The darkness was suffocating. Adrian's ears were ringing from the gunfire, but the scream was louder, ringing out over and over.
"Ava!" He yelled her name, his own voice swallowed up by the room. No answer. Only frantic running footsteps, the crash of metal, and parched gasps all around him.
Hands flailed around him in the darkness he lashed out blindly, his fist connecting with something soft, a grunt accompanying it. A second hand clapped onto his arm, and he was spun around. He fought back, kicking, clawing, his madness a weapon.
Freeze, for God's sake" Caldwell's whispered, furious voice broke into the melee. She thrust him down behind overthrown crate as a second shot boomed. Fire flickered for an instant across the blackness, revealing a swirl of figures thrashing, blades flashing.
Adrian's eyes darted wildly in that fleeting light. Ava where was she?
He swept his eyes once more in desperation, but when the sparks faded, she was nowhere to be found. His pit deepened.
"Where is she?" His voice cracked, his chest shuddering. "Caldwell, where's Ava?"
Caldwell cursed under her breath, firing wildly into the blackness. "They took her."
The words were a blade to Adrian's heart.
"They what
"Hear me," Caldwell cut him off, yanking him behind cover as rock exploded inches from his head. "You can't rescue her if you're dead. Now you need to get yourself alive long enough to find her again."
Adrian's heart thudded in his ears. His twin his only family member was somewhere out there in the hands of men who hunted them, observed them, obsessed about them.
He punched his fist into the icy stone floor, forcing the horror below into something harder. Anger.
"They'll be sorry they took her." His voice shook, but his eyes flared with a promise. "They'll all be sorry."
The room trembled again, dust raining from the ceiling. It wasn't the fault line this time it was something heavier. Something shifting above them.
Caldwell's head snapped up, her face carved in a hard line. "They're closing the doors."
The appropriate-looking man spoke in the darkness, calm and icy. "One twin is enough. Kill the boy."
Adrian froze.
And then the night exploded with gunfire.
Gunfire ripped the room to shreds, ear-piercing, ricocheting off stone. Adrian ducked involuntarily, his shoulder slamming into Caldwell as splinters of rock ricocheted through their bodies.
"Run!" she barked, grabbing him into a side alley barely big enough for the two of them. The universe narrowed to the crash of shots at their backs and the panicked pound of his own heart.
Adrian wasn't concerning himself with himself, though. Only Ava. With every step down the dark alley, he was a traitor.
"They're moving her farther away," he panted, stumbling as a chunk of rubble caught on his foot. "We can't just run!"
Caldwell spun on him, slamming him into the wet stone wall. Her face was carved in rage, but her eyes burned with something more fear.
"You don't understand," she snarled. "If we move now to attack her, we all die. And if you're dead, she dies too."
The words hit like a blow. He opened his lips, rage trembling on his lips but before he could say a word, a shadow appeared at the tunnel entrance.
One of the hooded men.
He was fast too fast. A knife flashed in the darkness, slicing through the air towards Adrian's throat.
Adrian didn't react he responded. He raised his hand, taking the attacker's wrist in mid-stroke. The blade sliced his skin, leaving a shallow burn, but he held on. He turned hard, adrenaline surging through every fiber of his body. The man grunted, stumbled and Caldwell finished it with a vicious, swift strike to the chest. The man in the cloak hit the ground, blood spreading across the stone floor.
Adrian was stuck, chest heaving, the iron odor clogging his lungs.
He had almost died.
But worse the man who had just fallen was human, not some faceless beast. A human being. A real person. Someone who had tailed their every move, maybe even taken those pictures.
And Adrian had been a beat away from killing him himself.
Caldwell pulled his collar, jerking him back to reality. "Stay sharp. They won't stop until they take both of you."
Dust was falling from the top of the tunnel in small snow-like flakes. Adrian's stomach rolled. He remembered the man in the suit's words: One twin is enough.
If Ava was alive… it was because they wanted her more.
He clenched his fists, his nails digging into his palms. "Then I'll make sure they don't get her. Not ever."
But even as he said it, a scream echoed faintly down the tunnels high, raw, and unmistakably Ava's.
Adrian's blood turned to ice.
He sprinted toward the sound before Caldwell could stop him.
The scream bounced off the stone walls, raw and sharp, cutting deeper into Adrian than the ringing of gunfire ever could.
Ava!" he screamed, his own voice tearing at his throat as he sprinted down the tunnel. Caldwell's oaths followed him, but so did her footsteps.
The passage jogged left, right, shrinking until Adrian's shoulders scraped against the wet rock. He pushed forward, seared lungs laboring, his sister's shrieks pulling him like a rope.
He burst into a bigger cavern and stopped dead.
Candles lit the room, flames licking the damp. Two suited men stood in the center, hauling Ava about by the arms. Her wrists were bound behind her, her mouth gagged with cloth, her eyes wide and full of fear.
Adrian's heart jolted. He didn't think. He pushed forward.
But before he could cover half the room, a figure blocked his path.
The man from the crevice. The boots, the voice of steel.
Close up, he was even more frightening tall, measured, his face half-concealed under a hood. His gloved palm lay on a knife at his hip, but it was his eyes that froze Adrian in position: chill, deliberate, as if Adrian were a piece already lost on a game board.
"Too late," said the man softly, near pity.
Ava fought back at her captors, her suppressed scream shredding Adrian's heart. He charged again
but the man cocked his pistol like a coiled viper and pressed it inches from Adrian's head.
The torches flared. Caldwell moved in behind Adrian, her gun levelled.
The room locked into a deadly hush one wrong move, and the twins would both be dead.
The man's finger closed on the trigger.
"Take one step closer," he commanded, "and she dies first."
Adrian's chest rose and fell in shattered gasps, his whole body trembling with fury. His sister was within reach within reach to see the purple bluish welts rising on her arms where the men held her, within reach to see the desperate look in her eyes.
And she'd be dead with one jerk of that gun.
Caldwell moved closer in front of Adrian, her weapon held hard. "You kill him," she growled, "and I take a hole between your eyes."
The man's unflinching cold look revealed nothing. "You won't. Because you know the moment you fire, her throat is cut.".
One of the suited men tightened his arms around Ava and pressed a knife to her throat. A rivulet of blood seeped up at her flesh, and she whined against the gag.
Adrian's vision blurred. Rage and helplessness slammed against his chest, threatening to overwhelm him. His head was yelling at him to move forward, to fight, to do something yet his body would not comply, each muscle paralysed by the force of that gun on his temple.
"Why us?" Adrian's voice trembled, the words spilling out before he could stop himself. "What do you want from us?
The man tilted his head, looking at him as a puzzle piece he already had the solution to.
"You were born into a legacy you don't understand," he breathed. "Your parents thought they could hide you. But blood to blood. And now…" His gaze swept to Ava, came back to Adrian. ".one of you will be the price for the other to live."
Words cut more painfully than the pistol against his temple.
Adrian's stomach twisting. "What"
But before he could force the words past his lips, the man spat a fleck of silver saliva and clicked his fingers.
The two suited men pulled Ava away towards a hidden door at the far end of the room. Her muffled scream was raw, tearing through Adrian's chest as she fought to be released.
"Ava!" Adrian yelled, running forward despite the gun against his head.
The man's trigger-finger compressed
And the world splintered in a blinding crash.