Jase
With single bulbs swinging slightly and creaking as they do from the high ceilings, the hall is dim. The rocking of the water can be felt in the aged corridors.
“How old is this place?” Seth murmurs his question as he gently kicks the first steel door open. Without a light in the small ten-by-ten room, it’s hard to look in every corner. The rustling of Seth’s shirt as he pulls out a small flashlight and clicks it on gets my attention. The heat of worry, of restlessness, is dulled by my conditioned response to chaos, stay calm. Always calm and alert. Or else death is sure to come for you.
He brings the light to his gun, both hands holding the pair steady and revealing an empty room inside. There’s only a mattress on the floor and nothing else.
The same with the next room and the next.
Rows of doors, mostly open, line each side of the hall and we go through each one. Every door we open that reveals nothing but rumpled blankets and makeshift beds leaves me with the dreadful thought that we’re too late… that when we push the next door open wider, it’ll reveal a girl on the floor, no longer breathing.
“We can’t be too late.” The fear disguises itself as a hushed request.
“She’s here,” Seth reassures me beneath his breath as he turns the knob of the next door, and lets it creak open, revealing another barren room. “Why else would he do this?”
My gaze moves instinctively to him. “Why does Marcus do anything?”
“If you want to beat him, you have to think like him. Why this place? Why the boy? Why the sign?” He pauses to make sure I’ve heard.
“Why her in the first place?” I add to the pile of questions.
I count the remaining rooms, four of them, two on each side. Three open, one closed.
My mind travels to deceit. Wondering if he already took her away. Wondering if Marcus locked the two of us in here in her place. “If his intention was so easily known, he wouldn’t be who he is.”
With the slow creak of the next steel door, rusted on the bottom edge, I hear Marcus’s rough laugh in my memory and an icy sensation flows over my skin. Unforgiving, cruel.
We betrayed him first. I can already hear his excuse. We came onto his territory; we stole from him. The only question is: what are the consequences?
“Empty too,” Seth whispers. The next room and the next prove the same.
Prepared to be left with nothing but more questions and curses hissed beneath our breath, I place my hand on the final closed door and turn the knob, but it doesn’t move.
Seth and I share a glance in the silence as I try again and then quietly shake my head. Locked.
Hope thrums in my chest as my pulse races and I take one step back and then another.
“On the count of three?” Seth asks, backing up with me. Nodding, I tell him, “Kick it in.”
One.
Two.
Three.
My muscles scream as I slam my boot against the door as hard as I can along with Seth, the two of us putting everything we have against the steel lock with the last hope of seeing Jennifer behind it.
The door slams open to reveal darkness and then a shriek. My eyes can’t adjust fast enough, although I think I see her small form just before I hear the bang!
The heat of a gun going off, the metal against my skin, singeing my shirt and filling the air with the smell of metallic powder is disorienting but familiar. Adrenaline surges in my veins and I’m quick to push forward, not knowing if the bullet hit me, grazed me, or if I was spared from the shot. Anger, fear, and the need to survive all war inside of me to come out on top as I shove myself forward, closer to the gun and whoever’s holding it.
Bang! It goes off again, the shot hitting the ceiling with a pop of steel breaking that joins the crackling of the plaster that falls from above my head.
My body hurtles forward, landing on top of the small woman who’s desperate to cling to the gun. She fires it again as I grip the barrel, forcing it away from me just in time to send the shot wide and feeling the burning hot metal as I rip it from her hands and toss it away. It thuds on the floor as she turns under me, desperate to get it back.
“Jennifer!” I scream out her name and hear Seth cuss behind me.
She screams and kicks wildly, fighting like her life depends on it.
“Stop!” The command is torn from me with equal parts demand and desperation. Seth moves to the side, kicking the gun farther out of reach. “Stop fighting,” I grit out as her heel hits my ribs and she scrambles on the dirt floor.