And locking.
The women shuffled and waddled back to their beds, their kind faces crossed with worry. I guessed this kind of security breach didn’t happen every day in their safe little bubble.
“Wren, run!” Reece shouted. He pulled on my arm, giving me no choice except to chase after him.
In my panic and haste, my limp foot wouldn’t work properly. It wanted to twist and give away with every step I took. I was slowing Reece down, he should have left me and saved himself.
“Reece, I can’t,” I puffed out, my breath lost somewhere along the corridors. “Please go. I’ll catch up.”
“Not happening,” he replied. A moment later he scooped me into his arms as if I weighed nothing and continued running. It was all I could do to hold onto his neck and pray I wasn’t still slowing him down.
The doors to the wing were closing automatically, operated by an unseen security force that could probably see our every movement from a safe booth.
Reece put everything he had into getting through those doors. He had to jump through, twisting our bodies until we were side on and as small as possible.
It thudded closed behind us.
“Where do we go now?” I asked as he hesitated, his head whipping back and forth between the options. We could go left or right, neither way was signposted.
It was all down to gut instinct.
I never trusted my instincts.
“Right,” Reece said, nodding his head to reinforce the decision. “We go right.”
He took off without hesitation.
His injuries probably hurt terribly.
The sound of the alarms were so loud I wanted to cover my ears with my hands. If they weren’t wrapped around Reece’s neck, I would have done. For now, it was something I had to endure.
The banging of closing doors followed us down the corridor. Scientists huddled in the rooms beyond, letting the security guards do the dirty jobs of capturing us. I wondered what had tipped them off, I hoped it wasn’t something I did.
I couldn’t be responsible for Reece coming to harm.
He was far too kind to be hurt.
“Hold on tight,” he warned me before putting his shoulder into opening a closed set of doors. We barged through, the impact ricocheting through his body. It had to have hurt like hell.
Regaining his footing, Reece picked up the pace again. We barreled along the corridors as if we actually knew where we were going. Perhaps Reece did, I wouldn’t know. He said he hadn’t been to this laboratory before but that might not have been the truth.
I trusted him, but it was my rule never to believe what people said until I knew it was definitely the truth. It was a skill that had kept me alive for eighteen years.
It certainly wasn’t good luck.
We entered another wing and then another. It was like they had designed the buildings so exits were impossible to find. It was a difficult place to get into and escape from.
Control freaks, the lot of them.
They wanted to hold life in the palm of their hands, whether giving it or taking it away.
I hated them.
I hated them all.
Reece barged through another door and abruptly stopped, his feet skidding on the linoleum floor. We looked around to see what had caused his sudden halt.
And shivered with dread.
We were surrounded. There had to be at least ten guards forming a human barricade around us. Everywhere I looked there was another one.
They all pointed guns at us, their faces set in determined grimaces. As it turned out, there was a very easy way out of the laboratory.
Death.
And they were willing to give it to us without delay.
“Put down your weapons,” Reece said sternly. “I am Corporal Thompson of the President’s Trooper Division and I demand you put down your weapons.”
He placed me back on the ground, making sure my feet were steady before taking my arm and holding on like he had been during our visit. I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. Not even a breath could pass by my lips as I waited.
Waited for them to comply.
Waited for them to shoot.
Our future all relied on the next few seconds and I wanted to hit fast-forward so we could get it over and done with. I couldn’t handle the waiting, the seconds in between.
“Give her to us,” the guard at the front said, his gun still pointed squarely at us. “You know it’s the right thing to do.”
Reece didn’t say another word, nor did he move. His keen eyes were watching, though. He was planning, observing, and plotting. Once he found a way for us to get out, he would act.
Until then, the guards weren’t patient.
“Down on your knees!” they started yelling. Their voices and commands all mingled into one, barely discernable as belonging to separate people.
“Hand over the clone.”
“Get down. Get down.”
“You can’t leave here with her.”
“Don’t make a mistake.”
“You’re outnumbered, give up now.”
“Surrender or we’ll shoot.”
The voices went around and around like we were in the middle of a cyclone. I could almost see the words as they floated in the air and threatened to stab into me if I blinked the wrong way.
We weren’t going to get away.
There was no way out of that room.
I had to brace myself for the inevitable but I didn’t know how. I always knew my life would end at the hands of a scientist, but I had hoped to have more time.
More time to live.
More time to love.
It was all going to be taken away from me. And, thanks to me, Reece would have his life cut short too. He didn’t deserve that but I couldn’t change things now.
“You can have her,” Reece suddenly said, making every other voice falter mid-sentence.
He held me out, relaxing his grip on my arm. The last thing I had expected was for Reece to hand me over so willingly. This was never part of the plan. At least, the plan I knew of.
I didn’t blame him. He was saving himself, and if my harsh life had taught me anything, it was that sometimes you have to save yourself regardless of the consequences.
The guards watched us carefully, waiting for the punch line or the catch. They hadn’t been expecting Reece to give me up so easily either. The confusion and disbelief was written all over their hard faces.
They should have been happy. All their threats and commands, and they were getting exactly what they asked for.
Reece pushed me on the shoulder, making me take a step closer to them. “Come and take her, I said you could. She’s yours. I’m happy to be getting rid of her.”
My heart punctured and deflated in my chest.
How could Reece speak like that about me? He made me promises, he said so many things to me that made me feel like he might be different.
But he wasn’t.
He was just like all the other humans.
I was being served up on a platter as if I was nothing more than the commodity I was always told I was. It was so, so stupid of me to believe him. Everything that had ever happened to me in my life told me not to trust people – especially humans. It had only taken one, and a trooper at that, to shatter my sensibilities and lure me into a trap.
Would he claim the reward for me, too?
He pushed me forward again as the few guards closest started to come for me. The expiry date on my life was quickly coming to an end.
My biggest regret was not saving Rocky.
“Are you going to take her or not?” Reece said tersely. Not only was he throwing me under the bus, but also impatient about it taking so long.
I had severely misjudged the trooper.
It would be the last mistake I ever made.
The guards eyed us both warily as they came for me. The only sound I could hear over my heart beating was their heavy footsteps as they shuffled forward.
At l
east I was going to the VIP wing. President Stone wouldn’t dare visit any other place in the laboratory. They would probably put out a red carpet for her. The thought almost sent me into a fit of giggles over the absurdity of it all.
The older guard from the last checkpoint took my hands in his, reaching around for the handcuffs that hung from his utility belt. He unclipped them, opening the metal to slap them on my wrists.
But he never got a chance.
I was ripped from his hold, pulled backwards as I stumbled over my limp foot.
Everything happened so quickly I could barely process it all at one time. Reece stepped in front of me, making himself a human barricade between the guards and my body. He took a swipe at the men, managing to take them by surprise as a few went down.
Reece stole a gun from the guard nearest him, quickly spinning it around to point at them. With his free hand, he continued to strike out, his fist colliding with temples and stomachs. It was a brawl none of them had been expecting or prepared for.
One guard lunged for him, grabbing his arm in a grip he couldn’t easily shake off. Reece used his height advantage to pick up the guard and used him to knock over three others. Finally, the man was shaken from his iron grip.
Reece looked around, spotting me as I returned to my feet. He grabbed me, clutching me to his side and lifting me off the ground. Without hesitation, he ran through the injured guards and hauled me through the nearest exit.
He slammed the heavy doors with a thundering roar. “All good?” he asked, storming down the corridor as quickly as he could.
“Yeah. You had me worried there for a minute,” I replied.
“I promised you, Wren. I don’t break promises.”
And just like that, my heart was inflated again.
We didn’t have time to assess injuries or dawdle in the corridor. As soon as I assured Reece I could walk again, he let me go. Instead of carrying me, he settled for holding my hand so we didn’t get separated.
The alarms were still blaring overhead, the noise now settling into the background as my ears adjusted to it. The red flashing lights were more noticeable.
Many of the doors we tried were locked, automatically shut down by the security guards to stop us getting away. It seemed like we were going to be walking around the building all day and not be able to get out again. They could just wait for us to tire out and take us peacefully then.
“This one’s open,” Reece said as his hand rested on a handle. He gripped my hand tightly as he opened it quickly.
It didn’t look like the guards had come this way. We hurried into the room, which appeared to be another laboratory. A group of five scientists in white coats huddled in the corner. They all looked at us as if we were the most terrifying things they had ever seen.
“Please don’t hurt us,” a man at the front said. He was using himself as a shield for the others.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Reece replied, shaking off the comment like it was a ridiculous notion. I wondered if he realized the gun he had stolen was shining as it sat tucked into his pants. “Tell us how to get out of here. Where’s the exit to the outside?”
A few of the scientists whimpered and cowered. Clearly they had never encountered anything remotely dangerous in their lives. This kind of encounter was nothing to a Defective Clone. It was practically an ordinary day.
The man at the front was the one who answered. He pointed toward a door at the end of the room. “Go through there and turn left. There’s a door that leads into the back courtyard. It’s where we have lunch sometimes.”
Reece nodded. “Thank you. Don’t tell anyone we were here.”
Five sets of eyes burned into us as we crossed the room. Reece flung open the door and I trailed after him. We found the door on the left that the scientist pointed us toward.
I quickly stepped in front of it. “It could be a trap.”
“He said it would take us outside,” Reece replied.
“He might have been lying. You can’t trust anyone, especially not scientists.”
Reece’s intense gaze drilled into me as he weighed up my argument. He hadn’t even considered the man might have been lying. He took people at their face value.
He’d never lived the life of a Defective Clone either.
It must be nice to believe people.
Believe in people.
“We have to try it,” Reece finally said. He waited until I stepped out of the way, not entirely agreeing with the plan but failing to have an alternative one to offer.
He tried the door handle.
It was locked.
He clamped his lips together as he stopped the string of curse words he wanted to use. Instead, he let out a deep breath and looked around.
“We have to keep going, there has to be a way out,” he said determinedly. Taking my hand again, we rushed down the corridor and into the next room.
It was empty, evacuated with the security threat. Just like the next three after that. We were little more than rats running around a maze. The exit was never going to be found.
Reece suddenly stopped. “This isn’t working.”
“They’re going to find us if we don’t keep moving,” I pointed out.
“They are probably waiting for us to reach them, assembling the security team so we walk straight into them. Just like what happened back there.”
That was probably true but it didn’t change the fact we had no choice. If we stayed still, we would be killed. If we continued on, we would be killed. There didn’t seem to be many options available to us that didn’t involve our certain death.
“You could still make it out of here alive if you surrender,” I said. “This doesn’t have to be the end for you.”
Reece shook his head fervently. “Not going to happen, Wren. So quit thinking about giving up and help me figure out a way out of here.”
We stared at each other for a few moments, silently challenging the other.
It was pointless. I wasn’t ready to give up yet. I broke away from his deep emerald eyes and looked around the room, praying for inspiration to hit.
“What about the air vents?” I suggested. “We could crawl through them. They have to lead outside eventually, right?”
“Too noisy and too easy for them to catch us in the tight spaces.”
“Okay. How many bullets are in that gun? Could we shoot our way out of here?”
“They’ll shoot back. My Kevlar can only cover so much and there is nothing protecting you at all.”
My mind reeled, clutching at every stray thought that passed through my panicked mind. I wanted to help, I needed to figure out a way to escape. If I lived, there was still a chance I could rescue Rocky.
“The window,” Reece said suddenly. We both stared at the large window overlooking the back of the complex. The first ring of fences was about two hundred feet further on.
“There’s no opening.”
He went to the glass and ran his fingers along the smooth surface. “It’s not reinforced but they might have used special tempered glass. If I can smash it, we can get out this way.”
Before I could argue, Reece picked up a chair and swung it at the glass. I held my breath as I watched it bounce off the window, almost getting free of his grip.
He tried again, this time pointing the chair’s legs at the glass to get a sharper point to make the connection. The window splintered. It was possibly one of the best sights I had ever seen.
Bolstered by his progress, Reece put everything he had into bashing the chair into the glass. If his injuries were slowing him down, he didn’t let on. More and more cracks lined the glass as they spread out in a snowflake pattern. They were almost beautiful, like a shattered piece of art.
Reece finished with the chair and threw it against the door. He held his hand out for me to take. I accepted it before he pulled me against him until I was swallowed up in his embrace – his front to my back.
“Brace yourself and close your eyes,”
he whispered, sending a shiver down my spine.
My heart thundered in its cage, beating so hard I thought it was going to break. I had no idea what was about to happen and no clue about whether I would survive it. All I knew was that I trusted Reece and that would have to do for now.
He gripped me tighter, holding me against his chest before we started moving. My feet left the floor as he jumped, threw himself backwards at the window as man collided with glass with an epic shattering.
It felt like we were caught up in slow motion as we tumbled backwards through the windowpane. Shards of broken glass flew through the air in all different directions, threatening of untold pain and bloody wounds.
We landed with a hard thud on the ground outside. The lush green grass did nothing to break our fall. I impacted onto Reece’s chest, knocking the air from his lungs with an audible whoosh. A layer of jagged glass landed on top of us both, its sharp edges slicing whatever skin it came into contact with.
There was no time to count our injuries.
We were outside.
It was time to run.
Reece helped me to stand, pulling me onto my unsteady feet as we brushed glass from our skin and clothes. Little rivers of bright red blood were appearing sporadically. Reece had a nasty cut on his cheek while my ankle bore the brunt of my wounds.
He grabbed my hand as we ran for the fences. The alarm was quieter outside but still blaring in the distance. It wouldn’t be long before the security guards caught up to us, it wasn’t like we could hide our trail.
“We’re going to have to go over the fence,” Reece said, puffing out the words to match his strides. “When I say jump, I’m going to need you to jump.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it, Wren. We can’t hesitate.”
“I know. I can do this,” I assured him. When it came to my life, I was going to do whatever I could to preserve it. Staying in the laboratory meant a certain death.
So, yeah, I was going to jump if Reece said to.
I listened intently, watching the fence as it quickly came up to meet us. My gimp foot was killing me, ready to give up without any further notice. I willed it to last a bit long, just long enough until we were a safe distance away from the building.
Two Beating Hearts Page 20
