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Prologue

 PROLOGUE

Panting, I shoved the door open, ignoring the pain that shot up my arm. I spilled into the dark night, catching myself on the rough pavement.

I cant let myself get caught.

Gritting my teeth, I pushed myself up from the ground. The gravel scrapped my feet, but it was the least of the current pain I was experiencing. I needed to get away.

I forced my tired legs to move. The ally was dark, but a single light shone from the end of the alley. I jerked toward it. It was freedom, it was showing me my way out of this.

Surely if there was a street there would be people.

Head spinning, I broke into a run. Cold air seemed to rip at my exposed skin, the smell of the ally increasing. It was disgusting, but amazing. It meant I was free.

But I needed to get out of here before they caught me.

I staggered, my foot suddenly in a cold puddle. My shoulder hit the edge of a dumpster, and I cried out in pain as it jostled my shoulder.

I heard the door open behind me, and men's voices shouting after me.

Heart beating in fear I started again, the exit of the alley so close, I was so close to freedom I could taste it. I kept my gaze fixated on the light as I ran again.

"Stop!" the man yelled, the sound bouncing off the alley walls.

So close...

Muscles screaming in protest I forced myself to run faster, ignoring the pain of gravel, glass that I stepped in. I rather be cut then dead.

A loud bang echoed around me, and something whizzed past me milliseconds later.

Ducking, I kept going as three more shots exploded around me.

The breaths felt like shards of glass in my chest, blackness creating in the sides of my vision. But the rough, uneven ground turned into smooth concrete as I burst from the alley and onto the street.

I turned to the right, but a man was suddenly there, jumping out of an unmarked white van onto the concrete in front of me.

Panic and fear was like a pit of acid in my stomach. I couldn't let them take me again.

"Get away from me!" the fear triggered the old familiar burn in the pit of my stomach, the words packed with a power that must be obeyed as I screamed the words.

The male bodies around me went flying, almost like there was an invisible string yanking them like marionettes.

Pain bust in my brain, and blood resumed running out of my nose. I turned in the opposite direction and ran.

The night sky was pitch black, the street bare. Agony wracked every single part of my body, but as I forced my body to run.

The busy street was there.

It meant people.

It meant freedom.