“Up here!” someone yells. There are feet pounding on the stairs, and I stop thinking.
I stand to the side of the window and, with my covered fist, pull back and hit just like my father taught me. I shift my weight and drive through with my legs. It feels like my fist is going to shatter, but the glass gives, too. Pieces fall onto the stone floor and out into the night.
I’m climbing onto the ledge, staring down at what looks to be a rooftop twenty feet or so below me. Maybe I’m wrong. Goodness knows, I usually am.
But I’d rather be wrong than be here.
“Grace, wait!” someone yells, and I turn to see Prime Minister Petrovic on the stairs below me, looking up at where I sit perched on the ledge like a bird with clipped wings.
But I just shake my head.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
And jump.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s how to fall.
My feet are square as I hit the surface; my knees are soft. And my first thought is that, this time, my leg didn’t shatter.
My second thought is that I am still falling.
It must be another roof because I can feel myself slip; my purchase on the slick tiles is precarious and fading.
I try to right myself, but it’s no use. I turn to my stomach and feel the slide of tiles against my belly as I slip, faster and faster, and then drop, kicking to the ground.
It takes a second to adjust. To catch my breath. But I don’t have a second. I land and crouch, feel the stones against my feet, damp and uneven. There are streetlights and narrow, twisting alleys. I can hear the sounds of traffic. The shouts of people.
I pull myself upright and run.
When I pass a man and woman holding hands, I don’t ask for help. When I turn onto a wider street, I don’t stop and look in any windows. I just keep going, curving, turning, backtracking, and twisting through the city with one goal in mind: getting lost. Because if I can’t find me, then maybe no one else can, either.
I run until I can’t run anymore. And then I stop in the middle of a large square. It’s dark now but I know it’s not as late as it seems. People walk arm in arm. They carry sacks of groceries or ride bicycles. So many regular people just living regular lives. I envy them. And I know I’ll never belong—not here. Not anywhere. I will never be safe.
But I have to be somewhere.
My breathing slows. Standing still at last, my feet and legs start to shake. And my hand hurts. I think some bones might be broken, but I’m lucky, and I know it.
I really should be dead.
I let myself draw in a deep breath, then turn, taking in the darkness and the light, the sounds of whispered conversations in a language I recognize but don’t really understand.
And, finally, my eyes catch the sight that, deep down, I’ve been expecting to see since I first perched on the edge of the window.
The Eiffel Tower glows in the darkness, smaller than I thought it would be, shimmering like a lighthouse, warning me that danger’s near.
“Paris.”
Turns out there’s an advantage to being drugged and hauled to the other side of the world. If you’re kept unconscious for a day or two, it’s easy to stay awake. I’m not exactly rested. But my feet keep moving. My mind stays alert.
I can feel the cash and passports that I keep wrapped around my body. They’re still there, itching, scraping. But present. And that is all that matters. The PM and her goons must not have searched me. They must have underestimated me. Again. That might be the only thing I’ve got going for me—the fact that I’m not quite as stupid and careless as everyone believes.
I’m not without resources. I’m just without … everything else.
It must be getting later. The people on the streets around me are fewer. Somewhere a clock chimes midnight in the City of Light, but I can only see darkness.
I hear laughing, talking. A group of twentysomethings are walking down the center of the cobblestone street, singing too loudly, arms thrown over shoulders and around waists. They’re drunk. That much is obvious in any language. And I can’t help but remember another night on another street. The color of fire and the smell of smoke and the crowds that grew thicker and thicker the closer they got to the flames.
I had my brother with me then. And Alexei. And my friends. But now I am alone.
I press against the stone wall of one of the buildings. Light seeps out of closed shop windows. The street curves, and I am like a rat in a maze, not sure whether to go forward or turn back. But that’s not true, I realize. I can never, ever go back.
I jerk and bang my good fist against the wall at my back. “Stupid,” I tell myself. Now both hands hurt, but it’s what I deserve for believing the PM, for thinking I might be able to trust the Society.
I can’t trust anyone.
And that’s the one thing that makes me want to cry.
I miss Alexei and Jamie and Dominic. I’d give anything to see my friends or my grandpa—to know that Ms. Chancellor is okay. But anyone who might help me might also get hurt by me, and there’s no way to know exactly who my allies are. The Society has taught me that much.
If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that I have to keep moving. So I keep walking. There’s a café up ahead. A few small tables dot the sidewalk. Couples sit too close on the same side of the table, sipping coffee or drinking wine. No one notices the too-thin, too-hungry, too-scared American girl with the wild hair and the even crazier eyes.
A woman’s handbag hangs off the back of her chair, unzipped and daring me to do something about it. She and the man are kissing. Too absorbed in each other. Entirely too in love.