I felt the pounding of my heart in the backs of my eyeballs as I waited for something horrible to happen, and the fear I'd been trying to repress flooded over me again.
The metal cuffs restraining my arms behind me released and dropped to the floor. I rubbed my wrists and looked at Rogan with wide eyes.
"What the hell just happened? I'm free."
I shakily got up from the chair and began to move toward Rogan.
"No." His gaze moved up toward the ceiling "Wait. This room … Don't come any closer-"
A thick sheet of glass slammed down from the ceiling to the floor, cutting the table cleanly in half, the force of it blowing the hair back from my face. If I'd taken one more step it would have done the same to me.
I looked at it dumbly, not believing what had just happened. I put my hand against the cold glass and stared through it at Rogan, who had been knocked to the floor when the table fell apart. His hands were still bound behind him.
I glanced up at the camera that taped us and imagined the subscribers watching greedily.
I stalked over to the door and realized that there was no handle.
"Kira!" Rogan shouted. I could still hear him, even if he was a bit muffled on the other side of the glass barrier. He wore an expression of pure shock.
I promise that her death will be painless, Gareth had said.
I had to wonder what he meant for only another moment.
That was when the gas began to seep through the air vents into my side of the room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The gas slid out of the vent in the upper left comer in a translucent white, slithering line. It trailed down the wall and onto the floor, where it dissipated. But I could see it coming. More and more of it, moving through the room like blind fingers searching me out. When it reached me it
curled around my legs, swirling and moving like a snake.
"Kira!" Rogan yelled.
Gareth was right. It wasn't painful. In fact, it didn't hurt at all. I was surprised that the gas didn't even have much of a scent when it finally reached my nostrils. I clamped my hands over my mouth and nose, but I knew that wouldn't do any good. Not for long. I turned to the glass, to Rogan.
"What do I do now?" My voice was strained with panic.
He pulled hard against his restraints but it did nothing. His expression was frantic. "I don't know. Dammit! I don't know!"
The camera swiveled to take in both sides of the room.
"Gareth!" Rogan roared. "I'm going to kill you!"
But there was no reply. There was nothing. Gareth had promised to give us some privacy-other than the fifteen thousand subscribers who were tuned in to watch my death scene, of course.
I tried to hold my breath, but after thirty seconds I realized that breathing wasn't really a choice. Unfortunately.
I inhaled some of the gas, which still had no discernible odor. Maybe it was just a ruse. Maybe this was just something to get an entertaining reaction out of us and make the subscribers happy after we'd cheated them out of a good Level-Six ending by escaping.
But no. The more I breathed, the weaker I started to feel. My head began to swim. I gasped. Instead of pounding hard and fast with fear like it had been before, my heart began to pump slower and slower.
A tear slipped down my face-I wasn't sure if it was from self-pity or the gas itself, which had now filled the room completely. It was see-through, casting a slightly whitish fogginess to the already white room. I found that I couldn't stay standing, and my legs crumpled beneath me, bringing me down onto my knees hard enough to cause a bruise. I dragged myself closer to the window and put my hands up on the cold, smooth glass.
Rogan stared at me. He'd moved close to the barrier, and I could see his breath fogging up the glass. He continued to struggle hard against his bindings, even though it had done nothing but made his face gleam with more perspiration from the effort. His expression was now a mixture of rage and grief.
"I want you to know," I managed, gasping now for each breath I took, "I still think that you were wrong earlier."
"About what?"
"I'm glad I got off the shuttle. I… I'm glad for any time we've spent together, Rogan."
"Kira-" His voice broke. "No, don't give up!"
"Just… just promise me that you won't stop fighting." I blinked and the tears splashed down my already wet cheeks. "Don't let them change you into a monster like him. You're too good for that. There's… there's still hope…."
My hand slipped off the glass. I was now breathing shallowly through my mouth in quick little gasps. The world in front of me was beginning to fade to gray, darker and darker, to the pitch-black that I feared the most.
Would I see my family? Would I go to heaven when I died?
Be brave, I told myself.
But I wasn't brave. I was afraid. So afraid.
It didn't hurt. That seemed to make it even scarier. At least pain reminded me that I was still alive.
"No, Kira … please … don't leave me! Don't go. Please! I love you!" His voice broke for real this time. He was crying.
Ilove you, too, I wanted to say. I wanted to let him know how much I loved him, how much I believed in him. How much I'd miss him.
But I didn't have the energy to speak. My mouth moved wordlessly as I slid the rest of the way down the glass and felt the cold, hard floor against my head.
Ilove you, Rogan. Only you. Forever.
"No!" he yelled, and the grief in his voice was now a living, pain-filled thing.
Just before the world turned to complete, impenetrable black I heard something. It seemed so far away-as if I were at the end of a very long and empty hallway.
A door opened. Then I felt hands under my arms and the sensation of being dragged. I could hear the squeak as my heavy boots slid across the floor. Then a door closed. It was still so far away I didn't know what was going on. I was still fading. Fading …
And then I felt the unmistakable feeling of a hand slapping me across the face. Several times. Hard.
"Wake up, Kira. Wake up!"
My eyelids fluttered and I opened my eyes slowly, feeling the stinging on my left cheek. I tried to wet my dry, cracking lips with the tip of my tongue. The world came slowly back into focus.
Colin stared down at me with a fearful expression.
"We don't have much time," he said. "Can you move?"
More eyelid fluttering on my part. I swallowed. And then I realized that the air I was now breathing was clear of the poisonous gas. I began taking deep, greedy gulps of it. I drank at the air, filling my lungs with mouthfuls until my head cleared even more.
Out of the comer of my eye I saw his hand raise.
"Slap me again," I said, "and it'll be the last thing you ever do."
He gave me a tentative smile. "I'm glad you're feeling better."
"You should know that as soon as I've recovered I am going to kill you."
He frowned. "But… but I saved you."
I kept trying to breathe normally. 'Thank you for saving me."
He smiled. "You're very welcome."
"However, you do know that we wouldn't have even been in that room if it wasn't for you, right? So please forgive me for not offering to buy a round of drinks."
Colin licked his lips and shuffled his feet nervously. "I told Gareth to let you go. He didn't listen to me. The man is evil."
"You think?" I would have rolled my eyes, but I still didn't have the energy. "Help me up."
He got to his feet and helped me stand. My ankle still hurt like a son of a bitch from spraining it.
"Gareth had a meeting. I disabled the camera without him knowing. I couldn't do anything about the gas, so I had to come and get you manually."
"I can't believe you sold us out. For what? A stupid job?"
His expression twisted into one of shame, and he suddenly looked a great deal older than his twenty-one years. "If I'd known he was going to hurt you I never would have agreed to any of this."
"But it was okay to hurt Rogan?"
His jaw clenched. "My sister was one of the murder victims at the university four years ago. She was the only family I had in the world. I wanted Rogan to suffer for that."
"But he's innocent. Gareth even admitted it in there."
His eyes filled with tears. "I was wrong."
"I'm sorry about your sister." My heart swelled a little. I didn't even know he'd had a sister. He'd never mentioned her. Then again, I'd never told him about what happened to my family, to my sister.
I guess we had more in common than I thought we did.
I looked at his name tag, which read, COLIN PALMER-PROGRAMMER.
Funny. I'd never known his last name before, either. Never realized that until right now. I guess I'd always been too wrapped up in my own problems to allow myself to really get to know somebody else.
My eyes narrowed as I studied his name tag.
It was red.
Joe said that we'd need somebody with a red name tag to get into the room with the server.
"How long do we have before somebody finds out I escaped?" I asked.
"Not long." He looked worried now. "The subscribers will start contacting us now that the feed cut out. Apparently they've been having a ton of problems with the game recently. Gareth will be notified, and he'll know what I did. We'd better go right now."
I felt a fleeting feeling of compassion for Colin. He'd had a lousy life. I guess I couldn't blame him for latching onto something that seemed like an incredible opportunity with a huge future, working with computers, the one thing he really loved in life.
Lucky for me-and just in time-he realized that he wasn't a monster like Gareth.
"We need to get Rogan," I said firmly.
Colin nodded, and I watched as he removed the red card from his name tag holder and swiped it in the computerized lock on the right side of the white door.
The door swung open. Rogan turned to look at us and his eyes, shiny with tears, widened.
"Kira!" he exclaimed.
I felt a happy lurch in my chest as I went directly to him and threw my arms around him. But there wasn't any time for further celebrations. In fact, any celebrations could wait until we knew if we were going to live longer than five more minutes. All Colin had done was buy us a little more time.
Hopefully it would be all we needed.
Colin pressed a hidden panel on the wall and a keyboard was exposed. After he touched a couple of numbers Rogan's metal cuffs snapped open and fell to the floor, as mine had earlier. Rogan stood and pulled me to him, crushing me tightly against his chest.
"I thought I'd lost you," he murmured into my hair, and then captured my face in his hands, staring down at me for a moment before leaning over to kiss me.
The kiss was enough to give me the strength to keep going.
At that moment the thought of stopping Gareth paled in comparison to Rogan's kiss. That was what I was fighting for. More of his lips. More of him.
"Come on." I grabbed his hand, and the three of us exited the room.
"Are you okay?" Rogan asked gruffly.
"Not really." I swallowed and hobbled along quickly on my injured ankle. "I guess sucking in poisonous gas until you're almost dead isn't something you can just shake off."
Colin didn't say anything. Now that Rogan had joined us he seemed to be a little more afraid. Whether it was because of Rogan's reputation or the fact that he'd almost killed me and was afraid that Rogan would kill him in return, I didn't know. I'd have to give it even odds.
"We need to find Gareth's subbasement office," Rogan said gruffly. "Do you know where that is?"
"I haven't been here long enough to completely know my way around."
"We already took the elevator down past ground level. Is this the subbasement?" I asked. "Or is there more?"
'There's another floor beneath this one," Colin said. "They mentioned it when I took my orientation tour. I'm supposed to start working down there soon." He sighed. "I guess that's not going to happen anymore."
"Can we get to it via the regular elevators?" Rogan asked.
He shook his head. "No, but there's a flight of stairs. Yeah, right there." He pointed at a plain white door in front of us that wasn't marked.
Scurrying down the hallway heading toward the unmarked door, I felt the oddest sense of deja vu. Then I realized what was causing the feeling. It was from watching Colin play his networked game of "Anarchy." It felt like we were in the game right now, trying to find our way through, trying to save the day from the bad guys without getting ourselves killed.
I suddenly remembered how that game had ended earlier today for Colin.
Colin reached for the unmarked door.
"Wait!" I began, but he'd already turned the handle.
There was a man on the other side. I recognized him as one of the White Coats who'd brought us from the car to the white room. He was the one who'd hit Rogan in the back of the head with the butt of his gun.
The gun he still held.
His eyes widened with surprise when he saw us standing there.
Colin held up his hands. "Uh … hi, there. Um … Gareth asked me to take these two downstairs for the next level of The Countdown"
"Nice try," the man said. "But there aren't any more levels. And I just got word that they'd escaped with your help."
He raised his gun and shot Colin in the chest.
As he swiveled to aim again at me, Rogan sprang at him, grabbing his arms. There was a blur of fists and legs. Rogan hit him across the jaw, then spun around and kicked him in the stomach. They both fell to the floor. Rogan grabbed the man's arm and pressed his knee down on his forearm until I heard the sickly snap of a bone breaking. The man screamed out in pain, but Rogan had the gun in his hand now, and he pointed it at the man's head.
Rogan, breathing hard, then turned to look at me.
I'd caught Colin as he began to fall, and helped him down to the ground. He was breathing erratically, holding a hand to his chest, which oozed blood.
"I… I guess … I didn't pass the final.. job interview," he managed.
"Colin …" The tears flowed down my cheeks again. "I'm so sorry."
He shook his head. "No … no, I'm sorry. I love you, Kira. I always have. Don't… don't hate me."
"How could I hate you? You rescued me. Thank you." I kissed his forehead.
His lips curled into a small smile and then his eyes glazed over.
I let out a shuddery moan. He was dead. He'd died in my arms trying to help us.
I looked at Rogan, whose attention had diverted from the White Coat to me.
"Rogan!" I yelled. "Behind you!"
The man used his good arm to try to grab the gun away from Rogan. Rogan was able to kick at him. I thought for sure he would shoot the man, but instead he lashed out and struck him in the head with the gun, which knocked him out cold.
Rogan gave me a dark look, his chest heaving from the exertion. "I'm very sorry about your friend."
I nodded, blinking back tears, and moved Colin's still body to the side of the hallway. I took a moment to close his eyes, and I held my hand against the side of his face.
"So am I," I said.
Then I reached to Colin one last time and grabbed the red access card out of his name tag.
Rogan had a gun and I had an access card. And together we thundered down the stairs to the subbasement.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Having psi abilities is a very strange thing. I'd watched loads of shows over the years, especially when I was much younger, about psychics. They were pretty cool. Some of them made it seem like they had superpowers, being able to lift things with their minds. Being able to manipulate the thoughts of other people.
That would really help right now.
Unfortunately, my powers-if you want to call them that-weren't quite that cool. In fact, my being a psi, low-level or any level, didn't help us out at all at the moment.
Too bad.
; I touched the front of my shirt to make sure I could still feel the outline of the minidisk in my bra, and I could. The subbasement looked a great deal like the other levels of this building All white. All bland and clinical, with that antiseptic smell permeating the air like a superclean perfume.
Only down here, every other ceiling light was out or flickering, casting a spooky amount of light on the hallway we briskly walked down. It felt like a horror movie, like somebody might reach out at any moment and grab our ankles and pull us into another room and devour us. But maybe I was just being paranoid.
After all, it had been a really bad day so far.
"Maybe they changed it," Rogan said. "The room. Maybe it doesn't have Gareth's name on it anymore."
"Maybe," I said. "And maybe Joe was lying. He could have made the whole thing up."
"Yeah, and maybe that disk only has pictures of his last vacation on it."
I didn't like this game of maybe we were playing. I gave Rogan a look.
He glanced at me. "Sorry. I know we need to be positive."
"Screw being positive. I just want to find the room."
"They know we escaped."
I swallowed. "Yeah. They do."
"We don't have much time. They'll shut this place down, lock all the exits to find us. Maybe we should leave now, while we still have half a chance."
"After we went to all this work to get in here?" I said. "Why would we want to miss out on the fun? How much time do we have before they find us?"
"Why?"
"I feel a sense of loss if I'm not working to a countdown. Sue me."
He snorted and squeezed my hand. "In that case, I figure we have five minutes before they lock the place down. Sweeping the levels with full security … maybe another half an hour."
I felt a very small sense of relief. 'That's thirty-five minutes. Talk about luxury."
"Well, that's if we hadn't left two bodies-one dead and one unconscious-marking the staircase leading downstairs. You can cut that time in a quarter."
My heart sank. "That's not good."
"No."
"Dammit." I scanned every door we came to. Just as I was about to give up hope and take Rogan up on his offer to get the hell out of Dodge, my eyes widened. "Look." I pointed at the door that had a small brass plaque affixed to it.
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