THREE DAYS LATER
Run.
Phei's lungs were on fire, raw and shredded with every desperate gasp. His legs were lead weights soaked in acid, muscles tearing with each pounding step.
Blood poured from a gash above his eye, hot and thick, streaming down his face in sticky rivers that flooded his mouth with the metallic tang of iron when it seeped past his mangled lip—split open like overripe fruit, pulsing fresh crimson with every heartbeat.
Run. Don't stop. Don't think. Just fucking run.
His bare foot—ripped free sometime in that first savage ambush, when they'd hauled him kicking and screaming from the alley, boots smashing into ribs until he broke loose—crashed down on jagged concrete.
Shards of glass and rebar bit into his sole, agony exploding up his leg like a lightning bolt, nearly buckling his knee.
The other foot, still trapped in that one ridiculous high-end sneaker Sierra had teased him about, slipped on loose gravel slick with his own blood.
