Chapter 119: Sherry Vayne.
Darkness came fast the way it always did on the plain. No gentle fading, no long twilight. The sun simply made its decision and dropped below the horizon, taking the last of the light with it like a door slamming shut.
In seconds, the world shifted from burning gold to deep indigo, then to full black. Stars punched through the sky overhead, cold and countless, while the temperature dropped sharply enough that I felt it on my skin.
Mercury sat beside me in the sand, knees bent, arms resting on them, staring toward the Fallen City. The ruined skyline was just visible now, jagged black shapes against the last faint glow on the horizon, like broken teeth biting at the night.
Whatever we needed was in there. Whatever remained of the mission was in there. We had no car, no supplies, no team, and roughly the same equipment we had arrived with: a system, a charge, and two people who had been tied up in the sand and had gotten themselves untied.
"Time," I said quietly.
Mercury pulled her boots back on, the leather scraping against sand, and stood with a tired but determined motion, brushing grains from her legs.
"Bram." Something in her voice had shifted. Not fear. The opposite of fear.
I looked up at her. She was pointing behind us, into the darkness we had come from. I stood.
Two sets of powerful headlights sliced through the night in the distance, bright white beams cutting across the dark plain like searchlights. They bounced and swayed as the vehicles moved over uneven ground, growing steadily larger, twin pairs of glaring eyes advancing toward us.
"Do we hide?" I asked, calculating quickly. The plain offered almost nothing in the way of cover except the city itself, which was its own category of problem.
"That’s Sinn," Mercury said. Her eyes hadn’t left the lights. "Those are the armored cars. I know them."
I looked at the approaching headlights. Then back at her face. She was certain.
I felt something release in my chest, something that had been clenched tight since the Forsaken City hotel, since Major’s room, since waking up tied in the sand with the sun burning my back.
I pulled Mercury into a hug. She came willingly, arms wrapping tightly around me. We stood there in the cool night air, two small figures on the vast plain, holding each other as salvation rolled toward us out of the dark.
"How do we stop them?" I asked.
"Stand in the road," Mercury said immediately.
"They’ll run us over," I replied. "It’s dark and they’re not expecting anything out here except infected. They won’t know the difference until it’s too late."
Mercury laughed because she knew I was right. The headlights grew larger, cutting brighter through the darkness.
"We stand in the road and wave," I said. "Arms high and moving. Nobody misses that."
We positioned ourselves in the middle of the cracked tarmac, side by side. The cars came on. The closer they got, the more certain I became that Mercury was right, the specific height and heavy silhouette of the armored vehicles, the way their lights bounced over the uneven ground.
The headlights bore down, growing blindingly bright. At the last moment we raised our arms high and waved them wide, big, deliberate, unmistakable motions against the night.
The lead armored car slowed with a low mechanical growl, then stopped just five meters away. The second vehicle pulled up behind it. For a heartbeat the powerful beams pinned us in blinding white light, washing out everything else. Then they dimmed to a softer, controlled glow.
The back door of the first car burst open.
A figure burst out and ran without hesitation. I knew the run before I could see the face. I had been seeing that run since the plain crossing, since the gate, since the first corridor at Hogsby.
Sherry hit me at full speed.
We went down into the sand together, her arms locked around my neck, my body registering every ache and bruise it had been carrying since the tape, the sand, the dried infected, the headache. None of it mattered right now.
The headlights stayed on, softer now, bathing the scene in controlled white light. Mercury started laughing somewhere above us.
"Bram." Sherry’s voice was in my ear, raw and trembling. "Bram."
"It’s me," I said, holding her tight. "I’m here."
She was shaking. "I can’t believe it. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry we left."
"It’s okay."
"It’s not." She pulled back just enough to look at my face in the light, her eyes wet and fierce. "It’s not okay."
She helped me up. Her hand stayed in mine, pulling, and I let her pull.
May had come out of the second car and was walking toward us. Mercury met Sherry and they held each other, laughing the specific, relieved laugh of people who had been terrified for someone and no longer were.
May reached me.
She didn’t say anything. she took my face in both hands, her palms warm against my skin. She kissed me deeply, urgently, pouring relief and fear and joy into it.
I gripped her waist and pulled her closer, feeling her smile and soft laugh against my mouth, the laugh of someone who had run the probabilities on this moment and hadn’t liked the numbers, and was now overjoyed to have been wrong.
Behind us, Mercury and Sherry were already walking toward the armored vehicles, arms linked.
The front door of the second car opened.
Sinn stepped out into the night. He stood tall and silent in the cool darkness, the soft headlights casting dramatic shadows across his face. He said nothing, simply watching the reunion, letting the moment breathe under the vast star-filled sky.
We need to talk, I thought, looking at him over May’s shoulder. About Code. About Major. About Oddo and Speed and Owen and everything I watched happen on this mission.
But not yet. Not right now.
