Ruq was right.

There was only so much of her blood that Anette had harvested from that underground clinic to turn into dead blood. And by now, Sleritu must have wised up on what was happening, Hadley not bothering to hide smearing her friends' weapons with her blood.

Her blood's secret was in the open and that made her more of a target than any name and legacy ever would!

"I see the Hybrid!" someone shouted before an arrow hit Ruq on the side of her thigh, just above her right knee.

Hadley watched in horror as Ruq buckled and fell to her knees, her face twisted in agony as she pulled out the arrow. Hadley knew what her blood could do. And now she was witnessing just how much worse it was as dead blood!

"For fuck's sake! I said don't kill the hybrid!" Anette yelled. "You fucking moron!"

"And that's Hadley with her!" the Scavenger who shot the arrow yelled.

"Run," Ruq pleaded with Hadley, blue and green rings thickening around her irises. "Please!"

Hadley realised why! There were a lot more vampires suddenly pouring into the clearing to confront the Scavengers! Sleritu's army must have found a way to call for help! Hadley smiled when she heard Anette's frustrated yells behind her at the arrival of the new vampires.

But that wasn't the only thing Hadley heard behind her.

"I'm not going to let you get away that easy! Not after killing my Apollo and his brothers!" the words were uttered in a loud snarl.

Hadley groaned.

Apollo's master was chasing after her! She had a significant head start, but it wouldn't be nearly enough!

Hadley ran harder and faster than she ever had. If the vampire caught her, she would fight and maybe even kill him when he inevitably tried to bite her, but that would slow her down and Anette would then get a chance to capture her. Or Sleritu. She couldn't decide who between the two would be worse. However, Hadley didn't know where she was going as she ran through barely visible game trails, and she could feel herself burning out. She was already exhausted from all the fighting and was functioning on pure adrenaline at this point. That wouldn't last long.

Someone suddenly sped past her.

"This way!" it was Kade.

Relieved, Hadley followed him, forcing her feet to push past oblivion.

"There's a waterfall up ahead! At the edge, jump!" Kade yelled.

"What?" Hadley called out. He wasn't serious!

"Don't think! Just jump!"

Kade inched further forward. Hadley heard the vampire getting closer. There was no way she was winning this race – he must have been drained, close to being blood-starved. She didn't dare look behind to confirm this though. Kade suddenly disappeared ahead. Hadley committed, pushed as hard as she could, raced to the edge of rocks past the trees and jumped!

The vampire's fingertips scraped her forearm just as she launched herself into the unknown.

The fall was long enough to give Hadley time to chastise herself on how insane it was to have blindly leapt from dozens of feet up. She slammed into the water below, quashing every single thought in her mind and breath in her lungs. Her feet almost instantly touched the riverbed, and she quickly bent her knees to keep them from exploding out of their sockets. Thankfully, the water was deep enough to have killed most of the momentum of her jump. She pushed herself up from the riverbed, gasping a lungful of air when she resurfaced, and then tread water as she got her bearings. But when she looked up, she saw Apollo's master sneering at her.

Hadley's stomach dropped because she knew exactly what was coming next.

He jumped in after her.

Then the strangest thing happened.

A patch of clouds moved, a ray of sunshine hit the vampire and he burst into flames mid-jump.

Ashes rained into the water.

"Hadley! Hadley!"

She turned to Kade calling her name. He was out of the water, motioning for her to join him.

"The current's too strong!" he was yelling over the sound of the waterfall and following her downstream, hobbling on an injured leg. "You need to get out of there!"

It was only then that Hadley realised the water around her was swiftly pushing her forward, spurred on by rapids and eddies. The river was forcing itself down her throat. She struggled to stay afloat and breathe! It took some work, but she finally found a way to steer herself out of the rushing river and onto the shore, much to Kade's relief. He pulled her further out of the water as best as his limp would let him. She was completely shattered by exhaustion at that point, coughing up half the river from her lungs. They both collapsed on the shore of rocks and tried to catch their breath.

"Are you okay?" Kade breathed, carefully reaching for her.

"A little bruised and banged up," Hadley replied between gasps and still coughing up water. "But I'll live."

Kade looked back at the waterfall.

"Did you see that? Did you see what just happened? He just... I'd heard rumours, but never believed any of it." He said, a touch hysterically.

"Rumours?" Hadley was also trying to wrap her mind around what she'd just witnessed.

"The Shield is failing!" Kade exclaimed. "After two and a half centuries, it's finally breaking down. The sun is coming back in all its glory!"

Hadley was too exhausted to ask him any more questions. She kept her eyes glued to the waterfall, warily watching for movement. For more vampires. Or vampire dogs. Or Scavengers. But everything stayed the same. They were alone. At least for the moment.

Kade kept talking.

"Some of the Tribes have been talking about finding spots where the vegetation was thicker and healthier and where animals were drawn to in the thousands," he explained as he took off his T-shirt and tore strands from it. "One tribe supposedly even settled in one of these patches, free from the fear of vampires because of the natural UV protection. They were the first to be attacked by the Scavengers, which eventually forced them back to The Caves."

He began to wrap his right ankle with the strands of cloth.

"You okay?" Hadley asked.

"I twisted my ankle when I jumped." Kade replied, trying not to wince as he wrapped his foot.

Hadley sat up, shuffled closer to him, and took over the wrapping after examining his foot.

"It's a decent sprain, but it should be fine in a few days if you don't move it too much and if we find a way to keep the swelling down." Hadley said.

Kade got up and tested his wrapped foot. "We need to leave, in case anyone else follows after us."

"You need to rest your foot." Hadley insisted.

Kade pinned her with a serious look. "I just watched vampires and vampire dogs bite you and die, Hadley, and I have killed vampire dogs with one strike because my sword was dripping with your blood. I've never seen anything like it. Add that to the fact that all those bumps and bruises that you mentioned before are almost fully healed right now... well, the fact is that you're human, but you can regenerate, and you have blood that kills vampires. That's not something we can let anyone else have access to! Not the Wildlings, the Scavengers, or the vampires. And, by the way, keep all that knowledge from anyone else we meet, from here on end. Especially on the floating city."

Hadley wore a grave look on her face. "You sound just like Ruq."

"I'm serious, Hadley! Every single one of those people back there are dangerous, and we don't know who we're about to meet on that ship," Kade said. "But if I know humans, no one will be above experimenting on you. And if they found out that you're pregnant? Your child would be in danger too. You will never know peace."

"Okay! Enough!" Hadley said. "I get it."

She helped support his weight as they navigated the rocky shore along the river.

"It doesn't change the fact that you'll mess up your foot even more if you don't take the time to rest." Hadley stubbornly added, even as she helped him along.

"Time is something we don't have," Kade replied. "The boat is meant to come in summer – that's all the information we have. No exact date. We're almost halfway through summer, and now it'll take us at least five days to walk to the pickup point thanks to this stupid injury. We can't miss that boat, Hadley. Now more than ever."

Hadley turned once to look behind them.

"Do you think the others are okay?" Hadley asked Kade.

They walked a few steps before he answered.

"I know that we're okay," he said.

"But..."

"Stay in the moment. Enjoy the little wins, Hadley," he hopped over to a couple of large, flat stones next to the river. The flat stones would be easier to navigate in his condition than the pebbly shore. "You can't worry about the things you can't know or control. It's the only way to survive with your sanity out here."

They walked for most of the day, but Hadley eventually stopped them because she saw just how much it was hurting Kade.

"That's it," Hadley said. "We're taking a break."

"Okay," Kade replied.

Hadley had been preparing a rebuttal to his resistance. Instead, he walked away from her, hopping over to a spot shaded by a small alcove of stones and the skeleton of some sort of watercraft from centuries ago, embedded in the stone. He must have been in much more pain than she thought to agree to a break so fast.

"We'll need a fire and some food," Hadley said. She looked around. It was a good place to rest for the night. "Will you be okay there as I get everything ready?"

Kade looked up at her, his eyes falling to her baby bump. "Will you?"

Hadley scoffed. This was getting old. "Kade, I'm pregnant, not maimed."

It took many armfuls of driftwood and umpteen tries at rubbing sticks to start a fire. As she fed kindling to the little spark she'd started, Hadley was incredibly grateful for instantly healing blisters. After several hours of discussing the design of a good fish trap to set in a gentler, slower section of the river, the two were enjoying the fiery orange sky of a sunset hidden behind the steep gorge walls while the scent of fish grilling on blistering hot river stones wafted around them. A chorus of croaking frogs and toads, the crackling of the fire, the sizzling of the cooking fish, the whisper of a light breeze passing by, and the gentle soughs of the river mixed in with the distant white noise of the waterfall and rapids several meters upstream lulled them both into a relaxed, sleepy state that was welcome after the day they'd just had.

"This is nice," Hadley whispered, poking at the fire with a piece of driftwood.

"River rocks don't make for a good bed roll," Kade said with a little laugh as he tried to get comfortable while lying on his back.

"Try there. There's more sand," Hadley said, pointing with her smouldering driftwood at a sandier section of the shore.

They meant to leave the next day. But the weather was perfect, they had a fire going, enough fuel from driftwood and a seemingly endless supply of fish. The cold river water also helped with Kade's sprained ankle, and he said it felt good to move his foot around in this slow part of the river. Hadley approved of the hydrotherapy, and they eventually decided to stay on for another day.

Then another.

They spent most of their time trapping fish, using his hunting knife to sharpen spears out of driftwood, and swimming in a small lagoon they'd found a few meters downstream from their camp. Kade even roped Hadley into a "spear fishing lesson", where she quickly learnt that he was worse at it than she was, even though she'd never tried it before. Most of the lesson was him fighting the fish and slipping on rocks, tripping over, and taking her down with him. She'd complain, but it was between fits of laughter. They didn't spear a single fish, which made them value their fish trap a little more, but they did find a ton of crawfish, which apparently warranted celebration around their fire in silly songs and dances.

But the levity was a front.

More than once Hadley and Kade would find themselves alone at separate ends of the camp, processing their losses, usually with silent sobs. Images of that last fight would play through Hadley's mind and, as if to hone her grief and sadness to a razor's age, her imagination would add gory images of Jamila – whom she'd lost sight of amid the chaos – being shot by an errant Scavenger's arrow or her throat being ripped out by Sleritu or a vampire dog pinning her down and crunching her skull.

However, Jamila had escaped death more than once, and Hadley held on to the hope that she had yet again.

There was no hope to hold on to when it came to Ruqwik.

Hadley was there when Ruq got hit by the arrow of her dead blood, so the vampire's death scene came easier. Burning trails of acid etching outwards from the injury site to the vampire's heart and mind, her eyes glazing over, her lungs grabbing for that last breath, her limbs seizing before she dropped to the ground, still. Dead. Hadley had seen it happen to the other vampires touched by the arrows. Not a single one of them survived Hadley's dead blood.

That she hadn't been there for Ruqwik's last breath hurt almost as much as losing her.

"Stay and save your friends or run and save the world."

Why did saving the world have to mean destroying Hadley's?

Despite the urgency to get to the waystation further downstream and board The Boat, there was unspoken consensus between them both that they weren't in the right headspace to leave yet. They needed this time to breathe.

To breathe and mourn.

On the upside of a downward spiral, Hadley felt more at peace than she had for a long time. Here, in the middle of nowhere, lost to everyone and everything, and having lost everyone and everything, she was surprised to find herself. For Hadley, freedom had always meant leaving the Compound, joining the Wildlings, and roaming the vast forests without walls hemming her in. But sitting alongside this slow river, unburdened of everything she'd spent years worrying about and fussing over, she was free in a way she had never thought possible.

Here, she was and wasn't Hadley. Here, she could keep only the parts of her that mattered and let everything else go. Here, she definitely wasn't Hadley Fisher, because Hadley Fisher only existed to those who thought it should, and Hadley wasn't one of them. Here, she didn't hold the key to a vampire's sanity and the safety of an Enclave that housed thousands.

Here, she was truly free.

They stayed at that camp for three days. They would have stayed longer, but the weather turned rotten. Thick grey clouds blotted out the sky, and the rain didn't even give them the courtesy of starting as a drizzle. It was like a tub's drain plug had been pulled out! There was no shelter good enough, no protection from the wind, no getting away from it! And without their supplies, what they were wearing wasn't nearly warm enough to ward off the freezing cold.

The river began to swell, climbing up the shore and hemming them against the gorge's steep walls. Swathes of blanketing rain curtailed their visibility to less than a step or so ahead, and that, coupled with slippery rocks and Kade's healing ankle, made their task to get out of there as fast as possible a foolhardy quest, but they kept at it.

The rain rolled over to the next day and the day after that, its intensity ebbing and flowing. Every so often they would huddle together to rest their sore muscles after hours of scrambling and falling and climbing and falling and swimming and crawling along the river's shore as best as they could. Even though snuggling barely warmed them up, Hadley appreciated being held. Kade was strong and he was thoughtful and fun and caring and full of life and worked to keep her spirits up. She was grateful to have him there with her.

They got to the end of the gorge three days later – wet, tired, hungry, and absolutely miserable – but nothing could have prepared them for what they found.

"Holy shit!" Kade whispered.

Even in the light of a dull, grey, drizzly morning, the estuary was beyond incredible. If anything, the shimmering, watery sunrise bathed the scene in a dreamlike halo. The gorge's river widened, turning into a vast expanse of marshy land. The gorge's walls at the edges of the expansive marshlands stopped abruptly as these massive, impossibly steep cliffsides.

Drizzling rain drops fell over the estuary like sparkling diamonds, blindingly bright, but that couldn't hide the most impressive feature of the landscape yet. The extensive marshland drained into a body of water much larger than Hadley had ever imagined could exist. The water swallowed the earth all the way past the horizon, where the white shimmery rising sun struggled to shine past wispy clouds.

"Is that the ocean?" Hadley asked, her words coming out in staccato as she shivered.

"Yeah. It's... it's so..." Kade tried for words but quit trying after a while and just let out a long, steady breath.

"Yeah," Hadley whispered in agreement.

Hadley couldn't take her eyes away from the ethereal sight.

"Hey! Look!" Kade suddenly called out.

It was the urgency in his tone that pulled Hadley's attention from the awe-inspiring natural wonder of the ocean before them.

Kade was pointing to a space across the marshlands. Hadley's eyes widened when her gaze finally fell on the structure built into the gorge opposite from them. The building started several meters above the gorge's surface and into the gorge, partially splitting the cliffside. It looked like two silver knives without hilts were cutting into the earth. The silver grey "blades" were embedded halfway into the mountain, the curved edges pointing to the sky and the spines parallel to the ground. Between the flat sides of the "blades", connecting them to each other, was a giant cube of flawless glass held in place by a steel frame that extended outwards past the cliff walls, meaning that part of the humongous cuboid glass structure was hanging in mid-air.

"What is that?" Hadley questioned. A violent shiver wracked her body. It was bitingly cold. Normally, her changed blood would keep her temperature even, but they hadn't eaten in days, and she was realising that, without food to fuel it, her blood's abilities were a lot less efficient.

"That, Hadley, is The Lodge!" Kade said, grinning from ear to ear. He whooped and hollered and broke into a little happy jig. "That's the waypoint. It's where we wait for The Boat."

It took them a while to safely cross the river so they could make their way to The Lodge, pushed forward by the promise of reprieve from the elements and exhaustion. Finally, after making it through the marshes – ending up painted head to toe in smelly muck and partially frozen – and dragging themselves up one hundred and seventy one steps to the structure's main door, a giant mahogany square etched from edge to edge with a mesmerising geometric pattern. They pushed at the door.

It didn't budge.

So, they pulled at the door.

It didn't budge!

They pounded and kicked the door, screaming at the top of their lungs to be let in.

Nothing!

Asthey slid to the ground against the door, cold, muddy, and exhausted beyondwords, a loud crack of thunder heralded their failure, capping it off with a freshwave of torrential rain. Defeated, they huddled against the door and tried notto die from the cold and misery.