by Sadie Moss
Behind her glasses, her eyes were unreadable.
Fear lanced through me, but it couldn’t break through the haze of shock and confusion. I scrabbled backward on my butt like a crab, my hospital gown twisted and askew. But I wasn’t moving fast enough. There was nowhere to go. My mom took another step forward, adjusting her grip on the gun slightly—
A figure burst into the hallway from the intersecting corridor behind her.
Before she could turn toward him, he tackled her, bringing her down with a loud yell and a grunt. My mom was tall and stocky, much bigger than I was, but the man had several pounds of muscle on her. He had dark skin and short hair, and his broad face was contorted in concentration as he and my mom wrestled for control of the gun in her hand.
“Mom!”
Heart burning, I made an arrested move toward them—to help her? Or to help the new stranger?—but before I could act, the man tore the gun from my mom’s grip. In one swift movement, he brought the butt of it down against the side of her head.
I heard the crack. Felt it down to the pit of my soul.
My mom’s head whipped to the side, then she went still.
Her brown-gray hair half covered her face. Blood leaked from the wound at her temple, and her glasses sat askew. One of the lenses was cracked in a spiderweb pattern.
“Fuck.” The large man, still straddling her, checked her weapon for bullets then shoved the magazine back into the gun. He looked up, taking me in at a glance before shifting his gaze over my shoulder. “This turned into a real fucking shit show.”
“Yeah. We need to get out of here. Now. Where are Noah and Rhys?”
The voice came from behind me, and when I turned to look, the man with the slightly bent nose and brown hair was striding quickly down the hall toward us, his gun still held at the ready.
“Downstairs,” the man who’d tackled my mom answered. “Noah thought there might be one more restricted access area where Sariah could’ve been kept. But I don’t think she’s here, man. It’s over.”
“Agreed.”
The men continued to confer, each keeping their gun aimed down one end of the corridor in watchful suspense.
But I stopped listening.
I couldn’t stop staring at the prone figure of my mother. I had somehow ended up pressed against the wall, and I wanted to crawl toward her, wanted to make sure she was okay—but I couldn’t get my body to move.
When I turned the corner and ran toward her, there had been no one else in the hallway with us. The brown-haired man hadn’t been behind me then. I was sure of it. It’d been just me and my mom… and she’d shot at me.
She’d aimed right for my heart and fired.
I couldn’t process that fact, no matter how many times my terrified brain shouted the words. Her face was still, and except for the blood oozing from her temple, she looked exactly like she did when she came to visit me and fell asleep on my couch after one of our long talks.
Finally, my body did move. Slowly, tentatively, I crawled toward her. My hospital gown got caught under my knees, and my smiley face underwear were probably showing, but I didn’t even care.
My eyes were locked on my mom’s chest, trying to pick up the rise and fall that would tell me if she was still breathing. I reached out for her slowly, but movement at the end of the hall made me freeze.
My body tensed, and I braced for more gunfire.
But none came.
“Rhys! Anything?” the man who’d tackled my mom called out.
“What does it fucking look like?”
Two new men jogged quickly down the hall toward us. The one who’d spoken had curly black hair pulled back in a ponytail and a dark scowl on his face. The other was…
“Cliff?”
The word stuck in my throat, half whisper and half croak, as my brain overloaded completely.
Cliff looked down at me. He wasn’t smiling now, but even with the serious expression on his face and the gun in his hand, there was something about him that radiated warmth and kindness. He did a double-take when he saw me, his eyes widening.
The man who had burst into the exam room at the beginning of this nightmare shook his head at the black-haired newcomer. “Sariah’s not here, Rhys. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t fucking know that!” Rhys argued. “She could be hidden somewhere! This place is a totally different setup than the San Diego complex. Maybe they’ve got her in a separate wing! Maybe—”
Cliff broke his gaze away from me and looked up at his friend. “Jackson’s right. I’ve been here for a month, and I haven’t found anything like that. This place is run by a small staff, but they’ve definitely called for backup by now. If we don’t get out soon, we’re not getting out. Ever.”
“But if she’s here—!”
“Dude!” The burly mocha-skinned man grabbed a fistful of Rhys’s shirt, getting into his face. “Let it go! She wouldn’t want you to give up your life trying to get her out. And if you die here, you’ll never find her. We’ll try again. But right now, we have to go.”
Rhys’s lips curled up in a snarl. The two men were almost nose to nose, their foreheads practically touching. For a moment, thick tension hung in the air between them, and I almost expected Rhys to swing his gun around and shoot the other man in the head. He looked mad enough to try it.
Then he blinked. His jaw ticked and his nostrils flared, but he nodded stiffly. “We will try again, West.”
It sounded almost like a threat. But the man staring him down—West—didn’t seem to take it that way. He released his grip on Rhys’s shirt and slapped him on the chest. “Always, brother.”
I stared dumbly up at them all. I felt like I was watching an action movie, a spectator removed from everything around me. My body had gone numb, and the continuous shrill whine of the alarm felt like it had permeated my brain, like it would never stop.
“Come on, Scrubs. We’ll get you out of here.”
Cliff held his hand down to me. I blinked at it, my toes curling into the cold marble beneath my feet. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I couldn’t leave this place. I was sick—I needed to stay here to survive.
This all had to be some huge misunderstanding, some intensely vivid nightmare.
“We gotta go!” the man named Jackson called, shifting his gaze down the opposite end of the hallway and raising his gun.
The sound of pounding feet rumbled like thunder under the high pitch of the alarm, and a moment later, half a dozen guards dressed in tactical gear rounded the corner.
Fear iced my blood.
Whatever backup these four men had been worried about, it had arrived.
Chapter Six
“Motherfuck—!”
That was all I heard before chaos erupted. Gunshots echoed in the confined space of the corridor, and a hand—I wasn’t even sure whose—reached down, hauling me to my feet. I found myself surrounded by four large bodies, racing down the hall of this unfamiliar level of the Strand complex.
More shots sounded, even as we outraced the men behind us. One of the guys bringing up the rear of our group grunted, his footsteps faltering briefly.
“West? Are you hit?” Cliff called.
“Yup.”
“You all right?”
“Yup.”
The word was curt and unemotional, as if running down a hallway getting shot at was something he did so often it wasn’t worth remarking upon.
Who the hell were these men?
And what did they want with me?
My body was jostled between the large men as we careened around a corner. The one called Rhys kicked open a door and led us up another set of access stairs. This time I managed to keep my feet under me, but just barely. Cliff switched his grip on me to my elbow, steadying me.
We raced up three flights of stairs, ducking every time one of the men chasing us shot up through the stairwell. My breath came in sharp gasps by the time Rhys shoved open the door at the top landing, and Cliff pulled me through.
<
br /> Light nearly blinded me.
I staggered, blinking in the sudden onslaught of sunlight. The air was warm and slightly humid, and the asphalt beneath my bare feet was hot.
Before I could fully absorb the fact that I was outside, we were moving again, running across a small parking lot toward a row of parked cars. I threw a look back over my shoulder. The building we’d emerged from was small and innocuous-looking. It was a single story structure made of plain brown brick. Nothing about it gave any hint of the levels it housed underground, beneath the surface.
As I watched, the door we’d exited through opened again.
The first man to emerge was huge, tall as a tree and muscled like a TV wrestler. His neck was as wide as his head, and his blond hair was cropped short. There was a hard look on his face, and when my gaze met his, my blood ran cold. I thought I knew everyone at the Strand complex, but I’d never seen this guy before.
If I had, I was sure he would’ve haunted my nightmares.
He strode toward us, raising his gun.
Before he could fire, I was yanked sharply to the side, bringing my attention back to my immediate surroundings. Cliff dragged me behind a large SUV, blocking us from the approaching guards. Jackson smashed out the driver’s side window and unlocked the doors while West and Rhys shot around the front of the car, slowing our pursuers.
Yanking open the back door, Cliff picked me up and practically threw me inside. I landed on the soft leather seat and scrambled to sit up.
“Now would be a great time to show off those hot-wiring skills you always brag about!” Cliff called to Jackson, sliding in beside me and pushing my head down with a hand at the back of my neck.
“I’m working on it, I’m working on it.” Jackson’s voice was tense with concentration.
A moment later, the engine roared to life.
“Tires!” he yelled to the two men still outside the car.
I had no idea what that meant, but when I lifted my head a little, I saw the guy called West turn his gun toward the other cars in the parking lot. While Rhys continued to shoot at the guards, who’d taken cover around the side of the building, West systematically shot out the tires of all the vehicles around us.
Smart.
My numb brain was reduced to processing a single thought at a time. I couldn’t comprehend the entirety of what was happening to me, the nuclear bomb that had just gone off in my simple, uneventful life. But I could see that these men worked well together. That they were resourceful and smart.
Jackson gunned the engine as Rhys and West piled inside. West climbed over the middle console to crawl into the front passenger seat as Rhys slammed the back door shut. Then we peeled out.
I snuck a peek behind us as we sped toward the parking lot’s exit. The men in black tactical gear raced out from where they’d taken cover. Several of them looked at the cars with punctured tires, and a few shot after us. But the big blond man, who towered almost a foot above his compatriots, didn’t waste time with either of those things. He turned and jogged purposefully around the far side of the building.
Were there other cars over there? What had he and his men arrived in?
Bullets ricocheted off the back of the SUV, and Cliff put his hand on the back of my head again. I stared at my bare feet as the men’s shouts filled the car and a sudden left turn shoved Cliff’s large, hard body against mine.
“Damn it! That fucking blond Arnold Schwarzenegger is behind us!” someone called.
“Hold on.” Jackson’s voice was grim, and the car turned wildly again, sending me sliding the other way. I clenched my eyes shut and gritted my teeth, willing myself not to vomit. Another shot pinged off the back of the car, making my heart leap into my throat.
This isn’t real. None of this is real.
Maybe the new meds Doctor Shepherd had given me were messing with my system, causing hallucinations. Maybe I was inside the complex right now being rushed into the ER. But then why were the smells of metal, gunpowder, and leather so strong in my nostrils? Why was the back seat of the SUV full of Diet Coke cans?
Would I really dream that up?
“You all right, West? Where’d they get you?” Cliff asked, his voice taut with concern.
“Bullet grazed my arm. I’m fine.”
I lost track of the twists and turns the car took as we sped down the road, West calling out directions to Jackson. When I finally peeked out the window, I saw that we were in a rural area, with trees lining the sides of the road. Jackson made fewer sharp turns, but he never let up on the accelerator as the inside of the car settled into a tense silence.
Finally, the car shuddered slightly, slowing.
“Shit. Stupid fucking SUV driver didn’t fill up their tank. We’re almost out of gas,” Jackson muttered. “We’re about ten miles from our stash.”
“Just as well. If we drove any closer, we’d risk leading them right to us.” Cliff spoke beside me, his voice soft. He’d let up his hold on my head, but I remained bent over, curled into myself, as if by making myself as small as possible, I could escape my new reality. “It’s better if we cover the last bit on foot.”
The car lurched again, slowing even more.
“Not like we have any fucking choice.” Jackson chuckled humorlessly.
With a final shudder, the car eased to a stop. The front doors opened, and I heard the passenger side door open too. A moment later, strong hands slid around my waist. Cliff tugged me gently out of the car after him. The gravel on the roadside bit into my feet, and when I stumbled, he swept me up into his arms.
I shut my eyes, burying my face in the warm blue fabric of his scrubs. He was the only one of the four guys who wasn’t dressed in black, loaded down with weapons and ammunition, and somehow that made him slightly less terrifying. In my head, I could still pretend he was just “Cliff the cute orderly,” not some kind of renegade soldier who’d kidnapped me in a blaze of gunfire.
“You just going to carry her the whole way?” West sounded slightly amused and slightly annoyed.
“Yeah, man. I am,” Cliff shot back. “You think she’s going to walk like this?”
“As long as it doesn’t slow us down. If she slows us down, we leave her.”
That was Rhys, and the hard edge to his voice made my blood run cold. He wasn’t kidding.
Cliff didn’t answer, but his grip on me tightened a little, and that small gesture was so reassuring I felt tears sting my eyes. At least one of these men didn’t want me to die—not that any of them would truly be able to stop it. I’d been taken from the Strand medical complex, the one place I was cared for, where I was safe.
Outside, exposed to a barrage of unknown pathogens, how long would I last? How long before my body turned on itself again?
And this time, there would be no doctors to rush me into emergency care, no one to adjust my meds and monitor my vitals. Just four burly men who, no matter how well trained they were with weapons, likely didn’t know a thing about medicine.
I’m going to die out here.
That thought scared me, but not as much as it should have. I didn’t want to die—had spent all those years in the Strand complex fighting against death. But right now, in my numb, hollowed out state, struggling to push away the memory of my mother aiming a gun at my head, a small part of me welcomed the idea of oblivion. Of peace.
The men had started to move. My head jostled against Cliff’s shoulder as he ran, moving swiftly through the woods with long, even strides, as if he carried no burden at all.
After a while, a loud rushing sound reached my ears. Water?
Cliff’s voice rumbled in his chest as he murmured, “Sorry, Scrubs. We gotta go in.”
Before I could even form the words to ask what he meant, ice-cold water touched my butt, soaking through my underwear and hospital gown immediately. I gasped and jerked in his arms, and he looked down at me apologetically as he waded deeper into the river.
“We need to move downstream a bit. Hopefully, it’l
l make our scent harder to pick up.”
I had only a vague idea what he meant by that, but I didn’t complain. Rhys shot me a glare out of the corner of his eye as he trudged through the water ahead of us, and I pressed my face back against Cliff’s chest as the water rose higher up my body. My entire midsection was underwater, and occasionally my feet and toes dipped under too. Those parts slowly went numb, while angry goose bumps covered the rest of my skin, making my entire body ache.
We walked through the water for so long I lost track of time. By the time we emerged downstream, the light had changed around us. We were in a heavily wooded area, but the gloom wasn’t just from the canopy overhead. The sun was setting.
And still, the men didn’t stop.
They continued through the woods, exchanging quiet words from time to time. My damp gown clung to my body—as we’d waded through the river, the water had slowly worked its way up, soaking through even the fabric that wasn’t submerged.
“There. Up ahead.”
“Thank fuck.”
Cliff’s steps quickened, and I roused myself slowly, looking up in time to see a small shelter ahead of us. It looked very homemade, consisting of a brown tarp slung between several closely spaced trees. Leaves and twigs were scattered across the top of the tarp, some hanging over the sides. Several large packs rested at the bases of the trees.
We walked beneath the tarp, which dipped slightly in the middle but was high enough to allow the men to stand upright. Cliff lowered me gently to my feet, and I staggered away from him like a baby deer. It was hard to stand—I was cold and exhausted and so emotionally strung out, I felt high. The world dipped and swayed in my vision, but I gritted my teeth, fighting to remain upright.
For a moment, the five of us just stood in silence. A bird called in the distance.
Then, suddenly, the black-haired man named Rhys roared.
As if he’d held back his emotions for too long, he unleashed a feral yell, a torrent of angry curses streaming from his lips. Turning, he struck out at a nearby tree trunk, smashing his fists against it until his knuckles were raw and bloody.
