Page 188 of Villainous Rise

“Doesn’t really matter. They usually manage to find it every couple of years and it gets relocated,” he said simply.

I glanced back at the door we’d come through. “Should we warn the others?”

Cipher scoffed, the sound echoing as he pulled me down the tunnel.

“They’re my competition, Sparks,” he said, his tone dripping with dismissal. “If they aren’t smart enough to keep eyes and ears on the doors, that’s a them problem. I’m not running a charity.”

I nodded, swallowing the urge to argue. I had to stop projecting normal human morality onto a room full of criminals.

Cipher stopped walking and cocked his head, staring back the way we’d come. He pressed a finger to my lips, silencing the question forming on my tongue. He listened for another second before he scooped me into his arms. One arm hooked securely under my knees, the other wrapped tight around my back as his feet left the ground. The air pressure shifted around us, pressing against my eardrums as he flew us quickly down the tunnel in silence.

We rounded a sharp corner and approached a rusted steel door. Cipher touched down without making a single sound and set me on my feet, keeping his body positioned squarely between me and the corridor behind us.

He pressed his hand flat against the metal door, his head tilting again to listen to the outside. A muscle feathered in his jaw and he cursed, a vicious, breathless sound.

Cipher leaned down, catching my chin in his hand as he brought his mouth to my ear. “Listen to me,” he whispered. “I’m going to open this door and step through. You stay here. You count to ten. No matter what you hear happening on the other side, you do not move until you hit ten. Understood?”

My stomach plummeted. The Alliance patrol had this exit covered too, waiting to see who would be flushed out.

“Then what?” I asked, my voice barely a breath.

“Then you walk out, you turn left, and you disappear into the Maze.”

I nodded once. As much as I wanted him to refrain from fighting an Alliance patrol, I knew that wasn’t an option. It wasn’t like we could just walk out and say sorry, we were just leaving the illegal club, no big deal.

Cipher’s hand slid to the back of my neck, as he pulled me in for a hard kiss.

“You’re a civilian,” he said, breaking the kiss. “We both know that legally, the Alliance can’t touch you. But I don’t want you anywhere near the mess I’m about to make.”

I gripped his chest plate, my knuckles losing their color. “Be careful.”

He gave me a dark, arrogant smile. “I’ll find you in the Maze soon, Sparks. Then we’re leaving.”

Cipher slipped out and the steel door clicked shut, sealing him on the other side. I pressed my spine against the damp brick of the tunnel, my pulse hammering.

One.

“Stand down! By order of the Alliance⁠—”

Two.

The Hero’s command ended in a sickening, wet crunch of armor and bone. An impact shook the wall beside me, followed immediately by the high-pitched whine of a weapon discharging and the sharp smell of ozone bleeding through the doorframe.

Three.

The sounds of violence shifted, moving rapidly down the exterior alleyway as Cipher dragged the fight away from my exit route. I gripped the fabric of my dress, my knuckles aching. Every instinct screamed at me to crack the door and peek, to make sure he wasn’t outnumbered, but I held my ground.

Four. Five. Six. Seven.

Cipher’s brain operated on a level of predictive calculus that bordered on precognition. He had already run the numbers. If he told me to wait exactly ten seconds and turn left, it was because that specific sequence of actions was the only branch of probability that guaranteed my safety. Deviating meant throwing a wrench into his math, and I wasn’t going to be the variable that got him caught.

Eight. Nine. Ten.

I shoved the door open and bolted.

I took a sharp left and the alley dumped me straight into the sensory assault of the Neon Maze. Strobing magenta and electric blue lights washed over me in blinding waves. Holographic advertisements glitched in the thick, artificial fog, casting fractured shadows across the crowded walkways. I kept my head down, weaving through a group of tourists and a street performer.

I ducked into a narrow, twisting corridor lined with dead neon tubes, putting three more turns between me and the main thoroughfare. The shifting architecture of the Maze was a nightmare to navigate, but right now, its chaotic layout was my best shield.