Page 103 of Code Bound
I scramble away, rushing toward Locke and grabbing his arm. “Time to go!” I shout.
I risk a glance over my shoulder. Stryker is on his knees, his arms wrapped around his middle to staunch the blood flow, but his eyes are on me. He bares those sharp teeth as the penguins still alive around him start to drop and shrivel.
“Oh, fuck!” Locke shouts, seeing it happening the same time I do.
We run as fast as our legs can carry us. We’re wearing heavy gear against the cold, and I feel like I run far too slowly through the snow. Every part of me knows that we have to get away from this man before he heals. If Stryker gets his hands on us, we won’t live to the next day.
“The safehouse?” Locke asks, nodding in the direction of it.
“No,” I say, pointing toward the opening of the crater in front of us. “We’ll be safe only inside. He’ll just wait for us to leave and we’ll be trapped.”
“Get to the sea,” Cipher says. “Turn north once you break through the caldera. He will not follow you into the sea.”
I probably shouldn’t trust the system either, but he’s saved my ass a handful of times already. He clearly doesn’t want me to die. We have that in common.
“Odds?” I pant as I run, my arms pumping at my side. I keep my Fang in my hand just in case I need to use it.
“Not now,” Cipher says.
I know they’re bad. Cipher always tells me the odds. Him refusing to speak them right now means they’re bad enough he thinks it will impact my performance.
I keep looking back over my shoulder for Stryker, but I don’t see him. He’ll have to heal before he can come after us, but I don’t pretend it’ll take him that long. Tier Five’s are Ascendants, which means the bastard is from Luxe. Only the most powerful make it to Luxe.
“Faster,” Svetlana orders. “We must go faster.”
“I’m . . . running . . . as fast . . . as I . . . can,” I wheeze as we reach the caldera opening and turn north immediately, heading back to the water expanse we passed on the way to the Broken Caldera. To our left, bright orange trails run from the edges of the caldera, steam rising from them. The bright orange breaks through the white snow, stone showing so that the orange and the white never touch.
“Magma is hot,” Svetlana says. “Do not touch it.”
I wasn’t going to, but some part of me contemplated it out of sheer curiosity. Perhaps that’s why Svetlana warns me away from it. She’s supposed to be a part of me after all, so she’d hear all my intrusive thoughts. Which means she’s also hearing all about my attraction to the man we’re currently running from.
“Sometimes, us women make bad decisions about the men we’d like to fuck,” Svetlana responds. “Do not be ashamed,Umnitsa. I once fucked the Russian General who killed my mother. Of course, I beheaded him after. Perhaps you can do the same to the Leech one day.”
But I hear her warning. I’m not strong enough for that yet. Keep running.
The water expanse comes into view and we push ourselves harder. It’s difficult to run in the snow, my boots collapsing into it and making it harder to drag each step forward. My legs begin to burn as badly as my chest, but I still move. Even as we slow, I still push forward.
The small wooden platform comes into view before us and we aim for it.
“Get in the boat,” Cipher orders.
There are two small floating raft-like things at the platform, one larger than the other though not by enough to actually matter. I assume that is the “boat” Cipher is talking about. Both boats are small, barely big enough for both Locke and I, but one of them is indeed a little larger and has some sort of large mechanical contraption on the back of it. The other just has paddles in it.
“That’s mine!” someone shouts from our left and I whip my head around. There, I spy someone familiar enough to make me stumble, though we’ve never officially met.
The player from the television. The father. The one who’d been standing in line before Dox and me.
“There are two boats,” Locke hisses at him through his panting, aiming for the larger boat despite the man’s shout.
NEW ZONE UNLOCKED: Welcome to the Frostbit Sea
We reach the wooden platform at the same time, each of us aiming our weapons at each other. My Fang is covered in frozen blood. Locke’s hammer is caked up with frozen gore. But the man pulls out something I’ve never seen before. It’s metal and shiny black, nothing but a handle and a weird, square shaped top with a hole on the end.
“What the fuck is that thing?” Locke asks, staring at the metal weapon the man holds.
“A pistol,” the man says, pointing it toward us.
“Is that supposed to scare us?” Locke goads him. “We don’t know what it is.”
