Survival of The Fittest | Book 3 | Final Ride

by Fawkes, K. M.

  God, I hoped it was. Because I was getting really fucking tired of not knowing what was going on, and it still seemed to me that hearing Adam and Zach discussing pretty much anything was going to be the one and only way I got some insider knowledge.

  I bit my lip and narrowed my eyes, watching Zit Boy and his superior—I assumed—walking past, their eyes scanning the area in front of them in the hopes, I further assumed, that I would just sort of materialize out of thin air.

  I almost laughed at that. Seriously. Because they were basically walking along shouting at each other as they searched for me. What did they think I was going to do, stumble across their obvious path like some hapless damsel who didn’t know what the hell she was doing and somehow hadn’t heard them having a very loud conversation about how Zit Boy had lost me?

  If they thought that, it just meant they didn’t know me very well. Which, you know, wasn’t the worst thing. Because if they didn’t know me well enough to know that I knew exactly what I was doing, it meant they’d never see me coming. They’d never even stop to think that I might have anything hidden up my sleeve.

  They’d certainly never think that I was planning to use the thing hidden up my sleeve.

  Which was perfect, in terms of that whole being underestimated thing.

  The moment they moved out of sight, I shuffled back around to the front of the building, my hands going to the intercom again.

  Please let it work the way I think it does, please let it work the way I think it does, I chanted silently to myself. Please let me remember how to rewire a box, and please let this be a one-way open system rather than something they have to actually push a button for.

  If they had to push a button up there for me to be able to hear them, this wasn’t going to work. But I didn’t let myself think about that too hard. Because no matter how much I liked to have a Plan B—and a Plan C, if I could manage it—there were no other options right now. This had to work. Period.

  Famous last words. I know.

  I jerked the outer box off the intercom and saw inside the very things I’d expected to see: One, an old-fashioned telephone receiver and two, a bunch of wires.

  Perfect.

  I put the phone up to my ear, wondering if I’d get really lucky, and if the thing would just be working on its own. But there was nothing but dead air in the receiver, and I huffed gently to myself, realizing that I’d been stupid to think it would be so easy.

  You’d think that by this time, I would have learned better. Still an optimist, though, I guessed.

  Then I got to work finding the problem.

  It didn’t take much. There was a scorched mark in the wiring, making me think that during the last week or so—maybe during the attack itself?—there had been some sort of explosion in the box that had shorted it out. I didn’t think the attack itself would have caused that, but maybe some poor guy had spasmed right into one of the wires that led to this rollercoaster and caused some sort of surge.

  Well, the fix was simple enough, and that was all that mattered.

  I pulled out my fancy tool belt—courtesy of Adam himself, more or less—and found a tool sharp enough to actually cut the wires. I cut out the burnt parts, then stripped the casing off the ends of the clean wires. And now, I thought, the moment of truth. Because those were, theoretically, live wires. And if they were live wires, then there was a chance I’d be electrocuted when I touched them.

  “Well, no heroine ever saved the day without taking some risks,” I breathed to myself.

  I took a deep breath, bit my lip, sent up a quick happy thought for Will, and then grabbed the wires from the two ends and twisted them together as quickly as I could.

  Then I actually leapt back—as if that was going to save me from being electrocuted when the electrocution would already have happened.

  And then I realized that I had leapt back. Which meant that I was still alive. Which meant that I hadn’t been electrocuted.

  I grinned at that, and then stepped forward and picked up the phone. I put it to my ear and listened… and heard nothing but silence.

  Chapter 17

  I was just about to give the whole thing up—because I didn’t have a Plan B, and I didn’t have time to waste standing around waiting for that stupid phone to work—when I heard a sudden scuffle and crash from right above me.

  I ducked and looked up, worried that someone was actually coming through the window of that booth, to fall right on top of me in some sort of completely unforeseen accidental ninja move.

  And then the phone started working.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I heard a voice I recognized as Zach’s shouting. “You just shove me now like that’s your right? You think you’re so high and mighty that you can hit people you used to call friends?”

  “Whatever I do, I do it for the greater good,” another voice snapped back.

  Adam. And he sounded… well, insane. He sounded insane, and if I’d had any doubt about that before, that doubt was erased now.

  Honestly, I’d never had much respect for people who said they did things for the greater good in the first place. It was so freaking pretentious, and besides that, who the hell had put them in charge of figuring out what the greater good was? How did they know that their version of the greater good was better than someone else’s?

  And when their version of the greater good evidently involved kidnapping a whole bunch of people and shoving (and punching) your friends? Yeah, no thanks.

  I got as close to the building as I could, tucked the phone tighter against my ear, and turned around to stare at the space where Zit Boy and his superior had come from, hoping that Zach and Adam were going to do more than argue about Adam’s insanity. And hoping they were going to do it quickly—before anyone else came looking for me.

  “What do you mean you’re doing it for the greater good?” Zach asked, obviously over whatever Adam’s deal was. “You don’t even know what the greater good is. You’re only looking out for yourself.”

  Well on that point, he and I were definitely in agreement. And I thought once more that Zach might be more useful than he realized when it came to Will and I doing whatever it was we ended up doing.

  “This will protect everyone!” Adam screeched.

  I made a face at this. I’d known the guy was crazy, but screeching? I mean, come on.

  Also, what the hell was he talking about? The bunker? Yeah, it would protect some people, but certainly not everyone. Or was his definition of ‘everyone’ so shallow that it only included the people around us?

  Was that why he was going around collecting people?

  Because he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would just go around doing good deeds. He seemed like a transactional sort of person. The kind of guy who would do something for you only if you were doing something for him. Preferably something bigger than the favor he was doing for you. So if he thought he was saving all of these people…

  What was the bigger favor all of these people—including me and Will, I guessed—were doing for him? What part were we playing, and was there any way to get the hell out of the game and go somewhere else?

  “Have you even looked at the plans yet?” he snarled. “Have you even considered how impressive it is?”

  “And have you considered that we don’t actually have anywhere near the amount of materials we would need?” Zach responded. “Building it out of the parts we get around here? Are you actually serious right now?”

  “The plans say it’ll work!” Adam shouted. “The blueprints lay that out very specifically! And maybe you’d know that if you’d actually looked at them.”

  “Maybe I would have looked at them if you actually allowed me to,” Zach said.

  And in that one line, I could see their entire relationship. Adam was the dreamer. He was the one who’d always had pie-in-the-sky plans. Zach had been the one to either make them happen… or tell Adam when they weren’t possible. He was the realist between them. He was the one wh
o saw Adam’s plans as impossible.

  Or outright insane.

  And Adam had been in the military. I shuddered at the thought of him having access to any sort of weaponry. Guns. Tanks. Missiles. Maybe even planes and helicopters for all I knew. There was no way he was stable enough for any of that. I wondered briefly what exactly the story was behind that attack that got him kicked out… and then shoved the thought away.

  That was completely unimportant. He’d stabbed someone. Period. I didn’t need more detail than that.

  I needed to figure out what the hell they were talking about right now. Because it wasn’t making any sense, but I was willing to bet very good money that their current conversation had a whole lot to do with the ultimate plans for this place. Which meant that their current conversation should also give me what I needed to start figuring out whether—and how—their plans could aid me in my own escape.

  And Will’s, of course. Because I would never leave him behind.

  “We just need enough reclaimed machinery, enough metal, for the defenses and traps, and we can pull it off,” Adam was saying. “I’m sure of it. All of the plans say so.”

  Reclaimed machinery. Hm. Was that why we were out here taking apart rollercoasters?

  They both fell silent, then, and I took the phone away from my ear and shook it, wondering if something had gone wrong. I’d already realized that there was a button up there—which Zach had evidently hit when Adam had pushed him—and now I realized that it might have to stay pressed for this thing to work. Maybe Zach had moved. Maybe there was a time limit on the thing. Maybe—

  “Freeze,” a cold voice said from my left.

  I slid my eyes quickly that way, already tensed and ready to run, and found the exact same guard who had caught Will and me in Adam’s office standing about ten feet away from me, a gun pointed right at my head.

  Well, shit. I hadn’t been looking in that direction, and that had obviously been a really, really big mistake. And the gun complicated things. Yes, I had a power drill at my hip, but you just didn’t bring a power drill to a gunfight.

  For one thing, it didn’t come equipped with bullets. Guns did.

  So I was well and truly outmatched, unless I could get the jump on this guy and outrun him. I tried to remember whether there was any cover on the other side of the building—someplace I could hide from him—but I already knew there wasn’t. And even if there had been, it would be a second before I got there. And he had the gun.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  Why hadn’t I been paying more attention? Why hadn’t I been actually using my eyes?

  Because I still wasn’t used to having to, I realized. I was still caught in that world where the bad guys were digital rather than physical, and you didn’t have to use your eyes for things like watching out for them. You used your instincts and hiccups in the code that told you someone else was in a room with you.

  Turned out I wasn’t so good at this action hero thing yet.

  And now I was in trouble.

  I put my hands up slowly, dropping the phone I’d been holding, and turned to him.

  “Look—”

  “Shut it!” he snapped. “Let’s go.”

  He spun me around, grabbed my arm, and started marching me toward the steps that led up to the booth where Zach and Adam were still arguing.

  And for a moment, I almost hurried. I’m serious—I had the thought that as long as I needed to hear what they were saying, I might as well hear it in person rather than through the phone. Maybe we’d catch them saying even more before they realized that they were no longer alone.

  Then I remembered that I was in trouble—and that this wasn’t a joke. I wasn’t just going to get arrested if they figured out what I’d been doing. They had guns and real ammunition, and though Adam had been talking a big game about saving people, it didn’t take a huge leap of the imagination to think that he might be just as quick to shoot someone if he thought they were going to get in his way… or destroy his plans.

  By the time we got to the bottom of those stairs, I was actually fighting the guard, all swinging arms and kicking feet and desperately wrenching body as I tried to get away from him.

  “Let. Me. Go!” I shouted.

  “Not on your life,” he muttered. “You should really figure out how to keep your nose out of other people’s business if you don’t want to be manhandled and taught your place.”

  And he shoved me toward the stairs.

  I took the first step instinctively, knowing that it was better to at least be on my feet than lying flat on the stairs, and after that, and another quick shove from the guard, I had too much momentum to stop. He hustled me right up the stairs and through the door, and there we came to a halt, Adam and Zach both spinning around to stare at us.

  “What’s this?” Adam snapped.

  “Found her spying on you,” the guard replied. “Guess she doesn’t like her assignment for the day and thought she’d rather listen to what you two were saying.”

  Adam turned to me, his eyes narrowed. “And how, pray tell, were you doing that?”

  I kept my mouth shut. I had absolutely no reason to tell him how I’d been doing it. And I wasn’t stupid enough to give up anything I didn’t have to give up. He could think I was sitting outside the door with a glass held up to the wood and my ear to the bottom of it, for all I cared.

  The guard, though, had seen enough to answer that question himself. “She hotwired the phone,” he replied. “She was listening to the old comm system. And I watched her long enough to see that she was definitely able to hear what you guys were saying.”

  Damn and double damn. There went one more hidden talent. Before I knew it, Adam would somehow also know that I could hack any computer system known to man.

  Zach was giving me a long, considering look—as if he wasn’t all that mad about what I’d done. Adam, on the other hand, was sneering at me like spying was the worst thing he’d ever heard anyone do, like, ever. Because kidnapping a ton of people and shoving them into a bunker where you were playing god was so high and mighty.

  “What?” I snapped. “You bring us here, you don’t tell us anything, and you think I’m just going to keep my hands to myself? You think I’m not going to do everything I can to try to figure it out?”

  “This is the second time I’ve caught you snooping, though, and you know what they say about three strikes and you’re out,” he replied—in a statement that did nothing to address what I’d just said.

  “Those two things have nothing to do with each other,” I noted calmly.

  He nodded. “No. But I’m going to make sure there’s not a third time.” He directed his gaze toward the guard. “Put her in the prison cell, Jerry. I’ll deal with her later.”

  There was a pause long enough for me to meet Zach’s eyes once again and see a flash of sympathy there, and then the guard was yanking me around and hustling me out of the room—bound, evidently, for the prison cell, whatever that meant.

  Chapter 18

  As it turned out, the prison cell was just that. I mean, kind of. We went into the bunker as usual and down the stairs that I already knew so well—though I did manage to pause on the platform for long enough to continue to build that mental map I’d been working on before the guard, by the name of Jerry, pushed me toward the stairs.

  This time, I knew what I was looking for—and I knew that if I looked for something specific, I’d have a better chance of seeing something valuable. I had long enough to get a good idea of how close the electronics room was to Adam’s library, this time, thanks to that specific goal. And it was close enough to be dangerous, but not so close that I would risk him actually seeing me if I got into the electronics room and started making trouble—which was a plan that had been brewing in my mind for some time now.

  After all, electronics were my thing. How could I not have considered it?

  Then I was almost tumbling down the stairs, Jerry behind me with his ubiquitous gun shoved int
o my back.

  “Dude, what’s the hurry?” I grumbled. “I’m pretty sure the prison cell, whatever it is, will still be there whether we get there in five minutes or ten.”

  Jerry didn’t answer me. It wasn’t a big surprise, though; I was starting to get used to the guards not wanting to talk to me. And I had thoughts about that, too—namely that they probably weren’t supposed to talk to anyone, lest they give up Adam’s Top-Secret Plans. He also probably didn’t want them talking to anyone who might ask questions that they weren’t smart enough to answer. I didn’t think any of the guys with the guns were actually trained. They definitely didn’t know how to use those guns responsibly. The fact was, I was guessing they were friends of his from Life Before the Attack.

  Which meant they were probably all just as dissatisfied with the situation as Zach. It was another thing I was storing away for future use. I just hadn’t yet decided how—or when—I was going to be able to use it. But I hadn’t gotten to where I was by failing to use any and all information at my fingertips.

  When we got to the bottom of the stairs, instead of moving forward into what I considered the general living area of the bunker, we made a sharp right-hand turn and went toward the wall I assumed was there somewhere. After walking for about ten minutes, through a bunch of rooms that looked just like all the other rooms, we made another right.

  And here, I saw, there was a room actually built into the outer shelter of the bunker. Instead of being part of the divisions someone had made in the main space, it was a real room.

  Odd, I thought. Why had someone gone out of their way to make a real room when the division system worked so well in the larger space? And didn’t this make the whole thing… I didn’t know, less structurally secure? After all, an arc is stronger if it doesn’t have a big chunk taken out of it at the bottom.

  Right?

  Okay, so I wasn’t too sure about that. I’d never been an engineer. But it made sense in my head. Which made this one addition even stranger.