The Awakened (31 page)

I shook my head and started running toward the stairwell, hearing the heavy footsteps behind me. I pulled out the card tucked into my bra and slid it through the pad at the door. It blinked green, and I yanked it open. I glanced around, looking for some indication of what floor I was on and saw a large number seven printed on the wall. I knew we were underground and I had to go up a couple flights to level five. My legs burned as I ran up the stairs.

I came to a halt at level five and hesitated. I knew I should keep going, stick to the plan, but every rational part of me was shutting down in favor of searching for Ash. Would it really be worth leaving the compound if I left Ash behind?

The answer came to me clearly. No, it wouldn’t be worth it. I opened the door to level five and slipped into the quiet, dark hallway. I crept along the hallway, hating the slow pace I had to set. I ducked, doing my best to stay out of line of the cameras that lined the hallway.

Footsteps sounded from the hallway directly in front of me, and I froze. There was the familiar sound of harsh voices, and I looked around frantically. There was a door across the hallway from me. I crossed it, slid the card in the slot and closed the door quietly behind me.

I was in a room that looked like a storage closet, only slightly larger. There were several boxes of medical supplies and a whole wall of canned food. A small window was cut in the door to the room, and I peeked out carefully.

There were three men standing just outside the door, holding guns and looking around. They were opening the doors of the other rooms in the hallway. My heart was slamming hard in my chest, echoing in my ears. I was surprised they couldn’t hear it. They were creeping closer and closer to the door that I was hiding behind, and I knew it would only be a moment before they discovered my hiding place. I looked around desperately for a way out.

A small vent was hidden in the corner room, nearly concealed by the cans of food that were stacked to the ceiling. I spotted a step stool and carried it over to the vent. When I reached the third step, I looked at the shelves in front of me. They were sturdy, made of a strong aluminum, maybe even steel. I wasn’t sure if they could take my weight but there was no time like the present to find out.

I glanced over my shoulder. The men still hadn’t come to this door. I couldn’t see them, which bought me a little time, but they were coming closer. I started moving cans aside, clearing space on the shelves for me to climb. When I had just enough room. I placed my hands firmly on the shelf directly in front of me and pulled myself up, climbing up the distorted ladder. I reached the top and lifted myself up to perch on the top shelf. There wasn’t a ton of room between the shelf and the ceiling and I found myself crouched over.

I pushed up at the vent, relieved when it lifted easily. The open space left was just big enough for me to fit through, and I boosted myself up, crawling into the small space before slowly lowering the vent back into place, and not a moment too soon.

The men came in the door slowly, their guns raised as they surveyed the room. One reached for the switch by the wall and flipped it up; light filled the room. I flinched away from it and scooted as quietly as I could away from the slits in the vent. They moved throughout the room, peering under the shelves. I watched as one backed up into the stepstool, sending it crashing to the ground. I covered my mouth to keep myself from gasping out loud. I had completely forgotten about that.

“What was that?” one of them said, his voice coming out gruff. He sounded bored.

“Someone left out a stepstool,” was the answer. He came right into my line of sight, and he looked up, and I froze. “Stupid kids. Let’s go; this room is clear.”

They lingered a little, thoroughly checking the room, before leaving and locking the door behind them. I let out a sigh of relief and surveyed my surroundings.

I was obviously in a ventilation system, probably the air conditioner because I was immediately cold. The hairs on my arms stood up, and I rubbed them. It was a fairly decent size system; I had just enough room to crouch down. I started to crawl away from the direction that the men had headed in, hoping to find myself in a different area.

My hands and knees started aching almost immediately as I crawled through the small, suffocating space. There were bends and turns, and I kept going, turning left or right as I saw fit. I had no idea where I was heading. I only stopped to look down through the vents that I passed on my way. I felt like a spy, someone out of an action movie and I had to bite my lip to keep myself from laughing.

I had no idea how long I’d been crawling through the ventilation system when it started to slope down. I tried going down slowly, putting pressure on my palms to keep myself from slipping down the slick metal. When it finally leveled out again, I realized that I had come to a dead end with one large vent, large enough for me to fit through. I peeked out and saw metal steps. I must have ended up in the stairwell. Again. I hesitated for a moment and then reached for the vent, pushing it out.

It landed with a loud clatter on the metal floor beneath me and I paused, my heart doing a series of flips in my chest as I waited to see if anyone had heard it. When a few uneventful moments passed, I crawled out and fitted the screen back on the vent. I walked over to the number and saw six. I had gone down one floor. I immediately started running up the stairs.

I reached level five again and found myself in a different part of the compound. This must have been a different stairwell, because I recognized nothing around me. I crept through the hallways, listening for the sound of footsteps, but this wing felt relatively abandoned. There was also a distinct lack of cameras, which both relieved me and made me feel nervous. I glanced around, wondering if there were smaller, less detectable cameras in this particular hallway.

I continued on, pausing at each door and peeking inside to look for Ash. I was so tired, and I had no idea how large this compound was, or even how large each level was. It could take me ages to track down Ash if I had to stop and peek inside each and every door.

Just as I was thinking this, I reached a fork at the end of the hallway. A sign was there, pointing in each direction. Miraculously, perfectly, unbelievably, the arrow pointing to the left had small block letters printed above it reading: Detention.

My heart burst open, and I sprinted down the hallway, not bothering to mask the hard sounds my feet made as they hit the linoleum floor. There were doors in this hallway, the same as before, but the windows had small bars across them, and each one had a small door in the center of it, about the size of a dog door. I started peeking in the windows. Empty. Empty. Empty. Empty.

Wait.

I halted and returned to the door I just passed and felt my heart leap up into my throat. There was someone in this room, the first person that I had seen, and I knew almost immediately that it was Ash. I examined the lock on the door and was relieved to find that all it required as a key card. I hadn’t thought for a moment if I would have needed a fingerprint or password to get anywhere in the building. I’d had a direct route out of here planned by Liam and Tommy, and none of it included anything more than the keycard that was tucked into my bra. I yanked it out, sliding it through and watched as the light blinked from red to green. I reached for the door handle and pulled the door open.

AS SOON AS I OPENED
the door, Ash looked up and froze, his eyes wide. I wanted to rush at him, but he looked absolutely shocked to see me in front of him.

“Um, hi,” I said stupidly.

He blinked a few times and stood up. He was dressed in the same clothes I had last seen him in, complete with small bloodstains on them. My fists clenched in fury. His hair was a tangled mess, and there was a dark shadow along his face. I had never seen him with facial hair before. I noticed that it made him look older, much older. There were deep purple bags beneath his eyes, and his blue eyes had lost a little of the luster that I was so used to seeing.

But he was Ash. He was alive. He was standing in front of me, alive, and I had never seen anything so perfect and incredible in my life. He was
alive.

“Zoey?” he asked, sounding unsure of himself. I was so relieved to hear him sound so normal. There was no hint of a cough anymore.

I nodded, suddenly feeling nervous. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s me.”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he said, his voice low. “Why?”

I shifted back and forth, glancing at the open door. There was a camera inside his room, which was no larger than a closet, and I knew it wouldn’t be long until someone found us in here. “Well, I’m breaking out. And I came to get you. We should probably leave though. Now.”

To my surprise, he looked angry. “Are you crazy?” he said, his voice rising slightly. “Zoey Valentine, what the hell were you thinking?” He stepped closer to me, his fists clenched at his side.

I flinched, backing up. “Wait…what…”

“Zoey, you had a way to get out of here, and you came here to get me? Why would you do that?”

“I…I…” I faltered, speechless in my shock. His eyes were trained on mine, and he was angry. “Ash, I…”

He cut me off, pulling me to him and crushing me in his arms. My arms came up automatically to wrap around him, and we stood like that for a moment, just holding each other. I felt myself relax for the first time in weeks, feeling safe in his arms. He pulled back and pressed his lips tightly to mine. “You’re so stupid,” he whispered to me.

“Thanks,” I said, laughing slightly under my breath.

“You’re alive, Zoey,” was his reply. “You’re alive.”

“Yeah, I am,” I said, pulling back. “But I won’t be much longer if we don’t go. Now.”

“Right,” he said, and he was back to business. I grabbed his hand and started pulling him out the door and into the hallway. “Do you have a plan to get out of here?”

I glanced over my shoulder at him as we made our way back to the stairwell. “Mostly.”

“Mostly,” he scoffed, but he continued to follow me. I pushed the door open to the stairs and was immediately met with a gun in my face. The three men that had chased me to this level were standing in front of me.

“Run!” I screamed, and we both turned around and went tearing through the hallways. I followed Ash as he weaved his way, turning left then right and then left again. We had no destination, and I could hear the hard fall of boots against the floor just right behind us. I felt a pain in my side, and I remembered that I hadn’t really eaten today, and I was feeling it.

“Come on, Zoey, come on, baby,” he yelled back to me as we sprinted down a long corridor.

“Wait,” I said, looking around me. I recognized the hallways that I had come in earlier and knew there was another stairwell just around the corner. I ran past Ash and found it. I reached for the handle, praying that there would be no one behind it.

The stairwell was open, but it wouldn’t be for long. “Come on,” I said to Ash, and we started running up the stairs. I could see the strain in Ash’s face, and I felt it in my own body. Even all the running I had done on the treadmill the past few weeks hadn’t prepared me for this. There was a difference between running on a treadmill, not going anywhere, and running up the stairs, your heart pounding in fear as you ran for your life.

“Here,” I told him, as we reached a door that read the letters “AG.”

“What does that mean?” Ash panted, indicating the AG.

“Tommy said it was the above ground level, the only one that’s above ground. It houses all the vehicles that Sekhmet keeps,” I explained, my voice lowered. I raised myself on the tips of my toes to peek out the window and saw the level looked abandoned. Tommy had explained that most vehicles were used at night, where they had the cover of darkness as an advantage. The vehicles sat unused during the day, perfect for stealing a car, not so perfect for getting away. “Okay, let’s go.”

“Tommy?” Ash asked, his eyebrows rose as we made our way down a long hallway that led to a door.

“It’s a long story,” I said. I reached up to brush a loose lock of hair out of his face, and he reached up to grab my hand. He pressed his lips against the soft skin of my palm, and I felt a shiver go through me, and I turned away to swipe the keycard at the door.

It opened up into a large room, like an airplane hangar, and it was no wonder. There were lots of cars in there tucked to the side, more cars than I could begin to count. There were at least three helicopters and two small planes, one of them a large 747. I stopped underneath, wishing that I could fly. That would be a perfect getaway. I shook my head and turned away.

“There they are!” Voices rang out across the vast room, echoing off the walls.

“Oh my god,” I said, immediately running toward one of the vehicles. “Let’s go.”

Shots rang out behind us, and I kept running, running faster than I ever had before. These were not Awakened. Awakened had to catch up to me in order to hurt me. These guys could hurt me from much further away.

Ash stumbled, rolling into a somersault and landing hard on his stomach. I skidded to a stop and reached for him, helping him to his feet. He gasped, his eyes squeezed shut in pain before he continued to run beside me. We ducked in between planes and helicopters, making our way over to the cars that lined the furthest wall.

Ash was right at my heels, and I could tell he was limping from his fall. We reached the cars, and I started counting, one, two, three, four. There was a small SUV there, the exact one that I was supposed to be looking for. I yanked the door open and threw myself into the driver’s seat. He fumbled, surprised, and moved to the passenger door and lifted himself into the seat.

“Why the hell are these open?” Ash said, gasping, immediately pushing the lock button on the door.

“Please save all questions for the end of the tour,” I said, reaching for the keys Tommy said would be tucked into the visor. Sure enough, there was a slick silver key, and I stuck it in the ignition and turned; the engine flared to life. I glanced over at Ash and saw that his eyes were wide.

“What the fuck?” he said. His words were coming out in gasps, and his hand was clutched tightly over his stomach. I felt my stomach drop, wondering if he had somehow hurt himself when he had fallen.

“They’re very trusting at Sekhmet, apparently,” I said, wryly. “Too trusting. It works for us though. Get the guns.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“Under the seat,” I said, reaching down to put the car in gear. I watched as Ash fumbled under the seat and pulled out two handguns. He handed one to me and jumped as he looked out the windshield.

The men had caught up with us, and there were at least six or seven more of them than there had been before. They were coming at us slowly, their guns raised, each step solid and sure as they approached the car.

“What are you waiting for?” Ash asked, the gun clenched tightly in his hand, his eyes trained on the men in front of us.

I tucked my own gun next to me, hoping that I wouldn’t have to use it. I had killed plenty of Awakened, but I had no desire to kill these men, even they had no qualms shooting at me. Tommy had assured me that the vehicles were bullet proof, but the delicate clear glass in front of me made me nervous.

“Zoey, go,” Ash urged, his fingers tapping nervously on his knees. His voice still sounded strained, and I shook my head. Just a few more steps, just a few more…

I slammed my foot on the gas, and we went spiraling out of the spot, heading toward the men. They shouted in surprise and went diving out of the way. The tires squealed as I gripped the steering wheel and tried to gain control of the car. I weaved in between planes and other vehicles that lined the hangar. I was so glad that Mom had taught me to drive. There was no reason to drive back in New York, but Mom had insisted, and I had never felt so grateful for it.

“Over there,” Ash wheezed, pointing toward the exit that I had seen just a beat after he’d pointed it out. I headed in that direction. I glanced at him and gasped.

“Oh, Ash, what happened?” The car wavered, as I looked him closer. There was blood covering his hand and I looked down at his stomach. There was a large, dark red stain spread there. “Ash!”

“Watch out!” he yelled, and I looked up, just in time to jerk the wheel, to avoid crashing into a helicopter. I felt the tears spring up in my eyes, wondering how on earth I had missed that Ash had been shot. “Just go. Just go.”

“Ash, Ash, Ash,” I whimpered, pressing my foot harder against the gas pedal. We were nearly at the exit, just nearly to the sunlight. It was streaming in through, and I ached for it, eager to feel the warmth on my skin. I heard Ash groan, and I felt myself slow down. Where were we going to go? Where was I going to take him?”

“No,” he said, interrupting my thoughts, as if he could hear what I was thinking. “Don’t you stop, Zoey, don’t you do it. Keep going.” He coughed, pressing his hand tighter against him. “Drive, baby.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Tears were streaming down my face, and I focused on the rumbling of the engine beneath me, the pressure of the pedal under my foot as we closed the distance between the exit and us.

There was a line of guards at the exit, their guns raised. As we grew closer, they started firing, the bullets hitting the window. Tommy hadn’t lied; the cars were definitely bullet proof, though there were small cracks were they had landed. I flinched as they rained down at us and kept going at them, full speed.

I could feel every muscle in my body tense up. I was going to hit them. They weren’t going to move, and I was going to hit them. There was no time to stop. Stopping would be the worst thing for us to do; I had to keep going. I felt my eyes shut, and a scream ripped through my throat as I barreled through them. I felt warmth on my skin, and my eyes flew open. We were out.

The exit opened right out onto a dirt road. I followed it, glancing backward every so often, my foot still planted firmly on the pedal. There was no one behind us, and this did not bode well. They wouldn’t let us go. Maybe Ash, they saw no purpose in him, and maybe they knew that he was hurt. But would they let me go?

I kept driving, easing up on the speed, taking inventory of the car and my surroundings. The car was full of gas, and I knew there would be minimal supplies in the back, provided by Tommy. I felt his loss again, like a punch to the gut and hoped we would make it out to justify his life. We were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees everywhere. I glanced behind me and saw that there was still no one behind me.

Ash groaned again, low, as if he didn’t want me to hear him.

“Ash?” I asked, my voice wavering as I looked over at him. My knuckles were white as I gripped the steering wheel. “Baby, are you okay?”

“Just. Drive,” he said. His eyes were squeezed shut, and his forehead was pressed to the glass. The car was full of the slow, ragged breaths coming from his mouth.

I took one last look behind me, just to make sure there was no one there, and looked back over to Ash. “I’m sorry.” His eyes flew open and met mine. He opened his mouth to speak, but I kept talking. “This is going to hurt.” I jerked the wheel to the left and we went spiraling into the forest, hitting the ground beneath our wheels rough and hard. Ash winced, but I kept going. I had to keep going.

I navigated through the forest, around trees, not caring if they were scratching up the paint. I hit one tree hard, and the side mirror cracked and hung against the side of the car, useless.

The forest wasn’t very thick, probably because there was a road right on the other side but that’s what I was hoping for. They would expect me to take their dirt road to the actual road but they would never expect me to make the rough trek through the forest. We bounced around, no matter how gentle I tried to be, and I felt Ash’s gasps all the way down my spine. I had to get him somewhere. Sanctuary, we would find Sanctuary and they would fix him.