Before Jade could even register that the guard had pulled the trigger, brightness filled her vision as his burst of fire lit up the alleyway. Pain immediately flared from her shoulder as the first of his rounds skimmed over it, and while the rest of his shots recoiled upwards the impact was still enough to send her tumbling. Instinctively placing her hands in front of herself to protect her face from the fall, Artel’s empty weapon was sent flying as her palms grated on the rough dirt on the floor of the alley.

“Up!” Trim yelled as she flew over Jade’s rolling body while raising her own pistol to return the fire. Even while carrying Nina she didn’t seem to have a problem lining the man up, and as a result she easily put a neat hole straight through his chest before he had managed to correct his aim. Not even bothering to look back to see if Jade was alright, she surged onwards before skipping over the two dying guards and disappearing into the darkness.

Jade winced as she slid across the dirt. Not only could she feel the burning pain from where the guard’s shot had skimmed her shoulder, her palms that had been used to arrest her fall were now badly scraped. Dirt and small stones mixed together with the fresh blood on her hands which caused them to sting, and the scent of burning from both her clothes and flesh had finally reached her nose. Deprived of her momentum, she cursed inwardly as her body screamed for her to stop. Her already weak legs smashed against the dirt as she rolled over once more, but she knew that stopping now simply wasn’t an option.

To stop now was to die.

“Don’t say a word,” Saela spat as she as she appeared beside her. Grasping her collar as she ran, she hauled Jade up with a frantic tug before letting her go. The process had clearly slowed her down, but Jade was thankful as her feet found purchase once more on the dirt beneath them. Picking herself up off the ground would have taken too much time, and by the time she had managed to push herself back up to speed she would have lost the others in the dark.

Satisfied that her job was done, Saela kicked her pace up a notch once more as she skipped over the two bodies before them in her pursuit of Trim. A gap was pulled out between them, but at least Jade had managed to keep them both in sight. For once she was glad that Trim had been wearing a cream shirt underneath her sweater instead of a black one.

Each step for her was bordering on agony now as her thighs burned, but she knew that they were close. Her shoulder was going to have to be fixed and it would probably leave a nasty scar, but right now all she could focus on was escaping from the clutches of Rucille and the Royal Guard.

Turning another corner, she looked up to see that Trim and Saela were dashing through the thin alley some fifteen meters in front of her. Fortunately, it seemed that Artel’s grenade had bought them enough of a buffer against their pursuers, and if Jade was in their shoes she too would have been concerned about a second trap. Her current condition was enough of a handicap to begin with, so any advantage to offset it was something that she would grasp with both hands.

Trim and Saela disappeared around another corner up in front of her, so she immediately began to scan the stone walls in the darkness for the opening. What she thought was the shouting of the Royal Guard as they coordinated a sweep through the district was creeping into her ears, and she instinctively swallowed before finally finding what she was looking for. She couldn’t be sure in the dark, but it seemed that the space was thinner in comparison to the other alleyways. It was almost as though it was an alley within an alley, but without time to think she simply threw herself into the opening.

She cursed as she almost tripped over the remains of a wooden box which sat just around the corner, but when she raised her head up she froze inside as she realised that Trim and Saela were nowhere to be seen. The alley was even thinner than where they had been previously with space for only two people to walk side-by-side, but it was also as straight as an arrow which was what caused her to be concerned. There was simply nowhere for them to have gone, so if she had made a wrong turn it would become incredibly difficult to them to be reunited in the dark.

Turning back into the jaws of their pursuers wasn’t an option, so instead she pressed on. If she was lucky she would be able to catch sight of either Trim or Saela as she crossed through the maze of paths, so all she could do was simply head in the same general direction that they had been traveling in and hope for the best. The fact that the maze of dilapidated stone was tightening, however, left her worried. A small tight area like this was most likely where Trim was planning to lose the guards for good, and if she wasn’t there to find it with them she could potentially be left behind.

What she was looking for, however, found her.

Fighting the urge to scream as Saela’s head popped out from behind an old wooden door which was only a couple of meters in front of her, Jade reacted by digging her heels into the dirt. While skidding on her feet down the alley, she hadn’t even come to a stop before Saela reached out and pulled her into the room beyond. It was already so dark inside that Jade had difficulty making out Saela’s features, so she frowned once the door was closed behind them as now she was totally enshrouded in darkness.

“It’s here,” Saela said as she let go of Jade’s arm before stepping away from her. When her soft footsteps scuffled across the dusty stone floor in a direction away from the door, Jade realized that if she didn’t follow her she would end up being just as lost as before. Questions could wait for later, so she silently padded across the room as she followed the sound of Saela’s footsteps.

The air in the room was surprisingly free of dust despite what Jade thought it should have been like, although admittedly she couldn’t see anything right now. She was listening carefully to see if Saela would step around anything that she might trip on, but it seemed that she was simply making her way across the room in a straight line. Apart from the sound of their footsteps, all she could hear right now was the occasional yelling from the Royal Guard, sometimes it was closer and sometimes it was further away. It did seem to be coming from all around them though, so if this wasn’t in fact the final part of their exit strategy she would quickly become concerned.

The scuffling on the floor in front of her was replaced by the creaking of timber, and Jade immediately wondered why someone would bother with wooden floorboards in such an impoverished area of the town. She was imagining how people would pull them up to be used for more practical reasons, but her attention focused when she realized that instead of moving away from her, the creaking noise from the timber was moving upwards. She initially thought that there must have been a staircase in front of her, but very soon she realized that the noise was coming from right above her. At that moment, her hands which she had been fanning out in front of her touched the answer to her question.

When she gripped onto the rough rungs of the ladder she had come across, the gentle swaying motion from Saela climbing above her was passed through to her hands. She frowned with a hint of pain when she herself began climbing as both her aching legs and injured shoulder protested along with her bloody hands, but she clamped her teeth shut with a grunt as she hauled herself up the rungs which she soon lost count of.

“Surprised you’re still with us,” Saela said casually with a blank expression on her face once Jade had eventually reached the top of the ladder.

Jade ignored the bait as she hauled herself up onto the landing before realizing that she could make out Saela’s expression. Lit by the moonlight that poured in from an open window that looked out over some of the smaller buildings in the district, she found that they were in a small room which was only around three by three meters. A single wooden chair sat by the opening, although it was currently empty.

“Trim?”

“Out,” Saela replied as she nodded towards the window before walking over to it. After stepping out over the sill, she quickly disappeared off to the side without saying another word.

Jade followed her out to find that she was standing on a flat stone area that was only slightly larger than the room she had been in. Ignoring the temptation to look down, she instead took a glance at the gentle glow which was creeping across the horizon before she followed Saela around the corner platform. Once she had made it to the opposite side from the window, she saw that there was a thin wooden plank placed between where they stood and the building across from them.

Jade wasn’t bad with heights considering what they did for a living, but a poorly maintained piece of wood which hung three storeys above a dirt road didn’t particularly appeal to her. Saela didn’t seem to mind though as she skipped across the plank, so Jade had no choice but to both reluctantly and carefully follow her.

Surely they were close.