Page 231 of Code Bound
The timer ticks down. Three minutes to go. Then two minutes.
“Come on!” I start to scream. “Please!”
The crowd watches me closely, feeling the unhinged energy rolling off me in waves. What am I going to do if she doesn’t come through? What am I going to do without her? I can’t keep going through the Harrow without her by my side.
“Please!” I choke, my eyes welling. “Fuck!”
One minute. Forty-five seconds.
Another man. Another woman. Three more men.
Thirty seconds.
A young boy. Alone.
Twenty seconds.
Two girls barely old enough to lift a weapon. Also alone.
Ten seconds.
A couple, both clinging to each other desperately, the woman coughing as she brings through the remnants of her Black Lung.
Five seconds.
A man who barely looks around before he leaps off the stage.
Four.
Three.
A single woman.
Two.
One.
The timer stops counting down. The blue swirling portal shimmers and continues to spin. I stare at it, my heart in my throat.
“Come on,” I whisper. “Please, Dox. Please.”
The portal shimmers again and a leg steps through. A body follows, arms, torso, and then a face.
A familiar face.
My shoulders ease for about two seconds before they tense again.
Blue eyes look around and find me, her blonde hair dirty, her face covered in grime. There are bruises on her cheek, on her arms, on every part of her body I can see. She’s skinnier than she was when I left, and she was already lean. Her collarbones stand out in sharp relief against her dirty skin. She finds me, and relief flickers in her eyes seconds before panic does.
“Run,” she chokes out. “V, run!”
The portal shimmers again and another man steps through, also familiar. One of the players who’d stepped through before them throws something up to the man who grabs Dox roughly, one of the projectile weapons we’d seen in the Shatterlands.
Orion grins and points the weapon at my chest.
“Hey, baby,” he purrs, his eyes bright with malice. “Did you miss me?”
Pure, animalistic rage rises in my throat. I bare my teeth . . .
. . . he pulls the trigger . . .
