The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) (34 page)

Kimberly scowled and hobbled to the bed,
dropping onto the edge of it and massaging her foot through her
tennis shoe. She had a fleeting concern that it was broken, but
after stripping off her shoe and sock, she assured herself that the
bones were all intact. The last thing she needed was a busted foot
to prevent her from getting the hell out of there.

Jacob’s visit had told her a few things that
would probably come in handy. First, that the people at this
facility were paranoid enough about her that they wouldn’t come in
the room without the requisite protective gear. Second, Jacob
brought two soldiers with him as a protective detail, and she
figured maybe if she played her cards right, she might have a shot
against them. Third, the cell door swung outward into the hall.

That last one felt like it was the most
important of the three.

Kimberly settled back on the bed, twisting so
she could watch the door, folding her feet underneath her. She was
a patient person. She had no problem waiting for the most opportune
moment to present itself before she made her move. Even if it took
all day to arise.

She was going to get out of there. Then she
was going to track down Ethan and, yes, even Chris and get them out
too. She would be damned if she helped these people anymore,
especially after the treatment they’d received.

She just had to figure out the best way to do
it.

To say that
Ethan was pensive about his future would be an understatement. He
was forcibly marched down the hallway toward his unknown
destination, shivering with cold, his muscles trembling as the cold
air cut through the thin excuse for scrubs that he wore and
chilling him to the bone. Two soldiers had his biceps in tight,
vice-like grips, and he could practically feel bruises forming
under the strength of their grasps. A quick twist of his upper body
revealed a third soldier directly behind him, a rifle pointed at
his head.

There’s no getting out of this one,
Bennett.

The guards steered him around several hallway
corners, thoroughly confusing him in the facility’s dizzying
maze.

What the hell have you gotten yourself
into?

Ethan still couldn’t figure out how he’d
gotten where he was right then, being shoved down a long hall
toward an unknown fate, the thought of which made him queasy. He
tried to keep track of the twists and turns on the off chance he’d
have the opportunity to escape. There was a fat chance of
that
happening, but he’d stay on the alert regardless.
However, the facility was built with no clear pattern to its
hallways, and he quickly lost his bearings. That was until the four
of them arrived at a large door flanked by glass walls. A sign that
read “Laboratory” was attached to the door.

One of the soldiers holding Ethan’s arms
pushed the door open and shoved him through it. They stopped him in
the middle of the room, and he assessed his surroundings. He stood
in an office space outside the actual labs. There were two desks in
the room, one to the far right and another against the wall to the
right of the door. Both of the desks’ tops were nearly bare and as
immaculate as he’d ever seen a desk. Directly across from him was a
room that divided the office area from a lab. There were nozzles on
the walls inside it, and he assumed it was a decontamination
chamber. The lab itself was spotless, all stainless steel counters
and tons of lab equipment, half of which he could actually
identify, thanks to the forensics and criminal investigative
classes he’d taken. Several computers were on a desk near the far
wall. To the left side of the lab, down a short hallway with clear
walls, there looked to be something that resembled cells or maybe
cages. He squinted at them, but without his glasses, he couldn’t
say anything for sure.

When Ethan had come out of his months’ long
coma, as he liked to call it—there was something horribly
uncomfortable about admitting he’d lived as one of the infected for
several months—his eyesight had gotten noticeably worse. That
wasn’t something he’d divulged to anyone yet, not even Kimberly. It
wasn’t like anyone could
do
anything about it. Optometrists
had once been a dime a dozen, but now he could say that finding one
in a post-Michaluk world would be impossible. And getting a new
glasses prescription filled was even more impossible than finding
the person who could write it.

Right now, though, glasses were the last
things on his mind. While he’d been examining the room, the
soldiers had been taking turns guarding him and checking the
security of each other’s biohazard suits. Once they were done with
this, they shoved him forward, steering him toward the entrance to
the decontamination chambers. They didn’t stop in there, though;
they continued on through them into the lab. Once they were inside
the colder room, they took a sharp left and shoved him toward the
clear-walled hallway. As they drew closer, Ethan saw that cells
lined the walls, and inside several of them were infected. Though
he knew they couldn’t hurt him, Ethan’s instincts caused him to
freeze up. He tensed and dug his heels into the tile, trying to
prevent them from taking him any further. The two men who were
holding on to his biceps nearly picked him up off the floor to keep
him moving.

They shoved him into one of the cells,
between two other infected, one of which looked like a live one and
another that was half rotted. The cell’s walls and door were clear
plastic glass, and Ethan met one face to face as he was shoved
against the one furthest from the door.

“Move from this spot before we’re out of the
cell, and I’ll put a bullet in the back of your head,” one of the
soldiers said. Ethan nodded, and the man let go of him and backed
away.

Ethan waited until the cell’s door thudded
shut before he pushed away from the wall and whirled around,
glaring at the three suited men on the other side of the hazy
glass. “Let me out of here!” he shouted, slapping his hand against
the glass. The bang of his palm drew the attention of the infected
in the cells to either side of him, and they plastered themselves
against the clear walls that separated his cell from theirs.

There was a small slot on the door barely
wide enough to squeeze his fingers through. One of the soldiers
slid the small door over it aside and called through it, “Major
Bradford’s orders. You’re not going anywhere.” He slid the door
shut and walked away, leading the two other soldiers with him
through the lab and into the decontamination showers.

At any other time, Ethan might have watched
them go through the decontamination process, if only because he was
curious about how they handled the decontamination of their rifles.
Right now, he was too angry to care. He focused on trying to find a
way out of the glass box, trying to ignore the infected that were
plastered against the glass, attempting to get to him through the
impenetrable barrier between them.

Ethan paced the cage, searching for gaps,
seams, a way out of the too-small space he’d been stuffed in, but
the only option he had was the door, and that wasn’t much of an
option. The edge of the door overlapped with the wall alongside it,
a narrow lip on the door that prevented him from wedging his
fingers in any gaps that might have been there otherwise. He swore
and slapped his hand against the door, frustrated at his lack of
success.

Ethan sat down on the floor against the far
wall, scowling. He tried to ignore the infected on either side of
him, resting his elbows against his thighs and staring at the cell
door before him.

He was stuck here. There was no clear escape
from this cell. He would have to bide his time and wait for an
opening. He would only be here for forty-eight hours, and he had a
sinking feeling that it wouldn’t be enough time for him to find and
take advantage of any openings that presented themselves.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. He leaned
forward, dropping his head into his hands and rolling it from side
to side. He was at a loss of what to do, and the feeling was
detestable. He
hated
feeling hopeless and helpless, because
it made him angry and prone to lashing out at the nearest person.
Seeing as how there were no other people nearby, all he could do
was stuff that frustration down inside him, where it would
undoubtedly simmer and stew until eruption.

The banging of the infected on either side of
him was muffled but rhythmic, like a heartbeat. He closed his eyes,
trying to tune the noise out before it drove him crazy, and sent up
a silent prayer to whatever deity would deign to listen to him that
he’d find a way out of this and would be given the opportunity to
track down Kimberly and make their escape.

Roughly two hours
ticked by, and Kimberly was getting antsy. She was pacing back and
forth across her tiny cell, counting minutes to calculate hours,
trying to keep track of the time that was passing. She was ready
for something,
anything
to
happen
already. The lack
of action was driving her insane.

Occasionally, she went to the door and peered
out the narrow window, watching for long moments for the least bit
of activity in the hallway. Once, she’d seen a thin woman with a
short blonde bob power walking down the hall, her heels
click-clacking with every step. Kimberly thought about smacking her
hand against the door to get the woman’s attention, but something
had held her back. Her hand, raised and halfway to the door,
dropped uselessly to her side.

That woman was the wrong target. She couldn’t
get Kimberly out of there. She looked too low on the totem pole to
have any say in the matter.

That was, by Kimberly’s count, thirty-eight
minutes ago, and she hadn’t seen another soul in the hallway since.
After those thirty-eight minutes, she’d started peering out the
window with each pass, searching for anyone—the guards, the
scientist who’d visited her before, Chris, Ethan,
anybody
.
She wanted to get out of the tiny room so badly it
burned
.

Kimberly rubbed at her face, tilting her head
back and pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes. She saw
bright, blotchy red stars in the darkness behind her eyelids, and
she reveled in them. She stood for a moment longer, her eyes still
closed, then blinked them open and stared at the tiled ceiling.

At the
tiled ceiling.

“Jesus,” Kimberly whispered. “Damn it,
Geller, why didn’t you notice that earlier?”

It was so horribly action-movie cliché, and
Kimberly hated that she was even considering it, but she had to do
something
, and sitting around hoping for another solution
wasn’t going to cut it. She stared at the ceiling, trying to
calculate the distance between the top of her head and the ceiling
tiles, and guessed it to be between five and six feet. Too high for
her to reach from the floor or by standing on the bed.

Kimberly turned her attention to the sink.
She thought maybe it would give her enough of a boost to reach the
ceiling tiles.

She glanced at the door, wondering if she
should wait until the scientist who’d stopped in before made
another appearance before she tried climbing around in the ceiling.
It was hard to judge whether now or later would be the better
course of action; she’d lost all accounting of time during her
unconsciousness, when that stupid soldier had smacked her on the
head with the butt of his rifle. For all she knew, it was the
middle of the night, and no one would come by for hours, hours that
she could spend getting as far of a lead on anyone who would follow
them as she could.

Worst case scenario, someone was about to
find her standing on the sink.

Kimberly went to the toilet and stared at it
for a second. It was a metal contraption, much like the sink, with
no lid, so she was going to have to balance on the metal seat and
pray she didn’t slip. With one last glance at the door, she braced
her hands against the wall and climbed on top of the commode,
balancing on it with one foot on either side of the seat. Once she
was sure that her stance was steady, she shifted to put all her
weight on one side of the commode and quickly hauled herself up
onto the sink.

Standing on the sink ended up being a lot
harder than it looked, and her balance was precarious. She
stretched an arm up and nudged at the ceiling tile above her head.
It shifted easily, and she smiled.

“Jackpot,” she murmured, shoving it out of
the way. She pushed it into the ceiling’s crawl space and felt
around in the gap she’d left behind, searching for hand holds to
haul herself up with. She hooked her fingers around the framework
that held the tiles, sent up a prayer that they would hold her
weight, and pulled.

Within moments, Kimberly was in the narrow
space between the dropped ceiling and the building’s actual
ceiling. It was dusty up there, and long strands of dark cobwebs
hung down from the narrow rafters above her head, like a series of
veils spread randomly throughout the crawl space. The idea of the
cobwebs being loaded with spiders was enough to make her want to
crawl back into her cell. But no, she had to do this. Finding Ethan
was imperative.

Kimberly twisted around to pick up the
displaced tile, sliding it into place silently. When it thunked
into place, the little light that had been illuminating her
surroundings vanished, plunging her into a murky darkness that set
her teeth on edge. She crouched there, her feet planted carefully
on two of the junctions where the framework crossed over itself,
and waited impatiently for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Once
the subtle shapes of cobwebs and the ceiling’s framework shifted
into focus, she took a deep breath, nearly choking on an errant
cobweb in the process, and picked a random direction to start
crawling in.