The building shook again. Another ominous rumbling rippled through the cell.
“No, it wasn’t the Delegation who caused the Purge. It was Deliverance. The Delegation wanted to, but…the Doctor, he stole their fire. He stole it for Deliverance and he…he destroyed the world before the Delegation got the chance.” Kelm babbled on, his voice joining the chatter from the nearby prisoners as they voiced their fears about what was happening.
Deliverance? Kelm made less and less sense the more he talked.
“Kelm, whatever happened to you, it doesn’t matter now. We’ve got to get out of here. The building is under attack.” Adan rose and grabbed hold of his cellmate by the arm and looked him in the eye. “Listen to me, Kelm. I overheard the guards saying that they are going to use gas on us. We need to—”
The building shook again, halting Adan mid-sentence. The other prisoners started pounding on the walls of their cells, demanding to know what was going on. The men across from him pressed up against the transparent walls, straining to get a glimpse of what was going on.
“Kelm, do you know any way out of here?” Adan asked.
“If I knew a way out of this place do you think I’d still be here?” Kelm replied, giving Adan a helpless look. “But it doesn’t matter. Even if we escape, the purge will kill us all in the end. We’re too close to the surface.”
“The surface? What’s that got to do with it?” Adan shook the man, trying to snap him out of whatever vision was overshadowing his perception of the here and now. “We’ve got to get out of this place, Kelm, before it falls down around us or the guards kill us.”
Kelm’s shoulders went limp. “It’s no use.” He wagged his head, his eyes misting. “They’ll kill us all this time. They won’t make the same mistake twice.”
“Kelm, if you know anything that can get us out of here, you have to tell me now.”
The building shook twice in rapid succession. The prisoners shouted and banged their plates, beds, anything they could find, demanding to be let out. Adan wished they would stop. The cacophony made it hard to concentrate.
“We’re going to die,” Kelm cried out, his voice joining with the others. “We’re all going to die.”
Adan abandoned Kelm to his ravings and returned to the transparent wall. He pressed his fingers frantically around the edges, searching for some crack or vulnerability. It was a slim possibility, but he hoped the shaking might have damaged it somehow. But even as more tremors wracked the building, increasing both in frequency and intensity, the wall remained frustratingly intact.
A muffled voice came over the sound system, echoing down the hallway, but Adan couldn’t make out anything over the uproar from the prisoners.
“They’ll clean the world once and for all this time,” Kelm moaned, sitting on the edge of the bed and rocking back and forth to some tuneless rhythm. “And all the works of men shall vanish in the light. That awful, terrible light…”
Adan noticed a fine, white mist drifting up from the floor. It was the gas. He pounded on the clear wall, joining the rest of the riotous inmate population, demanding to be freed.
A thunderous blast erupted down the hallway. It shook the walls of the cell in all directions and the roar of it drowned out the voices of the clamoring prisoners.
The prison grew quiet in the aftermath of the shot. Even Kelm stopped moaning. He stared at the clear wall, a terrible look of resignation on his face. Adan could no longer look at him. Instead he prayed silently for courage as the white mist caressed his feet and legs.
Rapidly approaching footsteps broke the silence. A flickering yellow light came along with them.
“Adan!” a voice shouted down the hall. “Adan? Are you in here?”
Adan recognized the voice. It belonged to Trey. Before he could respond, his friend stood in front of his cell, the prominent scar on his forehead glistening from sweat. The yellow light of a cutter shone from one hand. In his other he wielded a massive thick-barreled gun.
“Trey—you’re alive,” said Adan. “But how? And how did you find me?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Trey said, eagerness and relief mingling together in his expression. “Hold on. I’ll have you out of there in no time.”
Trey’s cutter slashed through the transparent wall in a web of light, carving an opening in a matter of moments.
Adan tried to connect to Trey’s mind, hoping he would be able to quickly fill him in on everything that had gone on since they’d gotten separated, but it came up blank.
“Trey, something’s wrong. I can’t sense your thoughts,” Adan reported.
“I know,” Trey said. “That’s what made it so hard to find you. This prison must have some sort of inhibitor broadcasting into it. But it doesn’t matter any more. Come on, let’s get you out of here before this whole place falls down on top of us.”
Adan started to step through the opening when he noticed that Kelm still sat trembling on the edge of the bed, staring at Trey’s cutter in abject fear.
“Kelm,” Adan said, returning and grabbing him by the arm. “Come on, this is my friend. He came to get us out. This is our chance. Let’s go.”
Kelm’s shaking subsided somewhat.
“He’s…he’s not part of the enemy forces?”
“No, no. I told you. He’s here to help us.” Adan took Kelm by the hand and coaxed him to his feet. The white mist was growing thick around the floor and he wanted Kelm breathing as little of it as possible.
Kelm began to calm down, but he still showed little interest in following Adan. “Why leave if the whole world is going to be destroyed anyway? We’ll never get down far enough to avoid the purge.”
“Adan, we’ve got to hurry. This building won’t hold together much longer,” Trey warned.
Adan dragged Kelm towards the opening.
“Even if you’re right and we’re all about to die, we’re not going to die here in this cell. We’ll face whatever dangers are out there together.”
Kelm allowed himself to be led out into the hallway, all the while shaking his head and mumbling unintelligibly.
The passage shook again. Prisoner’s faces pressed frantically up against the transparent panels along the corridor, terrified by the gas billowing around their feet.
“Get us out of here!” they screamed. “Save us!”
“Trey—” Adan began.
But Trey had already taken off down the hall.
“We can’t just leave them,” Adan protested, running after him. Kelm stumbled along behind, half dazed.
Trey disappeared out of the prison before Adan could catch up. He either hadn’t heard Adan, or he wasn’t interested in saving the other prisoners. Either way, Adan had no choice but to run after him.
The thick metal door to the prison block lay twisted and broken on the ground just in front of the opening. The body of a guard lay behind the transparent wall in a bloody mess of shrapnel and charred metal. Adan quickly averted his eyes.
As he burst into the corridor outside the prison he caught sight of Trey sprinting up ahead. Adan flew after him, exceeding his breakneck pace so he could close the gap between them.
They sped by doors and intersections as the rumbling of the building droned on like a sort of primitive alarm system.
“Trey,” Adan shouted when he was almost caught up. “What about Sierra and Tarn? We have to save them, too.”
“Listen, Adan, the Collective is up there,” Trey said between heaving breaths. “We’re three floors below the surface and they’ve been hitting this building hard. We’re going to get buried if we don’t get out of here as fast as we can.”
As if to confirm his point, the building shuddered again. A long metallic groan seeped through the ceiling, terminating in an ear-splitting crash somewhere behind them.
“I won’t leave them behind,” Adan said, slowing down. “If you want to get out yourself, that’s fine, but I’m going to find them.”
Trey hesitated, breaking stride.
“She saved your life,” Adan reminded him.
“All right,” Trey relented, shaking his head. “The guard I interrogated told me how to get to both prison blocks on this level so they must be in the other one. But if they’re not there I can’t help you.”
The two of them shot off to the right, down a new corridor. The passage lighting cut in and out, the world tilting helter-skelter as they ran. The building shook again. A light mist of dust sprinkled down from the ceiling in front of them.
Trey pointed to a door like the one to Adan’s cell block. “There. Just up ahead,” he said.
Seeing the cell door, Adan suddenly remembered Kelm. In his race to catch up to Trey, he had forgotten all about his mentally unstable cellmate. Adan turned back to see if he was following them, but there was no sign of him. He wondered whether or not he had even left the prison.
“Kelm!” he shouted. “Kelm, where are you?”
Trey jerked Adan by his collar. “Forget about him. We’re barely going to have enough time to save the others as it is.”
Adan winced in frustration, wishing he had paid closer attention to Kelm. Given his mental state, there was no telling where he might have run off to. But as awful as Adan felt, he could not turn back now.
A ball of fire flashed from Trey’s massive weapon, obliterating the prison door in front of them. The little that remained of it lay about the entrance in heaps of smoldering ashes.
A terrified shout came through the gaping hole and Trey pulled out an oscillathe from inside his coat. The crackling blast which burst from the gun, instantly silenced the cries. As Adan stepped through the mangled ruins of the entrance he saw the body of the Wayman guard under the wreckage of the front walls. He was still burning from the after effects of the explosion.
“Trey…you didn’t have to…” Adan stared at his friend in disbelief.
“You wanted to get into this prison block, didn’t you?” Trey snapped back. “Casualties are part of war, Adan. There was nothing I could do.”
Perhaps Trey was right. But his words did nothing to dispel the sickening emptiness Adan felt inside.
“Come on!” Trey pointed at the row of cells. Clouds of white mist fogged up the clear walled chambers.
Fear for Sierra and Tarn washed away his other emotions. They bounded down the hallway, scanning the cells for any sign of their friends. The prisoners lay sprawled out on the cell floors or slumped up against the transparent walls. They failed to stir even amidst the rumbling and shaking.
The building trembled again. The ceiling buckled. Snapping sounds crackled through the structure above. The building had to be on the brink of collapse. Fear sapped Adan’s strength, but he forced himself to keep moving.
As they reached the second to last pair of cells, Trey tapped him on the back and pointed to the one on their left. Tarn and Sierra lay huddled together against the transparent wall. Their eyes were closed and they were not moving.
“No!” Adan screamed, pounding his fists against the transparent wall.
“We’re too late,” Trey said. “They didn’t make it.”
Seventeen
Prison Transfer
“Sierra…no,” Adan whispered. He sank down in front of the transparent wall. Not since he first awoke in the Institute, not since those long lonely days as a subject in the Collective’s lab, had he felt this empty and alone.
“We should go,” Trey said. “It’s not safe here.”
“No,” Adan said, barely able to speak from emotion. “I won’t leave them.”
Trey grunted in frustration. “Do you want to throw your life away, too?”
Adan wondered how someone who had been so close to death could be so callous to it when it came to others. Adan stood resolutely and held out his hand.
“Give me one of your gloves,” Adan ordered him.
“What? You’ll release the gas out into the hallway if you cut through that wall. They’re dead. Can’t you see that?”
Adan grabbed at his hand, but Trey jerked it away.
“You’re losing it.”
“Give it to me or I will take it from you,” Adan said bluntly, his nostrils flaring, every hair on his skin standing on end.
Trey flinched and Adan saw fear in his eyes. “Fine,” he relented, exhaling deeply. “But let me do it. It will be faster that way.”
Adan nodded and stepped away from the wall. The numbness consuming his feet crept up his legs.
Trey cut a hole in the wall, smaller than the one he’d made for Adan’s cell. Gas poured into the hallway, eagerly lapping around Adan’s feet, but he didn’t care. He ducked through the opening while Trey backed away.
“Think about what you’re doing, Adan,” Trey pleaded. “We can still make it out if we leave now.”
Adan ignored him and dragged Sierra’s body out into the hall. The gas seeped into his lungs, covering them in its drowsy webs. His limbs, like enormous magnets, threatened to pull him to the floor. It took tremendous effort to keep them moving. As he pulled Tarn out into the hallway he nearly passed out, but the sound of Trey’s voice yanked him back to his senses.
“Please, Adan,” he begged. “This is pointless. You can’t save them.”
Up to that point Adan had been acting on pure emotion. Looking down at his friends, Trey’s words finally sank in. What was he really hoping to accomplish? Did he intend to drag the corpses of both Tarn and Sierra through the maze of this crumbling building just so that their bodies would not have to be buried beneath this cruel Wayman city? What difference could that possibly make?
Numinae, please tell me what to do. I don’t want to lose my friends—and Sierra, you know that she was much more than that…
As Adan opened his eyes from the prayer, he saw something that made him pause. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and then he saw it again. Sierra’s chest rose and fell ever so slightly. Joy surged through him. Sierra was alive. He was sure of it.
“Quick, Trey, give me some almamenth,” Adan said.
Trey pulled a tube of the healing paste from his pouch and tossed it to Adan, but remained back where he was, away from the gas. Adan was amazed he had not passed out yet himself, but then again he had resisted the Waymen sopor pods as well.
He smeared the almamenth wildly, using far more than necessary. He quickly finished with Sierra and then jumped over to Tarn and did the same.
It only took a few moments for the healing agent to counteract the poisonous gas. Sierra and Tarn’s eyes both opened and they sat up. They moved slowly, but appeared otherwise unharmed.
“What—?” Sierra began but then caught sight of Adan.
In that moment all was forgotten: the shaking building, the gas, the Collective attack, the fallen Waymen; Sierra was alive and all he could think about was the radiance streaming from her eyes. They had never looked more beautiful or so full of life.
I think I understand what love is now, he thought.
“Oh, Adan, you’re alive,” Sierra exclaimed, falling into his outstretched arms. As they embraced, the warmth inside his heart flooded his entire body. A wave of weakness rushed over him, nearly as strong as the effect from the gas.
“We should go,” Trey’s voice jarred him back to reality once again.
“Right.”
“Trey?” Sierra stared at him, eyes blinking in disbelief. “Is that you? How did you find him, Adan?”
Trey shifted uncomfortably. Adan decided not to say anything about Trey wanting to abandon them. Trey had only been acting as any rational person would have in that situation. He thought their friends were dead and was trying to save Adan from a similar fate. If anything, Trey had been the one who acted wisely. Adan had been so swept up in his emotions he had been willing to risk both their lives. But sometimes Numinae honored the rash course of action, apparently.
“Trey found me, actually,” Adan said. “But there’s no time to explain. We need to get out of here. The Collective is attacking the city and this building isn’t safe.”
Tarn rose beside them, his face beaming at Trey. “So we are together again. I knew the wind would not carry you far. Lead the way.”
Adan grabbed hold of Sierra’s arm and Tarn hobbled along behind them. With the ceiling and walls still cracking and shaking, they hurried down the corridor and away from the smoking cell.
“Where will we go?” Sierra asked as they fled the prison. “Aren’t there still Waymen here? And if we do manage to get outside, won’t we get captured or killed by the Collective forces?”
“We’re going to the praxis,” Trey declared. “It’s waiting for us just outside this complex.”
“I thought the praxis was was going to stay outside of scanning range of the city,” Adan said.
“When you didn’t show up, they decided to come looking for you,” Trey explained and then set off down the passageway before Adan could get anything more.
Adan didn’t like the thought of the praxis flying into the middle of the fray just to save him, but he had to assume that Gavin would not risk the ship unnecessarily.
They raced through the hallways, the building rumbling and shifting all around them, until at last they came to a small door and slowed to a stop. Trey reached for the handle, but before he could open it, six Waymen appeared from around a corner right next to the door. Both groups hesitated, barely two steps between them. Trey pulled out his oscillathe, but Adan grabbed hold of his arm and yanked it down.
“Wait.”
Trey bristled at the command, but the delay afforded the Waymen the opportunity to shout, “Get out of the way!” and plow past Trey through the small doorway.
“They’re trying to escape, just like us,” Adan said.
The appearance of these men reminded Adan of the reason he came to Hull in the first place. He wondered what had happened to the Welkin. Had the praxis come and saved them already? Had the escape attempt been foiled by Rak and the other Waymen? He thought about asking Trey, but now wasn’t the time.
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 82
