The Canary Who Learned To Fly

Seraphina Vitiello POV

Several weeks later.

The convoy was finally moving.

I was seated in the third SUV. The "suicide seat."

It was the car they put the decoys in. Or the expendable assets.

Dante and Isabella were in the lead armored vehicle. My parents secured the second.

We were heading to the airport.

My exile was finally happening.

I stared out the window at the unforgiving grey Chicago sky.

My back was still healing, a constant ache beneath my clothes. My leg, though no longer in a cast, throbbed with every bump in the road, a dull reminder of the fracture. I walked with a slight limp, a physical manifestation of the scars they had given me.

I hadn't spoken a word since the basement.

The driver, a low-level soldier named Rocco, looked at me in the rearview mirror.

"You okay back there?" he asked, his brow furrowed. "You look pale."

I didn't answer.

I just watched the overpass approaching.

I saw the flash an instant before I heard the sound.

An RPG.

It hit the lead car.

The explosion shook the ground beneath us.

Our driver slammed on the brakes.

The SUV swerved, tires screaming against the pavement.

Another explosion hit the asphalt directly in front of us.

The car flipped.

Glass shattered into a million diamonds. Metal groaned like a dying beast.

The world spun.

We rolled once. Twice.

We landed upside down.

I was hanging by my seatbelt, gravity dragging at my injured body.

My head was pounding. Blood dripped warm and thick into my eyes.

I looked to the front. Rocco was dead. His neck was broken at an unnatural angle.

I tried to unbuckle, but the mechanism was jammed.

Gunfire erupted outside.

A chaotic symphony of bullets.

I saw boots on the pavement through the haze.

Then I saw Dante.

He had dragged Isabella out of the burning lead car.

His face was covered in soot.

He was carrying her, shielding her body with his own.

He was running towards the backup vehicle that had pulled up alongside the wreckage.

He ran past my window.

He looked in.

He saw me.

For a heartbeat, time suspended.

Our eyes met through the spiderwebbed glass.

I saw the cold calculation in his eyes.

He had Isabella. She was the asset. She was the future.

I was the spare.

He didn't stop.

He didn't even try to open my door.

He kept running.

He shoved Isabella into the backup car and jumped in after her.

The car sped away, leaving me behind.

I watched his taillights fade into the smoke.

He left me to die.

Again.

Smoke began to fill the cabin.

I smelled gas.

This is it, I thought.

This is how it ends.

It was peaceful, in a way. No more pain. No more silence.

Then the door was ripped open.

A pair of strong hands grabbed me.

It wasn't Dante.

It was a bodyguard from the rear vehicle. Marco.

He cut my seatbelt.

I fell into his arms.

He dragged me out onto the asphalt.

We were barely ten feet away when the SUV exploded.

The heat seared my skin. The shockwave knocked us down.

I hit the ground hard.

Something inside me snapped. Not a bone this time.

Something deep in my abdomen.

Marco was shouting into his radio.

"I have the girl! She's alive!"

I looked up at the sky.

It was starting to rain.

The drops felt cool on my face.

I closed my eyes.

I didn't want to be saved.

But the universe, it seemed, wasn't done torturing me yet.