When we got inside, it was dark, and when he flipped the light switch, it remained dark.
But the glow of outside lights from the window was enough to be clear something had happened. The computers in the dining area were on the floor, broken glass glittered across the carpet.
The silence was the eeriest part.
Followed by the smell.
Axel tugged at my arm, holding me at the door. “Stay here.”
He didn’t give me a chance to follow him, and I hesitated because of the glass. “Who was staying here?”
He crossed the room carefully, using the light from his phone to shine over the space. It reflected over the destruction. He moved his bedroom door further open. The tanks were smashed, water flooded the floor. The fish and other creatures in them already dead.
We’d just missed this, I kept thinking. We weren’t gone that long…
He sucked in a breath and turned away to cross to the other bedrooms. “We had people here watching over them. Blake’s family. My cousin… and… You…” He paused as the light swept over a bloodstain across one of the walls near Raven’s door. “Your father…”
It stunned me they had brought them here. To protect them? At the same time, my brain was registering what I was seeing.
The blood.
The silence.
There wasn’t anyone here. She’d taken them.
An overwhelming surge of anger swept through me, starting with Blake’s family and full tilt at the thought of my father being here. “Why…him…”
“He’s had contact with you within the last twenty-four hours…” He stopped when we heard the sound of sirens in the distance, coming closer. He came back to me, pushing me out the door. “We have to go.”
“Where could they have gone? Gretta…”
“Someone got to Gretta,” he said. “They got her phone to distract us maybe? We’ll check on her later.”
We raced toward the other apartment.
But this door was open.
Lights never turned on.
Blood smeared across the wall.
Empty.
We headed to the stairwell again and down, the whole way, to the bottom floor. He spoke into the phone, breathless. “Self-terminate.”
That was it. I wasn’t sure who he was talking to or what it meant, but I didn’t have the breath to question.
We hit the ground floor and emerged just as alarms started blaring in the building. The night guard that was usually around was missing. The extra security that had been in place, whoever they were, weren’t there.
Where was everyone? Did they run away? Escape?
Brandon…Marc…the others…
Axel had me follow him out the back door. I was already breathless from running down the stairs, but the fear inside me kept me going. It was like I couldn’t breathe in the building anymore, and outside I was just trying to suck in as much cool air as possible.
And then when I looked behind me, above at the windows, I caught two bright balls of fire.
Self-terminate. They had to get rid of every evidence before the police arrived. No connection to the Academy. Nothing to leave a trace.
The blood. It just hit me again that there was blood on the wall.
Was it a set up? Designed to put us all in jail? To handle us like she did Sam?
Whose blood was it?
Axel jogged out into the night, toward the pond, toward homes not far from where the building was. Police had pulled into the parking lot of the apartment building. More were on the way.
Who knew if the others had gotten out?
As we ran around the pond in the back, he broke his phone in two and threw the pieces into the water, leaving no chance to track us in such a way.
Two blocks down, I was dying, out of breath. “I can’t keep running,” I seethed, bending over to clutch a stitch in my side.
He went up to a street parked car, something that was pre-2000. He used a rock to smash the window and leaned in, starting the engine after a few seconds.
“Get in,” he said.
Within minutes, we were heading up the road, away from the sound of sirens, away from the Sargent Jasper.
I never thought leaving forever would be like this, in terror. Yesterday, I hated the idea, now I was doing so on pure instinct.
If we got caught, we were dead.
My heart was in my throat. Feeling the wind from his broken window didn’t help.
My breathing slowly normalized. I don’t know why, but after driving a while, it struck me hard. “Did we just steal a car?”
“I hear pot talking to the kettle like she’s never done this.”
“Not a car.”
“Only enough money to buy a car.”
I didn’t have an argument for that. I couldn’t help but talk just to keep my brain from shutting down. “The blood….”
“Not enough,” he said. “Not enough for someone to be dead. It was a swipe. Something to give a reason for the police to drag us all in for questioning…” He growled as he spoke, his usually stoic personality replaced by an angry storm I’d yet to witness.
“Do you think they got out?” I whispered, terrified of the answer.
“No way to know.”
He didn’t stop until we were in a neighborhood that might have been somewhere between North Charleston and Hanahan. He pulled over to where there was a sketchy phonebooth near a sketchier looking closed gas station. He tried the phone and then dialed out.
I waited in the car, my legs refusing to move for the moment. My body seemed numb after what happened.
His voice became loud enough that I could hear.
“Get them all out,” he said. “Everyone. Start with people connected to us at any moment directly. Eventually, get them all out.” Pause. “No, we’re staying. We’re staying and we’re taking care of this, but we’ll wait. We’ll wait until they’re all out. Then we’re coming back. No. I don’t expect you to agree. We never would agree to this, but you know it’s the right thing. I won’t say it.” Another pause while he listened.
In that moment he was quiet, I knew.
He knew what I did. That if Alice had the others, they could already be dead. We had to find her and put a stop to this, or it would never be over.
This wasn’t something we could l
et go. If we ran, they’d always chase us. They would eventually find out about the Academy. They would find them and take them down.
We had to stop it.
There was only one way to do it, too. We had to let go. We had to disconnect from the Academy as much as possible and take care of this ourselves. We couldn’t wait this time, not when there was a chance they had the others.
Eventually, he spoke. “I know. I’m sorry it came down to this. We all understand.” He hung up.
He motioned to me. “Get out of the car. I’ve got to hide it. They’ll come get it.”
I waited by the phonebooth while he parked the car behind the old building of the gas station. He found a tarp and used it to cover the front of it, making it look like some old wreck that was just left behind. I helped him shove a trash bin nearby it.
“You don’t think the police will see it?”
“They’ll come for it,” he said, suggesting the Academy. “Our prints and hair are probably all over it. They’ll clean it and leave it somewhere to be found. They’ll find the owner and make sure they get a new vehicle and if they have anything important inside, they’ll get it back.” He looked around the gas station and then tugged at my wrist. “But let’s not do that again. We need to disconnect from them now, and every time we need their help to cover our tracks, it makes it worse. Come on. We have to change our clothes.”
The air was cool, which was enough to keep me numb—to my own feelings and in general. It allowed me to focus on following him down the sidewalk. The neighborhood must have been familiar to him, because within a few blocks, we were at the parking lot of an old diner with a thrift store next door. The diner was just starting to open. Only a couple of people were inside, one sipping coffee at a booth, the other pouring over a breakfast platter at a table.
It wasn’t until we were sitting that I started shaking. Anger, fear, simply being exhausted…it all sunk deep into me, and my bones rattled.
Jack. She could have taken Jack. She may have taken Blake’s brother, and his pregnant wife. And Axel’s cousin.
She could possibly have Marc and the others. Or they escaped. We had no contact, no way to know. Either they got out, or they were with her now and we were out of time. The one place we thought we’d be safe from her until we could find a way out, and she took her chance.