Mara ran toward the roof.
I followed, my boots skidding on concrete slick with blood and glass and things I didn't want to identify.
"Mara!"
She didn't stop. Her feet moved with impossible precision, finding purchase where there shouldn't have been any, her body adjusting to gravity with an avian grace that was becoming less human by the second. She reached the stairwell and didn't use the stairs. She climbed the wall. Her fingers caught the edge of a railing. Her body swung upward, muscles contracting in ways that shouldn't have been possible, and she landed on the next floor with a soft thud.
I stared, my breath ragged, my heart hammering.
Mara stared back, equally shocked. "I don't know how I did that."
Another gunshot cracked behind us, the bullet sparking off the wall where my head had been. We kept running.
The roof door burst open. Wind slammed into us, cold and carrying the smell of smoke and burning wood and dying hope. Haven was on fire below us, the settlement dying in real time, flames licking up the walls of the concrete bunker like hungry tongues. Mara stepped toward the edge. The drop was four stories to hard, unforgiving ground.
I grabbed her arm, my fingers digging into her shoulder. "Don't."
She looked down. "It's not that far."
"It's four stories."
"I know."
She stepped onto the ledge. Concrete crumbled beneath her boot, tumbling down to the ground below. I tightened my grip, feeling her bone beneath my fingers, feeling the strange heat of her skin even through my gloves.
"Mara."
She looked at me. Her eyes were different now—darker, the pupils adjusting to light in a way that was no longer human. Something black moved beneath the skin of her neck, a ripple, a wave. "I can make it."
"You're not a bird."
She smiled sadly, the expression breaking my heart because it was goodbye. "I don't think I am anymore."
Then she jumped.
My heart stopped. Literally skipped a beat, the black substance surging in panic, trying to force a transformation I didn't ask for.
Mara fell. Five meters. Four. Three—
Something black flashed across her back. Not wings. Not yet. But something moved beneath her skin, something structural, something that had been waiting for this exact moment, this exact need.
Her body twisted in midair, spine bending at an impossible angle, limbs adjusting like a cat's, and she hit the ground hard. Rolled. Stood. Uninjured.
I stared down at her from the roof's edge. She looked up, brushing dust from her clothes, her hair wild, her eyes bright with a terror that was equal parts exhilaration and horror.
"I think I'm getting better at this," she said.
I slowly removed my ruined gloves. Then put on another pair from my coat pocket, my hands trembling. "We need to leave."
"Agreed."
Behind us, the roof door opened. Voss stepped through, her rifle raised, her face calm despite the chaos. I smiled. The claws returned, pushing through the fresh leather like it was paper.