BOOM!

The earth quakes, and I nearly fall on my injured arm. I brace myself against the wall. I glance above me.

The voices in the hall turn to shouts.

BOOM!

The door to my cell opens. A soldier runs in and grabs me, cursing the entire time. I scream as he squeezes my injured arm. Before I consciously decide to hit him, my good arm shoots out and slams into his nose. I hear it crunch, and he cries out, releasing me to clutch at it.

The time for compliance has long since run out. If I don’t want to die in this prison, now’s my chance.

While he’s distracted, I grab his gun from its holster. Flicking off the safety, I cock it and shoot him in the thigh. There’s no hesitation to my actions. No uncertainty.

He howls, falling to his knees. I watch him dispassionately, and my lack of reaction terrifies me.

As he writhes on the ground, another soldier begins to enter my cell. I clench my jaw against the pain in my arm as I lift the gun and fire. The bullet clips him in the shoulder.

Not only can I injure without remorse, I know how and where to shoot a man without killing him.

I shake my head, more than a little curious just what kind of ball-busting broad I was before I lost my memories.

Before the door can click shut, I force my way out, ignoring the burn of my injuries as I step over the man and push my feverish body into action.

BOOM!

My back crashes against the wall. The fluorescent lights flicker.

Out here I hear shouting and the echo of dozens of pounding footsteps. Somewhere in the distance, rounds of gunfire go off.

A uniformed man runs past. Only after he passes me does he pause to glance back. I point my gun at him.

“Keep moving,” I say.

This one is either smarter or less courageous than his comrades because he does.

I need to get out of here before someone decides I’m worth the trouble. I begin to jog, clenching my teeth against the pain in my calf. I hook a right, then a left, following the sounds to their source.

In the chaos, no one I pass stops me, though several of them pause when they recognize my face. The gun in my hand seems to deter them from doing anything more.

BOOM! The screams increase in number and volume.

The lights flicker again. We’re going to lose electricity soon. I welcome the possibility. At the moment, I’m too recognizable.

Ahead of me, people herd into a stairwell and from my vantage point, they seem to be descending the stairs. Most, but not all, wear fatigues. I hesitate. Either escape or shelter is down there, but so are my enemies.

Making a spur-of-the-moment decision, I head into the mass of people, keeping my head ducked.

We shuffle into the stairwell, and the current of bodies tries to drag me down the stairs, but I don’t want to go down. I want to go up.

It’s as I try to extricate myself that I get noticed.

“Hey,” a soldier next to me says, bending to peer at me, “are you … ? Shit, it’s Queen Lazuli,” he says, more to the people around him than to me.

People look over, and the murmurs begin.

“Queen Lazuli.” “It’s the queen!” “Someone grab her!”

I straighten; no use hiding now that my cover’s been blown.

Just as the first hand reaches for me, I raise my good arm in the air, the one holding the gun. I aim it at the bare bulb lighting the stairwell, and then I pull the trigger.

The bulb shatters, and the stairwell goes dark. Around me, the crowd shouts and covers their heads.

“The next one goes in someone’s brain!” I yell over the noise.

People fall away from me like I have the plague.

Pushing myself the rest of the way through the crowd, I head upstairs. No one else tries to stop me, too intent on saving their own lives.

The higher I climb, the more distinct the noises of battle become. I can hear shouted orders and the thump of machine gun fire—the kind that’s mounted to a vehicle rather than a person. It’s louder, you can hear the force of the kickback.

Again, I wonder how I knew that.

I lean heavily on the metal bannister as a series of shivers course through me. My eyes burn. It probably doesn’t matter whether I manage to escape or not. I’m pretty bad off. I give myself another day before my fever takes me completely, and then it’ll be up to Mother Nature to decide my fate.

The next floor is where the noise is loudest. Ground floor. I brace myself for the onslaught of soldiers, readying my gun, but the only people who enter the stairwell carry injured men, and they have no time for me.

I follow the stairs up two more flights to the top. All’s quiet here.

Running on instinct, I slip out.

I understand immediately why no one’s here. Building materials, broken furniture, and a couple bloody limbs litter the ground. The floor outside the stairwell slumps, and less than twenty feet away from me, it’s crumbled away completely. In several places fires sizzle. I welcome the heat against my feverish skin.

The place got firebombed. No wonder nobody’s here.

Beyond the gaping remains of this building, another building smolders across the street, lighting up the dark night. Between the two, I hear more than see the fighting. The air is filled with hazy smoke, and it smells like gunpowder and charred bodies.

Hell has come to earth.

The whine of a jet shakes the building as it swoops by, and I grab a wall for support.

My stomach clenches at the noise, like it knows something I don’t.

It does.

When the explosion hits, the sound consumes me. It shrieks across my skin and as my body’s thrown back, the last thought I have is that out of all the ways I thought I might die, this one’s the most preferable.

I FIGHT AGAINST consciousness. Everything already hurts. I don’t want to face it.

My body doesn’t give me a choice. I moan as I stir.

I’m on fire. I must be.

The fever’s fully set in, and I’m being cooked from the inside out.

I peel my eyes open and lick my chapped lips, tasting soot and plaster on them.

Where am I?

Trash and debris litter the ground I lay on. I remember the mad dash I’d made up here and the sounds of fighting.

All’s silent now.

The rays of early morning light stream in from the gaping hole, and my throat tightens. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen since I can remember.

I crawl to the edge of what remains of the room, where the floor drops away. I lay directly beneath a beam of that early morning light. It touches my skin and all the depravity of this place can’t ruin this moment. I close my eyes as a tear trickles out.