I stood vacantly, looking down at Marissa. She wasn’t moving. I had come to know this habit about her, this way of being, too well; so well that, at first, her stillness didn’t alarm me as it should have. She was a girl who liked to sleep and she was good at it. I’d turned to my left or my right a thousand times and found her dozed off, the warmth of slumber filling every part of her. She is a remarkably attractive sleeper, which can’t be said of all people, including myself. Marisa is soft when she sleeps. If we’re sitting on a couch she will pull me around her like a blanket and fall away into a cup-shaped form, our bodies held together by dreams and whispers.
“Snap out of it, Will! Hey, you in there!”
“Wake up, man!”
Kate was slapping me hard on the shoulder, rousing me back to reality. And was that . . . Connor?
“Did you breathe any of it into your lungs? Did you?!”
“I—I don’t know,” I stammered, staring down at Marisa, who was lying on her side. “What’s wrong with her? Is she okay?”
“She’s fine, Will—just exhausted. I think the stress is getting to her even more than usual.”
Kate was at my hand, trying to wrench something free I wasn’t willing to let go of. Connor just stood there, gaping at us all, like he didn’t know what to do.
“Give it to me, Will. Just let it go. I need to bar this door so he can’t get out.”
“What?” I looked in my own hand and found that I’d carried the metal pipe all the way out of the O zone with me. I don’t know why I did it or even how, but there it was, still in my grasp as I held it out and loosened my grip.
“I heard him laughing,” said Kate, shaking her head like she couldn’t even begin to believe it. “At least let’s make sure he doesn’t get out if we can help it.”
“She told me to guard the door,” said Connor, “I should go back.”
“Guard what door? And who? What are you talking about?” Kate asked.
Connor pointed down the rusted, dripping tunnel.
“Avery—who by the way looks pretty bad if you ask me—she and Alex went in, but I was supposed to guard the door. Make sure Davis couldn’t get in. Or Rainsford, whatever this dude’s name is.”
Like you could stop him if you tried, I thought.
“Just go, yeah—wait for us there,” Kate said impatiently. She went to the O zone door and Connor took off in the other direction. Looking down at Marisa, I got the feeling she was waking up. Was this her new reality? Like a narcoleptic, would she simply go to sleep at the most inopportune times? I leaned down over her, pushing her dark hair back and feeling her skin. It was warm as I’d hoped, and her hand came up to mine. Her cheek was soft against my hand, her palm against my fingers like a butterfly perched and ready to fly.
“You scared me,” I said.
“You scared me, too. Let’s try not to do that to each other anymore, okay?”
Her eyes opened and I saw that she was smiling. She reached up, took my shirt in her hand, and pulled me close.
Let’s just say it was the best kiss of my life up to that point. Five seconds, ten? I couldn’t say, but somewhere in that general time frame my eyes came fully open. I’d remembered something important.
“Shut the blue door,” I said, not nearly loud enough. Then I was up, moving as fast as my feet would carry me to the S4 monitor. “Ben! Lock the blue door!”
I was yelling into the screen, hoping I hadn’t been too late, wondering if Ben Dugan was in the observation room waiting for me to give him instructions. There was a long, stress-inducing silence as I stared into an empty room but got no reply.
“What’s going on?” asked Kate. She’d returned from her chore at the O zone door.
“The other O zone entry, it doesn’t lock either,” I said as Marisa got up and came over, too. The three of us stared into the monitor. “I left the blue door open and put Ben in the observation room. If he doesn’t get that door shut, Rainsford could get out.”
“Is the observation room locked?” asked Marisa. “If it’s not it should be.”
“Ben!” I yelled. “Come out, let me know you’re okay.”
I had a chilling sense that Rainsford was about to pop his orange-covered head into the monitor and hold up Ben’s dead body. I’d tried to kill Rainsford. He would be furious.
“Hang on, I’m coming. Give me a second.”
“Hey, that’s him—that’s Ben. I know that voice,” said Marisa. “Ben!”
“You need to lock the blue zone right now!” I yelled.
Ben came into view, slowly and with some effort, and I saw that he wasn’t doing as well as I’d hoped.
“My back is seizing up on me—couldn’t get up off the floor.”
“Oh, Ben—I’m sorry,” said Marisa. “Is the door locked? Close it so no one can get in.”
“No, wait!” I countered. “There’s no key card. It’s fried, trust me. If you lock that door you won’t be able to get out, maybe ever. Just engage the blue lock, Ben. He can’t be past there yet.”
“Whoa.”
“Wait, what? What’s going on?” I asked. Ben looked like he’d just seen a ghost but couldn’t get his legs to move and run away.
“It’s Rainsford,” said Ben, mesmerized by something I couldn’t see but he could. “Dude, he just walked right into one of those holes with the electric water.”
“This is bad,” said Kate.
“Ben, hit the blue button! Do it now, before he gets to the door.”
“You don’t understand,” Ben said, squinting his eyes and leaning closer to the wall of monitors. “He’s lying down in the water. He’s gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean, gone?” Kate asked.
“Okay, he’s moving fast, like really fast,” Ben said. “But he’s under the water. This is weird, you guys. The tunnel is filled with sparks. The guy is, I don’t know—I think he’s washing something off himself. How’s that even possible?”
Rainsford was taking a bath in a high-voltage pool of age-old water, an act that would kill a mortal in no time flat. He was clearing his system of whatever gunk Marisa had pushed him into. All the procedures over all those years really had made him unkillable. He was Rainsford, the immortal. He couldn’t be stopped.
“Which button do I push again?” Ben asked, glancing down at a console I’d become all too familiar with.
“Blue, round, big.”
“Um . . . yeah. I see it.”
“Hit it!” I yelled. Marisa and Kate yelled, too, and Ben looked at the monitor with Rainsford on it and his eyes widened. He hit the button hard and fast, then stepped back from the control panel.
There was a long silence, maybe five seconds straight, where no one spoke. I looked at Ben and raised my eyebrows.
Did you get the door locked in time?
He nodded, yes, and I felt a little better. At least Rainsford was contained for the moment. I was actually feeling pretty good, like it was all a big game and we’d surged into a position where we might actually win.
And then the truth struck me. What was I, a total moron?
Rainsford had a blue key card.
He could open the door anytime he wanted to.
“Ben, what’s he doing now?” I asked as calmly as I could.
“He’s still in the water, but he’s sitting up now. The dude is like Frankenstein.”
“Which pool is he in? The one close to the monitor or the one down at the end, by the blue door?”
“The one by the monitor. He seems to be taking his time.”
“Good, hang on—and don’t shut that green door. Also, get down and stay quiet. If Goring shows up, she can’t know you’re in there. Only talk to me, got it?”
“Got it, and I’m more than happy to lie down. I don’t feel so good.”
Ben slid slowly out of view, and I knew I had very little time. I had to take complete command of the situation, and fast. It was risky what I was doing. I was taking Ben’s life in my own hands. I was the only one who knew Rainsford had a blue key card. Only I knew that Rainsford could get to Ben Dugan. The question was whether or not I could make it to the blue door first.
“Marisa, you and Kate stay with Connor,” I said, backpedaling toward the O zone door as Kate followed me. “Wait for Avery and Alex to come out. And find a weapon if you can—anything—I don’t know if Avery can be trusted.”
Marisa nodded, asked me where I was going.
“Just trust me, okay? Can you do that?”
Marisa nodded again. I’d won back her confidence and I aimed to do everything I could to keep it that way. Seconds later I arrived at the O zone door with Kate. She’d figured out the perfect way to slide the bar through the opening on the handle and jam the edge into the corner by the door.
“I need to take that bar with me,” I said. “He’s not going to come this way. It’s too far, and he knows he’d drag all that radioactive garbage along with him. He’s clearing his system so he can be with Avery, right? He’s only going to go the other way.”
Kate wanted to protest, I could see it in her eyes. But she’d heard everything, knew what was going on in the blue zone. She knew Rainsford was making a break in the other direction.
“He can get out, can’t he?” she asked, searching my eyes for the truth.
I popped the bar out of its position and slid it free of the O zone door.
“I hope not” was the best I could do.
I instructed Kate to stay at the monitor so I could communicate if I made it back to the observation room and I told her where Marisa and Connor were stationed. Then I raced through the tunnel until I reached the opening that led to the X door. Connor and Marisa stood there, shadowy in the soft light.
“Stay here,” I instructed. “Kate’s at the monitor—she’ll alert you when I call. If anything interesting happens, go tell her. I should be online in ten minutes, hopefully less.”
“Be careful,” Marisa said.
“I’ll take care of the girls, no worries,” Connor added. I wanted to mention that he hadn’t been very useful so far, but I let it pass and hoped he could at least help guide everyone out of the red zone when the time came.
And then I was off, making my way as fast as I could past holes in the floor, each time trying to imagine what Rainsford was doing. How long did it take to wash radioactive sludge off your skin when you were using high-voltage liquid? I doubted even Rainsford knew, though probably he could feel how long it would take. I rounded the first of two corners in the red zone and remembered something very important.
“Kate!” I screamed, my voice bouncing wildly through the tunnel system. She was a long way off, far enough that I couldn’t see her in the gloom, but she answered. My hearing was a problem, as always, and whatever she said came through like the sound of a hamster squeaking into a tin can. At least she’d caught my voice.
“Tell Ben to open the red zone door!” I screamed. It wouldn’t do me much good to arrive at the door and find it locked tight. I yelled once more for good measure as loud as my voice would go, “Open the red door!”
Did she hear me and understand? Would Ben be able to get up off the floor in the observation room and do what she asked? Had Mrs. Goring appeared in the room, looking for me? All questions I asked myself as I kept on, arriving at the two remaining holes in the floor. They were both long but narrow, easy to get around but menacing to look at. They were filled with shards of tile and thick, exposed tubes of wire that snaked over and under the water’s surface. The tubes looked like serpents that might reach out and wrap themselves around my legs at any moment, sucking me under as Rainsford had gone under. Only I’d die and he wouldn’t. The unfairness of it all seized in my mind, a fuel of anger and fear and regret for allowing myself to be tricked again.
Fool me once, right bro?
Yeah, I know the saying, Keith. I don’t need to hear it.
It’s a good one, though, right? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Shut up, Keith. You’re bugging me.
You always had a way of getting us out of a jam though, right? It was your specialty.
It was rare for Keith’s voice to rear up in my mind in the past tense, so it caught me off guard.
You always had a way of getting us out of a jam though, right? It was your specialty.
Past tense had a different kind of power. I had to face the fact of losing him all over again, the knowing he was gone.
As I came to the red zone door I pushed my little brother’s voice deep down inside. I couldn’t tell if the door was open or shut, and part of me didn’t know which result I hoped to find. Past the door was now Rainsford’s realm. I’d hit him in the side of the head with the metal pipe I was carrying. He’d want revenge. If he’d cleared the blue zone I was history, me and Ben both.
How long had it been since I’d last seen Rainsford taking a high-voltage dip? Ten minutes? Longer? Time was warped in my head in a way that made it feel more like ten hours had already gone by and I was about to open a door and find a monster standing behind it.
I touched the red zone door, slick and metallic, and pushed. It was heavy like the others and moved slowly. On the other side it was very dark, only a single soft bulb to light thirty or more feet of tunnel.
A figure stood in the distance, bathed in blue light from a monitor on the wall. He’d come for me, probably already stopped over in the observation room and killed Ben Dugan. And the red door was open, too. He could have his pick of victims: Connor, Alex, Kate, Marisa. They wouldn’t have a chance.
“That you, Will?”
It was not the voice I’d expected.
“Ben?”
“Yeah, it’s me. I got scared in there. And it feels better if I move around some, doesn’t seize up on me.”
I ran through the door toward Ben’s silhouette.
“Whoa, what’s the rush? Take it easy, he’s behind the blue door, remember?”
“Start running! Get through the red door!” I yelled. Ben needed to be safe and away from the observation room. I didn’t even stop at the turn where Ben stood, I just blew past him and kept on going, yelling for him to get back in the red zone as fast as he possibly could.
“Why would I want to do that? It’s cold in there, plus—”
“Go, Ben! Just go right now! It’s not safe here! And shut the door behind you!”
I was screaming the words over my head as I passed under the hole with the ladder that led up to the surface. I wondered if Amy would unlock the latch and let us all out. There was still a chance I could find a way to escape, to free everyone.
I rounded the last corner, sliding and falling on the slick tile floor. When my shoulder hit, the tiles broke through, revealing a river of water below through two feet of empty space. I scrambled to my feet, barely avoiding disaster, and came to the blue door. It was closed, thank God, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long. The card reader on my side of the door had a soft blue light about the size of a pencil eraser. It was flashing and beeping. There was a loud click and the light went solid again.
The door had been unlocked from the other side.
I grabbed the handle and set my foot against the jamb of the door, fumbling with the pipe in my other hand. It was like a baton, slick and moving between my fingers.
“That you, Will Besting?” came a voice through the small crack that exposed the other side.
It was him. Rainsford. His voice was ominously calm.
“You know I’m stronger. You better just start running.”
I held the door with one hand, but I was losing my grip as the gap grew larger.
“I’ve got all the time in the world.”
I hated his voice, hated it so much I wanted to open the door and hit him in the face with the pipe. But I knew better. I had a burst of new energy, an adrenaline-filled rush of power. The door pulled shut in my hand and I slid the pipe into place, jamming it with a forceful thrust that left me breathless and shaking.
Rainsford was contained, at least for the moment.
I yelled and jumped up and down like a little kid.
“You okay, Will?”
It was Ben behind me, who was turning out to be a guy who was terrible at following instructions.
“Yeah, Ben. I’m okay.”
“I really didn’t want to go back in there. Can I just stay with you instead?”
I smiled, even laughed, and put my arm around his shoulder. The blue light blinked on and off again and the beeping sound returned.
“I have a better idea,” I said, guiding Ben to the bar jammed in the door. “Hold this bar right where it is, don’t let it slip.”
Ben took hold of the bar just as Rainsford tried to pull the door open. It held nicely, but I could see how the bar might come loose and fall to the floor if Rainsford tried ten or twenty times.
“Sure, Will. I can do this,” said Ben. “And Will?”
“Yeah?”
“Get us the hell out of here, will you?”
“Working on that,” I said, and then I was running again, hoping to make it back to the observation room before I’d been missed.
The first thing I noticed was how quiet it was. I took a few seconds to just drink it in—the calm of the room with all the monitors off except the one at the main entrance. That one delivered a cold, silent view of nothing moving. I took a deep breath and held my hand over the S4 feed.
Time to check in with Kate.
When the feed appeared she was standing there, looking bored and beautiful. She was in profile, staring at the floor, but she knew I’d returned.
“How’d it go? Save the world again?”
“Maybe not the whole world, but it went as planned. We’re still in the game.”
“Glad to hear it. Connor called over a few minutes ago. Still nothing from behind the door. Maybe Alex and Avery are making out.”
“Somehow I doubt that. Hold tight, okay? I’ll leave your monitor on in case something comes up.”
“Roger that,” Kate said. She was starting to sound like Connor as she rubbed her temples. Kate was tough as nails. I could see why people would follow her around, and for a brief moment I wondered what would become of her.
Kate Hollander, CEO of a large corporation. Yeah, that fit. And a marathon runner.
Maybe I was thinking about things that really didn’t matter because I was apprehensive about what I’d see when I clicked the S5 feed on. It was the one feed that had returned nothing but a wall of darkness since I’d arrived in the observation room. I knew what was hidden in the dark, I just didn’t know if I wanted to see it.
I engaged the S5 monitor and found that all the doors in the room had been opened up. Two people were in there, scanning shelves, looking for something.
“Hi, Alex. Hi, Avery,” I said as softly as my voice would allow. I didn’t want to scare them into dropping something important.
Alex turned around, but Avery did not. Her hair and clothes were wet and it looked like she was shaking.
“Will? Hey, Will!” said Alex, moving closer to the screen. His clothes were wet, too, but his short-cropped hair had dried.
“How many vials?” I asked, getting right down to business. Avery still wouldn’t turn around. As Alex looked at the wall of open doors, I shuddered at the thought of what I saw. So many vials, all lined up in rows. It couldn’t be.
“I don’t know, man. I think about a thousand. It’s a lot.”
1,000 vials divided by 6 equals . . .
Alex could tell I was calculating the enormity of it.
“I know, crazy right? I did the math. If it’s seventy years for every six vials, he’s about twelve thousand years old.”
“But that’s impossible. I mean totally impossible.”
Avery spoke without turning around, and what she said chilled me to the bone.
“They’re not all his.”
Avery turned around then, her ghostly face even more troubling with the strings of wet hair hanging in clumps over her eyes.
“There are others like him, there have to be.”
It was as if she’d been thinking about this idea a long time, running her fingers along the vials and wondering, calculating. Could there be more than one Rainsford out there? It felt impossible. It was also an idea that had the power of distraction, which was something we no longer had the luxury of enjoying. It was Kate who reminded us all, as her voice boomed into the observation room from where she stood at S4.
“Focus, you guys, focus! Or let me in there and I’ll get the job done. Who cares if there are more Rainsfords running around? All we care about right now is this one. Seven vials, that’s it. Get them and get out.”
I was reminded once more as Avery touched the pocket of her soaked jeans that it was she who carried the seventh vial.
“Took a while, but we finally figured out they were lined up in order. Ours were the last ones in,” Alex said. “We found ’em, only there’s a problem.”
“Let me guess,” I asked. “You only found six.”
Alex looked at me like I could read minds and nodded.
“Goring said she had to keep hers, remember?” Kate yelled. She trained her eyes on the one person that mattered. “Avery?”
Avery wouldn’t answer as Marisa arrived next to Kate. She’d heard Kate yelling and wondered what was going on.
Avery Varone wouldn’t speak. She went back to the wall of a thousand vials and I wondered what she was thinking.
“Avery, listen to me.” It was Marisa, with her soothing, sleepy voice. “I know how much you love him.”
“No, you don’t,” Avery said without turning around. “You don’t know anything.”
“But I do. And I know how much it hurts when they lie. I know how hard it is to trust them again.”
It stung to hear Marisa’s words, but there was nothing I could do. My betrayal was being played out in front of everyone whether I liked it or not.
“He loves me,” Avery said, and I could tell she was crying. “Only me. No one else.”
“You might be right, but either way, he’s keeping things from you. Big things. I know how that feels, too.”
“And he’s sorry,” I added, partly for Marisa, but more for Avery so she’d understand. “Listen, Avery. Please. This is about us getting cured. You can make that happen. If he really loves you, he’d want that for you. He’d want you to help us, wouldn’t he?”
Avery didn’t answer as Alex held up six glass vials—three in each hand—and mouthed the words, What do I do?
I could tell him to tackle Avery and take the seventh vial. She was crafty though. She might figure out a way to make sure at least one of them broke or got spilled.
“I think you’re right,” Marisa said. “I think he does love you. Only you. And I don’t think that’s going to change if you help us.”
I glanced at Kate’s monitor and saw that she was staring at the floor, wincing in pain. The stress was finally getting to her. Those headaches were getting worse. Marisa looked utterly exhausted. I was having trouble hearing everyone. Even Connor, with his rock solid persona, wobbled back and forth in a distant blur on the monitor, one of his spells coming on unexpectedly. All of us were—in one way or another—in need of a cure. And if Mrs. Goring was telling us the truth, Avery had what we needed.
“Why are you guys soaking wet?” I asked. There had been a brief lull in the proceedings and it was a question I’d wanted to ask.
“Wet?” asked Marisa, because she couldn’t see them from the angle of her monitor.
“Yeah, so once you get past the X door there are some steps getting in here,” said Alex. He was happy to have something to do besides stand there and look stupid. “First there’s this tube and a ladder that goes down, a lot like how we got underground to begin with, then it’s like a beach with water coming up to the edge. The room we’re in is on the other side of an underground lake. And let me just say it is some frickin’ cold water. I don’t recommend getting in if you don’t have to.”
It wasn’t really a lake, I knew. It was a missile silo, filled with groundwater. That was the round part I’d guessed about on the map. And behind that, the room with the vials.
Avery came toward the camera, and to my surprise she pushed Alex out of the way and put her face right up in the lens. Up close she looked more innocent, and I was angry at Rainsford all over again for what he’d done to us, to her.
“Marisa?” she called. “Are you there?”
The two of them had talked many times during our first visit to Fort Eden. They shared things we couldn’t have known about. They had been like two peas in a pod.
“I’m here, Avery,” Marisa called from the passageway. She, too, came up close into her screen.
“Get out of the way, Will,” Avery said, and I realized I was standing between them, blocking their views of each other. When I was out of the way they stared at each other for a moment. It was the first time Marisa had seen her, and I could see how badly she felt for Avery, how surprised she was at the hollowed-out girl on the monitor across the room I stood in.
“Will you come in here?” asked Avery. She glanced at the floor and back up again. “I can’t do this alone.”
There was no hesitation in Marisa’s answer.
“I’m going to the door, how do I open it?”
“Give me five.”
Avery crossed to Alex and talked with him, saying things I couldn’t hear. He looked in my direction as if searching for an answer, but Avery commanded his attention once more and he stared directly into her eyes.
“What are you guys talking about?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
Neither of them would say as I watched Alex hand all six of the vials to Avery and walk off camera.
“Whoa, wait a second—what’s going on?” I asked. “Alex? Alex!”
I heard the sound of moving water and knew that he’d gotten back into the underground lake of the silo. Avery wouldn’t look at me.
What are you up to, Avery Varone? I thought. I still didn’t trust her and now she had all seven vials. If she’d wanted to, she could destroy them right there in the room. She was alone. She could throw them against the wall, smash them to bits.
I felt helpless and alone. My team was spread out all over the place, my girlfriend was on her way into the deepest, darkest part of the facility, and the most un- stable among us was holding all the vials. I almost wished Mrs. Goring would return and started to wonder why she hadn’t. She’d been gone longer than usual—forty minutes, an hour? Her absence made me nervous the more I thought about it.
Nothing was happening that I could see, which felt like a lull before a storm. A bad omen. I thought about visiting Ben, just to make sure everything was okay at the door, but decided against it when Connor came running up to the S4 monitor.
“Did you approve this thing with Marisa? Why don’t I go instead?”
“Avery wants to see her,” I said. “I think it’ll be okay.”
Secretly I worried that Connor might get in that freezing cold water and seize up on us. He’d drag Marisa under with him and they’d both be dead. I knew Marisa could make it because I’d seen her swim back home. She was solid, she could do it.
“Just wait for them to come back. We’re almost out of this thing.”
“You mean she’s letting us out? No way! Why didn’t you say that?”
I couldn’t bear to tell him the truth, but Kate made sure he knew without me having to say anything.
“No such luck. His master plan doesn’t include us getting out of here. At least not yet.”
Connor scowled at me, like I’d lied to him or told a half-truth, and then walked away. When he vanished into the hallway leading to the X door, I started watching the S5 monitor again. Avery was somewhere off camera, probably at the water’s edge waiting for Marisa to show up, and I stared at the rows of vials. Could there really be a thousand vials of fear blood? It sure looked like that many.
“Where’s Ben?” Kate asked.
“He’s holding the bar in the door so Rainsford can’t get out.”
Kate just nodded. It looked like it was taking some effort to speak at all.
“Bad?”
“Yeah, not great. It must be getting dark outside. That’s when it’s the worst, right before dark.”
“I wonder why.”
“Couldn’t tell you. Maybe pain and darkness like each other.”
I had been right about the bad omen, the calm before the storm, because right when Kate said those words, everything started to fall apart.
It started with Amy, who unexpectedly returned to the main monitor. Her cheeks were flushed, as if she’d been running or gotten embarrassed.
“Will, she knows! You have to get out now! She knows everything!”
“Slow down, Amy—what happened?”
“There’s no time, Will! She knows and she’s going.”
“Going where?”
“I did what you asked. I unlatched the way down. I even opened the door and left it that way. But she knows, Will. She’s leaving right now. And she’s mad. Like, really mad. At you.”
“Can you stop her? Slow her down? Anything?”
“I can’t even get out of here! I’m locked in the basement. You have to get out now, Will. Get everybody out. You have to save me.”
Amy started crying. She was really scared, like a beast was lurking outside the bomb shelter door, trying to get in.
“Hold tight, I’ll get there as fast as I can. I promise!”
There was a voice from the basement—was it Mrs. Goring? I thought it was, but I couldn’t say for sure with my rotten hearing. Had to be, because Amy gave me a look before she killed the signal that said something important:
She’s not gone after all. I’ll keep her here as long as I can. Go! Go! Go!
This was at least a glimmer of hope. Thank you, Amy! was my first thought as I focused my energy on the S5 monitor. Looming up in the back of my mind was time. It was always about time, it seemed, not enough or way too much in the case of Rainsford. It was about a six- or seven-minute walk to the pond, but Mrs. Goring was in the basement and she had to make sure everything was locked down tight so no one got out. That could take, what, five minutes extra? I had a max of twelve minutes to get everyone out, which meant Avery and Marisa had to be on the other side of the underground lake within five at the most.
“Marisa! Answer me, it’s important!” I yelled. Kate stirred from where she leaned hard against a wall.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Hang on—Avery? Marisa! You need to leave, now. The doorway out is open but not for long. We don’t have much time!”
“Coming!” yelled Kate. She was getting out of the missile silo whether anyone else made it or not. “I’ll grab Alex and we’ll meet you at the exit. And Marisa and Avery? If you can hear me, and I know you can, get your asses in gear! It’s time to move or get left behind! And don’t show up without the vials. I mean it!”
I appreciated the extra boost of enthusiasm from Kate as Marisa’s flustered face appeared in the monitor.
“We’re coming! We talked it through, and we’re coming!”
“Do you have the vials?” I asked. I had no illusions about Mrs. Goring helping us, but if we could just get out and escape into the woods before she found us, it wouldn’t matter. We could take the vials home and do the work ourselves.
“Swim fast! Run faster!” I yelled. “There’s seriously like no time. You gotta move.”
Marisa didn’t even take the time to answer me, she was just gone. And then Avery appeared in the screen. She had a wisp of a smile on her face, which I hadn’t seen all day. She seemed almost happy.
“We’ll make it. Don’t go leaving without us.”
I told her I wouldn’t think of it, and then I double-checked to make sure the red zone door was open. I was about to leave the observation room when a thought raced to the front of my mind.
What about the seven candidates in Fort Eden? Are we just going to leave them behind? What about Amy?
I wasn’t responsible for all of them, but I did feel responsible for Amy. She had talked about going first, which could mean really, really soon. If Mrs. Goring got Amy drugged or under some kind of deep hypnosis or whatever, I’d never forgive myself. And the other six candidates were trapped, too. How fast could I get the cops up here? It would take a few hours, at best. It wouldn’t be fast enough.
I saw two dripping-wet figures come into the tunnel on the S4 monitor—Marisa and Avery were out—and they were running. That was my cue to get to the exit.
“Will, over here!” yelled Connor. He and Kate and Alex were running up the red zone tunnel. One of them had a flashlight, and it sent a dancing beam of light in my direction.
“I’ll get Ben,” I said, and ran for the blue zone, where I found Ben sitting on the ground, holding his back with one hand and the metal pipe with the other.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I’m good, but he’s pissed,” Ben said. He stood partway up and started hobbling toward me on his sprained ankles. “I think he’ll keep unlocking the door and banging on it until it falls off its hinges.”
“You’re probably right. Just one more good reason to get out now.”
“For real? The door’s open?”
“Yeah, I did it. Let’s go.”
Ben threw an arm around my shoulder and I helped him walk back toward the entryway. When we got there Kate, Connor, and Alex were milling around, nervous energy having overtaken them. Seeing Ben, Connor went into commando mode again.
“We got an injured guy on our team, let’s get him out first. I can go right behind, catch his weight if he starts to fall.”
“Fine by me,” said Kate. “I think I’ll wait a second, make sure my girls get out first.”
Ben was all too happy to start up the ladder before Kate even stopped talking, but he wasn’t fast enough to beat Alex to the first rung. He was flying up that ladder before Ben could take his first step. Once he got going, Ben hopped from rung to rung, making slow progress, and Connor pulled up behind him.
“What’s the plan at the top?” Connor asked. “Do we just go right out or wait?”
“I think we scatter and run for the cars. Just get out and run; we’ll do the same.”
Connor nodded down at me like he was raring to go, but he was nervous. He kept looking up into the tunnel like it was spinning around in circles.
“Feeling dizzy?” Kate asked.
“Nope, I’m good.”
Connor began the slow ascent to the top and Kate nudged me on the shoulder.
“Don’t go in there until he’s out. You don’t want to end up under a falling football player.”
Kate could be cold, but she had a good point. Beneath a free-falling Connor Bloom was not a place I wanted to find myself.
“If we do get cured, he’s so going into the army,” I joked. “He’s already trained.”
“Yeah, he’d be a natural.”
Nine minutes had passed, and I didn’t want to tell Kate we were down to almost no time by my calculations. It was altogether possible that Mrs. Goring was already standing outside waiting for us with a shotgun as it was.
I heard a noise in the distance, down the red zone tunnel, and I couldn’t help myself. I started running in Marisa’s direction.
“Go ahead,” I said to Kate over my shoulder. “You might as well. We’re going to make it.”
Kate looked in both directions and seemed to weigh her options.
“No thanks. I want to see those vials for myself. Plus Connor’s not to the top yet.”
I could see the resolve in Kate’s expression when I looked back once more. She’d come this far to get rid of a constant, blinding migraine. She wasn’t about to take any chances.
There was no reason for me to run toward Marisa. I just wanted to. I wanted her to see how much I missed her, how much I loved her. How proud I was of her getting Avery to come along. I rounded the corner at the S1 station and kept on going.
“Marisa? Avery?” I shouted. “Come on, fast as you can!”
They blasted through the red zone door, soaking wet and shivering despite the run. Marisa saw my silhouette and knew it was me. When our bodies connected we hadn’t slowed down quite as much as we should have, and I think it nearly knocked the wind out of her. I wrapped my arms around her shaking body and felt the clammy cold of her bare neck on my lips.
“Are you getting me out of here, wonder boy?” she whispered, close and shivering in my ear. It was pure magic. I didn’t even answer, I just took her hand, made sure Avery was with us, and started running toward the exit.
I kept looking back, making sure Avery was there. She was slower than I would have liked, moving more at a jog, and finally I slowed to a walk.
“Can you go any faster?” Marisa asked, and Avery did pick up her pace, but not enough. I felt sure we were already out of time and Mrs. Goring would lock us in all over again. When we finally reached Kate she already had one foot on the first rung, nervously looking back and forth between us and the way out.
“They’re already outside!” she shouted. “It’s open up there, I can see it.”
At first I couldn’t believe it was true. Had Amy really come to our rescue, opening the latch so we could escape from a maze of horrors? The idea surprised me, and I didn’t believe Kate until I pulled in next to her and stared up into the shaft. At the top there was a faint circle of light, the light of a day coming to a close outside.
“This is good,” I said.
“No duh,” said Kate, but I was thinking not so much of our escape, but of what we were escaping into. It would be easier to slip away at nightfall than it would have been in broad daylight.
“Ready to get out of this hellhole?” Kate asked Marisa, and then to Avery: “You have what we came for?”
Avery and Kate had never been very close, in part because they’d briefly fawned over the same person. Young Rainsford—Davis—had caught Kate’s eye, too. I had the feeling as I glanced at Kate just then that she didn’t exactly feel sorry for Avery.
Looks like getting the guy wasn’t such a good deal after all. Sorry that didn’t work out for you.
“I have all seven vials,” Avery said softly.
“Let me see them.”
Avery didn’t like being bossed around and narrowed her eyes. She wasn’t about to give in to Kate Hollander that easy. In the shadow of a fight over a guy, the two were rivals above all else.
“Where’s Davis?” she asked, looking at me then, thinking I was the most likely to know.
It was a hard question to answer, one I knew was coming. She wasn’t going to leave the missile silo without him.
“There is no Davis. There never was. And Rainsford is going to betray you.”
“You don’t know that,” Avery said, but it wasn’t forceful. The spell was breaking in his absence.
Marisa touched Avery’s porcelain white hand, holding it delicately.
“He tried to kill me, Avery. Me and Will both.”
Avery began to shake her head slowly as her gaze shifted to the floor. We had to get out before the door slammed shut and locked again, but Avery was crying. She was confused and upset, but we couldn’t leave her behind. I was afraid she might run back into the darkness of the tunnels, screaming Rainsford’s name, turning her back on us in the end.
Marisa tightened her grip around Avery’s hand. They looked like two young children about to wander into a forbidden wood with only each other to depend on. The way they looked at each other, there was something deeper that hadn’t been there before, something I couldn’t understand.
“Let me take you out of here,” Marisa said.
Avery looked up, red eyed and sallow. “I can’t do it. I can’t.”
“Then give me the vials and stay here if you want,” said Kate. She’d had about enough of the Avery weepfest to last her a lifetime. “Stay down here, be my guest. But you’re giving me those vials one way or the other.”
Kate was taller and stronger than Avery, towering over her like an oak tree.
“We can’t make you come with us,” I said. “But we want you to.”
Kate took one step toward Avery, which put her about two inches from punching her in the gut (something I could actually imagine Kate doing in a situation like this). Avery reached into her back pocket and pulled out three vials, but she wouldn’t give them to Kate. She handed them to Marisa instead.
“Hold these,” Marisa said, passing them off to me. Feeling their delicate glass casings made me nervous about having charge over them. They were each filled with a black gunk so thick it smeared all of the glass inside. Throughout this exchange Marisa and Avery had not stopped holding hands, but now they did, and Avery dug three more vials out of her other back pocket. These she handed directly to me.
“Yours is in there,” she said, wiping the tears from her face.
My fear in my hands, and everyone else’s, too, I thought.
“Where’s the last one?” Kate asked, still not backing down as she glowered over Avery. “Come on, Avery. You have a death wish, fine. But that door isn’t going to stay open if Goring finds out. Give me the damn vial!”
Avery dug down into her front pocket and pulled out her vial.
“I hate carrying it around anyway,” she said. “I’m not even sure why I need to. He just said so, and that’s what I did. Because I do whatever he says.”
She said the last part without sincerity or sarcasm. It was said flatly by a girl on the verge of falling apart, and this made it impossible to say where her true allegiance fell.
“You take it,” Avery said, giving her vial—the seventh vial—to Marisa. “Don’t let it go.”
“I won’t,” Marisa promised, and just like that, Kate was climbing up the rungs.
“You’re stupid for staying down here,” she yelled back. “I thought you were smarter than that.”
It was, in its own way, the kindest thing Kate could have said. She was clever enough to know a challenge between rivals might get Avery moving.
But it did not.
A few seconds later it was Marisa in the shaft, and then it was me. I took one last look back, wishing it wasn’t true.
“Are you sure about this? You might not get another chance,” I pleaded.
She wouldn’t answer—only nodded—and hearing Connor yelling down the tunnel made me realize I had to get him to shut up and fast. He was drawing attention to us, and half of our number weren’t even above ground yet. Kate was moving like lightning, already to the top before Marisa was halfway. Three rungs on my own journey to the top I heard a noise I hadn’t expected. It was the kind of noise that makes a heart stop, a noise with the power to bring misery.
In hindsight I should have thought it was possible. I should have planned for it.
Ben wasn’t there to hold the pipe any longer. And even with my terrible hearing, I could hear it when the pipe hit the hard tile floor. It was a sharp, metallic sound, followed by the ringing echo of the blue door being slammed shut. Avery hadn’t opened the blue door, she hadn’t needed to. He’d finally done it on his own.
Rainsford was free.