Mira's POV
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The sound stops.
Just like that. One second it is winding through the darkness like something alive and hunting, and the next second it is gone. The lights flicker back on. Every lamp, every post, every window_ all of it returning like nothing happened. Like the whole zone didn't just hold its breath for fifteen seconds.
Senna and I stand on her doorstep not moving.
Then Senna says, very quietly, "What was that."
It isn't a question. It is the sound a person makes when they already know the answer and hate it.
I look down at my hand. She is still gripping my arm. Her knuckles are pale. I put my free hand over hers and she finally loosens her fingers and we both breathe.
"It came from the gate," I say.
"I know where it came from."
We look at each other.
Then Senna pulls me inside and closes the door.
-
She tries everything.
She has a plan involving tunnels on the east side of the zone that a man named Grete supposedly dug three years ago for exactly this kind of situation. She has a backup plan involving a supply truck that leaves before dawn. She has a third plan that involves us both hiding in the storage room under her floor until the lunar cycle passes and someone else gets chosen next time.
I let her talk. I let her pace and plan and curse under her breath because this is how Senna loves people_ loudly, practically, with her whole body moving. She can't sit still when someone she cares about is in danger. She never could.
When she finally stops and looks at me, I take her face in both hands.
"Senna."
"Don't."
"If I run, they take someone else next."
"I know that—"
"Maybe you. Maybe Petra. Maybe the little boy on the corner who is nine years old."
She closes her eyes. Her jaw is tight. I can feel her fighting it_ fighting the logic of it, fighting the fact that she can't argue her way out of what I just said.
"It isn't fair," she says. Her voice cracks on the last word.
"No," I agree. "It really isn't."
She opens her eyes and they are wet and furious and she looks at me like she is trying to memorize my face and I almost lose it right there. Almost. I hold on.
"I'm walking to that gate," I tell her. "And you're going to walk with me as far as they let you. Okay?"
She pulls my hands down from her face. She holds them instead. Squeezes once, hard.
"Okay," she says. "Okay. Fine. But I am cursing out every guard we pass."
"I would expect nothing less."
-
She keeps her word.
She curses out two guards on the main road and a supervisor who tries to tell us to keep moving. She holds my hand the entire way and talks_ just talks, about everything and nothing, about the time we were fourteen and snuck into the old cinema building and scared ourselves half to death, about the song she has been trying to learn on the broken guitar she found last spring, about the food she is going to make when I get back.
When, she says. Not if. When.
I don't correct her.
The Dungeon Gate comes into view and my stomach drops but my legs keep going because my legs have decided we are doing this and the rest of me is just along for the walk.
There are six guards at the gate. Human guards_ men and women chosen by the mutant overseers to manage the sacrifices because the mutants themselves don't come up top for this part. They stand in a line and they don't look at us as we approach. They look at the space above our heads. This is a job to them. They have done it enough times that they have learned not to look at the faces.
We get within twenty feet of the gate when one of them steps forward and holds up a hand.
"Family only past this point," he says.
Senna stops. Her hand tightens on mine.
I turn to face her.
She is trying very hard not to cry and failing at it in the way that only Senna can_ fighting it so hard that the tears come anyway, one at a time, like they are sneaking past her on purpose.
"I'll figure it out," I tell her. "I always figure it out."
"You better," she says. "You better figure it the whole way out and then come back and tell me every single thing that happened."
I hug her. She hugs me back so hard I can't breathe and I don't mind at all. I hold on for one extra second.
Then I let go.
I turn toward the gate and I walk.
-
One hundred steps.
I count them. I don't know why_ maybe because counting gives my brain something to do that isn't screaming. Maybe because each number feels like something solid to hold onto.
One. Two. Three.
The gate is a crack in the earth about eight feet wide. Blue light pulses from it slowly, like breathing. The air around it is warm and smells electric_ like lightning, like something charged and alive.
Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two.
Behind me I can hear Senna. She isn't talking anymore. She is just making a sound_ low and continuous, like a hum, like she is trying to hold something together by sheer force of voice.
Fifty. Fifty-one.
I think about my ring in my pocket. My ring that I chose. I press my fingers against it through the fabric.
Seventy-five.
I think about my father's back as he walked out of the kitchen.
Eighty.
I think about a yellow curtain moving.
Ninety.
I think about Senna saying when.
One hundred.
I step through the gate.
-
The blue light swallows everything.
For three seconds I can't see, can't hear, can't feel the ground under my feet. Just blue light and warmth and that electric smell so strong it fills my entire head.
Then it clears.
I am standing at the top of a tunnel that goes straight down. The walls glow faintly. The air is warm. And the pull_ that cracking feeling from before, that door-kicked-off-its-hinges feeling_ comes back so hard and so suddenly that I grab the wall to keep from falling.
But this time it doesn't disappear.
This time it gets stronger.
And this time, I hear something underneath it_ not a sound exactly, more like a frequency, like a note being held by something enormous and patient that has been waiting for a very specific thing to walk through that gate.
Something that feels, in a way I cannot explain and do not understand, like it has been waiting for me.
My hand is still on the wall.
The wall is warm.
And then, slowly, impossibly, it pulses back against my palm.
Like a heartbeat.