The Lofties (The Echelon Book 2) Ramona Finn (fiction novels to read .txt) 📖

off my feet and flying. I struggled, throwing elbows, and I was spinning and stumbling, tripping back down the stairs with my feet in a tangle.

“Lock!” I turned and swung at him. He caught my arm and dragged me across the landing. I flew off my feet, skinned my knee. Lock pulled me up and kept running, and I grabbed him by his collar. We fought, spluttering and gasping, my palm in his face. Lock bit and spat and swept my feet out from under me. I clawed at his shirt, scattering buttons down the stairs. The guards were gaining, and I strained back toward them, slavering for the fight.

“What the—what are you—” Lock scrabbled at me, got a hand in my hair. We half-fell down the stairs, thrashing, flailing.

“Ona’s still up there. You swore—”

“Look!” He spun me around, jerked my head back. “You wanna fight all of them?”

I crumpled like he’d punched me, the wind rushing out of me at once. The stairwell was mobbed with guards, all the way to Sky Station. Every flight, every landing bristled with blasters, black muzzles trained on us, ready to fire.

“Lock—”

Feedback squealed in my ears, then a bullhorn blast. “Come quietly, and there’ll be no need for bloodshed. We’ve got you surrounded, so—”

“This way.” Lock vaulted over the railing, and this time I followed and plunged down the stairwell, three floors to the bottom. We hit with a jolt, bones jarring, muscles tearing. We half-collapsed into the hallway, blaster bolts singeing our skin. I tore after Lock, beating sparks out of my skirt.

“Where are we going?”

He ran faster by way of answer, scattering patrolmen before him as he charged through the refinery. More poured in from all directions. We hit the bridge, and I gasped. We were surrounded on all sides, Sky’s forces behind us, the Dirt watch in front. Below us lay the reservoir, red with warning lights.

“Lock?”

Spit clicked in his throat. “How long can you hold your breath?”

“What?”

“Jump,” he said, and he did. The light caught him as he dove, red from above with the pink blaze of blaster fire. I sprang after him, less gracefully, over the railing and down, down, down, hitting the water feet-first. Searing bolts raked the surface, and I dove to avoid them, chasing the churn of Lock’s boots. He stroked for the bottom, hard and determined, kicking bubbles in my face. I torpedoed after him, pressure building in my head. My ears filled and popped. My eyes burned with cold. The water turned brownish, then green. I tingled with claustrophobia, the overwhelming urge to breathe. The weight of the water bore down on me, and I fought panic.

Up ahead, Lock was struggling, trapped or drowning. I swam up beside him, and saw he’d found an outflow pipe jutting out from the rock. A metal grate blocked our exit, and Lock had hold of it. Rust clouded the water as he wrenched and pulled. I grabbed on alongside him and flung my body into the task. I kicked for leverage and found none, threw myself backward and burned for air. Lock’s lips peeled back, bubbles bursting between his teeth. He bent in half and pushed off, and the grate gave at one corner. I seized it, bent it back, and Lock squeezed through ahead of me, into the dark.

I hesitated, eyes bulging. My limbs had turned to rubber, my lungs to bags of sulfur. My chest heaved, and I half-turned—then I heard a splash behind me. Another splash came, and another, and I paddled after Lock. My skin crawled and my vision dimmed, but still I kept going, lime scale scraping my back as I burst through a narrow flue. I spat a long stream of bubbles and followed them up forever, through the endless black water clutching me to its breast.

I broke loose into sulfur, and I gulped it like fresh air. I sucked back breath after breath, water streaming down my chin. Lock was coughing and clawing at me, and I kicked him away. He caught me again and dragged me onward through blackness. I paddled and kicked till my toe stubbed something solid, and I realized I could stand.

“Outside. We’re Outside.” I stood up and shook myself, plucking duckweed from my hair. “We need to go back for Ona.”

Lock didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. I threw my head back and screamed. We couldn’t turn back—of course we couldn’t. Soon, they’d be after us, the Decemites this time, hunting us like—

“We need to go.” Lock fumbled at my wrist and snapped my phone free. He thumbed on the flashlight, and I saw we were in a tunnel, somewhere deep underground. “There should be a ladder,” said Lock. “Up ahead, for the maintenance crews.”

“We never even found those nanobots.” I trailed after him, palm to the wall. “Or your cure, or much of anything.”

“We found those guns. And the maps.” Lock found the ladder and jammed my phone in his pocket. “We know we’re not alone now. If we can get to those other Domes, warn ‘em what’s coming—”

“If they’ll even listen. If they understand us. I know I don’t read so well, but those signs weren’t English.”

“Maybe Ben’ll know something, or Jetha, or Starkey.” Lock started up the ladder, boots clanging on the rungs. “We’ll get to them first, then we’ll take it from there.”

I glanced back at the still water, aching to my marrow. Ona was trapped in there, and Reyland, Mom and Dad.

“Don’t think about it.” Lock held out his hand. “Mission mode, remember? We gotta go.”

My eyes pricked with tears, but I blinked them back. I crammed everything down inside of me, all my anger and hate, all my terror, my pain. I swallowed it all and climbed up toward the moon.

Chapter Twenty-One

I jogged up next to Lock as the lights of Echelon dimmed behind us.

“Give me my phone.”

“What?”

I slapped at his pocket. “You’ve got my phone.”

“Oh.” He fished it out and forked it over, brows knit