Chapter 42:
Shay attacked his robot pals without batting an eyelash. Kyle reached me first, placing his frighteningly large gun against my skull.
“Jaylee...” I heard the pain in his voice. “Why do you have to be so stupid?” He sounded so genuinely sad.
That did it. I was not wrong. I was not stupid. It was him who'd been brainwashed and become everything he hated. I hit him in the neck. His dark brown eyes bulged out of his skull as he clutched his throat. Then, it was an easy matter to wrench his gun from his hands. One of the robots fired, and I just barely jumped to the side. Running backwards, I released a stream of bullets into the room. They all ducked for cover, but I managed to hit a few of them in the vests. I was careful not to aim for their heads, or an unconscious Shay, who lay in the middle of the floor.
I'd almost made it back into the hallway when someone grabbed my shoulders. Before I had time to turn around, a large hand clamped over my mouth and nose. I struggled to lift the gun, but another arm wrapped around my middle, pinning it in place. As the world began to spin, I was filled with an incredible panic. This wasn't supposed to happen. Sure we'd saved Dale, but at what cost? I didn't want to go back there. I couldn't.
Panic filled me, and bit down on the man's hand, thrashing like an animal caught in a trap. The lights in the room blurred together into a blinding haze of white light. Eventually, one of my kicks landed, and my captor doubled over in pain, letting me go but managing to take my gun in the process. It didn't matter; I was free.
Collapsing to the ground, I gasped for air. The world still spun, but I didn't need sight or balance. I was running on instinct. Getting to my feet, I turned to make a run for it, but something smashed into my head.
I collapsed. The light joined together, and I was spinning, falling, falling down. Until my butt made contact with the floor. I tried to look up, but the bright florescent lights hurt my eyes. There was a splitting pain in my temples. The knife in my hand dripped blood, as I moved it forward, using it to pull a white-clad man towards me.
Though I knew where I'd hit him, my knife seemed to heal rather than hurt, and the man stood back up. He backed away, and another doctor leaned in, seeming to want a better look at my weapons. Seemingly satisfied, he straightened back up. I blinked a couple of times, in confusion, and the blood spot in my eye cleared up, giving me a better view of the hospital waiting room.
Pushing my back up against the counter behind me, I forced myself back onto my feet, placing my hand on the desk for support. A nurse tried to say something, but her words made no sense. Was she speaking English? It was impossible to tell.
Seemingly frightened by something, she moved back, putting as much distance between herself and me as was possible. Suddenly, through the pain, I realized that every pair of eyes in the waiting room was focused on me. Scared and self-conscious, I began to back away, right back out the automatic doors. Strangely, once I was back out on the midnight street, I did not turn and walk away normally. Instead, I continued to limp backwards, as if I had no need to see where I was going.
Everything seemed to be in slow motion, as I struggled to keep moving, leaning on walls for support; but always moving, backwards, towards some unseen goal. Down the ramp of a parking garage, and towards a red pickup truck.
Once I'd reached my destination, I slowly lowered myself to the ground, placing my cheek against the asphalt. Then, I defied gravity; flying feet first into the truck bed. Crawling backwards, I curled into a ball under a pile of tarps. I heard footsteps, then the truck door slam. It roared to life below me, and we backed out of the space, up the ramps, and out onto the street. We did not turn around, even on the highway, when the truck seemed to be going much too fast for reverse. I didn't dwell much on it though, my head was too foggy. Everything hurt, and every time the truck bounced it sent a new wave of pain through my skull.
Suddenly something occurred to me. This was a dream, another memory. It had the same feel to it, but it was like someone had hit the rewind button. I was seeing the part of my memory which had been erased by the concussion; backwards. To be honest, it didn't surprise me. Things were never easy for me.
Eventually, after what felt like a life time, we began to slow. The truck did not come to a complete stop, but I slid backwards out from under the tarps, and over the side. Crawling backwards on my hands and knees, I flattened to my stomach on the edge of a rain water ditch. From my new position, I watched as the truck moved farther and farther away, picking up speed.
Behind me was a range of mountains, and billowing from of the side of one of them, a trail of smoke. Continuing with my reversed limping, I moved towards it. The forest floor was a tangle of roots and rocks, and I tripped twice, my scraped knees healing right in front of my eyes. When I emerged from the trees it was into a clearing created to make room for one of the massive poles used to hold up the gondola wire.
I collapsed. Pain. That's all I felt. My leg screamed, and tears began to move up my face, pooling themselves back into my eyes. My head had fallen into a pool of blood that had already been there waiting for it. Everything was wrong, and I screamed; a sound that sounded right, no matter what direction time moved in. Things spun and I hovered over unconsciousness, kept away from sweet oblivion by the adrenaline coursing through my veins. As time went on, the pain intensified. Until... It stopped.
My head was no longer on the ground, all the blood back where it belonged. Then, it was like someone had turned off gravity, and I began to rise into the air. As I did so, the bones in my right leg seemed to realign.
The pain began to fade away, and with it the ground. I was flying! The pain in my shoulder was almost nothing, compared to what I'd just been feeling. Beside me, a machine gun soared upwards as well, probably to the same destination. My non injured arm grabbed it first, swinging it over the gondola wire.
From inside my useless shoulder, a bullet emerged. As it exited my flesh, the skin sowed shut behind it. My other hand swung up, grasping the other side of the machine gun. The bullet flew farther and farther away and sparks rained down from the metal wire, as I ziplined upwards. The gun made a painful sound, but it did not break. And my arms screamed, but I did not let go. A few more bullets flew by, but came nowhere near me.
The soles of my feet made contact with a ledge, and I rolled backwards into an upward standing position, running backwards away from the smoking opening. Fire licked at the walls, and I spun around, coming face the face with a wall of guards, all holding guns identical to mine. People were speaking, but like the nurse, their words were nothing by gibberish. They began to move away, disappearing into their respective hallways, and I turned around again, running, always running, towards whatever had caused this.
I was almost out of sight of the gondola room, when I fell to my stomach again. Not knowing what was coming, I prepared for the worst. Suddenly, everything was fire. The explosion receded back to its origin point, the gondola, the reverse shock wave pulling me with it. Flying to my feet, I continued on like nothing had happened; which it hadn't, at that point in time. All my scrapes, aches, and pains; they were all gone. I was good as new, and nothing was amiss aside from the blaring alarm.
Placing my machine gun on the ground, I turned to an unconscious guard, an older boy who was only vaguely familiar to me. I struck out at him, but every kick, and every punch seemed to bring him back to life, until he was as good as new, the gun still in his hand. Ignoring me, he turned away.
Further down the hallway, I burst through a set of wood paneled double doors. They banged shut behind me, and I began to readjust my clothing. I pulled my black dress back down over my spandex, from where it was hiked up around my waist. On the other side of the room an identical set of doors stood closed, though they looked one good kick from splintering open. With every bang, this seemed to be less and less of a possibility.
In the center of the room sat a humongous touchscreen, built right into the table. It showed the image of a map. I might not have had proper schooling, but I could tell it was the south-east United States, and the assorted islands off of its coast. As if in slow motion, my hand moved towards one of the smaller islands, one highlighted in red. When my finger made contact with the smooth surface, two numbers and a word appeared.
The Compound and its coordinates.
My heart stopped. I'd known. All along I'd known. I'd known enough to bring an end to that hell hole.
But it was too late now, the darkness surrounding me confirmed that. In the end, I hadn't lost to an army, or to a monster like Lukas. I'd been defeated by my own mind, my own stupidity, my own mistakes. Consumed by that knowledge, I sat in a resigned silence for the rest of the trip.
The only other occupant of the shipping crate was Shay, and he was still out cold. So they'd caught him too. Legs pulled up to my chest, I sat facing the door. Finally, the rocking stopped and I heard the sound of a bar being slid off the door. Blinding light filled the space. When I was finally able to see, I saw Kyle standing in the doorway, the other robots behind him. He extended his hand, offering to help me to my feet.
“Welcome home Jaylee.”
The End Of Book One