And their footsteps faded down the hall in the opposite direction. A door slammed shut, and silence fell once more. I let out my breath in a rush and collapsed against the wall.

Waaaaay too close, Cobalt. Still a lucky SOB. Now get out of here, before that bomb goes off…

Shit. The bomb.

I started to move, to hurry back into the shadows and make a beeline for the gate as quietly as I could, hoping to somehow avoid both the soldiers and the deadly explosion minutes from going off.

Then…I hesitated. In the middle of a St. George chapterhouse, surrounded by enemies who would kill me on sight, with my seconds rapidly ticking away, I hesitated, unable to make myself take another step. If I left now, if I finished the mission and walked away, everyone on this floor would die.

Including that kid. Madison, the girl I’d met for only a couple minutes, would die. She was human, she was part of St. George, but she wasn’t a soldier. And without even knowing it, she had saved my life.

I raked my hands through my hair. So, what are you going to do, Cobalt? Not complete the mission? Go back to Talon and admit you failed? You know they won’t accept that.

No, they wouldn’t. So that left me with exactly three options. Return to Talon having failed the mission. Accept their punishment, whatever it was, knowing they would never trust me again, knowing they would consider me tainted and incompetent and somehow corrupted. Talon had little use for dragons who failed; my future with the organization was assured only if I continued to be valuable. It was career suicide, but I could kill the bomb, return to Talon and face the consequences of my decision, whatever they might be.

Or, I could finish what I came here to do: leave the bomb and get out, knowing more people would die. Knowing that kid would burn to death like everyone around her, because she had let me go. And I might never sleep again without seeing her face, staring up at me from my dreams.

Then, of course, there was the final option.

My chest felt tight, my stomach twisting into painful knots. Everything, it seemed, had come down to this moment. Run, or stay? Continue with the organization, or take my chances on my own? Hunted. Hated. A traitor to my own kind.

A rogue.

My hands shook, and fear spread through me as I realized the truth. I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t go back to the organization knowing some little kid had died…no, that I’d killed her, and Talon wouldn’t think twice about it. Why should they? She was only human, and human lives meant nothing to dragons. If a few mortals died so that our race was preserved, then the sacrifice was worth it.

But they never had to see the faces of those they destroyed; the sacrifices they spoke of, the consequences of our war, never touched their desks. They had me. I was doing their dirty work for them.

No. No more. That ended right now.

Numbly, I went back into the server room and walked to the place the bomb sat, tiny and ominous, red numbers ticking down. Looking down at it, everything inside me went cold.

2:33

2:32

2:31

Two minutes? What the hell? Even after the conversation with Madison, there was no way that much time had elapsed. Though the reason for it was immediately clear: the timer was moving twice as fast as a normal clock, eating away the seconds at a frightening speed. Even as I stared, they seemed to go faster, until the seconds were nothing but a red blur against the screen. My head spun with the implications. I’d never make it out in time. If I hadn’t come back, I would’ve died with the humans when the building went down.

Horror flooded me. Dropping to my knees, I pulled out my wire cutters and stared at the tangle of wires surrounding the bomb. Red, blue and yellow. My hands shook, and I clamped down on my resolve. If I chose wrong, none of this would matter, except my death would arrive a few seconds earlier than planned.

I clenched my other fist. Without thinking too much about it, I jammed the blades around one of the red wires and, before I could second-guess myself, snapped them shut, severing the line.

The device gave an ominous beep…then stopped. Nothing exploded in a blinding cloud of dragonfire, and my heart started beating again.

Dropping the snips, I ran my hands down my face, everything inside me twisting into knots as the realization of what I’d done—what they had done—hit me full force. Maybe the bomb had malfunctioned, maybe there had been a glitch to make the countdown accelerate like that. But I knew better than to think this had been accidental. Talon had never intended for me to come back.

In a daze, I rose from the tile floor and stumbled toward the exit. Fear clawed at me, dark and crippling. Talon was my whole life; my entire existence had been spent serving the organization. I knew what would happen once they figured out I hadn’t died like I was supposed to. I was fully aware of what they did to those who went rogue. But there was no turning back. This had been coming for a while now. I knew it, my trainer knew it…and Talon had known it, too. My days of spy missions, sabotage and blowing up buildings full of innocent humans were over.

That’s it. I remembered Madison’s face, the way she’d smiled up at me, and my resolve grew. No more. Do you hear that, Chief? I’m done. This is Agent Cobalt, checking out for the last time.

Crossing the room, I opened the door and melted into the shadows. I still had to get free of St. George, but even if I escaped, the organization would have accomplished at least one thing. A Talon operative had died in this building tonight. As of this moment, Agent Cobalt no longer existed.

Ember

My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.