The War of Ashes and Flame

By Miranda Olson

In the futuristic and conflict-torn country of Halldis, previously the United States of America, a war rages between the ruling faction of the Emissary and a growing rebellion. However, this is no ordinary civil war. Altered with extraordinary super-human abilities, young soldiers across the country fight for a twisted definition of freedom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Author Academy Elite
• Release date: Jul 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781647461690

Book preview

PART 1

From One Prison to the Next

CHAPTER 1

The Memory of Attack

There was the smallest moment between the flicker of her eyelids, a shudder that stirred in the blackness of her vision between opening and closing her eyes that sent a trickle of terror sliding down Aidan Erinheart’s neck.

It happened too often to possibly forget the images there in that tiny flicker. Sometimes, she could see it when she blinked the sweat from dripping past her brow in training that day, or it happened when stiffening her gaze in a rigid salute to the Authorities. But usually, those shreds of memory that leaked into Aidan’s daily routine invaded her head at night when she was the most vulnerable to their reign.

In sleep, she was weak. The fortifications that she held around herself day after day in the demands of military life fell to the aggression of dreams. Only there could she see the full picture, the vivid details of images that scrolled through her brain on a tormenting repeat.

It was guilt, and it gnawed at her unceasingly.

The morning would come too swiftly, and Aidan was left groggy and restless when the sun rose, backdrops of roaring fire sputtering to embers in the break of dawn. The rigorous drills of the Emissary’s Correction Facility were enough to force forgetfulness even just for a little while. It was enough to temporarily forget the flames of scorching blue and ravaging red, the dense smoke of choking black, the echoes of screams, and the…

No.

Aidan forcefully shook her head as she slouched on the edge of her lumpy bed, letting long locks of midnight hair brush against her pallid cheeks. The light from a barred window filtered into her cell as she planted her bare feet on the cool concrete ground and stood with the accompanying pops from tired, aching joints. She glanced at the tablet embedded into the wall, purposely ignoring her own reflection in the mirroring panels of the room.

A Wednesday, the screen read, and that meant hand-to-hand combat practice for most of the morning.

Stifling a groan even louder than the creak of her bones, Aidan shimmied into a suit of scratchy cotton and bent down to lace up her rubber-soled boots before finally daring a peek at her figure in the metallic panels of the cell.

She knew it wasn’t a good idea.

Her facial structure had become even more pronounced since she had come to this vicious place of correction. Her collarbones were jutting and her shoulders sharp on her back. Deep gray settled around her sunken eyes like a ring of thunderclouds, and her posture was sore and deflated.

The Emissary did not take treason lightly, and it did not do good to the body.

You look like hell, a musing voice crowed from the open cell door.

Aidan hadn’t even heard him unlock the deadbolt. She only scowled at Kyren, refusing him the pleasure of seeing her jump in his presence. All the guards in the correction facility were insufferable, their chins too high to see anything but their noses.

Yanking her hair into a messy ponytail, Aidan stalked from the cell, a detesting frown on her lips. Kyren chuckled as he trailed after her down the corridor, a hand hovering over the weapon at his belt, capable of downing any of the imprisoned soldiers in seconds with a stinging and flexible bullet the size of a penny that rendered the victim immediately incapacitated with a potent toxin. As the description implied, the inmates all called them stingers, and mercy be to anyone that was unfortunate enough to have felt that sting.

Aidan usually would have remained silent; she faced the same morning ritual every day after a meager breakfast as a guard escorted her to and from her training sessions, agitated hands brushing weapons strapped to their waists. The guards never left her side, never left her cell door unguarded at night, never allowed her out of their sight. Even now, Aidan glanced toward a small fixture in the corner of the high ceiling and knew that someone was behind that extra eye, that camera, watching.

She’d been a quiet, obedient inmate, submitting herself to every moment of detention that she deserved, following the guards’ orders precisely and without question. Silently, Aidan carried on for the seven hundred thirty-five days she had been here and counted down the two life sentences that she had left to endure.

And likely, the Emissary would ensure that she served them all even if that meant keeping her heart artificially beating.

Normally, she kept her thoughts to herself just to stay in the good graces of the guards and the figures behind those hanging black eyes. Except today, the guard escorting her about the correction facility was Kyren Marley, and he could not keep his mouth shut.

You know, I heard that there was an attack on an outer Emissary fort. Soldiers were killed. He shrugged as they journeyed down the hall. Kyren’s long strides met Aidan’s with ease. Luckily, the fort was held.

She nodded, staring down at her boots as she walked while listening to this tidbit of news. It was nothing surprising; each day, new developments from the war front in the east were transmitted to all facilities of the Emissary, and gossip was eaten up with vigor. As the only source of entertainment, the soldiers were left with only battles as brutal as the imagination to brood over.

More and more soldiers are being sent to the front now. Won’t be long until this hole is emptied and we’re back to an all-out war.

Nothing. Aidan pressed her mouth into a line.

But the Emissary will win—we always do. I just can’t wait to see some real action, no more of this boring ‘guard’ stuff. Kyren sighed dramatically and muttered, Maybe a serious fight will bring in some prisoners, some widows, orphaned children. That would be a lot more exciting.

Aidan lifted her head slightly, glaring at the guard who held a smug grin on his face. Shut up, she hissed quietly.

He slowly raised an eyebrow, his grin turning to a taunt. Excuse me? Kyren countered.

I said shut up, Aidan mumbled before lowering her gaze back to the ground.

Kyren’s smile dissolved. Did I say something that you didn’t like, Erinheart?

When she didn’t respond, the guard stalled just in front of her, and Aidan was forced to a halt. She didn’t dare raise her chin. Last week she had made that mistake, and she had ended up on the floor with a burning red imprint of a slap on her cheek.

I asked you a question, soldier, Kyren’s voice grew in warning as he growled down at Aidan. Do you have a problem with what I said? He leaned in closer, near enough that Aidan could smell the smoke of deathling on his breath. The drug always made the guards irritable, eager for a fight.

It’s all true, every word I said. The battles will destroy the districts, heighten the resolve at the war front, and displace thousands of innocent people. It’s only a matter of time before the Emissary snatches them all up and turns them into—

Aidan didn’t let the man finish before she was on him, tackling him to the ground with her teeth clenched and a sudden anger racing through her blood. He was struggling beneath her when she delivered a violent blow to the side of his head with a fist. He squirmed and yelled obscenities that reverberated from the metal-paneled walls, but Aidan smashed a punch into his nose with a sickening crack.

His grunts of frustration from trying to throw the girl off called other guards to his aid, and they stormed down the hall with their weapons drawn.

Freeze! guards yelled and then swarmed, surrounding the brawl with stingers held at the ready.

Aidan stopped her brutish deed, her chest heaving and her knuckles shining red. She sneered up at the armed guards before placing her trembling hands on her head at their command. The burst of strength had lasted only seconds, but now she sagged in regret, blinking away a familiar memory of a boy, helpless on the ground, being devoured by…

Fire.

She flinched at the memory, and an unrelenting ached pulsed hot at the base of her skull. She straitened to her feet and followed a guard’s instruction to stand against the wall, a draining rage dissipating in her gut as she realized the infraction that she had just committed.

Kyren pulled himself from the ground, wiping a hand over his bleeding nose. "What’s wrong, little traitor? he barked. You don’t like how the Emissary recruits its soldiers and turns them into killing machines like you?" He nodded at his fellow guards who still stood menacingly with their weapons poised for another outburst.

I say we send her to the front right now! Kyren didn’t try to suppress his snarl and he again let his gaze simmer on her. You’re obviously ready to see some action.

"That is not your call." Another’s voice suddenly traveled down the corridor, belonging to a stalky man with a superior air.

Aidan let her poisonous glower relax for the smallest second as she swiveled her head to see a man with odd silver hair and a purposed authority in his step strut toward the group of guards, a grave intensity to the clench of his jaw.

He was clothed in a darkness that dimmed the harsh lights on the ceiling, and a chill of warning clouded the scene as the guards immediately stood at solemn attention. None dared relax a salute in the wake of this newcomer’s clacking boots, his hard gaze laced with a cold rage.

Aidan moved into line with the rest of the soldiers in the hall, clad in the dingy gray of the inmates and the black cuffs of the Emissary. The symbol of the ruling faction was embroidered onto the back of her uniform: three white x’s arranged vertically with a parallel line running the length of the logo to represent an overall E for Emissary. She twitched in her training jacket, trying to ignore the same symbol that branded the delicate skin on the back of her neck, the uncomfortable tingling of the scars that followed the straight path of her spine.

The man like chiseled stone paused his storming march just before the guard, Kyren, who sniffled and swiped the back of his hand over his oozing nose that had already swelled twice the original size.

With his hands held firmly behind his back, the strange man demanded, State you name, soldier.

Kyren Marley, sir. He tightened his salute.

At ease. The man of high rank nodded toward Aidan with weariness as if she were nothing more than a delinquent asset acting up, a troublesome responsibility, and asked, What makes you think that you have the right to send soldiers out to the field without proper authorization?

Kyren gave a shaky smile, letting his hand fall to his side with a nervous hiccup that could have been a laugh or a cough. S-sir, he stuttered in the Authority’s presence, attacking a guard is a severe infraction worthy of dishonorable discharge.

Aidan felt the man’s gaze sweep over her, lingering longer on the drying blood that now stained her knuckles, and then back at Kyren with his bruised face and straightforward stare.

Tell me, Marley. He cocked his head in feigned question. To whom must an infraction of this sort be reported?

T-t-the commander, sir.

And where is the infraction appealed to?

The haughty guard dropped his head slightly. The Emissary’s M-Militant Council.

Hmm, the man crooned with a proven smirk. He bent at the waste to level his petrifying glare with the guard’s now insecure one. Then I suggest you leave this matter to the individuals that stand above your position instead of asserting your actions without proper jurisdiction.

Do you understand? his following growl seemed to clarify, and Kyren swallowed, the lump in his throat bobbing up and down before he replied with a quiet, Yes, sir, and another salute.

The Authority hinged back up and rolled his shoulders, taking exactly two even steps to tower over Aidan. She was not lacking in height, but this man was a looming shadow with eyes of intense green like the deep foliage of the forests in the north. He held his head high with a challenging cockiness, and his incisors were slightly more pointed than the other teeth as he grinned like a wolf interested in toying with its prey.

And you, soldier, he said coolly, indeed establishing that he was the predator, give me your name.

Aidan bristled in his presence, partly embarrassed at having been constrained by this Authority who could dole out a number of punishments—that is, if the act went unreported to the commander—and partly mortified that she had let her temper flare so freely in the first place.

She cleared her throat. Aidan Erinheart.

A low hiss sounded from Kyren, but the Authority ignored him, instead taking the name like he was tasting it on his tongue, weighing its meaning while he pursed his lips in thought.

You attacked an Emissary guard, Miss Erinheart, he reminded those who stood at attention in the hall. Aidan could hear what he could say next, what he would harshly scold her for and then decide the type of justice she deserved.

Her temper and stubbornness had gotten her into this correction facility, and that same outburst would continue to condemn her for as long as the war wore on. She hung her head.

The man pinched the bridge of his nose, sighed, and surveyed her head to toe. She shifted under his scrutiny, beneath his narrowed eyes and drawn brow. Finally, with an exhale that bordered an attitude of boredom, he said simply, My superior was not wrong about your aptitude for ‘disturbing the peace.’ With the leave of your commander, gentlemen, he again addressed the guards in the hallway, I am taking Miss Erinheart into my custody.

Under whose orders? demanded Kyren with a penchant for revenge as he glowered at Aidan with a scorching hatred.

A twitch of irritation feathered in the man’s jaw—brief, but Aidan had seen the crack in his otherwise polished composure.

Under the orders of the First Lieutenant to the Emissary’s General, Asher Adams, he declared.

A shutter rippled through the group then, and hands shot back up in a fresh round of salutes.

S-s-sir, Kyren stumbled over his words again in shock, if we had known that we were in the presence of the lieutenant’s right hand… Forgive us, Officer Hunt.

The man, Officer Hunt, smiled tightly, a scowl concealed beneath his angled features. Yes, well, next time that you confront an Authority, do so with solemn regard, soldier, or the dishonorable discharge will be your own. He swiftly pivoted on his heel, motioning Aidan to fall in step without so much as another glance.

Aidan hesitated only a moment before filing past the guards who still wore stunned expressions on their faces, Kyren’s a little more swollen than the others. She walked dutifully after the officer, jogging at times just to keep up with his rapid pace, wondering if where she was headed at the order of the Emissary’s First Lieutenant was to be any better than the correction facility.

~

Veda Knolls knew the footsteps of nearly all the Authorities in the easternmost Emissary Training Facility, especially those of the officers that labored in the control center.

She knew the soft ones of the shy boy who worked on the maps, the clunking steps of the heavy-set girl who typed away on a holographic keyboard that only she could see with the help of a small eyepiece called a viso, and the nervous hopping from foot to foot of the girl who watched the screens that tracked the movements of the soldiers down in the main arena.

She had grown to recognize these simple noises, the normal strides of the soldiers she worked with. Veda had studied the sounds of their footsteps tirelessly when she had first arrived here; it was a natural process in which she had been vigorously schooled. To notice sounds, patterns…

That was her strong suit, and it served her well in her line of work.

Even now, as she adjusted the viso against her left eye, Veda studied the unconstrained projections in front of her, sifting through the information that displayed itself in a three-dimensional field of objects. She waved her hands through the icons, scanning the texts that scrolled in the projection, her face twisted in concentration.

While she flipped through document after document of classified information in silence, memorizing every essential detail, she focused on the approaching footfalls of rubber-soled boots and realized immediately that these were unfamiliar.

Veda clapped her hands together once, and the projection collapsed, stored in the hard drive of the facility’s information system. She turned just as the door to the control center de-materialized and Officer Hunt emerged from the corridor beyond.

Unlike the steps of all the other Authorities, his were the quietest but filled with the most purpose. Officer Hunt never trudged or dragged his feet, and he never hurried his pace.

The man was perfectly consistent.

Wait here, he mumbled to someone in the corridor behind him before he strolled into the control center, sparing Veda little more than a glance. After scanning the room, clearly not seeing what or who he was searching for, the officer finally met the petite girl’s stare with a sliver of annoyance.

Where is the lieutenant?

Veda shrugged, matching Officer Hunt’s signature scowl that was always pasted on his stern features. He does not wish to be disturbed.

"I am on his orders, Officer Knolls," he huffed.

Well then by all means, disturb him, she grumbled as she turned back to her work, expanding the projection of documents once again with a swish of her wrist. It hovered in the center of the room, and her viso began rushing through the text in a mass stream of words.

Officer Hunt’s footsteps resumed, striding toward the Greater Meeting Hall for only the Authorities to congregate, but he stuttered as Veda asked flatly, Who’s that in the corridor?

She tried to sound uninterested, focused on her work. But whoever accompanied the officer was…

Nearly too silent for Veda Knolls to hear.

Even as she strained her hearing for that figure waiting in the corridor, the breathing, the way that person shifted—it was too quiet. No pattern of inhaling breath to follow, no reoccurring order of movement, no system to that mystery person’s heartbeat. Veda involuntarily hissed when she could feel the man behind her with a slight smile on his face.

Too sneaky to spy on, Veda? I’ve wondered if you’ve been losing your touch lately. He snorted, "What, with your accidental mix up of documents and such..."

Veda just whipped her head around, her cropped, black hair slashing her cheek, and snarled, "I told you! Those documents went missing, Hunt."

Recent accounts of skirmishes with the enemy, records of soldiers in service to the Emissary, detailed pages of full-fledged battles. Gone.

I memorized the order of them all, and they went missing. Nothing gets past my notice.

The officer just grinned at having made her redden and let out a low whistle, pointing to the corridor beyond the door with a lazy finger as if to say that she had, indeed, missed this.

Veda clenched her teeth and settled again into a rapidly scanning pace, glowering through the small eyepiece. He’s in the Greater Meeting Hall, but like I said, he doesn’t wish to be disturbed. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Officer Hunt cleared his throat in amusement, pricking Veda’s short-cut nerves even more before straightening his vest and marching into the meeting room. He closed the entryway behind him and the girl skimming the classified files was left to her work, other officers flitting about the space in their duties.

She read the same paragraph of the same page of the file again, starting over when she could no longer understand what she was reading. It must have been the sixth time she had stumbled over the same sentence, "Finally, Einar was conquered…," when she abruptly straightened, forcing her ears to catch the noises of that silent shadow in the corridor.

She closed her eyes against the grunts and hollers of the rowdy arena below as a fight ensued, the incessant clicks from machines that produced the map projections, and the muffled voices of Officer Hunt and the lieutenant in the Greater Meeting Hall.

Veda shut out all those distracting sounds and tuned in to—

There! The high-pitched sigh of a woman. A girl, perhaps eighteen, no, nineteen years of age. Her hands were wringing themselves together, impatience evident in the way she shifted her weight and crossed her arms over her chest.

Officer Knolls lifted her chin and strode from the control center, passing through the shimmering entryway that changed from opaque metal to a breach-able state and halted directly in front of the young girl who met Veda’s gaze and refused to blink.

She didn’t even startle as the officer took in her form, her rubber-soled boots, the thin legs, the dingy and ratty state of her midnight hair. The girl stood a head taller than the officer, but Veda was never one to let size scare her off.

The way the girl had existed here in complete silence for those few moments after Officer Hunt had left—

And, oh…

Was she wearing a correction facility jumpsuit? Veda stalled at that, her eyes widening at the baggy uniform and the inmate number printed on the front.

Served the girl right.

The officer just lifted a dark eyebrow, shaking the hair from her face. "Well, this is a surprise. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, Erinheart. Shouldn’t you be dead or imprisoned for life?"

The girl matched the height of the officer’s chin, glancing downward with eyes that held no hint of bluff. Her lips merely twitched upwards once.

Huh, Veda scoffed. This girl had always been a good liar.

She quieted her voice so none could overhear and asked, Why would Officer Hunt go through all the trouble to take a dishonored soldier from the Emissary’s Correction Facility? After all that happened, I was hoping they would have made your execution look like an accident by now. You really are quite the actress! What did you tell them that convinced them to spare you?

The girl began to shrug, acting utterly oblivious to the disgust that layered Veda’s tone, acting as though she did not know the officer that stood before her.

Just then, the entryway of the Greater Meeting Hall glittered open, Officer Hunt emerging with an unreadable expression on his hard features.

Soldier, he beckoned, in here. He didn’t even let his stare rove to Veda as he said, The lieutenant needs those documents by tonight, Officer Knolls.

Veda started to protest, the backlash of meeting an old ally—a girl that should have been condemned for what she did—shooting annoyance into her veins. But that will take hours of work! They’re historical accounts with no basis for analysis, and—

"Tonight, Veda. The lieutenant demands them for a meeting with the general."

Veda stifled another retort with a growl rising in her throat and obediently offered a salute. Officer Hunt nodded without taking his eyes from the prisoner girl, ushering her into the meeting room.

Who was that? another Authority, Officer Becker, wondered with his eyes still glued to the changing maps.

A former friend, a dangerous enemy, someone Veda had trusted long ago.

Hell, if I know. Veda stomped back to her workstation and tapped her viso a little too hard. The documents wavered from the interference, but the image held strong as it grew bright in the unconstrained field physically in front of her. She went about flicking her wrists and snapping her fingers, discarding pieces of the documents that were irrelevant to its subject and breezing through the words.

Well, Officer Becker continued, she must be important if the lieutenant wants to personally meet with a dishonored soldier.

Veda just scoffed again. She ignored the rest of her comrades’ conversions as they made light chatter in between their jobs. Officer Knolls had never fit very easily into light conversation and meaningless rambling.

No, she liked to think, to scan, to understand, to create solutions.

In a steady rhythm, she worked while minutes slipped by and a headache burned behind her eyes from looking through the viso for so long, from thinking of the midnight-haired girl and her blank stare, dressed in an inmate’s uniform of the Emissary’s Correction Facility, her hands covered in scars that matched…

Veda looked down to her own olive-toned palms and traced the white slashes of skin there, the rings of tender tissue that wrapped around her wrists.

Officer Knolls remembered when she had received those scars; some had been inflicted on the night Aidan had taken Veda’s hands in her own, their faces pale with panic.

We have to go! Aidan had urged in a hoarse whisper, nearly sobbing as she had rubbed a salve that she had bribed one of the guards for that night onto the tight cuffs encircling Veda’s wrists. Aidan had gotten her own cuffs off the same way, by biting against the pain and tugging while skin ripped and blood oozed over the cold metal bracelets.

This is it. Now, quickly, before the bombs trigger.

What about the guards? Veda had asked, hissing as the cuffs slid to the ground. Surely, one of them heard that.

We can outrun them.

And if we can’t?

Aidan had looked her dead in the eye, the shadows of night passing over the holding cell and bathing her face in milky moonlight. Veda could still see the bruises on her neck and the swollenness of her lips from the guard who had bargained to help them escape with the salve.

Then we fight our way out.

Page after page, Officer Knolls stripped the historical documents to the backbone of chronological facts, putting the pieces together in her mind of what the lieutenant could be so eager to have while suppressing the thoughts roaring through her mind.

She slowed, forgetting her deadline in favor of piecing the puzzle of words together into one story without all the fluff that the people in the twenty-first century had liked to use.

Focusing. It was the only way to return to her rhythm of finding patterns, the only way those memories in her head stopped. Sifting through the documents, she at last paused on the beginning sentence of that paragraph she had skimmed over and over.

Finally, Einar was conquered, and all that had opposed the Western imperialism of Halldis fell.

~

Lieutenant Asher Adams had jolted awake from a nightmare the night before. His breath had been short, and he had been doused in a cold sweat. He had jolted upright in his bed, stifling the trembling of his hands.

The Emissary’s First Lieutenant still hadn’t gotten used to visions suddenly springing into his head at night when he slept. He couldn’t stop them from invading his mind, and sometimes he even mistook his visions for dreams.

That’s what he missed the most about being Unaltered: the ability to dream and think for himself without the startling revelations he saw in his future visions.

His eyes had adjusted to his dark quarter, the shapes of his side table and dressing cabinet emerged from the shadows. His labored breath had begun to quiet as he sat still, the vision replaying in his head. The scene of ruthless fire still haunted him with a familiar sting.

It was a memory, he had realized.

But if Asher couldn’t dream and could only see what was to be in the future, then why did he see a memory?

It was the question drilling through his skull the moment that Aidan Erinheart, the soldier of legend at just nineteen years old, had waltzed into the Greater Meeting Hall where the Authorities in this sector of the army met for detailing and strategic report. From the north of the country, Halldis, from the district of Shredmare, this girl had been drafted for war.

And war she had become.

Even sulking in the gray and dingy uniform of the Emissary’s Correction Facility, an inmate number printed on the front and inked onto the inside of her wrist—even with her matted black hair, thin shoulders, lowered chin, and weary eyes, she still sauntered with a mighty air of the force that she was.

Treasonous and dishonored, but a force all the same, and heavens knew the Emissary needed such a force to finally come out conqueror.

Lieutenant Adams tugged on the high collar of his uniform and pushed away the flames of his nightmare, favoring a vision of promise that he had seen. He savored that image of the warrior that would change the course of the civil war.

CHAPTER 2

The Return

Aidan wasn’t sure just how to react when she entered the cavernous hall surrounded by great pillars of steel, her eyes shielded by stray sections of ratty hair. She furtively scrutinized her peripheral, realizing that the only possible exit was behind her from which she had taken twelve steps away and had halted before a long table of cold metal.

If she broke now, she could reach the door in four speedy strides, cross the threshold in less than a second, and cut through the control center in sixteen running steps.

The trick would be getting past...

Veda Knolls.

Aidan knew that girl like she was her own sister, and the scars on her wrists would never let her forget it.

Small but quick, Veda was the type of soldier who did not tolerate anything out of the ordinary. Indeed, from the way that she had sized up Aidan, her dark olive skin heating in annoyance and surprise, her tongue sharp and eyes alight with anger and filled with unpleasantries—

Aidan would have to be fast.

And then there was the towering man that stood slightly behind her, his presence a smothering sense of keen awareness as he too seemed to notice every slight movement in the room, every twitch as other Authorities left their spots at the rectangular table of hard steel and filed out the doors. They were careful not to step too close to him.

No, it would not be easy catching him in shock, nor would she be able to outrun him. His legs were too long, his hands already jerking in anticipation, his mind already alert as to any peculiarities or possible threats.

It was then Aidan Erinheart realized that Officer Kellan Hunt was an extremely close ally and protector to the First Lieutenant of the Emissary’s Military, perhaps even a friend.

Her only option, she thought with an irritated huff, would be to debilitate him with a kick to the groin. She could whirl on him, wind back her fist, and drop him to the ground if she struck the nose.

It was only a matter of precision and timing.

Then it would be navigating the stairwell in a few long leaps. Tripping the fire alarm that was situated on the wall across from the entrance to the stairwell, exactly three bounds away from where she would land, would be the next move. And finally, in the bustle of the mass exodus of soldiers leaving the building, she would steal away into the crowd, make her way to the loading docks, and escape on a military hoverblip.

From