“We can do it, Tori,” Ben whispered to me. His hand clamped down on my tense shoulder. “We’ve made it this far. All we have to do is make it to the trees.”

He sounded much more confident than I felt. I couldn’t bring myself to match his smile. After all, escaping prison is no laughing matter. We’d made it out of our cell, but that was the easy part.

All around us, alarms split the night. The spotlights searching for us were shining closer and closer to the dark nook we’d taken shelter in. We’d have to bolt soon, but I was frozen to the spot.

We were within view of the fence now. It was around nine feet tall and rimmed with barb wire at the top. It was something that only desperate people would even consider climbing.

But hey, we were desperate.

Ben grabbed my hand. His blue eyes shined in the reflection of the spotlight that passed three feet from us. “Ready?” he asked, grin firmly planted on his face.

I swallowed hard and nodded once.

We ran. Suddenly, there was an explosion of sound. The sound of men shouting and dog’s barking hit my ears like a hammer. My heartrate rose with the swelling alarms. We had maybe fifteen seconds to make it to the fence.

Ben made it in fourteen. I made it two seconds later. We immediately started climbing. I’ve never been the greatest climber and now that my life depended on it, I found it almost impossible to get my shoes into the holes in the chain link fence. I was moving far too slowly.

Suddenly, something powerful and sharp clamped onto my calf. I cried out and looked down to see a German shepherd hanging from my leg. The dog shook itself, and my fingers fought to maintain their grip on the fence. I was two thirds of the way up now. If I let go, that was it.

I grit my teeth against the pain and let go with my other foot. Now, hanging just from my fingers, I used my free foot to kick. The first one went wild and barely grazed the dog’s shoulder, but the next one connected hard on the animal’s eyes. I heard a pitiful yelp, and then I was free. I couldn’t help a small irrational twinge of regret about kicking the dog. But I had more important things to do.

Adrenaline surged through my chest as I regained my footing and kept climbing. As I neared the top of the fence, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Ben, bigger and stronger than me, had made it the top first, but he’d waited for me. He grabbed my shirt at the collar and helped lift me up over the barbed wire.

I barely registered the pain of the metal barbs ripping through my clothes and digging trenches in my skin. On the other side, I fell. I hit the ground hard after the nine foot fall, but I managed to roll to diminish the impact. Even so, my ankle rolled painfully.

Ben hit the ground next to me a few seconds later.

“Come on,” he grunted. He hooked his arm underneath my armpit and dragged me to my feet. I started running despite the shooting pain in my ankle.

Together, we sprinted towards the thick woods that seemed an impossible distance away. But once we were there, I knew we could lose ourselves in trees.

I didn’t look back but somewhere at the back of my mind, I could register the sound of the guards at the gate trying to get it open. The dogs continued to bark madly, and the men shouted obscenities.

I focused on the woods ahead. We were almost there. For just a moment, I allowed myself to feel just a little hope.

Then came the bullet. And time seemed to slow.

It was strange; I didn’t even feel it at first. I couldn’t feel my scapula explode as the long-range sniper bullet slammed into at 3,000 feet per second. I didn’t feel the bullet rip out through the right side of my chest just below the collar bone.

But I heard it. The bullet hit with a loud thud that shook my whole body. Then came the horrible instantaneous squelching sound as it left through the front of me. I heard my sudden ragged gasp. I heard myself choke on my own blood.

The added momentum of the bullet threw my steps off balance, and I tripped and fell. My arms were too slow to stop my fall, so I hit the ground hard with my face. That was actually the first thing I felt. The rocky ground digging into my cheek.

Then time sped back up again. I screamed in pain and writhed on the ground. When I looked up, I saw Ben backpedaling to stop. He turned and started to run back to me. He was so close. I tried to shake my head, to tell him to keep going. Leave me behind.

His head snapped back violently, and he collapsed to the ground without trying to stop his fall. My breath caught in my throat as I saw the blood leaking from the dime-sized hole in the center of his forehead. His blue eyes stared back at me without blinking.

My world came crashing down with Ben’s body. I looked away. My own life blood was forming tiny rivers in the dirt, running father and farther away from me. I had just enough time to realize that I was dying.

Then nothing.

Silence.

Darkness.