Catching the Hero

Chapter Eighteen: Inferno

“What’s wrong?” Ryder’s voice echoed to me.

I pulled it off the wall, running my fingers over the smooth surface. “It’s my mask. I lost it today during the fall.”

“So whoever did this had your mask?”

I nodded and fell into step beside him. “I guess. I don’t know how else they would’ve gotten it.”

He reached his hand out, and I laid the mask in his palm. He looked at it for a second before asking, “Are you sure this is the one you lost today?”

I squinted at him, wondering what he was getting at. “I only have two. This has to be it.”

“Unless someone made a copy of it.”

“And why would they do that?”

He was silent for a moment as we walked. “They might not want you to look for it. If they gave you a fake, you may not have thought twice about it, and they would have your mask to do whatever they wanted.”

“It’s a bit far-fetched, don’t you think?”

“Fallon, our villains are completely far-fetched. Do you have a way of knowing if this is yours?”

“Check the bottom left corner of the left eye. There should be an indent.”

As he looked at it, he shot me a glance out of the corner of his eye. “What from?”

“A training accident when I was nineteen,” I said. “I went through a window and the glass cut the corner of my eye.”

He surprised me by letting out a chuckle, and turned humored eyes on me. “That sounds like you. Anyway, it’s real. The indent’s there.”

He handed it back to me and faced forward again. For the next few hours, we made idle conversation as we jogged through the underground tunnel, and though I knew we still had over ten miles to go, I found myself enjoying the company.

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“This is it.”

The narrow entrance to the Center was in front of us, the metal doors the only barricade between the tunnel and the familiar Data Room. Of course, that was going to be a problem: getting inside without ripping it apart.

“I could always melt them,” I offered sarcastically.

Ryder chuckled. “I don’t think that would go over well with SkyRaider.”

I smiled at the thought of my father and returned his laugh. “So what do you suggest?”

“Let’s just see if they open first.”

He stepped forward and probed at the door, and suddenly, thankfully, the door parted down the middle and the Data Room came into view. I sighed in relief and practically ran inside, completely happy to be out of the monotone tunnels, and instead of heading toward the entrance, I walked to the Healing Room in search of the large sofa. It had to be nearly seven in the morning, after the hours-long run, and I was completely, extremely too exhausted to go home right now. It seemed Ryder had the same thought process as he followed me into the room and nearly collapsed on one side of the long sectional sofa, leaving me the other half. I barely mumbled a word to him as I lay down and fell asleep.

Hours later, a gentle tap on my shoulder roused me from subconsciousness.

Ignoring it, I rolled over, expecting to come into contact with one of my many pillows, but instead hit a warm torso sitting beside me. I sat up quickly, my mind going blank and spinning dizzily for a moment, and pressed a hand to be forehead to rub my temples before opening my eyes. Ryder sat beside me, eye-catching smirk in place at my slumberous state. I groaned and slouched back slightly.