Within These Walls

Chapter 36

The hair on the back of my nape bristles. I take a couple of steps back. Gunshots go off somewhere outside the room, followed by screams.

"April!"

I don't have time to think about what the guard said. I bolt after Marcus as he flies through the door. Ahead of us at a junction of our hallway and another stand two guards. They take aim at a group of kids racing down the hall and fire off shots.

Bodies crumple to the ground. As we bound toward them, a boy steps out of the crowd and positions himself between the teens and the guards. Adam lifts his hands, palm facing outward. A guard points his handgun at him and shoots. He lets off another round without pause.

The bullets hit an invisible target and bounce off it, ricocheting off the walls. The two guards throw themselves on the floor and cover their heads. Just when I think our group has a chance to escape, two more guards converge on our hallway and join their friends.

One of them turns to face us and takes aim with his handgun. I flinch when a gun goes off right next to my ear, so loud the noise tears through my eardrum. The guard hits the floor. Marcus keeps his arm raised and fires a round at his companion. A couple of cracks of gunshots later, the second man drops dead.

The third one whips around to face us, but it's too late. A bullet slams into him before he can lift his weapon. Without breaking stride, Marcus points at the last man. He misses the first time. When he shoots again, the gun makes a hollow click.

Swearing, he tosses the weapon away and picks up speed, barreling down the hallway toward the armed man. He dives at the guard from behind. They crash onto the floor and as they wrestle for the gun, Alec and Adam jump into the fray. It goes off twice before Marcus seizes it. A bullet to the chest ends the man's struggles.

Marcus rises to his feet and presses an arm to his ribs, panting. I reach his side and look at the carnage. Seven bodies lie in the hallway, excluding the guards. I check on a girl stretched out on her back, her bended arm propped against the wall.

No pulse. The fatal bullet hit her in the neck.

The guys check the other six kids, but it's hopeless. They're all dead. We've lost seven people in less than five minutes.

Marcus reads my guilt-ridden expression. He comes over to me and touches my elbow. "Don't blame yourself. We weren't better off down there—"

He cuts off when I recoil away. It's a slight, unconscious step backward, but the damage is done. A quick flinch flashes across his features and then it's gone, replaced by something cool and unreachable. I don't know how to bring us back from this.

"Did Blaine teach you this?" I ask. "How to shoot a gun?"

I do a poor job of keeping the tension out of my voice. Olive-toned skin stretches over his knuckles when he fists his hands. "You got a problem with that? Maybe I should've let those men kill all your friends."

"No, of course not."

I know what he did was necessary. That's not the issue here. It's the brutality of his killings, the systematic, emotionless manner in which he took those guards down. The way he would have killed that guard in the security room. In cold blood.

He didn't falter for a second, didn't stop to consider the magnitude of holding their lives in his hands before he decided to snuff them out. I want to believe that he killed for Blaine because he was under duress. But being a killer is second nature to him, and it makes me question his stability. His reliability.

"Now's not the time for a lovers' quarrel, kids," Alec says, picking up a gun from the floor. "I'm going with the others. Try to keep up."

"Grab a Glock, Adam," Marcus says. He checks to make sure his gun is loaded and slips it into the waistline of his sweatpants.