There was no time to process it. The force of the impact swept me off my feet, and I flew backwards – my back slamming into the human wall behind me.

Smoke filled the air. It was impossible to see, to feel, to breathe. All I could make out was the blazing heat, and a piercing pain slicing through one side of my face.

For the first few seconds, the explosion had brought silence, but it didn't take long for the crowd to find their voices once more. Screams of panic cut through the air, as painful as a knife dragging through an open wound. Behind each one lay pure, unadulterated fear – and that was something none of us needed to share.

I'd been forced to the ground by the impact, but I managed to pull myself up, head twisting in an effort to gain some sense of direction. My hands were sore from being trampled on, and the splitting pain in my head was getting worse – but this was neither the time nor place to think about injuries. My sole focus was getting out of the danger zone before anything else happened.

Bombs were coordinated. There could be more coming.

Panic was tangible throughout the square, and the force of hundreds of others slammed against me, all desperately trying to scramble for an exit. I could hardly find the space to breathe. With smoke spreading around us, it seemed like air was limited, and we were all fighting for what little oxygen remained.

Then came the next explosion.

This one was further away, somewhere across the square – but the ripples of intensifying panic reached me in no time. Plumes of smoke filled the air, and a new round of screaming turned the noise into some kind of twisted chorus.

This wasn't a single person. This was an organised attack, crafted to hit as many people as possible.

And I was right in the centre of it.

I turned to move, but somebody shoved into my side, and I was sent off balance all over again. There was barely room on the ground to place my feet. Everywhere I looked, there was blood – dripping down faces, splattered onto green T-shirts, coating the street like a sinister paint job. Just the sight of it made my head spin – or was that the heat, the smoke, the fear? Everything had blurred into one, and all I could do was try to hold onto my own consciousness.

I have to get out of here.

The thought arrived in my head with startling urgency, forcing me into motion. Most people were trying to push back the way we'd come, back onto the City Walk – but I couldn't get carried with them. Who knew how many more bombs were planted among us, ready to blow the next group of people to smithereens?

I glanced toward the edge of the square, back at the armed officers – but the chaos had disoriented them too, and I could see them struggling to find a target. How were they supposed to attack when the next explosion could come from any one of the thousands of people? They were trapped in the same boat as everybody else.

In that split second, I made my decision. Forcing myself against the movement of the crowd, I elbowed sideways, slamming against every other person trying to escape. It was slow going, but I could get closer to the edge that way – and a quieter side street was all I needed to stand a chance of making it out alive.

Someone's elbow collided with my head, and another round of splitting pain went through it, but I ignored it as best I could in an effort to keep moving. I was half-aware of the bleeding, and the sensation of warm liquid creeping down my face, but there wasn't time to dwell on it. I had other priorities – like not dying.

Then, suddenly, I was there. A space opened up in front of me, and I squeezed through the edge of the crowd, hauling myself over the metal railings that fenced us all in. The security officers were too distracted to notice, let alone stop me.

Once over, the free space before me was almost overwhelming – it felt like I hadn't seen so much empty ground in years. I stepped forward, but the movement was clumsy, like my feet had forgotten how to move more than a couple of inches at once. A twist in my ankle almost had me crashing to the floor again, but my hand grabbed the edge of a building in time, and I just about managed to remain standing.

I moved as fast as I could, but it didn't take long for my lungs to start burning in protest. The air was clearer here, and yet the effects of the smoke still lingered. It was difficult to ignore the urge to double over and succumb to the coughing. Something was writhing within me, burning from the inside out – and in the middle of the street, I fell to my knees, abdominal muscles clenching to force out the toxins.

I had to keep moving. Staying in one spot was like keeping myself in the open, sitting and waiting for whatever else was headed. And what if bombs were only the beginning? What if they were just a ploy to create mass panic, to stream a crowd of thousands into the firing line of something worse?

I needed to pull myself up, to stumble through the streets as best I could. Even slow progress was better than none at all. However, it was harder than anticipated to break through the smoke-induced haze, to stop coughing long enough to take a breath of air. My legs dragged against concrete as I tried to get up, but the pain was insignificant compared to everything else. Seconds later, one foot landed flat on the floor, and after a moment's struggle I was standing once more.

The street was empty. I could see nobody around – and yet I hadn't escaped the noise of commotion from the surrounding area. Panicked screams intermingled with subsequent explosions – or was that just my imagination? With blood pounding in my ears, I could barely distinguish between reality and the products of twisted fear.

I gripped the wall tighter, using every ounce of effort to keep my head upright and focus on the street ahead. If I stayed still, the earth didn't topple quite so violently – and I actually stood a chance of working out where I was.

A sign sat a few paces ahead. I squinted my watering eyes in an excruciating effort to make out the words – Bridge End Street. Disappointment broke through in the place of recognition; it wasn't a name that brought anything useful to mind. I was only sure of the fact this was central New London – and even that was because I wasn't physically capable of staggering far from City Hall.

City Hall. All of a sudden, Jace's image flashed through my mind. Where was he now? There was no telling who was responsible for the bombs – at this point, how could anybody say with certainty that there weren't more within the walls of the government, ready to tear it apart from the inside?

Then, suddenly, something grabbed me from behind. I tried to cling to the wall, but the force overpowered me easily, and I was wrenched backward with momentum that threatened to topple me over. The protest caught in my dry throat, where the attempted words felt no more forgiving than toxic smoke.

"Astrid!"

I recognised the voice. It put an instant halt to my struggle, and my weight fell against the arms that gripped me, the vice-like hold no longer so threatening. It was Jace.

"What are you—"

"There's no time," he said quickly, barely able to get the words out through heaving breaths. "Are you okay?"

His gaze caught on the side of my head. A gentle movement had my neck tilting to one side, and I felt him move closer, fingers brushing against some kind of wound. "Have you lost a lot of blood?"

"What?"

"You're bleeding," he said. "Are you okay?"

"I don't know," I stammered, trying not to panic. "I think so."

"We need to go."

"Go where?" I asked, as he tugged at my arm. "What's going on?"

"We're under attack," he explained, and the urgency of his movement finally had me stumbling forward. "From BioPlus."

"No." The word came tumbling out like an instinct, an association that my brain couldn't seem to make. "There must have been some kind of mistake. It can't be BioPlus. They wouldn't do this."

"Well, they have," Jace told me, voice laced with a certainty that didn't seem up for contradiction. "And this is coordinated – it seems like it's been planned for a while. We don't know much right now. You just need to come with me."

"But where are we going?" Despite the swelling urgency, I couldn't seem to stem the flow of questions. I could barely think straight, and my stumbling steps following Jace's lead were almost totally blind. I had no reason to trust him – he could've been leading me right into the source of the danger, spinning me the story that'd get me there – and yet something kept me moving anyway. "How did you find me?"

"I could see you on the security cameras, before the explosion happened," he said, yanking me down a side street with another abrupt turn. His tight grip on my hand was one of the only things keeping me steady. "I was keeping an eye on your movement for the plan. But then the bomb went off... and I watched you go this way."

"And you came to find me."

"I grabbed an opportunity," he said, and I found myself wishing he'd turn to face me, if only so I could read his expression. "My dad and everybody else went down to the panic room. It was only luck that I managed to slip out through a side exit. I'm supposed to be there with them."

"Where are we going?"

"We're making the plan happen." He paused, and when I didn't say anything to fill the gap, seemed to take this as his cue to elaborate. "The whole point of doing this during the rally was because security would be lax, and we stood a better chance of getting in. If anything, that's more likely right now."

"We're going back to City Hall?"

"Yeah," he said. We'd reached the end of a small alleyway, where the buildings on either side gave way to an unnerving amount of open space. Jace paused, and I stopped behind him, resting my back against the wall for support. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Fine," I said, letting my eyes flutter closed for a second. "Just a little dizzy."

"You're injured." He'd turned to look at me more closely now, and I could see the concern written all over his face. "Maybe we shouldn't be doing this. We need to get you some help."

"I'm fine," I told him, more insistently this time. "It's just a little blood."

"It looks like a lot of blood." Once again, his eyes were scanning the side of my face, and I reached up to brush my fingers against the skin. They drew back coated in fresh red liquid, and I had to force down the nausea threatening to come up from my stomach. "It could be serious."

"I said, I'm fine." The note of finality in my voice seemed to halt any of his further protests. "Has anybody checked City Hall?"

The couple of seconds' silence before Jace spoke made the answer clear enough. "Not exactly," he said. "The high-profile security went down to the panic room too. There wasn't really a lot of time to think."

"Jace," I said, still struggling to catch my breath, "are you sure this is what we should be doing? If BioPlus really are behind this, it's a very real possibility that there could be devices planted all over a government building. That's who they'd want to target, right? And we'd be the ones walking right in and setting them off."

"I know," he said. "I really do know. This may well be the stupidest idea possible, and I can't even guarantee we'd make it out alive. There could be bombs all over the place – but there's no way of checking. And once this is over, security's only going to get tighter. The chances of us getting what we need are going to get even slimmer. You want to find Nova and Eden, don't you?"

The sudden demand of an answer caught me off guard, and I blinked in the face of his expectancy. "Yeah," I said. "Of course I do."

"Then we have to do this," he finished, and perhaps it was the way my head was still swimming with panic, but the note of finality in his voice really made it sound like there was no other option. "We knew it was going to be dangerous, didn't we? But if it leads us to finding them... it's got to be worth it."

"Okay," I breathed. "Okay. You're right. So how do we get in?"

"I unlocked one of the side exits on my way out," he said. "That's got to be our best bet. Everything else will have been sealed automatically by the panic button."

"And if we can't get in that way?"

He'd started surveying the street ahead, checking the coast was clear, but turned to shoot me a look I couldn't quite read. "Then we cross that bridge when we come to it," he said. "We haven't got time to think ahead. Come on, let's move."

Seconds later, his hand slipped into mine, and he was tugging gently but insistently forward. We emerged together from the alley, the sudden arrival of open space somehow coming as a terrifying relief. The noise of panic had grown fainter, which had to mean it was further behind us – but I knew better than to count my blessings when the danger was still unthinkable. Our feet pounded the concrete, though it was taking unnecessary concentration to make sure my steps fell in a straight line. If I made it to the building without passing out it could only be considered a success.

Were we almost there? The streets twisting around us formed the city I'd known for eighteen years, and yet as brickwork and concrete flashed past, I couldn't make sense of anything. Even places bombs hadn't touched seemed to have been reduced to rubble, the foundations of everything familiar crumbling around me. BioPlus had done this. The organisation I'd put my faith in from birth, purely through the nature of my existence. They'd set explosives in a crowd of thousands, like destroying lives was the way to get across their agenda.

And if that were true, how did it make them any different from BioNeutral?

"It's through here. We're almost there."

Jace's voice pulled me from my thoughts, which was perhaps a blessing in its own right. I looked up, and sure enough, the angled roof of City Hall had come into view just a couple of streets away. We'd looped back around to the side of the building, closer to the source of the chaos, and yet the noise levels had dropped eerily once more. The screams and general panic had echoed through the centre of the city just ten minutes ago, but now I could no longer hear a thing. In this kind of world, I couldn't take silence as a good sign.

"What happened?" I asked, struck by the compulsion to keep my voice down. "Where is everyone?"

Jace was rooted to the spot, and in the silence I heard him swallow. "I don't know," he said, after a pause that lasted slightly too long. "Perhaps it's better not to think about it too much."

We kept moving, though our pace slowed considerably now our footsteps sounded so much louder. Just being in such close proximity to City Hall felt dangerous. This was the ultimate target, and placing my feet anywhere near felt like a risk I couldn't afford to take. One wrong move and both of us could go up in smoke – but since this thought was particularly hard to stomach, I was doing all I could to push it from my mind.

Then, finally, we were there. The door Jace had been referring to was situated round the back of the building: a metal window carved out of the main structure, fastened by three heavy bolts. Only one was slid across, and once Jace moved forward, it only took a couple of seconds' adjustment to move it out of place.

A grip of the handle, and the door was open.

We were in.

Jace paused, as if mulling over what we were about to do, and then turned to me. At some point, he must've touched his face, because there was a smear of blood down his left cheek. The poster boy for human nature, tainted by a single swipe of genetic engineering. In any other situation, it might've been ironic.

"Well," he said, as his eyes locked onto mine, "are you ready?"

I expected the word to catch in my throat, which still felt like sandpaper, but instead it emerged with a surprising undertone of confidence.

"Yeah." I moved forward, closing the last few paces of distance, until the both of us were stood before the open door. "I am."

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Hi everyone! I am so, so sorry this has taken so long. I've had a bit of a crazy summer, combined with writer's block, and other projects that I'm supposed to be working on... and this happens. I'm so sorry. You really shouldn't have been waiting this long, but you're incredibly patient!

I'm back at uni now for my third year so things are going to continue to be hectic, but I really do want to continue working on this story, so I'm going to try my best. I guess we'll just have to see how it goes!

As always, drop me a comment to let me know what you thought. You're the best readers in the world!

- Leigh