“You told him about Black Eye?” I ask Rose.
“He thought it was funny.” Rose shrugs and smiles sweetly at me.
“Where did he go?” I ask Charlie, letting him help me up. Rose and Will begin fighting and while I know it’s not the most intense fighting you can imagine, it still looks a lot more sophisticated than what I’m capable of. Am I expected to fight like that against Charlie?
“I don’t know. He sometimes disappears like that. Come on, you ready?”
“No, I’ve never done this before.” I look back over to Rose and Will which makes me feel even more nervous.
“Hey, don’t sweat it. I completely suck at this, just ask Rose, she’ll love to tell you all about it. Now make sure your hands are always up like this.” Charlie makes two fists with his hands and holds them in front of his chest close to his chin.
I mimic him and feel like a fraud doing so.
“Good. Now sort of bounce on your feet. You need to be able to move quickly to dodge and move about.” Charlie moves lightly around the mats and I try to do the same. My legs protest, feeling sore from my run and the circuit. I groan and stop moving. Not wanting to look completely inept in front of Charlie, I bite down on the pain and jump around again, ignoring how much my legs dispute the movement.
“Shouldn’t we be supplied safety equipment? Don’t people usually wear helmets and gloves for this?”
“Stan said out in the world we won’t always be equipped for a fight, so we should train like that.”
“Sounds dangerous.” My voice shakes as nerves set in.
“I won’t hurt you, Zoe.”
“Then this is going to be a very boring fight.”
“Come on, take a swing at me.” I weakly throw my arm out at him and he knocks it away easily. “You need to have more force than that. Keep your elbow slightly bent and make sure you keep your hand in a fist. You have to jab your arm and then bring it back in front of you to protect yourself.” I nod that I understand. “Try again.”
I punch out again and this time, when Charlie knocks my arm away, I’m quick to move it back.
“Good, now you just have to try and do that when I’m not expecting it. Move around a bit.”
I bounce around on the mats, knowing I’m slow. Perhaps if this had been the first thing I’d done today, I might be better.
I take another swing at Charlie, he ducks easily and manages a quick rebut by kicking out at me. I have no way of getting out of the way in time and Charlie stops his leg right before he hits me.
“We’re kicking, too?” I complain.
“Hands up, Zoe,” Charlie reminds me and I quickly bring them back up. I already feel them moving away from me straight away. It’s such an effort to remember to keep them up. “You’re doing great, Zoe. Just keep attacking.”
Attacking? I’m not an attacking type of person. I’m never going to be able to do this.
Charlie lets me take the lead and I know he’s not bothering to do much, letting me find my own rhythm. He ducks and blocks all my attempts and my energy level starts to go down fast.
“Maybe you need some motivation. I bet you can’t hit me, not even if I was blindfolded.”
I roll my eyes at him, but do feel something fire up inside of me.
“What’s at stake here?” I ask, watching his feet moving quickly along the mat.
“How about, if you can get a hit, you get however much of the quilt you want tonight. If you can’t manage a hit, then I can hog it.”
“Deal.” I smile at Charlie, bringing my arms back up to protect myself.
For at least a minute, I punch out several times to no avail. I’m beginning to lose hope when Stan of all people gives me an opening. I watch Charlie’s arm begin to drop and I punch out with all the energy I have left. Charlie’s attention moves away from me, though, as Stan’s voice booms through the gym, announcing he has returned. My fist makes direct contact with his jaw and he falls back in surprise. Pain radiates through my hand and I quickly pull it back.
“I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” I panic at seeing him holding his face in his hand.
“That is some right hook you have there.” Charlie grimaces.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think I would actually hit you.” I rest my hand over his own hand that is holding his injured jaw.
Stan walks over and forces me to move back as he leans over and examines Charlie. “Nothing broken.” He then turns around and grabs my hand. He moves my fingers around and I bite down on my lip in pain. “You’re both fine. Go get some lunch and be back in an hour,” Stan dismisses us and then leaves to talk to Will and Rose.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I ask Charlie who’s gone back to rubbing his jaw.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Guess I lost the bet.” He sounds miffed.
“Only from one lucky punch. If we’d been having a real fight, you know you could have had me a hundred times over already,” I reason, not wanting him to feel bad about it.
“True, you were sucking pretty badly.” Charlie pokes his tongue out at me.
“Keep talking and maybe tonight I won’t be in the sharing mood when it comes to the quilt.”
“You make a fair point.” Charlie laughs.
***
Stan left us training on our own several times during my first official day and each time, Rose and Charlie start fighting. Usually, it’ll start with a comment from Rose about Charlie losing to a girl again and it doesn’t take long after that to escalate to yelling at each other. Will seems content to simply ignore them, but I can’t stand them shouting at each other. Three times, I have to tell them both to shut up and I even have to stand in-between them once. I have no idea what their problem is or why it’s getting so bad, however when Stan finally walks in on them yelling, he seems furious. His moods are often all over the place and this merely seems to be his current bi-polar state. He finally has had enough of them and decides to punish Rose with running the circuit while he takes Charlie away through another door in the room, one that none of us have been through before. My heart rate speeds up with fear, watching him go, but I feel too silly about rushing over to say goodbye in order to make sure he’s okay. Instead, Will and I are sent back to the lounge to relax and I shuffle out hesitantly. It’s sort of like since Rose is being punished with exercise and Charlie is being punished with God knows what, we’re allowed to sit and take a break just to show them what they’re missing out on.
I worry about what is happening to Charlie, especially when the power starts to go on and off every few minutes.
“What do you think is happening to him?” I hope he isn’t being hurt.
“I don’t know.” Will is pacing the room.
I had turned the television on, but with it shutting off every time the power is lost, it’s hard to get into anything. I turn it off, feeling like it’s simply a reminder for Charlie being possibly hurt.
“What’s wrong?” I watch Will moving around quickly, his body tense. I’ve never seen him like this before.
“I’m so sick of this place. When can we leave?” Will asks quietly.
“Soon, I hope.”
“I’ve never spent so much time indoors before. I didn’t think I’d ever miss being outside as much as I do right now.”
“Well, as long as that door is locked, we’re stuck here.” I point at the door that Stan often uses as an entrance. We know that one definitely leads to an exit since that is where the guards brought Blake through when he was bleeding out, which also means it has the most direct way to the outside, otherwise they would have come through somewhere else.
“I could get us through that door.”
“How?” I wonder if Will has managed to steal a key.
“I’m super strong, right?” Will walks over to the door, touching it carefully with his hands.
“Will, don’t. You’ll hurt yourself.” I move over to him, afraid to cause any more trouble than what we already have. If we break out of here right now, just to
go outside, then they’ll up security for sure. This is the worst thing we could do right now.
Will doesn’t listen to me. By the time I’m able to reach him, he has already charged forward and run through the door, bashing it open.
Chapter Twenty-Six – The Break-Out
“Will!” I shriek, watching as he grabs hold of his shoulder and rubs the spot that just crashed into the door. “What are you doing? Are you crazy?”
“Come on, let’s go.” Will rushes through the now open doorway, yet my legs stay firmly in place. “What?” Will hesitantly stops running and turns back towards me when he realizes I’m not with him.
“We can’t leave the others.”
“We’re not leaving them; we’re going outside.” Will’s eyes plead with me.
I know this is a bad idea. I know I should say no, but my mind races ahead to being outside. Fresh air and rain. Will has already broken through the door, the harm is already done. Obviously there isn’t a guard here waiting for us so we might as well enjoy it rather than stay in here now.
“If we’re going outside, then we should pay attention. Look out for a computer.” My legs move forward and before I know it, we’re rushing down a new corridor, my heart pumping hard while my body fills with adrenaline. I take in every new image that I see, glad for something new to look at. There definitely aren’t armed guards at our door like Stan had said. Did he lie about that or are we simply lucky?
All my senses are heightened as I wait to hear running footsteps behind us or a shout for us to stop. However, there is nothing. This whole thing feels too easy and dread fills my body. Something must be wrong, nothing is ever this easy.
The lights remain on in the corridor and I wonder if we’ll be coated in darkness soon. I feel an urge to search for Charlie. Is he in trouble? Is he behind one of these doors?
We turn down another corridor before the hallway comes to a finish with a closed and, no doubt, locked door with a sign saying ‘stairs’ over it. That’s the door we need to get to. There is one problem, though. We have to pass another hallway, which after a quick check we discover has a guard patrolling down it. From the quick glances I take, I notice he seems to be guarding a door there rather than anything else.
“What do we do?” I whisper as quietly as I can manage to Will. Will leans down near my ear and so quietly I have to strain to hear, he speaks to me. “Are you ready for this?”
I know what he wants to do; he wants to run. We can’t really turn back now. The doorway to our lounge area has already been broken. We can’t fix it, so they’ll know we broke through it. It’s a waste not to enjoy our short lived freedom.
I nod to him that I’m ready, even though I’m not. I still have adrenaline pumping through my veins, but my legs are stiff from the recent exercise. I’m completely unfit and not competent to outrun a guard who most likely is quite fit.
The power shuts off again and it feels like fate. Now is the time to run. Will grabs my arm and we run past the open hallway completely hidden. We try not to make a sound with our shoes, however to my ultrasensitive ears I think we sound like a herd of elephants on a stampede. I know we’ve made it to the door when Will crashes into it and breaks the door down. Darkness still surrounds us and already I hear noises from behind us and a flashlight aiming at us. Will and I race down the stairs and I almost trip down them in my haste to hurry up. Will races ahead and soon he is too far ahead for me to see him and the guard is now chasing me down the stairs. I keep my arm on the rail to guide me downwards, running down three flights of stairs when arms grab hold of me and I scream at the same time that I try to push them off. A flashlight hits Will’s face and I realize that it’s him I’m pushing.
“Sorry, I thought—”
“Come on!”
I don’t get a chance to glance backwards to see how far away the guard is. Will takes my arm and pulls me beyond the door he must already have crashed through. Footsteps behind us are louder and I know we’ll never make it outside.
I slow to a jog as I take in this new level we’re on. We’re on the ground floor and the ceilings here are higher than what we have on our floor, even higher than the training area. Glass walls encompass the entire outside as it moves around in a circle. The grey, stormy sky outside pulls at me and I feel a smile come over my face to see how close we are to fresh air.
Will suddenly stops dead in his tracks and I run straight into the back of him, falling to the ground from the impact. I’m not even sure if Will noticed that I hit him, though. He feels like solid rock. Looking ahead, I see why he has stopped and my heart sinks. Two guards are running our way from straight ahead. Looking behind us, we see the guard that we had passed on our way to get to the stairwell. We have nowhere to go. I look back out at the glass wall as I continue sitting on the ground and watch the rain pelt hard outside. It’s almost as if the weather can sense my despair as the rain gets harder. We’re so close.
The guards start to close in on us and I glance around, wishing this hadn’t been such a waste. It’s then I notice to my left several unused desks and sitting on top of the second desk in from the stairway is a laptop. My heart jumps seeing it. If we can get Rose here, then maybe she can use it to get word out of our location. She can get us help.
Will moves away from me and before I understand what he’s doing, he picks up one of the chairs at the first desk closest to us and throws it against the glass wall. Upon impact it smashes into shards, some large and some small. The chair keeps flying into the air and it doesn’t land for an inhumanly long amount of time. An earsplitting alarm sounds and I block my ears as the noise tries to pierce through to my brain.
Will grabs one hand away from my ear and pulls me to my feet. We run through the now exposed wall, over all the broken glass and into the rain outside. He keeps pulling me along until we’re a good fifty or so meters away from the entrance we have made. We’re on a massive patch of grass next to a large car park.
It’s the best feeling being outside. I laugh as I twirl in the rain. Within seconds my hair and clothes are soaked and I don’t care. This was what I’ve missed. This is what I want. I don’t even feel the cold. I just breathe in the fresh air. I promise myself I’ll never take this for granted. That if I ever get out of this place, I’ll appreciate being able to leave somewhere whenever I want to, to be able to breathe in fresh air and not have had to stage a huge breakout simply to get outside.
I look over at Will and see that he’s laughing, too. I don’t think I’ve seen him laugh once while he’s been here, maybe not even smile. Laughing looks good on him and it also makes him look so much younger. I look back at the building we’re being kept in and realize why it was called The Windmill. It appears they’ve taken a regular looking, bricked, rectangle building—the one where our rooms are—and added an eccentric, circular, glass contraption to the side of the building where Will and I have just come out from. It’s glass up all the levels and it gets narrower until the very top where blades of thick metal move in the heavy breeze. It’s kind of amazing and yet completely stupid looking. I wonder if they were hoping to use the blades for power to try and help with Charlie constantly setting the power off. Would power from a windmill work when that happened?
“We did it, Zoe! We really did it!” Will brings me back to the excitement of now and I watch as he holds his arms upwards and looks up at the sky, letting the rain hit his face.
I’m about to say that he has been the one who had done everything when I feel a sharp pain at the back of my head. My legs drop in shock and my vision wavers as dizziness overtakes me.
The last thing I see is Will’s furious face approaching me and then the world goes black.
***
I wake up feeling cold, freezing actually. My body is shaking and I wonder what’s happening.
“What happened?”
“Is she okay?”
“Muscles put her down!”
I wince hearing the loud voices and try to move away, but I�
��m trapped. My head is against something hard and it moves harshly up and down, causing my head to ache.
Where am I? Am I with Dana?
“She’s hurt, Muscles. She needs to be looked at.”
“The only reason she’s hurt is because of you.” The hard moving surface vibrates against my face.
“Will, they need to look at her. Please?” I recognize this voice. It’s Charlie. He sounds close to me. Is Charlie with Dana? Are they friends?
I feel myself drifting further into darkness and I welcome it since the further I fall in, the further the pain in my head seems to be.
***
The next time I wake I’m warm. I still have a dull ache at the back of my head, but my whole body from my head to my toes is comfortable. I’m lying down and the soft pillow touching the side of my face tells me I’m in a bed. I feel the mattress shift and I open my eyes, ignoring the brightness that attacks them.
“Hey.” Charlie sounds relieved as my eyes focus on him lying next to me. He’s on his side with his elbow on his pillow and his hand keeping his head up. His eyes are intently staring at me.
“Hi.” I feel shy, realizing I have no memory of getting into bed with Charlie or even how I got back inside.
“How are you feeling?”
I reach out and gingerly touch the back of my head where the ache is coming from. I feel a definite sore spot with traces of what I think might be dried blood. I try to remember being hurt when memories of being outside in the rain hit me.
“Where’s Will?”
Charlie eyes me carefully for a moment before answering, “He’s in his room.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yeah, he’s fine. I think he has a broken shoulder or something. The guards tried to hit him over the head like they did with you, but it didn’t quite work on him. He’s the one who carried you up here.”
“He did?”
“Yep, never seen the kid so mad. The guards were too afraid to go near him.”
“But he’s fine?”
Taken By Surprise (Taken Trilogy Book 1) Page 27