Chapter 6
ADA
Fifty-three floors down. The canopy starts at approximately one hundred and fifty feet—dense, dark, the mutated growth that ate the lower city.
Below the canopy, another hundred feet of branches and then the ground, or what's left of it.
I won't reach the ground. The canopy will break the fall in the wrong way—branches catching me, the stop sudden, the outcome the same regardless of which branch gets there first.
I've counted it three times. It comes out the same.
Behind me, the stairwell door bangs open. Three Ordained soldiers spill onto the roof, blades drawn, breathing hard. They see me at the edge and they stop. The squad leader—broad, armored, his face trained into the calm of someone who has dealt with this before—raises a hand. His soldiers hold.
"Step away from the edge."
His voice is professional. Trained. He's been taught how to talk to people on ledges, which tells me the Ordained have people on ledges often enough to train for it.
I don't look at him. I look at the sky.
The morning is clear. High clouds, thin and fast, the kind that come before a weather system moves through.
The light is the color of something ending—pale gold, the sun not quite above the canopy crown, the shadows long across the rooftop gravel.
Below me, the canopy moves in the wind. The upper branches sway, leaves catching the sun in flashes of green and gold that scroll past like something alive, something breathing.
Silver-backed leaves turn and catch the light, sending bright flickers across the surface of the canopy like fish turning beneath dark water.
It's beautiful. I wish it weren't. Dying should be uglier than this.
"The girl you took," I say. "Petra. Where is she?"
"Step away from the edge and we can discuss—"
"I'm not negotiating. I'm asking a question."
He doesn't answer. I didn't expect him to. The question isn't for him—it's for me.
I need to hear myself ask it. I need to know that Petra was the last thing I fought for. I need that to be the shape of it.
She'll be all right. The Cages are soft. She's strong, she's trained, and the drugs won't take all of her. She'll survive.
I think this the way I think every lie I have to tell myself to function—with my teeth set and my eyes open, the full knowledge that it's a lie sitting right beside the parallel knowledge that it's necessary. Lies are a resource. I've been spending them for four years.
The Ordained squad leader takes a step forward. His boots crunch on the gravel. Behind him, his soldiers have spread to either side, widening the approach angle.
Standard flanking for a cornered target. They're treating me like an asset to recover, not a threat to neutralize. That tells me everything.
"Ada. We know who you are. Brother Lief has an offer—"
"Brother Lief can choke on his offer."
Another step. "You're valuable. You don't have to do this."
Valuable.
The word hits. Valuable. Not as a person—as inventory. As a presentation-grade combatant who would attract a high-status Shade during peak rut season. I'm exactly what Brother Lief was here to collect.
The fact that I fought my way through his soldiers to the roof of a building instead of coming quietly has probably increased my assessed value, because the Shades can smell the fight in a woman. The fight is what the high-status ones want.
I'm worth more for being here. That's the thing that loosens the last bolt holding me to this ledge.
I look down.
The wind pulls at my hair, my jacket. My boots are on the very edge, the gravel shifting under my heels—small stones rolling and falling over the lip, disappearing without sound, the distance swallowing them before they land.
The canopy is dark below—not inviting, not peaceful, just there, the way the ground is always there when you're standing above it.
The distance is a number. The number is final.
Three options and none of them good. Surrender means the Cages—cleaned, scented, dosed, arranged in a clearing for a Shade to claim.
Fighting means dying slower and on their terms, dragged down by three armored soldiers who will be careful not to damage the merchandise. This means dying fast and on mine.
Something loosens in my chest.
Not grief. Not fear. Something older. Something that's been holding on so long it forgot it was holding. Four years of right decisions—every watch rotation, every training session, every supply run, every name on the wall that I looked at without letting myself feel.
I let go of it.
Not all at once. In stages, like uncurling fingers that have been fisted too long. The responsibility. The plans. The intelligence maps in my jacket that no one else can read. The second-years who still need six more months of training. Renna's pivot. Dov's exhaustion.
The singing in the courtyard at night, the voice I never identified, the song I'll never learn.
Senna on the bench with her hands folded. Petra's blade grip—loose wrist, relaxed hand, the way I taught her.
I let go of all of it because I can't carry it over the edge. I'm going over the edge. A good death. My death. The last thing I choose.
The Ordained squad leader says something. I don't hear it.
I step off the ledge.