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.
The guys collect the remaining guns and leave me with none. I don't know if this is a deliberate move on Marcus's part, but I'm relieved I don't have the responsibility of shooting at human beings. No complaints on my part about that.
We take off after the rest of the group and round a bend. There's a closed door ahead of us. A narrow, rectangular window reveals a glimpse of the stairwell beyond it. Marcus takes the stairs two at a time, and I try to keep up. I'm on the second stairway when the door below us flies open and gunshots fill the stairwell.
A bullet pings off of the silver railing to my left. I duck and press against the side wall. The guys fire back at the guards. Alec leans over the railing to shoot and is rewarded with a startled shout. I see the moment a bullet slams into his body. He grunts and falls back into the wall. I crawl up to him, my heart speeding into overdrive.
"Where were you hit?"
"Yeah." Blood blooms across the right side of his shirt. He groans and presses a hand to it. "Right below my ribcage."
"Adam, help her carry him upstairs," Marcus barks, slipping past me.
He's going to confront the shooters alone.
"Give me your gun," I say to Adam.
My hard expression quells his protests. He presses the gun into my outstretched hand and throws an arm around Alec. Together, they stumble up the stairs toward the door. Marcus glances back, sees me with a weapon in hand, and scowls. "No way. Get back up there now."
Gunshots go off. I duck and cower on the stairs. Marcus peeks over the railing and lets out a couple of wild shots. They outnumber him and there's no way he can beat them all alone. I don't want to be in a gunfight, but I won't let him go down trying to save us.
I look down at the gun. My hand shakes as I click off the safety. I assume it's ready for use. Here goes nothing.
I lift myself just enough to get a sight on the uniformed guards below us. The recoil is unexpected when I pull the trigger; energy explodes up my arms, jerking the gun backward. I clench my teeth and brace myself, firing again and again.
A guard makes his way up the first set of steps. One of my stray bullets hits his leg. He loses his balance and tumbles down the rest of the way.
I slip out of sight when his partner aims his gun. Marcus fires at him twice, and the grunt of pain lets us know he got him. There's silence for five seconds and then the door opens again. Rapid gunfire erupts as more guards pack themselves into the stairwell.
"Run!"
We take off before they can reach the stairs, keeping low until we reach the door. A blast of warm air greets us outside, the sensation strange after days spent in an air-conditioned building. My eyes take in everything at once. The bumpy, dirt-covered before us, the nondescript two-story concrete structure across the street. The bedraggled group gathered outside the door, looking at Marcus and me like we are their only hope.
Alec is sitting against the outer wall, his face drained of blood. Willow is with him. There's an open first aid kit next to her, as well as several blood-soaked bandages. Her feelings for Alec and her fear that he'll die are right there on her face, but she holds herself together and works methodically. She's too strong to break down even at a time like this.
Marcus is looking around frantically for something to keep the door closed. There's a deadbolt on our side, probably meant to prevent our escape, but it wasn't locked. I wonder if this, like the fact that the guard didn't immediately sound the alarm, means something.
Through the door, we can hear movement coming up the stairs. The kids become agitated, their fear fueling my own. I reach into my pocket and pull out the ring of keys, shoving them into Marcus's hands. "Check if any of these work."
There are about a dozen keys, and they all look the same. As Marcus tries the fourth one, the doorknob rattles and the door is flung out toward us. Some kids throw their weight against it, but it shudders and bucks despite their effort.
"You tried that one already," someone says, pointing impatiently at the keys in Marcus's hands. "Are you sure the real one is not marked?"
"You idiot," another says haughtily. "This isn't a video game where you collect quest items that are labeled. It's not that easy."
"Pablo,' Marcus says.
Pablo wraps his large hands around the boys' napes and leans down to say, "You know what's not easy? Listening to you nerds. Shut your trap, or we'll feed you to the scary men."
I'm losing hope that any of these keys will work when the lock turns. The guards continue to pound on the door, but the doorknob is secured. As if realizing this, they thunder back downstairs, taking with them the threat of violence.
"We made it!" someone says.
The kids me are noisy, shouting with relief and expressing worry about what's going to happen to us next, but in the absence of chaos I'm able to pick up a new sound. The beeping that my bracelet makes when it's active.
I look down at my arm, but my bracelet is silent. So is everyone else's.
It's coming from my pocket.
I shove a trembling hand into my pocket and take out the silver case. There's a visible seam at the top of the case, like it's ready to pop open now. Some mechanism must have triggered when I walked through the door.
Holding my breath, I tug on the lid and open the case. There's a syringe inside it, filled with bright golden-orange liquid. Under that is a note scrawled in Sam's handwriting.
It reads: Metamorphosis Inhibitor Serum.