got here.
But I couldn’t be sure we weren’t being watched until you got away from the entrance.
” Slowly, I stand, even though Lucy tries to tug me down.
My rifle aimed up, I watch Hunter jump down from an upturned car. “Hey, kid.”
I motion for everyone to stay where they are and cautiously walk out into the open. “Hello.”
“Going on an adventure, huh?” Her tone, somewhere between sarcastic and deadly serious, keeps me on my guard. I don’t lower my rifle. “You’re far from whatever shithole town Mom sent you to. Some graveyard in the Southeast, yeah?”
“What are you doing here?”