by J. Bryan
Jenny was locked inside a clear-walled cell with its own ventilation system. The lights were dim for the night, and the only sound was Jenny’s heart monitor. Seth ran to the clear cube and saw her asleep on a hospital bed inside. He pounded on the wall beside her.
She awoke slowly, and Seth wondered whether she was heavily medicated. She blinked at him while he spoke.
“Jenny, we’re getting out of here,” Seth said. “But we have to hurry.”
“Why’s Tommy here?” Jenny asked.
“He’s helping me escape,” Esmeralda said. “All of us, together.”
“The guards are on the way,” Mariella added. “We don’t have much time.”
“We have to get the baby.” Jenny hurried to the airlock door of her cell, and Seth ran to meet her.
“You had the baby?” Seth asked. “The baby is...”
“Alive, Seth,” Jenny said. Her eyes glistened. “She made it. She’s alive.”
“A girl. And she’s alive.” Seth slowly smiled at Jenny.
“They’re keeping her at the clinic,” Mariella said, pointing northwest. “I’ve been listening.”
“There’s nowhere to swipe the access card,” Seth said, studying the door’s control panel, which had a small numbered keypad. “It’s a combination lock.”
“I’ve been watching them do it every day,” Jenny told him. “It changes every week, but right now I’m pretty sure it’s 335598.”
Seth keyed in the code and pulled open the outer door. He ran into the airlock and opened the inner door, and Jenny jumped on him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and holding him tight.
“Seth, it’s been so awful without you,” she whispered. “Horrible.”
“I missed you so much,” he said. “But the baby’s really okay?”
“A healthy little girl.” Jenny smiled through her tears and kissed him.
“We really have to get going now,” Mariella said, touching Seth’s arm.
“Stay where you are!” a voice commanded over the intercom. This time, it sounded like Ward. “Guards are on the way.”
The five of them hurried out the door. Mariella again watched the ever-shifting future and picked out the safest route through the base.
They made it to the short corridor in front of the clinic’s closed double doors.
“We’re done!” Mariella shook her head. “The clinic is full of staff, and the armed guards are almost here...” Everyone could hear the sound of boots echoing on tile. “I don’t see what we can do.”
“Tommy, can you panic the medical staff?” Seth asked. “Send them out here to block the guards?”
“Maybe.” Tommy cast a worried look behind them.
“Let’s go!” Jenny opened the door and led the way in, Seth at her side, followed by Tommy, Esmeralda, and Mariella.
The medical staff were already in a panic, the doctors and lab techs running out to the front desk area, where the nurses at the desk were on their feet and shouting. It looked like everyone had just been warned that the escaped prisoners were on the way.
Several of them screamed at the sight of the five paranormals charging into the clinic. All eyes went to Jenny, but it was Tommy who attacked, unleashing a plume of dark red droplets from his mouth, which settled over the medical staff like a mist of blood.
“Where is my baby?” Jenny screamed at the terrified nurses, letting the pox blister her face. “Where?”
“Down that hall...” A nurse pointed to a door, her finger shaking. “Last exam room, very last on your left.”
“There are bombs all over this base!” Mariella shouted. “You have five minutes to get outside the walls, or you’re all dead! Run that way!” She pointed to the open doors through which they’d entered, and the fear-infected medical staff ran out screaming, a dozen people or more. Esmeralda slammed the doors behind them.
“That won’t block them for long,” Jenny said, looking anxiously toward the door that led to her baby.
“Do you see all of them wearing gas masks?” Tommy asked Mariella.
“More than half of them, rows of them,” Mariella said. “There are some extra guards near the back who aren’t wearing any...maybe they didn’t have time to suit up or they joined at the last minute...but...”
“That’s good enough,” Tommy said, approaching the doors. “You’ll want to barricade these doors after I leave.”
“You’ll get killed.” Esmeralda touched his face. “You can’t do that.”
“I just want you to get out safe,” he told her. He pressed the gold Indian-head coin into her hand, the one they’d traded back and forth all their life. “I’ll see you again. You know this isn’t the end. Maybe I won’t be such an asshole next time around.”
“I doubt that.” Esmeralda smiled, but her eyes gleamed with tears. She kissed him, then held the coin against her heart.
“I love you, Esmeralda,” he said.
“I love you, too,” she whispered back, and he couldn’t help smiling. At least he would die with those words in his ears.
Tommy steeled himself, then hurried out through one of the doors, closing it again behind him. He hoped they would take his advice about blocking the clinic from the inside. If his attack worked, the entire base would soon become chaotic and dangerous.
The response team already filled the corridor, but they were a little disorganized as they parted for the crazed doctors and nurses to pass through them. Tommy wished he’d had the foresight to dress himself in medical scrubs, too, instead of a t-shirt and jeans. It would have helped him blend with the escaping mob.
Instead, the guards in their biohazard masks shouted and raised their machine guns at him.
Tommy breathed deep and exhaled, pushing out the fear from deep inside of him, giving them both barrels, everything he had. He poured all his energy into it. There was no point in holding anything back now—he doubted he had more than a few seconds to live.
The mist of fear flooded the corridor, so dense and dark that the light in the hallway turned deep red, painting everyone and everything the color of fresh blood.
“General Kilpatrick’s orders!” Tommy shouted. “Everyone in a biohazard mask is the enemy! Shoot on sight!”
His shouting brought the attention of all the masked guards, who turned their guns on him. The support guards at the back, armed but without biohazard masks, shouting in fear and opened fire on the rows of guards ahead of them. The body armor and helmets shielded their torsos and heads, but the bullets sliced through their arms and legs. The masked guards began to fall, taken from the rear by surprise, flurries of machine-gun rounds hammering their backs hard enough to crack their ribs through their armor.
Most of the remaining masked guards dropped and swiveled, returning fire and escalating the battle. A couple of them near the front remained focused on Tommy, raising their guns at him.
“Do your worst,” Tommy challenged. He exhaled a last thick mist of red, and then the bullets tore through his arms, stomach, chest, throat, and face, cutting him apart. They kept firing even as the fear-giver rose and looked down on his bullet-riddled body, just a useless slab of meat now.
His life as Thomas White was ended, and he felt satisfied that he’d done his best to pay his debt to the dead-speaker, atoning for his failure to protect her in their last life. He struggled to remain focused on the dimming world of the living, determined to see her get out alive, though he now watched from beyond the grave, unable to give her any more help.
* * *
“What are you doing here?” Alise demanded, slamming open the door. Niklaus sat on his bed, drinking cheap Polish vodka and smoking cigarettes. Though the alarm had been clanging for a few minutes now, he remained where he was, in his undershirt and black uniform trousers, boots propped up on the bed’s flimsy footboard. “Are you deaf?”
“No,” he replied. He swigged vodka and smiled, offering no other explanation for his inaction.
“The supernormals are escaping!” Alise
shouted. “We’re finding guards dead of Juliana’s plague. I checked Mia’s room, and it looks like she went with them. They cannot be allowed to escape, Niklaus!”
“Maybe someone will stop them.” He shrugged.
“We need your help! Get up!” She smacked his leg.
“I’m going, I’m going...” Niklaus reluctantly stood and took his time pulling on his belt, his jacket, checking that his pistol was fully loaded. He smirked at himself in the mirror as he put on his cap. It struck him as absurd, the black uniform, the silver skulls and lightning bolts, the twisted red cross on his arm. He thumped the swastika. “What is this thing, anyway? Does anyone know? Besides a big target that says, ‘Shoot me in the arm, snipers!’”
“We don’t have time for your drunken babbling.” Alise took his arm and steered him out into the hallway. “Take care of this, and I’ll give you a nice reward. Don’t you miss me in your bed?”
Niklaus pulled his arm free of her grasp. “We should hurry.”
“You’re right.” Alise began to run, and Niklaus watched her from behind, long golden hair sweeping her slender back in her black S.S. jacket. He thought of how callously she’d killed Evelina, and he forced himself to do the thing he’d been wanting to do for weeks.
Niklaus drew the Luger and aimed it at her back. If she looked him in the eyes, he knew he wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger. It had to be from behind.
He fired a shot into the center of her spine, and she fell and screamed, her legs twisting limply beneath her. He trudged toward her, in no hurry at all. Everyone else would be distracted by the alarms and the escaped prisoners. There was nobody else here on their dormitory level.
She turned her head to look up at him, and her gray eyes, the ones that matched his, were full of pain.
“Why?” she whispered. She lay on her stomach on the floor, paralyzed from the waist down, a pool of blood growing around her.
“You killed her.” Niklaus sat on the floor beside Alise and leaned against the wall. He kept the pistol pointed at his cousin.
“Who? Who did you love more than me?”
“I loved Evelina.”
“A Slav? You shot me over a...” She coughed, drooling foamy pink saliva. “...over a dirty goddamned Bosniak?”
“I told you I didn’t want to shoot her.”
“You could have...” Alise coughed up thicker blood. “You could have told me. I would have let you keep her. Because I love you, Niklaus. Remember I loved you, and you killed me. Remember it...my only love...” She coughed again, and her cheek rested flat on the floor, her eyes staring into nothingness.
Niklaus stared at her body. Maybe he’d been wrong to do it. With her dying words, she had given him only love, despite his betrayal. He wished she’d been hateful and angry, as he would have expected. He wished he felt triumphant, at least, for finally working up the courage to avenge Evelina. Instead, Alise’s death now struck him like a knife to the heart. Her final outpouring of affection was the worst thing she could have done to him. He knew it would stay with him for the rest of his life.
He looked at her dead body and wept. Her death had not brought Evelina back, nor did it bring him any peace. His cousin had been his guide through life, his trusted friend, his lover. He was alone now, forever.
Niklaus put the pistol into his own mouth. He couldn’t face his family again, after having a sinful relationship with his cousin and then murdering her. He wished with all of his being that he could bring her back to life and be with her again. Life without her would only be agony and guilt.
He pulled the trigger.
Chapter Forty-Six
Little Miriam lay in her incubator in the last room on the hall, just as the nurse had told Jenny. Jenny was the first into the room, but she held herself back, forcing herself to wrap her arms tight around herself and make herself small, as she’d done when she was a younger girl whose main concern in life was staying invisible at school. Those teenage days already seemed ancient to her, after all the strange turns of her life since then.
Outside the clinic, screaming and scattered gunfire sounded all over the base. It sounded like Tommy’s final attack had been successful, driving a number of people crazy with fear. Unfortunately, those people carried automatic rifles. The baby squirmed and cried in her incubator, and Jenny resisted every instinct that told her to pick up the tiny girl and comfort her.
“You’re okay,” Jenny whispered. “You’re safe now. Your parents are here.”
“There she is.” Seth spoke quietly as he entered the room. He didn’t hesitate as he went to pick her up and hold her close. Bathed in his soothing, healing touch, the baby stopped crying, and even closed her eyes and rested her head against him.
“You’re going to be a good father,” Jenny said, her voice almost breaking. She knew that she would always have to be a distant mother, avoiding any contact with her own daughter.
As if feeling her distress, Mariella carefully wrapped her arms around Jenny and hugged her close, risking infection and death to comfort her. Jenny leaned her head on Mariella’s shoulder, keeping away from the bare flesh of her neck, and she cried.
“You’ll need some of these.” Esmeralda had opened cabinets in the room and found one stocked with standard baby supplies. She grabbed bottles of premixed formula and a stack of diapers, and she handed Seth a cloth sling, still sealed in the original plastic. “Be sure to support her head.”
“I can’t believe it,” Seth said as Esmeralda helped strap the baby sling around him and secure the baby inside it. The baby snuggled against his chest again, eyes closed. “She’s actually asleep. It’s all gunfire and horror-house out there, and she’s just taking a nap.”
“You’re good for her,” Jenny said. “Your touch.”
“How do we get out of here?” Esmeralda asked.
“They’ll have all four exits covered.” Jenny pulled away from Mariella and wiped her eyes. “Maybe we should find the vent shaft for this section. The vent got you both out of here last time, didn’t it?”
“It got us up there,” Seth agreed. He was still staring at his little daughter, brushing her soft cheek with his fingertip. “I just hope this guy’s access card opens the maintenance doors.”
“Just remember to come with us this time, Jenny,” Mariella said. “Do you promise?”
“Of course.” Jenny managed a small smile, looking at the sleeping baby through her tears. “I’ll never leave her.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Mia climbed the slippery metal rungs inside the vertical tunnel, struggling upward against the air blasting down from the huge intake fan above. The wind was so loud that she and Sebastian couldn’t possibly hear each other unless they shouted, which could draw the guards. Mia didn’t feel like talking, anyway. They’d heard the gunfire echoing from below, and she had felt Juliana’s death like a ripping sensation deep in her heart.
Juliana’s last wish was that Mia and her baby escape the base alive. Her friend had died to protect her, despite her betrayal with Sebastian, for the sake of the little baby. If Mia survived, she and her baby would owe their lives to Juliana.
They stopped climbing when Sebastian, above her, reached the top of the vent. She held on tight, trying not to think about the long, hard drop below if she slipped from the small rungs.
She watched him inspect the giant fan that was in his way, underneath a mesh screen that kept out falling debris. They needed to stop the fan and move the screen aside before they could leave. High-speed wind pounded her face, and she had to scrunch her eyes to watch him inspect the machinery.
Sebastian found the bundle of wires feeding electricity into the fan, grabbed it, closed it eyes, and pulled as hard as he could. An explosion of sparks hit him, scorching his face and hands. The hair at the back of his head caught on fire, and he smothered it with his bare hand.
Mia tried not to cry out in pain as stray sparks landing on her, burning her arm in three places.
“Sorry,�
� Sebastian whispered, and she could hear him because the fan was quietly slowing to a halt.
The screen beyond it was secured in place by a ring of large screws, and they had no screwdriver. Seth tried the keys on the ring taken from the prison guard until he found a key tooth he could wedge inside the heads of the screws. Turning the screws this way was slow and difficult, and sliced up his fingers until the key was dripping blood, but he managed to gradually remove each one. Mia winced each time he cut himself.
A light flashed over the top of the vent, fully illuminating it in the night. With the alarms ringing, the guards in the watchtowers were swooping the spotlights looking for trouble.
Sebastian climbed up the narrow gap between two fan blades, and one of them scraped open a wide swatch of flesh along his hip.
“Careful,” he whispered down to Mia, his teeth clenched tight with the pain. “The blades are sharp.”
She climbed a little higher, waiting while he heaved the metal mesh to one side like a manhole cover and poked his head into the open air above. Mia smiled. She hadn’t seen the stars in months.
He pulled the screen back into place and ducked as another spotlight hit the vent shaft.
“Now!” Sebastian whispered when it was gone. He pushed the mesh aside and climbed out. Mia threaded her way between the blades, imagining them springing back to life, cutting her in half. She was five months pregnant, and her enlarged stomach took a horrible scraping from one of the blades as she squeezed past it. Sebastian took her hand and helped her out onto the narrow circular ledge surrounding the intake fan. He touched her bleeding stomach to heal her, and she couldn’t help smiling at the soothing warmth.
“No rungs out here,” he whispered. “About a five-foot drop. I’ll catch you. The spotlight’s coming back already.” Sebastian dropped to the ground below.
When he was ready, Mia pushed herself off the edge, landing in his arms. She looked up at him, feeling for a moment the deep affection that had existed between them under Alise’s spell. She was having his child.
