Uprising by Jessica Therrien

nervous.
    Is it clear? I asked.
    Yes. William and Mac are waiting.
    Kara and I kept to the shadows as we made our way alongside the house.
    It’s here , Kara said when we’d reached them. Behind the vines.
    The hanging plants were nearly a foot thick and heavier than I thought, but Kara and I managed to squeeze through. Beneath the curtain of vines was a passageway, its swinging door propped open by Mac’s foot.
    William pulled me by the hand and scooped me up into his arms.
    “What took you so long?”
    There was a Hunter , Kara said inside my head as the vines closed the gap behind her. Keep quiet .
    William nodded, and I realized he could hear her too.
    The tunnels that ran secretly within the walls of the house were easy to navigate, with fake vents that peered into abandoned rooms, and dim light pooling from lanterns on the marble walls. I wasn’t concerned about getting lost as we took stairs that led us deep underground. We had plotted and reviewed the route hundreds of times according to Kara’s memory. The four of us knew exactly where we were going, the only problem was there was nowhere to hide. Each step was tense, and even though Kara would have fair warning, the suspense from turning the next corner was enough to make my stomach tighten.
    It wasn’t until Kara slowed her steps that my heart really began to thud. Her face told me what I needed to know— someone was coming.
    Take a deep breath and hold it now , she advised sternly, and get ready to shoot .
    Her warning must have been heard by all of us, because Mac reached down for the knife strapped to his ankle, and all of us sucked in as much air as we could. Gentle footsteps grew louder from up ahead, but something was wrong. The shadow of a man stretched long against the curved walls of the passageway, but he didn’t come closer.
    Too much time had passed. I needed air. A part of me dreaded whoever was around the corner, but I was so desperate to exhale that I willed him to come forward. I wanted this over with, to expel all my breath behind a dart and finish him, but he didn’t show himself, and I couldn’t wait.
    The air came spilling out of me, and I was desperate to fill up my lungs again, but there was nothing to fill them with. I choked and sputtered, suffocating. I felt compelled to run, move out of the radius of this mystery man’s ability, but William and Kara began to choke as well. Mac was the only one who maintained composure. I drowned in the absence of air, clambering to get to William, in what could very well be our last moments. I was hardly aware of Mac moving in the direction of the shadow, the near silent scuffle that happened somewhere up ahead, but suddenly there was air again. William, Kara, and I coughed and wheezed, inhaling faster than we should, greedy for more.
    Mac sauntered around the corner waiting for us to recover, the knife in his hand dripping with blood.
    “Who was that?” I asked, still recuperating.
    “Victor,” Kara answered. “He gets his power from Lelantos. The bloodline controls the air.”
    “He won’t be controlling much of anything,” Mac added. “Not anymore.”
    “Are you all right?” William asked, still holding on to me. I wasn’t all right. How could I be? We’d almost died. Things had almost ended for all of us before we could even save Anna and Chloe. That wasn’t the answer he was looking for, though. I could breathe. I would survive.
    “I’m fine if you are.”
    “We’ve got to keep moving,” Mac pressed, the reality of what he’d just done visible on his face. He had killed a man. Even for someone of his size and strength, I could see murder still weighed heavy on his conscience.
    I didn’t look down as I stepped past the body on the floor. William squeezed my hand, pulling me onward. It had to be done.
    The four of us continued on in silence until we reached what seemed to be a dead end.
    “There’s supposed to be a door,” Kara said, staring at the wall in front of us.