by Holly Hook
Grimes stepped forward. "I don't know how long I can hold my breath. I'd guess that swimming at top speed will get us out of the tunnel in ten minutes. The creek drains into the Cat River, and there we'll be able to surface."
"We?" Trish glared at him. "You're a Normal. Or are you? I smell little scent coming off you at all. Don't tell me you're an Imposter who's trying to act Normal. That would be the second one who's led the ATC."
"Not now!" Grimes shouted.
These two would get along. Not. I'd let Trish berate Grimes all she wanted.
If Bathory was right, he'd left my mother to raise me alone and take her frustration out on me. Without him there, I couldn't make her happy. Maybe he wanted a son and took off when he didn't get one. A girl wasn't good enough. After that, he got Turned.
And he was the head of the ATC. That was a deal breaker.
I turned away from Grimes and faced the tunnel. I couldn't leave without him but he also made me want to vomit.
Brendan joined me and put his hand in mine. "I guess I get to swim with you now," he said, smiling. His own gown stuck to him, leaving the scars exposed on his back. He wasn't trying to hide them from me anymore.
"Go!" Grimes shouted. "I'll swim behind you. There's nothing more you can do here."
The army was retreating. Upstairs, things got quiet.
Except for some quiet, graceful footsteps and the swishing of a dress. Bathory was on the prowl, and she was getting closer—
The basement door flew open, banging against concrete.
Together, Brendan and I ducked through the hole. I took three long breaths and held the final one as my head scraped the top of an earthen tunnel.
And then the creek closed in, encasing me in a world of cold darkness.
I still had my gray vision as I kicked forward down a tunnel that never seemed to end. Gurgling filled my ears. The creek flowed down a tube carved from dirt and rock.
I saw no sign of light ahead.
But we couldn't go back now. I heard two more bodies splash into the tunnel behind me. Legs kicked.
Grimes might not survive the trip if he was borderline Normal.
I couldn't go back now. Behind me, an explosion sounded and concrete fell. The army was blasting the trapped personnel out of the safe room.
And then all sounds got lost except for the water. It insulated everything.
Brendan and I kicked, not daring to look back. Was Bathory following, or was she staying with her plan? She and Primrose were holding the army back. She had won the facility and her enemies—including us—were in retreat.
And Grimes was abandoning his post because of my plan. He was handing her the place.
And what would wait for us once we got out of this water? Grimes said it would take ten minutes, top speed, to get out. That was if his guess was right. What if the creek curved, and it took twenty? More?
Five minutes passed. My lungs still didn't burn, but Brendan's hand trembled in mine. He faced me as he kicked, propelling us forward. I could no longer tell which noises were who now. Grimes (if that was even his real name) might be unconscious back there for all I knew. Maybe he was suffocating and dying and I'd never get the chance to ask him any of the whys.
But did I want to?
Maybe he didn't want a kid and Turning was his excuse and his escape. Bathory could see into everyone's darkest corners. She might not have senses as good as mine, but she had thousands of years experience.
I didn't want to think about this but in that tunnel, there was nothing else to do besides swim for our lives. Everything remained black and white. I felt as if I'd plunged into the darkest underworld and that I'd float down this creek for all eternity. The cold crept into my skin, trying to suck the life out of me.
For the first time, I wondered if I would die down here.
But several minutes later, just as the first burn crept into my lungs, I spotted light.
It was faint and coming from around a steep curve maybe a mile or two ahead. I wasn't even sure if I was seeing it at first, and I guessed that maybe it was my brain playing tricks on me. The light wasn't even enough for my color vision to return yet—but it was brightening. It had a diffuse quality that made me think of late evening or maybe dusk.
And the sound of the water changed.
No one else might notice it yet, but I did. The water flowed faster, and the gurgling increased. Though warped, the sound of crashing liquid hit my ears and continued to get louder.
The Cat River.
Grimes had been right.
I tried to look back and see if he was behind me, but I didn't dare slow. I glimpsed Trish parting the water with her hands, swimming as fast as she could, but she blocked the view of anything that might be behind her.
If my lungs were just burning, how was this on someone who was borderline Normal?
Someone who had trouble seeing in the dark?
The light increased.
Brendan made a grunt. My hearing could detect the meaning. It was his attempted cry of victory. We were almost out.
The tunnel curved, and I banged into the earthen wall. The water flowed, pushing me now. Trish crashed into the back of us, which dislodged me. Tree roots tried to grasp at us. I maintained my grip on Brendan's hand and continued.
It was dusk. The water spilled out of a circle of light about half a mile ahead. The sounds of a gurgling river cut over the noise in my ears.
Anything could be out there. The military, the police, anything. Grimes might have told them about the creek. He'd called a meeting about the risk it posed.
But we had no choice. Bathory was behind us.
The circle grew larger. Trish grunted at me to hurry. I kicked, hoping that I didn't get her by mistake, which would be a typical Janine move.
And at last, we spilled out into the dusk. I glimpsed a mini canyon and a flowing river below as Brendan and I toppled from a waterfall and towards a toiling surface below.
Chapter Sixteen
Water shot back up my nose as I landed. I tried to take a breath too early and wound up with river going down my throat, too. I coughed and kicked my legs, losing my grip on Brendan's hand. The river was brown. Muddy. Murky. Pale light made waving curtains through the muck. My feet hit bottom, which tried to suck them down.
Another body splashed into the water a few feet away. Trish's hospital gown billowed around her as she fell. She attempted to push it back down, but the water wasn't having it.
I kicked and rose to the surface.
It was as if I could see and hear all over again. Sounds exploded as the river flowed out of my ears. I coughed again, expelling the water from my throat. I didn't want to think about what might have been in that water.
Only a pale orange light remained on the horizon. All the stars winked overhead in amazing detail. The view of the galaxy spread overhead, and I'd never been so glad to see the stars. The view in the city had been great because of my enhanced vision, but out here it was breathtaking. I forgot everything else for a second. The trees made dark shadows against the stars and the fading light, towering over me.
Next to me, Brendan broke the surface.
He gasped. "I'm never doing that again."
"But we got to hold hands," I said. "Look. You're swimming. I knew you could do it."
Trish broke water next. "I can think of better ways to get out of a facility."
Then it hit me.
Grimes wasn't here yet. I could hear scared fish zipping through the water along with every bird in the surrounding forest for a mile, but I heard no more arms and legs kicking. While submerged, my hearing got distorted. My focus had gone to my lungs and the coldness seeping into my skin.
I might hate the guy, but I didn't hate him enough to wish him a horrible, dark drowning death.
"Where's the ATC leader?" I asked. My stomach hurt just saying that.
He could be—
Crap.
Brendan let out a breath. "I heard what he said." He stared
at me as if I'd grown tentacles. His hospital gown stuck to his chest, revealing clear skin there. All the burn scars were on his back where the gown was more open.
"Yes," Trish said. "Where is that guy? The ATC are a bunch of hypocrites. They haven't had a Normal leader yet."
"We need to find Grimes," I said. "He might not swim as fast as we can."
"That's what he gets for being an Imposter," Trish said. "If the Underground finds out what a traitor he is, they'll murder him."
I lost it. "Trish! He might--" I stopped myself. How could I say it? If Trish knew the possible truth, what would she think of me?
How could I walk around, telling other Abnormals I might be the offspring of the ATC leader? I didn't even want to tell myself that.
I eyed Brendan for his opinion. He understood what I was getting at, and he offered it. He shook his head as he floated. Behind him, a pipe stuck out of the canyon wall, spewing the creek water.
No one came out of it.
The sounds of a distant helicopter followed.
"He might have information we can use," I said. "It sounded like he knows Bathory and has been working against her for a long time."
"By trying to make us weak?"
Desperation gripped me, tightening all my muscles. There was no time to rest yet. "Yes. He chose a bad way to do it, but I think he knows stuff about her we might need. We've got to find him!"
Trish eyed the pipe. "Swimming against the current will be much harder than swimming with it. We must climb up there."
"Then I will," I said.
"Janine," Brendan said. "Let me help." He swam in front of me, letting me see his scars. Either he had forgotten, or he was ready to let me see them.
The canyon wall was all dirt and towered over our heads by almost twenty feet, and the pipe was halfway up. Brendan and I had to sink our hands and feet into the dirt to climb, and the dirt wanted to give way. Seconds passed. We were running out of time. I couldn't hear anything over the rushing water that hit the river surface. Grimes could be ready to emerge, or Bathory could.
"Let me go first," Brendan said.
"I'm stronger. I can see farther into the tunnel."
Behind us, Trish splashed. She wasn't yelling at us to knock this off. My explanation had worked on her.
I hated going back in there, but I hated the alternative even more. Brendan let me go first, and it was a major effort to climb back into the tube against the flowing water. Water turned out to be much stronger than I expected, and now I understood why cars got swept away in flash floods and people wound up standing on top of them. I'd always wondered how they wound up in that situation.
I almost didn't make it back into the tunnel. But I did, and the water swept back over my head as my gray vision returned.
Behind me, Brendan fell. His strength wasn't enough to get him back in. This was a one-way tunnel for all but me.
A part of me wanted to forget about it. I wasn't worth it to the man I'd left behind, so maybe fair was fair.
Maybe.
Or maybe not.
A bigger part willed me forward.
A missing piece of my life was somewhere in this tube.
It took all my strength to swim forward at first, but I managed. The farther I got from the exit, the slower the water flowed, and the faster I could go. I saw nothing for the half mile before the curve, but I continued. Grimes had swam into the tunnel with us.
Behind me, Brendan and Trish were waiting. Trish would shake her head, telling him I was making a dumb mistake. Lingering around here was bad with the military all around. I might put them in more danger. Already, I had done that by opening that hole in the wall and letting the Mother come right into the facility.
I rounded the curve.
Ahead, maybe five hundred feet, a body floated against the ceiling, caught on a tree root.
Chapter Seventeen
I stopped and let the water push me back for a moment.
My vision might be gray, but I recognized Grimes's suit and the black hair that surrounded his balding head. I pieced together what had happened. He had passed out somewhere farther back and floated to the top of the tunnel where this root had caught him and prevented the water from pushing him forward. How long he'd stayed there, I didn't know.
I kicked my legs with more fury than I ever had. Rage overtook me. I wasn't even sure where it wanted to go, but at that moment, I hated the water, Bathory, and even Trish. That hate might even belong to myself.
I took only a minute to reach him.
I grabbed his suit sleeve and pulled, dislodging him from the tree root. Grimes didn't react. A single bubble escaped from his lips.
I heard nothing from him.
No eyelid fluttering, like Mom had during her sleep cycles, and no attempts to grunt or move.
I pulled, digging my feet into the tunnel to propel myself and Grimes backwards. The water helped us and pushed us along. I rounded the curve, maintaining my grip, as terror pumped strength into all my muscles. If I hadn't bitten the mean doctor earlier, I might not have been able to do this. Grimes's advice might save us both.
Or would it? Partial vampire or not, nobody could heal from death.
The thought got bigger and bigger, filling my body with desperation, as I pulled him into the fading light. The rushing water sound intensified, and the dusk invaded the tunnel. Brendan shouted something to Trish that got muffled.
We fell.
I landed on my back and Grimes toppled into the water, pushed by the creek.
When I surfaced, I found him floating on his back, still unconscious, as Trish pulled him towards the wall of the bank.
"Do something!" I shouted.
I sounded like a desperate, terrified kid. Trish rose from the water as she found her footing in a shallower area and pulled Grimes with her. She was a doctor, just as he was. I told myself that he was in the right hands. There was nothing more that I could do.
She lifted the guy, grasped him from behind, and did something that looked like the Heimlich maneuver. A bucket of water spewed from Grimes's mouth and back into the river.
He didn't cough.
"He might be gone already," Trish said. "I don't know how things would work with him." She faced me with those reddish eyes, eyes that had seen this kind of thing before. It was routine. Trish did not understand who he might be. She wouldn't offer me any sympathy, and I would have to hide my pain.
"We need him!" I shouted. "He might know how to defeat Bathory and how to get to her." Like me, he knew her weaknesses. I trudged through the water and up a hill of muck to join Trish. "I'll hold him, and you do that rescue breathing or something." My mind scrambled for the first aid class that Mom made me take when I was in junior high. I had thought I'd remember it if the time came, but now it was flying out the window. Trish would have to do the hard parts.
But Trish listened. "He might have useful information," she agreed. "But this is a risk."
I held Grimes.
Trish tilted his chin back and delivered the breaths.
Seconds ticked past. If Grimes had been unconscious for too long, there would be no bringing him back. But if he still had enough vampire in him, there might be a chance. A slight chance, but a—
Grimes coughed.
He didn't open his eyes or show any other signs of stirring, but he coughed.
Trish stopped delivering the breaths. "It's a miracle," she said. "I didn't think an Imposter like him would make it. He's made himself too Normal."
"Thanks for your vote of confidence," I said, vision blurry with tears.
Behind Trish, Brendan shrugged. I had him bound in silence. And as I watched him, he reached back and adjusted his hospital gown, closing it over his scars. The top half was drying now that we stood in waist-deep water.
We both had to stay quiet about something, then.
Grimes took a breath. He still didn't open his eyes.
"Hey," I said. "Wake up. We got you out of the tunnel." I sounded like
a frog now instead of a chipmunk. A lump formed in my throat.
Trish eyed me. "I wouldn't give this guy much sympathy. He had us tortured."
"He also fired the mean doctor who ran the Sunning Room," I said. Richard Grimes might be the ATC leader, but he had still done that. I thought of his speech about wanting to put families back together. A part of me must have remembered that and propelled me to swim back into that claustrophobic tunnel.
"He still had us tortured," Trish said. "Your friend here was begging to avoid the transfusion. And he still disregarded all medical ethics."
I eyed Brendan. He turned his gaze to the river surface, which reflected the stars. The distant helicopter continued.
"You don't know what he went through," I said. "We need to get out of here and then I'll tell you what Bathory's plan is." Trish, and the other vampires, didn't know about it yet, though I figured that the ones left in that bunker were finding out. "We need to carry Grimes down the river."
"I agree. I managed to get four others out. They must have already headed down the river."
Trish's words hung in the air. Few of us had escaped the facility.
Grimes coughed again, but no more water came up. He breathed slower than a Normal would, but he looked stable.
Would he ever wake up? Lack of oxygen could destroy a person's brain. But a partial vampire would heal, right?
"Let's get moving," Trish said. "We'll listen for the military as we walk along this bank. I think we can avoid having to swim for most of the way and I'm sure the ground has to let us climb out at some point. If we reach civilization, I'll give Xavier a call so he tries nothing dense. I don't think he will if the military is already swarming around the facility, but we'd never know."
I kept my grip under Grimes's shoulders. Brendan nodded an offer to help, so I let him carry the ATC leader instead. I wasn't sure how to feel now that the terror was gone.
"We don't have phones," I said. Xavier and Alyssa might try to go against Bathory and the military if they thought I was inside. Our mission wasn't done yet. Stopping yet another disaster depended on us getting to a phone.
"Precisely," Trish said. "We will need to steal clothes as soon as we find a store or a house and then use their phone."
