The Gauntlet (The Cage 3)

They weren’t firing.

Not yet.

Only making that strange crisscross mark out of exhaust.

He started running toward the sheriff’s office, hobbling on his hurt leg. He threw open the door and grabbed the map he’d made of the town, unrolling it in a hurry on his desk. He traced a finger over the approximate pattern of those crisscrossing exhaust lines, muttering the coordinates under his breath.

His eyes went wide. “Oh, no.”

He grabbed the map and hobbled outside as fast as he could. His pulse pounded in his ears as he made his way toward the truck Nok and Loren had been loading with weapons. Nok was in the town square now, yelling orders for the citizens to uncover the hidden weapons and start firing.

“Get those pilots safely to the ships!” she yelled. “Cover them!”

“Nok!” Rolf’s hurt leg buckled beneath him and he crashed to the ground. “Nok!”

She saw him and gasped. She started running toward him. She didn’t see the Axion ship lining up directly behind her. Time seemed to slow as she ran. Rolf took in every terrifying half second. A light turned on beneath the Axion ship. A laser weapon was powering up. They were going to fire. Nok was running as fast as she could, but not fast enough. The past few months flashed just as fast in his head: The first time he’d met her. Their first kiss. The moment she told him she was pregnant. Learning he was going to be a father of a little girl.

“Nok!” Rolf cried.

She wasn’t going to make it.

At the same time, someone shot out from the awning of the general store, slamming into her, knocking her out of the way of the laser pulses. Time sped up again as sand blasted into the air. Rolf shoved to his one good leg, hobbling and coughing as he made his way to her. “Nok!”

She coughed out his name weakly. “Rolf?”

Thank god.

He hobbled through the scorched sand to where she crouched on hands and knees, dirt streaking her face, turning her dark hair sandy.

Dane sat up next to her, coughing. Rolf’s surprise that Dane had been the one to save her was eclipsed by his worry. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she breathed. “Sparrow—I think she’s okay too.”

Rolf grabbed her, pulling her to him. He breathed in the smell of her hair, somehow sweet and strawberry even now.

He’d come so close to losing her.

“Come on.” Dane grabbed at their jackets. “Up. Now. Take cover.”

A shriek tore through the sky. Rolf pitched his head up to see the Axion ships circling back around for another attack. Dane helped both of them to their feet and threw one of Rolf’s arms around his shoulders to help him hobble to the general store. Overhead, the whine of ships grew deafening.

The Axion ships fired again, hot blasts of laser pulses shattering the remnants of the dance hall. Someone screamed. An explosion ripped through the town as they flung themselves into the shade of the general store.

“They’re targeting the town!” Dane said.

Rolf shook his head. “It isn’t the town they’re targeting.”

“What?” Both Nok and Dane stared at him in confusion. The Axion ships had doubled back, firing again. Bodies littered the town square. Billows of black smoke rose from the smoldering wreckage.

“Firing on the town is just a distraction,” Rolf explained through heaving breaths, “just like we tried to distract them into thinking the town was the place to hit.” He pointed up at the white lines of exhaust that crisscrossed overhead. “That’s their real strategy. They’re making a bull’s-eye.” He dragged the map out of his pocket and unfolded it on the ground, crossing lines over it to match the white clouds of exhaust. “See?” he asked. “The target points to one place.”

He slid his forefinger to the transport hub.

“We were so stupid,” he continued. “Of course they knew about the reactor core. The impostor Fian was here, on the ground. He was even in that transport hub! Brother Paddal didn’t know that, but we should have remembered. The Axion know they can take us out with just one blast, if it’s perfectly targeted. That’s what they’re doing.”

Nok gaped.

“We have to stop them,” Dane said.

Anger suddenly flooded Rolf. “You wanted to join them, you bastard!”

Dane’s face twisted in anger too. “I wanted to save us! I still do!”

Rolf paused, breathing hard. Was there a chance Dane really wasn’t as bad as he seemed? He’d saved Nok’s life a moment ago. Even at risk to himself . . .

“Shut up, both of you,” Nok snapped. She pointed to the reactor core on the map. “We need to figure out how to keep them from blowing it up.”

Rolf looked at her. God, she was beautiful. The badge glistening around her neck, her face streaked with dirt, her belly round.

He had once wondered what it meant to be a good father. Now, feeling such certainty in his chest, he knew. It meant love. Pure, radiant, encompassing love.

A love he would do anything for.

Overhead, the Axion ships let out another volley of pulses. Nok shrieked, and everyone ducked.

Rolf grabbed up the map. “There’s only one way to make sure they don’t hit the reactor core. You heard Brother Paddal. A manual shutoff.”

Dane and Nok both stared at him. “The radiation’s too high,” Nok said. “If someone climbed in there, they’d be—”

“They’d be a hero,” Rolf said quietly.

The look on Nok’s face turned to one of dawning horror, which quickly turned to anger. He could see her brain working. See her put together that the only person who had studied the maps and knew enough about reactors to be able to shut it down was him.

She lunged for him. “Don’t you dare!”

Dane grabbed her, holding her back.

Rolf had already snatched up a wrench from the pile of abandoned construction tools. His pulse was pounding in his ears. He felt dizzy, as though this were a dream. As though it weren’t really he who was going to climb into that reactor core, but a dream-Rolf, a second self. The real Rolf wasn’t brave. The real Rolf wasn’t a hero.

And yet, for Nok and Sparrow, he’d be anything.

“Rolf!” Nok strained against Dane. “Don’t do this!”

“Dane.” Rolf met the boy’s eyes. He was far from trusting him, and yet in this instant, he believed that Dane really did want to keep them all alive. Dane was a scared boy with something to prove, but not cruel. Just determined. And right now, Rolf could use him. “Keep her here. Don’t let her come after me.”

Dane paused, a flicker of doubt in his eyes, as though he too wanted to talk Rolf out of it. “You don’t have to do this,” Dane said.

“Yes,” Rolf said. He pushed at phantom glasses he no longer wore. “I do.”

He headed across the town square, his steps feeling too light, as though all the blood were rushing to his head.

“No!” Nok cried. “Rolf, you jerk, you bastard, you get back here, I love you, I need you!”

His breath came fast.

He wouldn’t look back.

He wouldn’t.

“I love you too, Nok,” he whispered very quietly. “More than anything.”

The general store door slammed behind him, and then he was in the thick of battle. Armed citizens were firing on the Axion ships, trying to take cover in the wreckage. A laser pulse caught one in the head, and she screamed as she crumpled to the ground.

Rolf froze as the dead body fell at his feet.

He was really doing this crazy thing? He was going to shut down the reactor core?

He stumbled forward on his good leg, wincing through the pain. Yes. He was going to save the town, dammit. He was going to save Nok, and Sparrow, and do this so that they would have a place to call theirs. So that Nok would have a chance for happiness. So that Sparrow would grow into a little girl. So that many years from now, Nok would cradle their daughter in her arms and tell her bedtime stories about how their father had saved their

lives. Another pulse of lasers exploded just a few paces away and he collapsed to the ground, breathing hard.

Ahead of him was the vent that led to the reactor core.

With shaking limbs, he crawled forward and tore off the vent grate. The sound of cries came from behind him: the pilots making a run for the ships.

He plunged into the darkness of the vent. Steam burned his skin, but he knew it was nothing compared with the burn of core radiation ahead. He crawled beyond the red warning labels. He could hear the battle raging outside. Laser pulses against laser pulses.

He kept crawling. He reached the inner core, and an alarm started droning.

Evacuate, the voice said. Evacuate. Radiation levels high.

Was it just in his head, or could he already feel his eyes burning? His vision went blurry, but there. Ahead. A small panel held together with screws. He crawled forward, slower now, his breathing strained. His stomach was heavy with sudden nausea, but he fought through it.

He used his last ounce of strength to open the panel with the wrench.

The manual shutdown.