I don’t wait for more details. I wake up Nari.

“What are you - “

“Get up.” I roughly grip her arm and pull her out of bed. She tries to rip herself away from me, but I won’t budge.

She stops squirming when she sees the knife. “What’s going on?”

“Stay with me and do what I say.” I cautiously peek into the hallway. The man has left. “We need to get you out of here.”

“What happened?”

“The Capital has been infiltrated. I have to keep you safe.”

“This is already a safe place.”

Angry, I slam her against the wall. She gasps at the impact. “If this were a safe place,” I mutter, “You wouldn’t need me.” I can see the panic in her sleepy eyes. I step back. “I need you to prepare for the worst case scenario. Do you have any weapons with you? Supplies?”

“Why would I have a weapon?”

I take one of the vases from her table and throw it to the ground. I pick up a long, broken shard. She gingerly takes it from me. “Stay behind me.”

I look into the hallway again. A knife whistles through the air and lands into one of the Capital’s own. Behind him, more fighters spill from the darkness. On the other side, figures that move as if they were creatures of dusk raid the hallway. I shut the door.

The Nights are here.

I stride to the window and push aside the curtains. We’d break a leg if we were to jump. “Is that door the only way out?”

“Yes.”

“Who designed this room?” I check the walls and the floors for any passages that even Nari might be unaware of, but she’s correct; that door is the only way to go in and out of her bedroom. “Are you sure you don’t have any weapons?” I only have one knife, and it isn’t very sharp.

“Well … “

“What?”

She holds the broken part of the vase with both hands. Her palms are bleeding. “I have something.”

“Where?”

Nari switches the jagged porcelain to her left hand and climbs onto the desk below her window. Her hand explores the mantle above it until she claims the hidden weapon. “Here.” She shows the knife to me hilt first. I don’t have time to look at it or ask her where she got it, because the shouting that had sounded distant is now right outside her room.

“Keep it,” I change my mind. “That’s better than a vase.” A body slams against the door and shakes the framing. I push Nari behind me and watch the door. “We need to get out of here, Nari. So I need you to listen.” I take Nari’s hand. She doesn’t object.  “When I – “

“Tao!”

I wait. It’s my practice partner.

“Tao. If you’re still in there, listen to me. You need to take her to a safe place. You need to stay there. Are you listening?”

I’m listening.

“Do not leave the building. You need to stay in the Capital.” I hear a grunt, and then a blunt crash. “We’re going to open this door.” I hear a shriek. “Are you ready?”

He opens the door before I can answer. Keeping Nari behind me, I burst through the door and straight into a snarl of focus and intent. A few Nights have abandoned their knives and are fighting the Capital’s own with their empty hands. It’s a peculiar thing to witness. The Nights are losing.

“Go!” My partner yells. I redirect a knife from digging into my shoulder, and then I turn. As I run, I see Han fighting with one of the Capital’s own. He’s the only one without blood on his face. He gives me the shortest of nods, and I know that the Nights haven’t failed yet.

“Out,” he mouths, and then his knife meets his enemy’s heart.

“Come on.” I force Nari to match my speed as I think about the contradicting commands I’ve been given. Han would know what the Capital expects me to do. He would have prepared for every scenario. The Nights losing is probably not part of his plan, but getting me out of the Capital in a way that won’t seem questionable is something he would have prepared to orchestrate beforehand. For now, I’ll take Nari to a safe place.

The Nights attack me as they should, but they do it in a way that the only infliction they receive is a bruise or a cut. I deal them nothing fatal, but I overstate my movements to prove to Nari that my actions are sacrificial. It’s procedure. I need to ground the Capital’s beliefs of me before I reveal that I was never theirs.

“The basement,” Nari says. “That’s the only place I can think of where it’s safe.”

“Can we get out?”

“There’s a tunnel. Nobody outside knows about it.”

I grit my teeth when a knife skins my right ear. “Tell me where it is.”

“Turn right. Take the stairs, and there’s a door on the left. That’ll lead to the basement.”

I swerve to the right. Because of the blood, Nari’s hand almost slips away from mine. I hold it tighter. “We’ll get that taken care of as soon as this is over.”

“Tao?”

“What?”

“Thank you.”

I close my heart to the guilt that’s roaming inside of me. “Let’s get you out of here.”

While keeping my eyes on possible danger, I turn right and stay attentive to Nari’s instructions. She stumbles over the body of a fallen Capital fighter. I pull her up, and we keep running until we reach the door at the bottom of the stairs.

I unlock the bolt and shove open the heavy door. It’s dark, enclosed, and dank. Nari closes the door, and any sliver of light we had is eliminated.

She sits down. I sit down beside her and feel the way her body trembles when we touch. She’s afraid, and I, a stranger, am her only source of security. Despite knowing this, the only fact I can think of is that the last time I have ever been so close to a female was when Ada and I were both running from the same problem. That sense of desperation was much like what I feel today. Except at this hour, I am the problem, and Nari doesn’t know it.

“So we stay here until it’s all over.” She in a wobbly breath. “Don’t you feel worthless?”

“Not at all. I’m here, and I’m with you.”

“But you should be out there!” she says. “You’re worth so much more than to stay here and be with someone like me.”

“That’s why I’m here. Because I’m worth so much more than to be out there.”

I’ve made her laugh, at least. I can hear the nerves in her voice when she says, “You’re so cocky.”

“I prefer the term ‘honest’.”

I can hear the noise of fighting even in this low floor. Han is going to cause a situation where Nari and I are forced to leave the Capital. I need to wait for his signal.

“I want to fight, too.”

She confesses it so quietly that I almost lose her words before I have the chance to catch them. I answer, “Then fight.”

A sudden onset of people rampaging outside of our door causes us to stand in alarm. Curious, I open the door to check on our circumstance. More of the Capital’s own have approached the Nights from behind and stand with their backs toward us. In front of them, Nights who have been fighting since the beginning of the raid are sneering with their bumptious attitudes. Leading them is Han, who is staring straight at me.

“Out,” he mouths once more, and then the Nights attack. I slink back into the basement. Blindly, I search for Nari’s hand.

“We can’t stay here, Nari. We need to leave.”

“But he said – “

“I know what my partner said, all right?” I almost shout. “Our position has been compromised. If you don’t trust me, then take a look for yourself.” Even without Han’s bidding, leaving the Capital would be the logical reason. We’ve been cornered to make such a decision.

“No. I trust you. I do.”

“Then show me the way out.”

“We have to keep walking a while. We’ll make it out, but it’s going to be far from the Capital.”

“We can make it back. Just keep moving.”

We feel our way around in the gloom. Our hands scrape against jagged stones, and our shoulders tighten between narrow walls. The farther we go, the less I hear of the battle occurring within the Capital. I focus on dependable sounds such as the echoing ring of our footsteps and our shallow breaths. When five, twenty, forty minutes have passed of nonstop running, we crash into a door we were unable to see.

“I don’t know how to open this,” Nari says. “I can’t see – “

I find the latch and pull it aside. Frighteningly bright light pours into the tunnel and stings our eyes. Disheveled and exhausted, we break out of the basement and into an area of the country I do not recognize. All around us are trees so tall that they could caress the sun. Behind me, the Capital walls seem shorter and weaker in comparison to the forest.

As soon as Nari closes the door, it’s as if the tunnel was never there. It blends in so perfectly with the outdoors that if I hadn’t just come out from it, I would not have known it was there. It rivals the camouflage we practice at the Nights’ base.

“What now?” Nari asks. I fix my knife back to my boot.

“We wait.”