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Scarlet shoved herself off the wall, but Ran was there first, hisone hand beneath her back so that her head fell heavily onto the hard floor

Like a starved aniht down his first kill, Ran leaned over and clamped his jaws over Michelle’s neck

Scarlet screaht of blood and Ran crouched on all fours

Her grandmother’s accusation echoed back to her They’ve turned you all into monsters

Still in shock, she forced her face away and rolled onto her side Her sto inside her but bile and saliva She tasted iron and acid and blood and realized she’d bitten her tongue when Ran had thrown her at the wall, but there was no pain Only hollowness and horror and a dark cloud creeping over her

She was not here This was not happening

Sto to push up food that wasn’t there, she crawled toward the far wall, putting as randht fro

Run

Lifting her head, she could see the start of a stairwell at the end of the hallway Beside it, a painted sign long since faded TO STAGE

Run

Her brain struggled to find the rand forward, she wrapped her fingers around the bars of the cell and used the to pull herself up To stand To push forward, into the hallway, into the light

Her legs felt nonexistent at first as she hobbled to the bottoth in them She pushed forward She ran

A closed door loomed at the top of the stairs, an old wooden door not even equipped with an ID scanner It creaked when she shoved it open

Then footsteps below, coe Old pillars stood clustered together to her right and a maze of fake stone walls and painted trees filled the shadows to her left The door sla a wrought-iron candelabra

She lifted it in both hands and waited, feet braced

Ran burst through the door, chin covered in blood

Scarlet swung as hard as she could A roar renched out of her as the iron bar collided with Ran’s skull

He cried out and stumbled back into the curtain He tripped on the fabric and fell backward

Scarlet thrust the candelabra at hiain She heard fabric ripping, but she was already gone, dodging between the set pieces, scanning the creaking wooden floorboards as she lunged over coiled dusty power cords and toppled spotlights She stue, the empty expanse of wooden floorboards and trapdoors, and half ju a jolt of pain that burned across her knee, she shoved the music stands aside and bolted into the auditoriue behind her Inhumanly fast

The rows of empty chairs flashed by and all she could see was the door loorabbed her hood

She let hi around and aiered

Scarlet darted through the cru marble arches, past the cherubs with their broken arms, past the shattered chandeliers and broken tile floors She flen the e doors that would lead to the street If only she could get out of there Into public Into the real world

As she hit the lobby floor, the silhouette of another manher in the square of pale sunlight fro, she ran for the other staircase, the stairs that went back down to the depths of the opera house

Above, a door sla and she couldn’t tell if it was one set of footsteps or two

Sweat coated the back of her shirt Her legs ached, her burst of adrenaline fading

She rounded a corner and barreled into darkness The uests of the opera house and a series of doors and hallways led to every corner of the sublevel Scarlet knew the halls to the right would take her back to the prison cells, so she veered left A drained fountain basin filled the space between the two stairways that led to the upper level The bronze statue of a half-dressed ered in an alcove atop a pedestal, one of the few statues that seelect

Scarlet ran for the opposite staircase, wondering if going back up to the lobby would be suicide--and yet knowing that to be trapped down here was no alternative

She reached the bottoe of the fountain She sturound

Fingernails dug into her shoulder, flipping her onto her back amid the tiny broken tiles of the dry basin She peered up into his glowing eyes, the eyes of a e at the street fight

Fear claripped her shirt and lifted her frorabbed his wrists, but was too petrified to fight as he brought her face toward his Scarlet nearly gagged on the stench of his breath, like rotten randht take advantage of you here, now that we’re all alone," he said, and Scarlet shuddered "Just to see the look on my brother’s face when I told him about it" With a roar, he threw her at the statue

Her back collided with the bronze pedestal and pain exploded through her head, knocking the wind fro to draw air back into her lungs