I forced myself to move. My leg muscles screamed in objection. My feet were asleep, my muscles in stone-hard knots from holding myself still. My jaw hurt—I’d clamped it down too hard for too long.
I stayed low and moved slowly, trying to avoid the motion sensor. I have to get out of here.
Out of this library, and out of Hardwicke. My mind went immediately to the tunnel, the one that let out in the Aquatics Center. If I could get past the guards, get outside, make it to the tunnel—
This place is a fortress. The dead Secret Service agent’s words echoed in my mind, followed by a statement issued by one of the guards. The snipers are in place.
If I went outside, they’d see me.
If they thought I was making a run for it, they’d shoot me.
No way out. I tried to ignore the low, insistent voice that told me this wouldn’t end well, that if the terrorists had used the element of surprise to let more than thirty armed men onto campus, if they had snipers on the roof and were prepared for the onslaught of a SWAT team or worse, I stood no chance of getting out of here.
That voice told me to hide.
It told me to stay here, where it was safe.
There is no safe, I thought. Dr. Clark had ordered the guards to take a head count and figure out who was missing. Once she realized I was unaccounted for, they’d sweep the building.
She’d remember that Emilia had surrendered herself here.
I have to move. I have to go—
“Where?” The word burst out of my mouth, a whisper as raw as an open wound. My chest was tight, each breath hard-won. My throat hurt. My eyes stung
Pull it together, Tess. Think.
I turned my attention back to Emilia’s tablet. If she’d managed to tap the security feed, she was on Hardwicke’s wireless, and if the wireless was up and running, I might be able to get a message out.
I launched a browser. Every site I tried to go to was blocked. I tried to text, tried my phone again—nothing.
Pulling the security feeds back up, I stared at them, trying to memorize the patterns of movement.
I can’t stay here. They’ll find me.
I had to move—without being seen.
Experimentally, I tapped the screen. Instead of a split screen, that let me go through the feeds, one by one. There were more than six of them now.
Armed guards at every exit.
There were over thirty cameras in the main building, giving me eyes on most of the rooms.
Including this one.
I couldn’t see myself on-screen. That was good, given that whoever was sitting up in the Hardwicke security offices right now was probably seeing the exact same thing.
If Emilia were here, she might be able to tell me how to knock some of these cameras out.
But Emilia had given herself up to save me. Why? I didn’t have time to let that question plague me.
You’re a fixer, I told myself. You don’t ask why. You take what you’re given, and you find a way.
I went through the security cameras a second time and took stock of where the gaps in the coverage were. No cameras in the bathrooms. No camera in the security center itself.
I tried not to dwell on the footage of the classrooms, of the students trapped inside. They lay on their stomachs, hands secured behind their backs.
I tried not to wonder what had happened to the teachers.
By now the Secret Service would have realized there was a problem. People would come for us.
And do what? a voice whispered in the back of my head. There were too many terrorists and too many lives at stake. Too many high-value targets.
Anna Hayden’s father is the acting president of one of the most powerful countries on Earth. The moment it had become clear that President Nolan was incapacitated, Anna’s father had taken those reins.
They shot the president. They killed John Thomas.
What if taking over Hardwicke had been the goal all along? What if Senza Nome had attacked the president so that the vice president would be sworn into office, so that the person in power had a child at this school?
They killed John Thomas. The same day the president was shot, they killed John Thomas. After that, Hardwicke had reason to bring in extra security, and justification for the additional security officers to be heavily armed.
Not just Hardwicke, I thought. Hardwicke didn’t do this. I swallowed. The headmaster did. The headmaster was the one who would have made the call. The headmaster was the one who would have chosen the men to bring in.
A Hardwicke student is killed. I went through it, step by step. The headmaster has an excuse to hire additional security, to see them heavily armed.
The president is shot. I forced myself to go further, to take this line of thought to completion. Once the president is shot, the vice president is imbued with the power of the presidency.
And the vice president’s daughter went to Hardwicke.
They want something. Anna is the leverage. Then again, they’d said high-value targets, plural. There are other students here who they can use for leverage, too.
Hardwicke was Washington.
I had to do something. Find a way to short out the cameras? Cut the power and the lights?
I forced myself to pull up one of the classroom feeds, forced myself to look at my classmates, lying facedown on the floor.
If I cut the power, one of them is going to try something stupid.
If I cut the power, those guards are going to shoot.
I couldn’t risk that happening. I was an unarmed teenager trapped in a building with dozens of armed terrorists. There were snipers on the roof. Soon the terrorists would realize I was missing. Soon they’d be looking for me. The only thing I could do, the only thing I could even try to do, was establish a line of communication with the outside world and tell them what I knew about the terrorists’ operation—where they were keeping the other students, how heavily the terrorists were armed, how many men they had, the fact that Dr. Clark was involved.
Information is power. My paternal grandfather’s words stuck in my mind. You can never know ahead of time which pieces will be worth the most.
The more information the police—the FBI—whoever was in charge of this operation had, the better our chances of making it out of this alive. I had to find a way of getting a message out. How?
My cell phone still wasn’t working. They must be scrambling the signal somehow. But they have a way of calling out. They must.
The terrorists would want to present their demands. They would want to open up a line of communication with the outside world. I just had to find it—and find a way to co-opt it.
If I were a working phone line, where would I be? I stared down at the security footage in my lap. I thought about the rooms that weren’t on there. The security station. If I were committing a hostile takeover of Hardwicke, that would be my base of operations. If I could make it up there, if I could distract the person manning it—
This is a bad idea. I knew that, the way you know that people in horror movies shouldn’t go traipsing off into the woods.
But it was the only idea I had.
They’re going to catch me anyway. Even if I stay here, even if I find somewhere else to hide—they will find me. The question is whether or not I can get a message out before they do.
I might not be Anna Hayden, but I was still a card they’d want in their hands. I’d already been kidnapped so someone could use me as leverage against Ivy once.
If you have to make an example of someone, Dr. Clark had told one of the guards, do try to make it someone disposable.
I’d have to take the risk that so long as they had me in their possession, they would want to keep me alive.
For better or worse, I had to try.