II. SAGEV
***
The girl didn’t know why she was running. She didn’t know who the man in the lab coat leading her was. And she had absolutely no idea why people were chasing and shooting at the two of them.
All she knew was that her name was Grace Alvarez, and she was fifteen years old.
Out of place memories tumbled through her mind, but they may as well have been a dream she’d just awoken from. The fragments of her past were confusing, foggy, and rapidly fading.
“We’re almost out,” the man ahead of her said as they reached a set of double doors. He slammed his badge against a box on the wall. The box’s red light turned green, and the doors unlocked with a click. The man led Grace from clean white halls to a dark, dirty tunnel. When the doors closed behind them, they blended in perfectly with the tunnel wall.
The man who was apparently—hopefully—saving Grace had scaley green skin, and a thin reptilian tail poked out from under his lab coat, swaying as he ran. His head was human-shaped, but when he briefly glanced back at her, she saw that there was a serpentine curve to his mouth and that his pupils were narrow slits in his oddly reflective emerald irises. His hands ended in clawed fingers.
Something in what lingered of Grace’s memory told her she could trust him.
Grace and the man powered through several twists and turns and even a few flights of spiraling metal stairs. The burning in Grace’s legs grew steadily more intense, but it was easy to ignore in favor of the fear that kept her in motion.
They didn’t slow until they reached a rusted ladder. “You go up first,” the man told Grace.
“Why?” Grace’s mind was starting to catch up and override the instinct that had told her to run. To follow him. “Who are you? Where are we going?”
“I’m sorry,” the man said. “We couldn’t get to you before they started the memory wipe procedure. I’ll explain everything as soon as I can, but right now we have to—”
A gunshot echoed through the tunnel. The man clutched his chest and staggered into the wall. A dark violet liquid splattered across the front of his white lab coat. Grace could only assume it was his blood.
“Go!” he gasped.
The violent shaking in Grace’s hands made the climb up the ladder difficult. She feared she wouldn’t make it to the top. Guards in gray uniforms approached below, guns up. Grace’s rescuer drew a weapon of his own, a blaster, and pointed it at them. The guards slowed.
“Go!” the man repeated. His trembling hand squeezed the trigger, and the ensuing blue beam sent the closest guard to the ground with a hole in his shoulder. More blood spread across the front of the man’s lab coat. “Now!”
Grace reached the top of the ladder and lifted the cover. She pulled herself onto cold concrete and collapsed onto her back.
She couldn’t stay here. They would find her.
The ladder had brought her into an alleyway. Buildings on all sides stretched impossibly high into the sky, and more beyond blocked out most of the sunlight. Grace rose to her feet and ran toward the sound of traffic.
She burst out of the alley onto a sidewalk. Vehicles raced by. People walked past her, not giving her so much as a second glance. Grace didn’t linger in the spot long, but she did take a moment to study the various alien races walking the street ahead of her. Then, the pothole-ridden street and the broken windows in the building on the other side.
She wandered aimlessly from there, not daring to stop, constantly throwing glances over her shoulder. Her body gradually stopped trembling, and her thoughts calmed. Who could help her? Police? That sounded like a good idea, finding the nearest police station.
Grace took the next staircase she saw and started moving up. She saw no signs of police on her way up, but the city did appear to be getting cleaner the farther she went, so she continued her ascent.
After nearly an hour, when she finally seemed to be nearing the city’s upper limits, screeching and blaring horns shook Grace from the daze she’d slipped into. She froze and looked up in time to watch a vehicle flip over a barrier and off one of the overhead streets. It fell toward a walkway stretching between buildings.
The shadow of the falling vehicle passed over a man.
No one was around to help him. Even if he moved out of the way, the walkway he stood on wouldn’t hold up when the vehicle collided with it. Grace started toward the man, but she wasn’t moving fast enough—
Wings.
She had wings.
They came out of slits in the back of her shirt—she noted, for the first time, that she was dressed entirely in plain gray clothes—and extended to their full length. Grace jumped and embraced the open air, relieved to find the wings easy enough to move. Controlling her flight path was another story entirely, but her trajectory to the man was a straight shot, and she made it to him before the vehicle did.
Grabbing him, dodging the falling car, carrying him to safety—it all passed in a blur. Moments after she’d grabbed him, they were tumbling safely onto the balcony wrapped around the nearest skyscraper.
Grace got the impression that the man was trying to hide his identity. He wore sunglasses and dressed in casual clothes, complete with a hood that hid his face in shadow. But the disguise didn’t last. Police and reporters and nosy citizens descended on the balcony, and the man was forced to reveal himself as Governor Syrus Starr.
The name rang a bell somewhere in the back of her mind, but when Grace tried to figure out where exactly she’d heard it before, she realized she hadn’t. Not that she could remember, anyway.
Grace watched as Governor Starr dismissed everyone but the medics and a handful of officers, who worked to keep the growing crowd and reporters away. And then the governor was talking to Grace, asking who she was, apprehension in his gaze.
Grace admitted she had no idea. She told him all she knew, explained how she’d wound up in this part of the city after her escape. The governor appeared to relax after that.
He offered her a place to stay while the authorities investigated the tunnels and tried to determine what had happened to her. He would provide shelter. Education. A life. It sounded like a good option.
Not that Grace had any other choice.