Marked

Chapter Thirty-Four

"Juan! Juan, snap out of it!"

No amount of screaming seemed to pull him out of his shock so Rachel slapped him. There would be plenty of time to hate Abby for working for the poachers but for now they had to focus on living through the next few hours.

"What'd you do that for!?" He exclaimed, cupping his cheek as red spread across his face, her fingers leaving behind an outline of white against his other-wised sun-kissed jaw.

"We gotta go! Get up, we need to be ready for when the guards arrive."

"Rachel, what in the hell is going on?"

Rachel approached the unconscious guard and stripped him of his weapons. She took his gun, made sure the safety was on and chucked it at Juan where it collided with his chest. He fumbled to get a hold of it while he rose from his perch on his knees.

"Abby is working for the enemy, that's what's going on and we gotta get the heck out of here."

Next, she took the guards Taser and rummaged through his pockets for a pair of the silicone bands he'd used to bind her. She flipped him over, bound his hands, and stood, all in a matter of mere minutes.

Now was not the time to fall apart or think--now was the time to act. "Let's go. Pick him up and help me get his finger on the scanner."

Juan did as she instructed. Rachel maneuvered the guard's finger onto the scanner on the wall where the it lit up red and refused to let them through. She tried again—maybe she'd used the wrong finger-- but none of them seemed to work. Growing frustrated, she tried his fingerprint one last time but all it did was earn her another 'denied access' voice message.

"Abby must have anticipated we would use him to try and escape. His fingerprint is locked."

Juan let the guard slide out of his hands and cupped the back of his neck with both hands, the gun-still held in one hand, poked out from under his curly hair.

"Well shit, now what?"

She glanced around the room, trying to come up with a plan but nothing was coming to her. That's when she spotted the camera glinting black in the corner of the room.

"Give me a boost." Juan wove his fingers together to create a foothold for her which she used to propel herself up and slam the thin, cylindrical taser against the glass of the camera with enough force to shatter it.

"Get on the other side of the door. Now that they can't see us, we'll try to surprise and overpower as many of them as we can."

"I can finally see what my brother saw in you now. You can kick some ass! Let's do this thing!" Juan clapped his hands together and went to the opposite side of the wall. He seemed pretty calm, given that a hoard of guards were surely on their way to collect them so Abby could ship them off to the city to be marked. She drew from his calm and steeled herself.

They both waited, Rachel's struggling to get her breathing under control after the mention of Hector's name. She refused to let herself think about the fact that his sacrifice had probably been in vain. That was the most difficult thought, the thought that, if she allowed herself to think about too much, would make her want to curl up into a ball and render her useless. Not today.

When the first sounds of boots clapping against the tile floors reached her, adrenaline took over. She nodded to Juan, waiting for the moment when they could spur into action.

There was no way of knowing how many of them there would be, but she had enough pent up anger inside her that she almost anticipated the encounter.