The rooms had to be soundproof. Across the way, a girl—her hair shaved like the boy’s—was yelling, her fists banging silently against the glass. Farther down, another boy was trying to get my attention, waving his hands toward the opposite side of the building, where another hallway intersected with ours.
Where Lana was watching us.
I raised the gun, but the rush of boiling needles was back, slamming through my skull with a new viciousness. I staggered, trying to stay vertical. None of the doors were open—Priyanka hadn’t had enough time.
Lana’s wavy hair had been pulled back into a neat ponytail. She was dressed in the same uniform as the security officer she’d shot and studied me now in a way she hadn’t before, her expression unnervingly close to Roman’s. The gun remained at her side, as if the one I was aiming at her was no threat. I shoved the phone into my pocket, freeing up both hands.
We don’t have time for this. We had to get the kids out.
“There’s a whole team here with me,” Lana said. “You’re not going to make it out. You might as well come with me now.”
“Don’t do this,” Priyanka said softly, stepping in front of me. “Please, Lana. Please don’t break my heart again.”
“That’s always been your problem, Pri,” Lana said, her voice husky. One hand reached up, touching the charm on her necklace. “You use your heart and never your head.”
“True.” Priyanka’s voice wavered. “I’m a romantic, as you might recall.”
“I recall a lot of things,” she said, her voice hardening.
“We didn’t abandon Mercer, Lana,” Priyanka said, taking another step toward her. “We escaped him. That man is a monster, and he’s hurting kids, just like the people here are hurting the ones who are right in front of you. Please…please let Suzume get them to safety. You can take me back with you to Mercer.”
Lana’s face twisted in disgust. “As if you have a choice now. I didn’t come here for you, but I won’t turn down the opportunity to stop you.”
Finally, she raised her gun. I kept my own on her, my heart banging in my ears. The jittery feeling of having my power repressed made it impossible to steady my hands.
I was right. This wasn’t the talk of someone who’d been brainwashed—this was nothing like I’d seen in the Reds. This was someone deeply misguided and manipulated, who’d walked into the arms of someone who’d likely seemed powerful and strong enough to protect her.
“You think Mercer loves you? That he cares about you beyond what you can do for him?” Priyanka let out a hollow laugh. “That’s not love—love isn’t torturing innocent kids, it’s not manipulating their bodies so that he can use them. I love you. Roman loves you.”
“And I hate you,” Lana said, the words seething. “I hate you.”
Priyanka flinched. “That’s what Mercer told you to believe.”
Lana kept her gun trained on me. Her laugh made the hair rise on my arms. “I believe what I want to believe, and that’s this: Mercer made me strong. He gave me the power to be the person I wanted to be. He didn’t leave me behind, he built an army for me. For us.”
“Leave you behind,” Priyanka repeated, her voice ragged. “Do you have any idea how much that killed us?”
“Not enough to come back,” Lana said. “Not enough.”
Behind us, the door to the stairwell banged open. I turned in time to see Vida throw out her arms, sending Lana slamming into the far wall with her power. Priyanka gasped, and I had to catch her arm to keep her from lunging toward Lana’s prone form.
The pressure of the girl’s power lifted from my mind and electricity sang through me once again, filtering toward me from all sides—above, below, through the walls of the rooms.
“Where are the kids?” Vida barked. “We need to go!”
“I told you, you’re not getting out of here.”
Lana hauled herself back up to her feet. I started to dive for the gun that had been knocked out of her hands, but she made no move to reach for it.
She only lifted the plastic cover over the fire alarm and pulled it.
THE ALARM SHREDDED THAT LAST bit of control I’d had over my nerves. It blared out, piercing and relentless. Red lights flashed on, sweeping over the bare walls and tile.
Vida pushed Priyanka’s frozen form aside, firing after Lana as the girl fled down the hall.
“She’s going for Ruby!” I shouted over the alarm. “There’s a Blue Star team in the building!”
“The boys are already there,” Vida said. “We just need the kids—Priyanka—Priyanka!”
She reached out, gripping the girl’s shoulder and giving it a hard shake. Whatever prison of horror Priyanka had been locked inside, she finally emerged.
“Can you turn the alarm off?” I shouted.
“It’s too late!” Vida said. “They’ll be here any second. Better to have the sound to cover the gunfire. Watch the other entrance—the elevators on the other side.”
“Right,” Priyanka said, moving toward the first room as if in a trance. “I need…It’s going to be…”
“It’s fine,” I told her, “just hurry.”
Before she took her position, Vida shouted to us, “If we get separated for any reason, we’re going out through the quarantine.”
Max must have had us covered, then. That small bit of relief was instantly stomped out by throbbing fear as I ran down the hall in the direction that Lana had gone. There was an elevator down that second corridor to my left. I planted myself at the corner, crouching down to use the edge of the wall as cover.
A shot rang out behind me as Vida took down the first security officer with ease.
“You’ve got seconds!” she shouted to Priyanka.
She didn’t need them. The doors swung open together with a hard clack as the locks released. The kids stepped out, their skin stained scarlet by the lights from the alarms. They’d only been given gray scrubs and slippers to wear, but that wasn’t the reason they were shivering.
“Follow me, all right?” Vida said. “We’re going to get you to a safe place.”
The kids stared at her with thousand-yard stares, as if shock had finally set in. They had no idea what was happening.
“We’re like you,” I shouted over to them. “And we are about to kick the asses of every single person in this building who hurt you. Got it?”
A little girl, ten at most, lifted her hand. It took Vida a moment to realize she was supposed to take it. Once she guided her forward, the others fell in line behind them, taking each other’s hands and forming a chain. Priyanka brought up the rear, gently urging them toward the door as Vida pushed it open with her shoulder. She leaned into the stairwell, aiming up, then down at anyone who might
be coming.
I waited a beat longer, just to make sure no one was coming up the elevator, then ran after them. The gun was slick in my hands, but I didn’t want to risk letting go of my grip to wipe them off against my jeans. I kept my gaze, and the barrel of the gun, on the stairs above us, mirroring Vida as she cleared the path below. A few of the kids screamed as the bodies, wounded and dead alike, rolled down the steps.
Bullets pinged off the railings, and the shouted orders from the uniformed security officers became roars of pain. Vida slammed her shoulder against the door to level three. I counted the kids’ small heads as they trailed after her, the chain ending with Priyanka. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
But there had been eight doors. There were eight kids.
Breath slammed in and out of me as I turned and ran back up the stairs, bursting through the door again. My shoes slid through the pool of blood, tracking it across the floor. I shoved back against the panic that was rising in me like a wave, focusing on scanning each room for places where a child might be hiding. I concentrated on the memory Ruby had given me, trying to sort through the glossy-bright images to match their faces to the ones I’d seen. The last room on the left was identical to the others, with one major difference: the sleeping cot was bigger. My stomach bottomed out as I realized exactly how stupid panic had made me.
Ruby. Ruby was the eighth one on this floor. There wasn’t another kid.
The elevator chimed, the doors dragging themselves open. Bootsteps thundered out, and it was all the incentive I needed to run back for the stairwell, legs and arms pumping harder than ever. I took the stairs too fast, barely catching myself from tumbling down onto the second level’s landing.
Steady, I thought. Calm down.
I tried to look through the door’s glass panel, but a bullet had left a web of cracks in it. After reaching out with my power to see if there were any electrical signatures nearby, and finding none, I pushed it open slowly, stepping out gun-first.
The alarm wailed through the corridor. Its red lights swept over the bodies scattered across the floor. I swallowed bile as I wove through them, running for the doors marked QUARANTINE.