Ice (15 page)

“Right now we need to find Kavick,” Tartok said.

Tartok ran back down to the basement then, and came back a couple of seconds later wearing his boots and black coat. He slipped his cape on and said, “Let’s go.”

We all walked briskly out of the house to the SUV. The Huskies were throwing a fit from in their fenced yard beside the driveway. They were all growling and b
arking at us. None of the shape-shifters tried to quiet them though, like Kavick had with Big John the first time I met him. I guess there was no chance of calming them, anyway, when they were so worked up.

As Adrik drove down the icy roads at a pace that was a little fast for my comfort, Tartok started on the plan,
sitting on the edge of his seat. “Adrik, you’ll stop the SUV before the Factory’s in sight, like we did before we reached the hunter’s house. Then I’ll shift and go ahead alone. I’ll see how many cameras they have up. I’ll come back to the SUV, and then you all will follow my lead.”

“What can
she
do, though?” Adrik asked about me. It was both an intentional insult and a legitimate question.

I fought back the urge to glare at him and pulled the nametag out of my pocket. “I have his username and password.”

Adrik was silent, giving me a funny glance in the rearview mirror. Was it so hard for him to believe I could do something useful?

Tartok looked at the nametag in my hand and then addressed Adrik’s question. “Besides, we may have to split up at some point. The more the better,” he explained in the same cold, bossy, business-like tone as earlier. “Once we get in, we’ll have to move fast. There’s probably going to be cameras everywhere, so they’ll be on to us in no time.”

“What about our faces?” Suka asked. “They’ll see our faces on the security footage.”

“I’ll take care of that,” was all he would say, and for some reason Adrik and Suka didn’t ask what he planned to do. I was too intimidated by his cold tone of voice to ask. I got the feeling his choice of words was actually a warning
not
to ask.

The silence felt heavy, thick, and unbreakable following Tartok’s commands. After the tense feeling faded from the air, I felt strange sitting there. I was sitting as far away from Tartok as I could. I felt like it was the quiet before the storm, as they say. It was so quiet in the vehicle that the noise coming from the engine and the road actually seemed loud. Kavick was all I could think about, but I was too scared to think about what might have happened to him, or what he was going through at that moment inside the Factory if he was still alive.

I said a silent prayer for him. I rubbed my gloved hands together anxiously. Kavick had to be okay. Despite only knowing him for a few months, I couldn’t fathom what life would be like without him. His presence had helped me get through life without my parents. I hadn’t realized it until then, in that eerie silence, that I actually relied on him quite a bit.

I clenched my eyes shut, praying again, willing him to be fine, even though that seemed unlikely.

I got the feeling I was being watched, so I opened my eyes and glanced at Tartok from the corner of my eye. There he was staring at me, sitting with his elbow propped on the window. His black hair hung down around his amber eyes in a careless manner. Even then he seemed so serious. Never before had the difference between him and his brother struck me as so stark and dramatic. They seemed like complete opposites. The only thing distinguishing them as brothers was their pale white skin and faces. As I stared back at him, the difference began to dissolve and the resemblance grew. Their faces were almost identical in everyway. His face reminded me of Kavick right when I was trying not to think about him. My mind couldn’t help but piece together the similarities to him.

“What is it?” I asked flatly. I had the urge to say “Why are you staring at me?” but thought better of it. I didn’t want to get on his bad side. And I wasn’t exactly on his good side to begin with, anyway.

“Nothing,” he muttered, turning his head so he was looking at the back of Adrik’s seat now.

I narrowed my eyes at him. I couldn’t help it. I hated being lied to. I decided I would try to let him know I wasn’t stupid enough to fall for that lame excuse in as polite a way as I could. “I get it. You don’t like me.”

He turned his head half-way toward me then and I couldn’t tell if he was offended, or not that I had spoken up. “It’s not necessarily
you
I don’t like…”

He seemed to relax a little in his seat and I was surprised he wasn’t giving me that cold look anymore. However, I can’t say his behavior was exactly warm, either.

“…it’s your association with my brother I don’t like.”

“But my
‘association’
,” I said with a little more dislike than was probably smart, “has proven to be helpful.”

Him labeling my friendship with Kavick as a mere “association” got under my skin. He had no idea how much our friendship meant to me. I mentally regretted my little slip up, though. I thought for sure this would be yet another one of those times where my big mouth would get me in trouble.

Tartok was silent for a moment. I realized he was at a loss for words because he couldn’t deny my statement. I noticed Suka leaning around her seat from the corner of my eye, enamored with our exchange. Her eyes were big like she expected us to start throwing punches at each other. Or, perhaps, him turn into a wolf and end my “association” with Kavick and the rest of them for good.

Finally he responded, and there was a hard tone to his voice. “The
only
benefit from it.”

He then leaned toward me to stress the seriousness of the matter—as if I didn’t already understand it well enough. “I hope you learn a lesson from all of this and realize just how much danger you’re in. Even if we do manage to get my brother out of that so called ‘factory’, he will never be safe. None of us are, and never will be.”

Tartok came back to the SUV, fully clothed. His clothes were covered in snow, though. He took the fur cape off as he spoke and tossed it into the back seat after I got out.

“They don’t have any security cameras up on the back of the building yet.”

“Good,” Adrik grunted as he walked around to Tartok, waiting for him to lead the way through the woods.

After a few minutes of trudging through the dark, snowy forest, we came to the last of the trees. Then we were walking on the concrete parking lot behind the back of a large white building. There were tall lamp posts lighting up the back of the parking lot, making it easy for us to see the back door. When we came up on it, I noticed a metal box beside it with a keypad and a slot to slide a card. Immediately I thought of the card with the magnetic strip on it Doug had written on. I pulled it out of my coat pocket, feeling the can of mace beside it, and slid it through the slot. The little red light went off on it and a green light lit up. I tried the handle and the door opened. Tartok moved past me, leading the way.

There was a long white hallway, and
I immediately saw a security camera in the corner of the ceiling. I tried to act like I didn’t notice it to keep from arousing suspicion. At the end of the hall was an elevator, and there was only a down arrow to punch. Tartok glanced to the right, never touching the arrow on the wall. We all followed his line of vision and saw a door. Beside it was a panel with a picture of stairs.

“We’ll take each floor,” Tartok muttered as he headed for the door. He pushed it open and we followed behind him.

We went down the steps at a normal pace. I glanced up to see not a single camera in the stairwell. I pointed up at the corners in the ceiling and looked over my shoulder at Suka and her father. “There aren’t any cameras in here.”

Tartok looked up to confirm what I said and then jumped over the railing and landed right in front of the door below where the stairs ran out. Apparently
, there was only one floor to look over. I sped up my pace to catch up while Suka did the same jump over. Her father, however, just followed along behind me.

I walked through the doorway behind Suka to see another long, white hallway. This one was much larger, though, and I could see where it split off into several other directions. We stopped in the center, Tartok and Suka looking at all the other directions we could go.

Suka was the first to break the silence, reflecting my very own thoughts. “Should we split up?”

“No,” her father said firmly from behind me. “We stay together. It’s too dangerous.”

I gulped before speaking up. There was another worrisome thought that just occurred to me. “If we stand here too long looking like we’re lost, the security guards watching us are going to become suspicious.” I figured there had to be cameras hidden somewhere on this floor.

Tartok immediately made his decision and gave the command. “We split up.”

“No—!” Adrik started to protest, but Suka walked away, ending his argument.

“Dad,” she said calmly, but with a sense of finalism, “it’s his brother. He makes the call.”

She then turned away and headed for the right hallway. “I’ll go right.”

“You’re not going alone!” her father said, going to her side. She stopped, waiting for Tartok’s next command.

“He’s right. Nobody should go alone. We’ll be in teams.” He then looked to me. “We’ll go left.” He looked back to Suka and her father with one last command. “We meet up here in a few minutes. If things get out of control, we meet up at the SUV.”

The father and daughter nodded and then headed down the hall at a quick pace. Tartok then headed left, and I followed. Even though we weren’t walking fast enough to cause suspicion, my heart was racing.

We reached a metal door at the end of the hall. To our surprise, the door automatically opened, sliding into the wall. We entered the room as casually as possible, even though I could tell it surprised him, too. The room was neat and clean with shiny counters and computers sitting here and there with phones beside them. There were filing cabinets against the walls. He quickly turned around and left since Kavick clearly wasn’t there.

As I followed him out, I said, “Do you think we could find where Kavick’s at on one of those computers?”

Tartok never stopped walking. We reached the split and took the other hallway Suka and her father didn’t go down. “How would we even begin to look for him on one of those?”

“Doug might have had clearance.”

“We don’t know that for sure. He might have just been their dog catcher,” he said with a venomous tone. He never looked over his shoulder at me when he spoke.

“Don’t you think it’ll look funny that we turned around as soon as we went in there?”

“It’s only a matter of time before security comes for us, anyway. We have to find Kavick before then.”

My heart started beating even faster. I held my chest, but only for a second. My heart was a constant, quick flutter. I tried to calm down; now was not the time to have a heart attack.

Just then, Tartok glanced over his shoulder at me. I was surprised and just stared back at him oddly, kind of like that “deer in the headlights” way. He just looked away a second later. And then I think I understood what it meant. Kavick had heard me talking about him on the bus one day. Tartok could probably hear my heart beating like a maniac. His stride seemed a little slower, too. Perhaps Tartok wasn’t such a cold SOB after all. Or maybe it was just out of necessity and not common care, thinking the same thing I was; now was the worst time for me to drop dead.

The end of the hall had another fancy automatic door. This time the hallway just split to the left and straight ahead. We took left again. This one was filled with more computers. Tartok stared at them for a few seconds like he was thinking about what I had said before. But he turned around again. The automatic door shut behind us with a hiss.

We went down the other hall. I looked down briefly at the echo of our footsteps. The floor was white, like everything else, and I could see our reflections in the shiny surface. The place was clean like a hospital, but colored like an asylum.

I looked up at the big metal door with the yellow stripe across it as if to warn us of something. This door had a handle on it. I wondered what we were going to find behind it.

Tartok pushed it open, never pausing. The hall was still white, but it didn’t twist and turn into different places this time. It was a single straight hallway. Eventually the white tile on the floor ran out, turning into just plain concrete. We reached another big metal door with more yellow tape, but this time it had “RESTRICTED” printed on it. There was also a keypad beside it like the one on the outside door. I quickly stepped past Tartok and ran Doug’s nametag through it. The red instantly turned green and the door made a “click” noise. Tartok pushed it open to reveal cold concrete walls to match the floor. There was caution tape along the walls, and to our surprise there was even a Bio-Hazard sign followed by more signs of warning. There was a “Beware of Dog” sign. Beside it was a white and red sign depicting a shape that resembled the profile of a wolf with teeth exposed. Under the picture there were red words that read: “WARNING: WILD ANIMALS”.

Needless to say, the building lost its pristine feel. We passed by a see-through case that had masks, gloves, eye shields, aprons, and hazardous waste suits. Beside it were metal shelves on the wall that had various items sitting on it that made me even more shocked: there were straight jackets, muzzles, and body harnesses for dogs that had leashes already attached. Beside that was another case, but this one was metal and had a padlock.

Once again, we reached a fork. This place was like a maze. I could only imagine how far away Suka and her father must be….

Suddenly, the long electronic wail of a siren sounded over us. The lights dimmed with every wail, constantly flashing dim and bright each time it sounded. I felt my eyes widen in panic. I stopped breathing for a moment as I looked overhead. Tartok bolted through the door that was in front of us. I followed after him. I had to run faster than I ever knew I was capable of to keep up with him. I was shocked to see a giant cage in the room with an operating table in the center. We ran past it and toward t
he office outside it that had big, glass windows. I tried to imagine what they must be doing in there; did people seriously sit behind those computers in that office and document them doing God knows what to Kavick in that cage, on that operating table?

That instantly ignited a fury in me I didn’t know I was capable of ever feeling. I was more mad than I had ever been. I hated Doug for having a part in it.

I slid Doug’s nametag through the little metal box next to the door. The red square of light was replaced with green like before. I turned the handle and we ran in. Tartok stuck his hand under his black coat and began digging for something. A second later, he pulled out a yellow bottle of what looked like lighter fluid and a box of matches. I stood there, shocked, watching him squeeze the liquid out of the bottle, spraying it on all of the computers. Then he started looking through the cabinets that lined the bottom of the counters.

“What are you doing?” I asked bewildered. If I wasn’t so out of breath I would have shrieked it at him. Suddenly, I didn’t care if I ticked him off. I was too scared, too mad…the sirens were still blaring. Any second our rescue mission would be over and Kavick would be stuck in this horrible place if he wasn’t already dead.

Tartok didn’t say anything. Then he grabbed several bottles of alcohol from one of the cabinets and handed some of them to me. I glanced at them, uncertain of what I was supposed to do. He unscrewed the lid of one in record time and started dumping the clear liquid over everything in the room. He even opened the filing cabinets and poured the liquid in there. He thoroughly doused everything in the stinky, clear liquid. After he dumped five bottles he darted out the office door, saying, “C’mon!” as he passed me.

I quickly tossed the bottles aside
in my panic to leave, and darted through the doorway. He had the door propped open with his foot and put his yellow bottle of lighter fluid back in his coat pocket. He struck a match and tossed it into the room. He slid his foot out of the way, the door closing on the flames that ignited in the office, instantly spreading everywhere. My nose stung from the alcohol and I heard a splashing noise as we ran. I saw him throw a cap aside. He was leaving a trail.

He struck another match just before we left the room. A line of fire spread to the cage as we ran out the door. Back in the dimly lit hall with the flashing lights, we took the closest door, the one on our right. No
nametag required for this door. We didn’t waste any time in there. It looked like a gym. There were several weights and a treadmill with a computer attached to it by several cords…we turned around. Tartok didn’t torch that room.

We took the last door in the hall. As we ran past the operating room, I could feel the heat and smell the smoke. Now there was the hiss of sprinklers and the fire alarm going off, including the siren that was already sounding. I felt like my head was going to explode from all the noise.

I swiped Doug’s card again. We pushed the heavy door open. There were cages everywhere. Dogs and wolves in pens lined the walls, howling and barking from the noisy siren. And then there were larger ones, like cells, where people in white scrubs were held prisoner. A lot of them looked Native, and then there was a white prisoner and a black one. Some looked stunned, some looked panicked, and some were confused.

“Kavick!” we both called as we went along each wall. I took the left one, Tartok the right. I fought back the panic rising to the surface; I couldn’t help but think I wouldn’t find him in any of the cells. But I wasn’t going to give up, either.

I started swiping Doug’s card through every metal box between the cells. I didn’t know if I had time to save them all, but I was going to try. “Get out of here!” I yelled at them.

One by one they ran out of their cells and out of the room. Some thanked me on their way out, some didn’t.

“We don’t have time for that!” Tartok hollered across the room.

I ignored him. I kept doing it anyway. One of them who came out of a cell said, “They turned on the siren, so they’ll be coming this way! I’ll try to stop them!”

I had no time to thank him; he was there one second and then out the door the next.

And then we reached the end of the wall. There was Kavick, kicking the bars of his cell in an effort to get ou
r attention. I could barely hear him yelling for the sirens blaring overhead. He had a straight jacket on and a human sized muzzle over his face like he was some kind of rabid dog.

“I found him!” I was so excited I screamed the words to Tartok.

I stopped one of the prisoners rushing to freedom and handed him the nametag. “Get the others out, but I’ll need that card back.”

“Okay,” he muttered as he took off and started freeing the others. There were only four cells on the other side of the room that had people in them. There were more wolves and dogs held hostage than humans.

Suddenly, I heard a gunshot and jumped. It was from outside the room, in the hallway. I could faintly hear the sound of dogs snarling and whimpering as Tartok and I swung the bars open from Kavick’s cell. Kavick stumbled a little, wearing white scrubs like the others, and turned around so we could undo the jacket. While Tartok worked on the jacket, I frantically worked at the straps of the muzzle. After a few seconds of fumbling with them, I got it off. His voice was hoarse and airy. “Christine, what are you doing here?”