The Tower

A fist closed the mouth as it yelled and Jade burst into the clearing as his brother toppled backward, his hands moving dumbly in the air, one holding tightly to a few loose strands of straw. He saw the panic in his brother's eyes as he reeled backward and heard the crack as his head struck one of the jagged stones framing the site, and heard a grunt-a low grunt, like an animal's-and then that was all, and he knew he had lost him. Then he was a whirlwind of knees and fists and elbows and he had lost his hat on the ground and he didn't even know what was moving his body, but when he reached his brother there were four boys lying around him coughing blood and whimpering.

Jade ducked and dodged reflexively, his eyes straining in the faint light to spot broken branches and trampled bushes. He rounded a tree at full speed and a jagged limb caught him across the left cheek, slicing along the line of his scar. Once again, he felt the hot blood oozing down his cheek.

His focus on the path ahead was so intense that the cut barely registered. He came to a clearing and halted, unsure in which direction to continue. In the dim glow, he spotted a broken branch, and he sprinted past it, back on course.

The boys were clutching their legs and stomachs, and tears streamed down their bruised faces. The boy who was Jade knelt down in the clearing and looked into the blank eyes of his brother. He felt the hole across the back of his head when he put his hand there to hold him against his chest, and as he sat with his dead brother under the brilliant sun, he felt the blood spreading stickily through his clothes and across his stomach.

Eenie meenie minie moe.

Jade pounded through the brush. He felt exhausted, but also somehow purged. It had finally come flooding through him, and he realized for the first time that his brother's panicked cries had long ago blended with the cries of other victims. Though Jade couldn't save them all, he had spent his life making sure that they didn't die on his shift, on his time.

Fear had propelled him, whipping him: What if you're not there, Jade? What if you can't stop another life from slipping away? He had to oversee all things dark and dreadful-he had to reign over it all. Fear was his bedmate and his lover. Fear was his anger and his hatred. Fear was the burden he had carried ever since childhood, just as it was Allander's.

He felt as if he was stirring from sleep, lost in the aftermath of a dream. A few lingering cries still rang in his ears. He heard them behind him now, and he picked up his pace, feeling adrenaline pumping again and thinking of Claude Rivers and the guard ahead. He was sprinting so fast he couldn't really see where he was going.

Bursting into a small clearing, Jade whirled around, searching for signs of Allander's path, desperately trying to remember in which direction the Tower waited. It was silent here except for the noise of his own labored breathing.

He sensed that the ridge he was running was parallel to the Maingate entrance. He looked at the trees ahead, then turned and faced down the slope. From his angle, it looked almost impossibly steep. The creek running below wasn't moving very fast, but it looked rocky. He glanced back up along the ridge, and suddenly realized he had to change direction.

"The quickest distance," he said in a low, growling voice as he stepped off the ridge.

He tried to keep his feet ahead of his torso as the slope carried his body to a full sprint, but about halfway down, his shoulders passed his center of gravity and he tumbled over, hurtling out of control down to the river below. The thick weeds that ran along the creek slowed his fall before he crashed into the icy water, but since he couldn't see it coming, he gasped at the shock. He pulled himself up, feeling heavy in his wet clothes, and sloshed through the creek to the other side. The pain of a thousand different bruises stung him, but as far as he could tell, he hadn't sustained a serious injury. It took him a few steps before he could feel his legs under him again, and then he ran into the forest, leaving the creek and the ridge behind.

Twenty feet later, he broke through the trees, and the steel gates of Maingate lay open before him. He saw a shadow flash, deep within the prison. He had been right-after all the struggle, Allander had returned to his starting point.

Jade sprinted through the gates.

Allander threw the bag of supplies in the speedboat, untied the rope mooring it to the dock, and revved the motor, edging the boat out into the turbulent water. As he pulled away, the rope slid from the dock to the water, where it trailed the boat like a slippery eel.

Loud, hammering footsteps sounded on the dock, and as Allander turned to look, he saw a shadowed figure take flight after the boat. He screamed and jerked the throttle all the way down.