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Within minutes, Zoya's heartrate has slowed back to its usual tempo, no longer shaking her ribs or making her fingers tremble. The memory of the helmeted man's hand around her throat still stains her mind in technicolor, and she can feel the new blossoms of bruises cooling on the tender skin of her neck.
She's moved away from the—apparently—top secret place that the bounty hunter had disappeared into, deeming it rather unsafe, to formulate a new plan. Instead of tracking him throughout the town and waiting for the opportune moment to single him out away from the people and other species roaming the streets, which could never happen, she's decided to get to his ship before he does and ambush him there. He'll be unsuspecting and caught off-guard, which is exactly what Zoya wants.
She makes her way towards the outskirts of the city, where she'd seen the bounty hunter's ship—the Razor Crest—anchored. She moves quickly, as she doesn't know when he'll be emerging from behind the alcove and coming the same way. If he catches her going into his ship to hide, it's all over.
With that in mind, Zoya escapes the city as rapidly as she can without drawing too much attention, slipping out the final maze of alleyways onto the broad landscape, pockmarked with ships and craters. His sits not one hundred feet away, ramp unlatched and set into the ground, almost as if it's waiting for her to arrive. A grin pulls itself lazily across her lips as she looks at the ship that had stolen her away from freedom those short months ago.
"Hello again," she says.
Glancing both behind her and checking ahead, she launches forward into a dead sprint, cloak flying out behind her, riding the wind. The cloth wrapped over Zoya's head pulls free as she runs, and her hair falls free, whipping into the air. She doesn't bother to stop and recover her face to disguise herself before she reaches the ramp, stumbling up it as fast as she can. Once at the top, she crouches down to check the area she'd just run across, ensuring that the bounty hunter hadn't seen her or shown up to catch her in the act. And thankfully, he hasn't yet appeared.
Zoya exhales a sigh of relief and makes her way deeper into the Razor Wing. By hazy memories, she finds the cockpit, configured for a single pilot. She even sits in the chair a beat, recalling how he'd done the same to her when he'd had her in cuffs, ignoring every single thing she said to him, save for a couple crude comments that he'd dignified with a muffled snort. Her hands fall upon the curves of the armrests as she lazily lounges in the chair, a queen on her throne. She surveys the desert through the windows as if it's her kingdom, and a smirk sprawls across her mouth when she feels its power thrum through her, a palpable, wild, twisting thing that burns through her veins.
