In a prison full of killer sociopaths and psychopaths, knowing who can be trusted is tricky business. I did trust Eric. I did trust Brent. The reasons for this trust were completely different. I also trusted Patterson and Caleb Green, who were accompanying Gabriel and me were on our rescue mission. Malachi was in charge of the door and supervising Brent. There was no reason for him to supervise Eric. Eric was more likely to kill Brent than Malachi was.
The hallway was empty. Knowing that some of the inmates had a bomb completely explained why everyone was avoiding certain areas. Most serial killers and mass murderers were not interested in being blown up. For that matter, neither was I. I hated bombs. However, these were not bombers with a cause. They were just serial killers with a goal. There was a difference and that was good. I could deal with serial killers having a goal.
Patterson was now in possession of my baton. It seemed everyone was going to get to use it at this point. I kept wanting to point out that I wanted it back.
“If you were going to enter the warden’s office, would you blow up the door?” I asked Patterson.
“No, but I’m not them,” he told me.
“How would you do it?”
“I would have threatened to detonate it at the cafeteria,” Patterson informed me. He had a point. There were more than four dozen law enforcement officials in the cafeteria and at least that many inmates. It was the better hostage negotiation situation.
“How’d they get a bomb?” Gabriel asked him. Patterson looked at the SCTU team leader and shrugged.
“They don’t include me in their plans of mass destruction. I was supposed to be dead hours ago.” He opened the door to the staircase. We stopped talking and began moving, sweeping the stairs and landings as we came to them.
A pipe bomb required a trigger. A trigger required someone to be holding it. We needed to recover the bomb and disable it. It might help us figure out who was in charge on the inside. While I figured it was a cell phone, there was no guarantee of that. It could have been a couple of different things. The only thing we knew for sure was that the person with the trigger was inside the Fortress. There was shielding that kept signals from going in and out of the building. Some of them were electronic and some were mechanical. The walls had steel plates in them and there was a large electromagnet in each of the towers that could be turned on. It was why we could talk to Fiona, but not Xavier or anyone else on the outside.
I felt the concussive force of the bomb. My chest felt like it had caved in. My lungs exhaled all their air and my diaphragm refused to refill them. My ears were ringing. My face felt warm. Wet trails were dribbling down my arms and cheeks. If my ears heard it, I did not remember the sound. The stairwell smelled of metal, blood, and gunpowder.
It took several blinks for my eyes to adjust to the dim lighting caused by dust floating through the air. They felt gritty. Gabriel was next to me, his mouth moving, but no words were coming out. I did a quick assessment. He was bleeding, but it did not seem heavy. A chunk of cinder block had landed on Patterson’s leg. He was tugging at it. Caleb was helping him. The door said we were on the fourth floor. I was sure we had been on the fifth a moment earlier.
My injuries were superficial, all my body parts still moved. An arm lay next to me, the hand missing fingers, but the elbow was still there and it was slightly bent. I looked at the arm. The cloth was burned, but I could see that it was yellow. No one except Patterson had been wearing yellow in my group. I did another check of Patterson and found both his arms still attached.
“Aislinn!” Gabriel was inches from my face. His voice was muffled, but I could hear him. “Are you alright?”
“Yes,” I said. He stared at my lips, as if he couldn’t hear me. I realized he couldn’t. We were both suffering from hearing damage. I put my fingers in my ears and attempted to pop them. My communication earpiece was missing. I grabbed Gabriel’s head. His earpiece was gone as well. I shoved him away from me and crawled towards Caleb. He’d been behind me, but now he seemed to be in front of me. I wasn’t sure how that had happened. I yanked on his sleeve, grabbing his attention and then checked his ears. His com piece was still in. I sighed.
“Can you hear Fiona?” I shouted at him.
“What?” He shouted back.
“Fiona!” I shouted.
“What?” He asked again. I forced him to look at me, and his eyes found my lips.
“Fiona, can you hear her?” I asked, hoping his synesthesia included lip reading.
“I can’t hear anything,” he answered. It had worked. With my help, we moved the block from Patterson’s leg. It looked broken. It was bleeding through his dirty yellow jumpsuit. I tore the fabric. The bone was not sticking out, but a small piece of rebar was. I grabbed it and jerked. The bleeding increased, but not significantly. I nodded. He nodded back. Gabriel was standing.
His eyes were skyward, staring into the dust. There was a skeleton of a staircase left. About six inches of each stair jutted out from the wall. The door for the fifth floor was there, but looked like it had been damaged. The sixth floor didn’t have a door. The landing had less than six inches of it left and it was mostly rebar with tiny bits of concrete still attached. The seventh floor had fared better. The blast had traveled out and down, more than up. In the haze, I could make out the figure of a person.
There was an emergency exit, but it was on the outside of the building. It took one out, down a couple of flights of stairs, and onto the roof of one of the cellblocks. From there, you had to climb down a ladder into the field. At this moment, it seemed like a faulty design. I wasn’t sure it was operational during a lockdown. I looked at Patterson.
“How did we get into lockdown? We managed to enter the building!” I shouted at him.
“There’s a special button in the secure ward. I hit it!” Patterson yelled back.
“Did you know it was there before you entered the secure ward?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“How?” I looked at my grandfather.
“I helped build this place,” he answered. “There is an emergency station outside the Fortress that contains the release button.”
“Jesus Christ,” I kicked the wall, “they let a serial killer help build the Fortress!” I kicked it again and again and again.
“They didn’t know who I was. They just thought I was an engineer, one of many, that worked on this place. I designed the secure ward and the central pillar system for this area. There’s an emergency lockdown button in the warden’s office too, but he wouldn’t have used it. So I did it for him.”
“You locked us in here with a rogue US Marshal and a bunch of killers who want us dead?” I glared at him.
“When you put it that way,” Patterson looked at me. I kicked the wall again.
“You’re going to break your foot.” Caleb gently touched my arm.
“It is either my foot or his face,” I told Caleb.
“I did it for your protection,” Patterson told me.
“You protected me by locking me in a prison full of serial killers that do not like me and at least one US Marshal who is giving bombs to whack jobs. Please, explain how that works?” I looked at him.
“How much do you want to bet there’s at least one contract killer on the outside waiting for you to exit this place?” He looked at me. I kicked the wall again. He was right. If they wanted to eliminate us, there was at least one contract killer on the outside just in case we didn’t die in here. I kicked the wall one more time for good measure. If my foot was broken, I didn’t know it.
“Okay,” I breathed in deeply and let it out slowly. “How do we rescue Fiona?” I asked him.
“We use the back stairs,” he answered.
“What back stairs?” I looked at him.
“The ones hidden in the cafeteria that comes out in the waiting room outside the warden’s office. It doesn’t have any other doors.”
“Why did you not tell us about this before we were blown up?” I asked.
“Because I was hoping we could get the bomb and find out who was holding the trigger.” I kicked the wall one last time. It was irritating as hell to think like my serial killing grandfather.
“Ace,” Gabriel said my name softly.
“No, just no. Do not talk to me. Do not touch me. Do not even look at me.” I began down the stairs. The others came with me. They were stealthier, their weapons still drawn. I was mentally begging for some asshole to come across us and give us a hard time. It might ratchet down my irritation level.