The place was silent.

Our first few steps over the threshold were all I could hear, swiftly followed by the loud metal clunking of the door behind us. Then, nothing. I almost wanted to notice an alarm wailing in the distance, or pounding footsteps headed in our direction. At least that would give us some kind of indication about what was coming. Here, we were totally in the dark.

With the exception of the BioNeutral launch party, I'd not set foot in City Hall, but it had always seemed the kind of place that would be constantly buzzing with activity. This was where the capital, and by extension the country, was run. Dull moments were surely redundant, even in the network of deserted corridors interlinking above and below the main rooms.

And yet in that moment, for all the noise to be heard, Jace and I could've been the only people left on the planet.

"This way."

Perhaps he was thinking along the same lines – his words barely came louder than a whisper, though I needed nothing more amongst the silence. This was the place he'd no doubt spent countless hours, the labyrinth of corridors already mapped in his mind, and yet the way his eyes darted from wall to wall seemed to suggest striking unfamiliarity.

I said nothing as I followed his steps down the hall, keeping up the urgent pace with minimal disturbance. Every placement of my feet felt like a wrong move, with the very real risk of a bomb tearing through the floor, but for the sake of progress we had no choice. With what felt like the world closing in on us, there was more danger in staying put.

As we kept on, the corridors got narrower, and following Jace deeper into the building only seemed to remove what little light we'd been relying on in the first place. The walls were dotted with emergency bulbs, but they were doing precious little to tackle the darkness that lingered around every corner. Was this part of a security feature, or was I just imagining the way I could barely see three feet ahead? When every step felt like heading deeper into a maze that I'd never escape from, I didn't feel in a position to tell.

"Do you know what we're looking for?"

The question came out louder than expected, and part of me wanted to reach out and snatch the words back, like this would clear the air of an unintended giveaway. But Jace didn't even look back.

"I've got an idea," he said. "An idea of how my father likes to guard his secrets, at least."

Part of me wanted to ask more, but it was at this moment that Jace's footsteps appeared to slow, and I found myself coming to a natural halt in front of a wooden door. Unlike many of the others, it was unlabelled – but its inconspicuous appearance ended with the electronic silver keypad bolted above the handle. Its screen was blank, but I had a suspicion that getting inside would involve something a little more than Jace's security code.

"If we're going to find anything worth knowing," he said, "it's going to be in here."

"What is it?"

Jace looked at me, and I wished I could read the expression behind his thick glasses. "I don't know," he said, after a slight pause. "But it's something my dad definitely doesn't want me to find out."

Without the distraction of moving, my head was swimming again. My instinct was to steady myself on the wall, but touching anything around here felt like a fatal mistake. Instead, I tried to focus on Jace as he stepped closer to the keypad, hoping there was enough blood left in my head to keep me conscious for a little while longer.

He tried a six-digit code, pausing for a couple of seconds, his face remaining totally stoic when nothing happened. Then came a second code, and an even longer pause – accompanied by his determined rattling of the handle. But the door wouldn't budge. It was like something had sealed it off, and that something wasn't going to give way to any of the subsequent string of numbers that Jace tried.

He must've tried at least fifteen different combinations before he finally gripped the handle, shaking it with all the strength he could muster. "Come on," he muttered, panicked frustration underlining each word. "One of those has to have done something."

"It's like it's completely dead," I said. "Like it's... sealed itself, or something. I'm not sure any code is going to make it budge."

Jace gave the handle another insistent rattle, but I could tell he'd resigned himself to the fact that we weren't going to get in so easily. He pressed his forehead against the wooden door, eyes closed as if submerging himself in thought. "A security setting," he said eventually, in a voice so quiet I had to wonder whether I was even supposed to hear. "They must've triggered something, down in the panic room. Something that seals all the doors."

"Like a lockdown?"

"Yeah," he said, and the defeat in his voice had my heart sinking. We were only getting started, and already it seemed like it was all over. "It must be built into the system. It's overridden everything."

"There must be another way," I said, but we both knew my words were little more than wishful thinking. I just couldn't take the threat of failure, pressing in on both of us from all angles. There was barely enough room to breathe as it was. "We'll force our way in. What if we broke the door down?"

I spun on the spot, looking for anything that we could use for physical force, but the corridor was empty for as far as I could see. The door looked wooden, but I was willing to bet it was reinforced with something stronger – and I highly doubted mine and Jace's combined strength would be enough to shift it. Physically, at least, we were at a loss.

I looked back at him, if only out of sheer desperation to find some kind of optimism written across his features. Our eyes met, and I found myself wondering if his heart was pounding at the same unnatural rate, if only to make sure there wasn't something seriously wrong with me. I could no longer feel the blood seeping down my face, which had to be a good sign – but there hadn't exactly been the opportunity to stop for a full medical assessment.

Then, something flickered in Jace's expression.

"Your blood."

I was convinced I'd misheard, which was incredibly likely with such a loud roaring in my ears. "What?"

I could almost see the words on the tip of his tongue, but he seemed to stop himself, swallowing over whatever had been about to come tumbling out of his mouth. "Okay," he said instead, and I wondered what he seemed to be steeling himself for. "What I'm about to propose could well be the worst decision of my life. And I know that. But... right now, I'm not sure we have a lot of other options."

The look on his face was slightly terrifying, and yet I couldn't seem to drag my eyes away. "What are you talking about?"

"There's another setting," he said quickly, the words coming much faster now. "I remember my dad talking about it last time they updated security. If there's a lockdown, there's another option to override the system. Blood. It can take blood, and with a match for one of the high-ranking officials... it'll grant access."

His spark was undeniable, and for a brief moment the hope ignited somewhere inside me. "And that'll work on you?"

"Well, no..." he said. "Not me. My dad, maybe, but my security clearance isn't anywhere near high enough. And that's not what I had in mind.

He stopped there, and my eyes swept over the lines of his face if only to fill the gap. There was too much to take in. Thoughts were racing through my mind in time to my pounding heart, each one lingering barely long enough to register. I looked at the strand of dark brown hair, an escapee from its usual neat style, flopping over his forehead. The lines, carved by stress, belonging on a man twenty years his senior. The scarlet swipe – my blood – streaked across his cheek.

My blood.

Modified blood.

Suddenly, his idea hit me.

"What will it do?" I asked, barely able to bring myself to get the words out. Even having them barrel into the open air felt like some kind of commitment, like there was no going back. "What happens if it detects... modification?"

"I don't know." Disappointment swept over me like the tide; a flicker of optimism had vanished as quickly as it had appeared. "I've never seen it tested. But to make an educated guess... it might trigger something else."

"And that's supposed to be a good thing?"

"Potentially." He reached up, running a shaky hand through his hair. "Look, I know this is going to be dangerous. Maybe it's a bigger risk than we should be taking right now. But I think maybe modification will flip the security switch, trigger its own kind of alarm. All we need is it to reset the system, and if there's any kind of time gap between the two... we might be able to punch the code in."

"Jace," I breathed, struggling to keep up with his sense of urgency. The words out of his mouth were coming at a million miles an hour, and I wasn't convinced he'd fully come to terms with the consequences of his proposal. He was getting caught up in the chaos of everything, and I had to dig my heels in if I didn't want to get carried along with him. "I don't know about this. There's so much that could go wrong... and it's only going to buy us a few minutes, tops."

"I know," he said, "but a few minutes has got to be better than no minutes, right?"

For a moment, I just looked at him. There was just something about the look on his face that wouldn't let me drag my eyes away. And it was in that moment I realised it: the danger really was everywhere. It wasn't just pressing in on every side, squeezing the air from my lungs like somebody was wringing them out. It was etched into every line of his features, carved right into the pores of his skin, glistening in the blood on his cheek. It wasn't just the situation that could ruin us: we were capable of doing that to each other.

And if Jace was danger, I was a catastrophe.

"Okay," I said, with more resignation than intended. "How do we do this?"

He didn't say anything – instead, he just moved closer, raising one hand that soon found itself before my face. The first touch was gentle, and yet still made my breath catch in my throat, startled by the sudden contact in such a tense situation. He turned my head gently to the side, and I felt a stab of pain as his hand brushed against the wound that had since dulled to a forgotten ache.

I hissed in pain, and Jace flinched, like he'd been the one to feel it. "Sorry," he breathed, his face so close I almost feel each word in the air against my skin. Then, he drew back, and the dab of scarlet on the tip of his finger had my heart pounding again. I watched in the moment that followed as it trickled down, the bead sliding across his skin and leaving a smooth red trail in its wake.

Then, without leaving me time to realise what was happening, he'd turned toward the door and pressed his finger against the keypad.

This time, there was no delay. The alarm sounded immediately, and the shrill ringing split across the corridor like a glass wall shattering. Maybe one had shattered. It certainly felt like everything I know was raining down in sharp fragments, slicing new wounds into my skin to accompany those I already had. My vision came in snapshots – I threw one glance over my shoulder at the empty corridor before one of Jace's combinations worked, and suddenly we were in.

The door gave way to a small square room, lined on every wall by stacks of filing cabinets, the perimeter broken only by the triple-screen computer setup in the back corner. Jace made a beeline for it, but for me this seemed pointless – there was no getting past any of City Hall's electronic barriers with only an outsider's knowledge. Perhaps some of the more technologically-minded kids at KHA would've had better luck, but computers had never been my area of expertise.

And yet the physical files were overwhelming. There must've been hundreds of drawers, stacked beside and on top of each other, no doubt each concealing a mountain of information. And what were we looking for? A neon sign pointing us in the right direction, complete with Nova and Eden's names? Stood here, surrounded on all sides by a wealth of information the government was trying to hide, our naivety seemed suddenly ridiculous.

We were running out of time. I had not an inkling about where to begin, but I could almost hear the seconds ticking away, each one punctuated by another wail of the ear-splitting alarm. Whether we'd drawn attention or not was no longer a question; it was now just a countdown. Be it an hour, a minute, or a few seconds – someone was coming for us.

But where to start? With a lurch forward, my hands gripped metal, and only a fleeting thought stopped to wonder why it felt like I'd collided with pure ice. The lock glistened before me. Physical force wouldn't push far enough, and I felt suddenly stupid for thinking the door to the room would be our biggest barrier. These files were locked away, and no amount of clever coding would substitute for the key's glove-like fit. There was more chance of the alarm's soundwaves shifting the metal than my hands.

There were labels – but they were tiny, and the handwritten black marks looked like they were trying to attract as little attention as possible. The tiny K flickered in my vision, and once I'd noticed this the others seemed to light up like sparks. I moved one to the right... L – some kind of distinction at last. My heart leapt for the briefest of moments, and I almost had to steady myself against the cabinet labelled O as my legs wobbled beneath me.

Oxford. Nova Oxford. If she was anywhere, it had to be here.

But once again, my naivety brought everything crashing down. The beacon of hope flickered out as quickly as it had ignited. Of course it was locked – they all were. And our time, like the final few grains of an upturned hourglass, was trickling away.

"Jace!" I yelled, wishing the panic didn't come across a thousand times worse outside my head. "It's locked. All of it's locked. I can't get to anything."

I don't know what I was expecting – perhaps a magic solution, the free pass he always seemed to give me? And yet when he glanced over his shoulder, our desperate gazes meeting somewhere in the middle of the room, the expression on his face filled me with more dread than reassurance.

"I can't get in either," he said. "The system's shut down. I don't know what to do. I thought maybe something would reset, and I could get in through a loophole... but nothing seems to give."

"Someone's going to come for us," I breathed, though it hardly needed saying aloud. "We have to get something."

"I know." His eyes flickered toward the door, then back to me. The screen behind him was flashing on and off, and I could see the square of light reflected in the corner of his glasses, like the imminent reminder needed to be a little more personal. "We need to abandon the computer. We've got no hope of anything electronic – the lockdown's refusing to give. But there's got to be something here... it can't all be sealed. Whatever we can get our hands on, it's our best shot."

We were clutching at straws, and I couldn't help but think the same thing was running through Jace's mind. Every file here was locked, which told us anything worth getting our hands on was just not an option. And we should've known. Both of us had been stupid, deluded by the prospect of figuring out what had happened to Nova, to Eden... and yet all our actions had done was throw us right into the firing line of government trouble. There was no coming back from this. Once caught – which had become an inevitability – it was all over.

And yet I stumbled to the other side of the room anyway, clawing at the drawers of each cabinet in the hope of finding a loose lock or discarded key.

Last chances were just that. Still a chance.

Metal clanked loudly as I tugged at drawer after drawer, and the cacophony only intensified when Jace started doing the same thing behind me. The noise was deafening, but with the alarm still wailing ahead, it wasn't like silence had ever been an option. Nothing would budge, no matter how hard I tried – they were all locked. If we were to take anything away from this, it seemed to be that the government's security was anything but lax.

Then, suddenly, something happened. My fingers slipped under the metal handle of a drawer, and the movement met a different kind of resistance. It moved no more than an inch toward me, hitting some kind of obstruction that prevented it from going further. Like something was caught. Like it was unlocked.

I was about to tug harder, but a distant noise made both of us freeze. Footsteps down the corridor were unmistakable, and seemed to bring with them a sense of dread that blanketed everything else. Our time, finally, had run out.

And yet a burst of urgent determination suddenly ripped through me. I yanked the drawer as hard as I could, and the metal came loose just in time to send it springing towards me. Files were packed in to the brim, wedged so closely it didn't seem like I could pull any free quick enough. But then my attention caught – on something peeking slightly over the top, a corner that hadn't quite been slid back into place. Before I could consider anything too deeply, I yanked at the file, and suddenly confidential government information was in my hands.

"Astrid!" Jace's voice, full of panicked urgency, should've turned my head. But I'd been drawn too deep into what I was holding, and even the imminent threat of being caught couldn't drag me back.

My fingers trembled as I opened the file, and the first sheet of crisp white paper caught my gaze.

It was mostly empty, a few words comprising some kind of introduction or title page. But that was all it took to send my heart plummeting.

Kristopher Holland Academy, it read, in bold letters.

And then, a date – ten days from now.

A warning.

"Astrid!" This time, a hand landed on my shoulder, and the sudden contact almost had me jumping out of my skin. Jace had moved closer, his words now strangled and frantic in my ear. "There's no time. You need to get out of here."

There was no denying it, of course – the footsteps down the corridor were getting louder, coupled with the sound of menacing voices. The worst case scenario was closing in on us, and we only had seconds to spare. Dropping the file was the last thing I wanted to do, but I no longer had a choice. Within seconds, Jace had forced the document from my hands and slipped it back into the drawer, slamming it closed. "You need to go."

"What do you mean, me?" I asked. "We need to go."

Hands landed back on my shoulder, and I suddenly found myself being steered towards the opposite wall – towards the room's only window. "No," he said. "You're going."

"I'm not—"

"There's no time to argue," he said. "One of us can get out. And that's going to be you."

"But I'm not going without you—"

"Yes, you are." Somehow, it came as a command, and as he started yanking at the latch on the window I realised there was no room for debate. "Look, don't worry about me. I can talk myself out of it, okay? Now get out."

In any other situation, I would've protested – but the voices from the corridor were mere metres away, and I felt fresh air caress my skin as the window latch came free. We were stationed on the ground floor, so there'd barely be a jump – and dropping to the ground was hardly more dangerous than all that we'd already done. The thought occurred to me just as my limbs started moving of their own accord, and I started hitching myself up onto the sill.

Crouched before the gap, I glanced over my shoulder, my eyes locking with Jace's for a frozen second.

"Are you—"

"I'll be fine," he answered, before I could even finish the question. "Now go."

I had no way to know if he was convinced. His poker face remained an impenetrable mask, and yet somehow still managed to bring back that pang in the centre of my chest. I was leaving him here. I was making my escape, letting him bear the brunt of whatever was to come.

What kind of person did that make me?

"It's for our own good," he said, leaving me half-wondering if he'd read my mind. "This is the only way."

There wasn't time to work out exactly what that meant. All of a sudden, the door behind us burst open, and every instinct in my body pushed me forward in the same moment. My feet left the sill, and I dropped through the air, feeling the wind rush against my skin and drag tangles through my hair.

The noise lasted for just a few moments, before my feet hit the ground.

Time to start running.

-----------------

Hi, everyone! I'm really really sorry that this has taken so long. I started writing this chapter about a month ago, but with mounting uni work and busy weekends, I didn't have time to finish it. However, I handed my (5000+ word) coursework in today and was left with a free afternoon so I decided to sit down and finish this for you guys. Hope it was worth the wait!

I really wish I could do NaNoWriMo this month, but the stress of 50,000 words on top of everything else I have to do might actually kill me. I think I'm going to have to settle for cheering everybody on from the sidelines.

Also, on another note, tickets for Wattpad LonCon 2016 are now available! I'm going to be there, as well as tons of other Wattpadders, so if you're anywhere near London on December 3rd, you should definitely check it out. Tickets are free and I'll put the event in the external link.

Until next time, guys! Thanks again for being so patient.

- Leigh