The fire or chemical reaction or whatever burns an intensely bright white for about half a minute and then snuffs itself out like someone pinched the end of a sparkler. I see the light in the hallway brighten as Sam pulls the door open, a little at first and then finally all the way.
We’ve found the walkway. What there is of it, anyway.
“Unfinished,” Sam says.
We are staring at nothing but I beams. The walkway looks like two railroad tracks with a few diagonal braces connecting them, all of it dripping with icicles and coated with a thick hump of ice. It’s a huge, backbreaking drop to the top of the first-floor walkway below.
I look across the space between the two buildings. Something’s not right. I count the floors, trying to figure out where we’d be coming out if we did manage to get across this icy bridge, but it’s hard to tell. The two buildings are on the side of a hill, and the main building is higher up.
I put one boot onto the beam, and as I shift my weight forward to try to walk, I move slightly too far to the side and slip. Sam catches me by the arm.
“I’ll go first,” he says.
He steps out onto the I beam, confidently, arms extended to the sides for balance. He does not look down. He moves in small, rapid steps, his feet turned almost perpendicular to the beam. One by one they cross to the other side. I look at the men’s naked feet. For getting across this ice-slicked steel girder, they may actually have the advantage. I take my boots and socks off, and hang the boots around my neck.
I put the ball of my foot onto the beam and immediately pull it back like I’ve been stung. The ice is so cold it burns.
Fear now blooms in my chest like a drop of ink in water. It colors everything. I turn my legs and keep my toes pointed outward like a ballerina, like they did when they crossed. I force myself to put my weight on my feet, to make myself fully commit to what I’m doing. This was how I used to do it, I think. People aren’t brave unless they need to be. Commit first, and the courage will follow.
I walk. As quickly and surely as Sam, Sylvester, and Jerry did. They say nothing to me as I’m crossing. No encouraging words. Nothing. They just let me get on with it without distraction.
Sam uses another burn charge to cut through the lock of the door on the other side of the bridge before pulling it open, staying clear in case someone’s in the hallway beyond. We wait, and then Sam finally has a look. He motions for us to follow. The hallway is dark, but Sam doesn’t want to risk using the lantern.
“Jerry, up front to find us a path. We’ll use the walls to guide us,” he says.
I put my hand against the wall, feeling my way. When we get ten or so yards down the corridor, the texture changes. I’m touching glass.
Sam finally asks, “What is this place?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “But almost every floor has observation windows.”
Jerry walks ahead, and after a few seconds we hear a thump and then the sound of Jerry getting back on his feet.
“Blocked,” he calls back to us.
We feel around. Concrete on one side, glass on the other. We’re stuck.
“Let’s just cut through the glass,” Sylvester says. “Or break it.”
“How?” I ask.
“We can use some of the burn charges to crack it,” Jerry says.
I hear Sam say, “Let’s do it.”
A moment later I’m already closing my eyes and getting ready to not look at the chemical fire. I hear Jerry slap the charges onto the window.
“I’m going to cup my hands over them to block the light,” Jerry says. “Just in case this area is still under surveillance.”
We wait. The burn charges shouldn’t take long. I lean against the wall, and my head touches something—a small plaque. I trace the writing. A number two. We’re not on the third floor after all. We’re on the second.
And then, too late, I remember why these walls are made of glass.
“Get that off the glass,” I say. “Get it off now!”
“I can’t. Once the reaction starts, I can’t stop it,” Sam says.
“It’s an aquarium. It runs the length of this entire hallway!”
This massive tropical fish tank is supposed to be soothing to watch. Steve once told me it held thirty thousand gallons of water and cost the hospital two million bucks, as he grumbled about his latest lousy pay raise.
Jerry takes his hands away from the burn charges. As they flare and grow more intense, I can see inside the tank. The plants are still, and the water is cloudy. Most of the fish are dead, but a few still lurk at the bottom, looking desperate for oxygen.
I hold my breath and wait.
The first of the charges melts through the thick glass and burns itself out. Almost immediately we hear the sound of water shooting onto the floor, like someone just turned on a hose full blast. It smells of fish and briny, rotting greens. I step back and shove my feet back into my boots. My socks are still stuffed into the toes.
The other charge flames out, producing another spigot of water. Then the hallway is again dark. Within seconds, we hear a scratching sound over the noise of the spilling water. It sounds like someone is running a diamond across the surface of the glass.
I turn the tablet on and use the light from the screen like a lantern. We see a crack form. It connects the two holes, then travels horizontally, fast as lightning, across the length of the tank. Dozens more small cracks start to branch out from it.
The glass sounds like ice breaking up. Water begins to spurt from the center crack, just a little at first, and then … quiet.
A second later, the whole tank wall explodes outward.
CHAPTER 27
I’m pushed backward, pinwheeling through the water. It seems to go on forever, and I think my lungs are about to burst. Someone slams into me, and then my head hits the exit sign on the ceiling. I grab it and pull myself up, against the tide of the water gushing toward the exit door we’ve just come through. From below the water, someone grabs my ankle and pulls.
A moment later, the pressure on the door is too much, and it blows off its hinges. The person holding on to my ankle loses his grip. I watch helplessly as whoever it is gets sprayed out the door and over the edge.
The water gushes out quickly and the hallway clears. After a moment, I let myself drop to the floor. The hallway is littered with pebbles and fake ceramic coral. I slip on a good-sized striped fish, bright as a tennis ball. Sam’s up the hall, still clinging to a piece of metal that hangs down from the ceiling. The metal is sharp and his hands have deep gashes that are bleeding heavily. He coughs, trying to clear his lungs. I look around for Jerry. I don’t see him. I pluck a piece of plant off my neck and stagger toward the door. Jerry’s holding on to one of the support struts of the unfinished walkway with his legs like he’s riding a horse bareback. Sylvester’s on the ground below, facedown, not moving.
“Jerry, can you climb back up here?”
He sputters a moment, then nods. The water has shifted some of the debris from the hallway. We climb through the broken tank to the other side. Neither Sam nor Jerry registers any emotion when I tell them that Sylvester has fallen, that I think he’s dead.
Sam says, “We need to keep going. They’ll come and investigate what just happened.”
Jerry nods.
“Wait.”
I take my boots off and use my socks to wrap Sam’s bloody hands. Not much of a bandage, but it’s something. I’m certain the tablet must be ruined, but when I touch the screen it lights up like a smile.
That’s when we hear them—a group of soldiers approaching. They’re sloshing through the remaining puddles on the floor, right behind us.
We hurry up the hallway, and I turn right abruptly. Sam and Jerry follow the light of the tablet as I go around the corner. I know just where we are: in the hallway that leads to the gymnasium.
“Where are we going?” Sam asks.
“Shortcut,” I tell him. “Through the locker room.”
&nb
sp; Stupidly, I hesitate as I see “Men” on the door, but then I push forward into the changing room. Several rows of lockers have toppled over, tipping against one another. I hear a humming sound, low and steady. The sound of electrical current. Sam nods and says, “That sounds promising.”
The only light we have is from the tablet strapped to my arm. I point it toward the far end of the locker room, trying to figure out if there’s enough space for us to pass through to the other side with the lockers blocking the way. I don’t think there is. Certainly not if we’re standing up.
Sam turns to Jerry. “Help me shift this.” Jerry reaches for the edge of a bank of lockers to set them straight again.
“Stop,” I say.
On the far side of the room a cable is hanging down, sparking and wriggling like some vicious tree snake. The end of the wire is making contact with one of the lockers. And all the lockers are touching each other, creating a giant circuit. All the metal in the room is electrified, and we are soaking wet.
We hardly have time to take it in before I hear the soldiers coming up the hallway. We are inches from the metal. My skin prickles.
We were looking for power. I guess we found it.
There’s nowhere to go. The voices are getting closer, and we have no choice. If they open the locker room door, we’re caught. We’ll have to squeeze ourselves through the tunnels created by the toppled lockers and pray we don’t make contact with any of the metal.
I don’t want to go in. It reminds me of being put into the MRI machine. Like I’m being entombed.
Sam points to the floor. “Down! Now!”
I still can’t. He sees I’m too afraid. That I’m going to give us all away unless I get moving. He pushes me down.
“Pull your arms in. Stay straight.” He practically throws me into the space between the lockers, like he’s pushing a puck along the floor. When I come to a stop, I use my elbows to inch forward. I hear Sam dive onto the floor behind us.
No sooner do we get ourselves crammed into this small void than the overhead light comes on. My body is rigid with terror. I worry that the soldiers hunting us will hear the water still dripping off my clothes, or hear me panting, or my heart pounding. That I’ll accidentally touch one of the lockers and fry myself.
Their steps are slow and cautious. A digitized voice says, “Careful. That’s a live wire.”
Another robotic voice answers back, “Let’s head upstairs before one of us gets electrocuted.”
After they leave, Sam, Jerry, and I continue crawling to the other side of the room. I’m not even sure how I’m pushing myself along with my arms against my sides. When we finally reach the other end of the locker room, the door to the gym is propped open and I can see inside. The gym floor is scattered with soccer balls, basketballs, volleyballs. Dozens upon dozens of them. They must have spilled off their storage racks when the explosions shook the building. It looks like a hundred children were playing and then simply vanished.
And then I see it: an outlet beneath a desk. I crawl under and plug the wet battery pack in, terrified it won’t work, but a red circle of light comes on.
Power.
Sam and Jerry slide in on either side of me, and we all push ourselves under the desk, our backs to the wall. I wait a solid ten, fifteen minutes before I turn to Sam and say, “I think they’re gone.”
Sam sits with his hands clasped, resting lightly on his knees. “Some of their men don’t speak English, apparently.”
“What do you mean?”
“That device he’s using. We used them when we needed to talk to the locals and there was no one available to translate. Each man has his own earpiece. Commands are translated into whatever language he speaks.”
Jerry spits. “Mercenaries.”
In this moment of quiet, I think of Sylvester. Neither of them has mentioned him. Maybe it’s part of their training, but part of me thinks otherwise.
“I’m so sorry about your friend,” I say to them.
“Friend?” Jerry says.
“Sylvester. The man who was pushed out the door when the fish tank exploded.”
“Yes. Right,” Sam says. “He was a … good soldier.” His eyes are vacant, like he’s not sure who I’m talking about.
Jerry is staring straight ahead, confusion clouding his face. This was a close friend and fellow soldier, but they’re already forgetting about him and neither is sure why.
Is this a side effect? Would anyone want to forget like this, so quickly, so effortlessly? The procedures have taken away these men’s ability to remember, which is to take away their ability to grieve, which is to take away their ability to love.
I feel a cold, wet, slimy sensation in the pit of my stomach.
Is this what’s going to happen to me if I can’t get the last pill I need? Will I end up like Oscar, unable to distinguish dreams from reality?
The three of us wait for what seems like hours. I’m about to pull the battery cord out of the wall when the light on the charger starts blinking green. I look down at the computer on my wrist and realize something: Those two soldiers we saw earlier should have registered on the screen, but they didn’t. They must have turned off the tracking device.
They know we’re here.
CHAPTER 28
“They know we’re here, and they know we’ve got one of their devices,” I say to Sam and Jerry.
Sam clenches his jaw and digests this piece of bad news without comment.
I tie the power cord around my waist like a belt. “I think we can cut through the pool area and exit through the women’s lockers to the central hallway. From there we can …” I’m about to say “get to the nurses’ station,” but realize they don’t know that part of the plan.
“We can take the stairs down to the basement and find a way back.”
Now that we can’t rely on the tablet, we’re flying blind. But the extra risk is just punishment for the detour I’m taking us on.
“This way,” I say.
I follow the smell of chlorine. A column of snow is falling through the broken glass above the pool. The wind has died down and the snow has changed. It’s no longer light and wispy; now, each flake is the size of a dime.
We run quickly to the other side of the room, through to the women’s locker room. It’s dark and chilly and smells of bleach. We push the swinging door open between the locker room and outer hallway. I touch Sam lightly on the shoulder and point. A row of panicked eyes stare back at us. Six nurses are propped against the wall, gagged, their hands and feet bound.
“Hostages,” Jerry says.
I scan the group quickly, and right away I recognize Nurse Jenner. I can’t tell if she’s relieved or worried. Certainly, all of them seem bewildered by the sight of us.
I kneel and remove the gag from Nurse Jenner’s mouth as Sam cuts the plastic tie binding her wrists with a knife he’s pulled from the backpack.
“How are you still alive?” she asks.
“I don’t honestly know.”
“Do you know what happened to the other patients on the floor? Oscar? William?”
William? Ah. The kid in the coma.
“William is dead. Oscar is alive, but he’s not—there’s something wrong with him.”
“Of course there is. You think we’re playing around here? These procedures are precise. Oscar needs to have his final injection of sealant. Soon. Sooner than now. Do you know what that boy is capable of?” She looks at me as if I’m being stupid on purpose, which I now realize is how she’s always looked at me.
“I know where he is right now,” I say. “I could give him the injection.”
I begin to unravel the thick tape that keeps her ankles bound together, but she pulls her feet away and finishes it herself. “We’ve got to get to the medicine locker at the nurses’ station on the third floor.”
Sam looks at me. One of those soldiers in the locker room said something about heading upstairs.
I start to undo the tape on another nur
se’s ankles, but Jenner stops me. “You’re better off leaving them where they are. The soldiers send someone by every fifteen minutes to check on us. If they see us all gone, they’ll just hunt us down and shoot us.”
“Where’s Dr. Ladner?” I ask.
“Ladner.” She says his name like it disgusts her. “This is his fault.”
“That’s not what I asked. I want to know where he is.”
She looks at me, startled. I’ve never actually said a defiant word to the woman until now.
“He barricaded himself in his office on the sixth floor before they rounded us all up. They seem to be focusing their efforts on getting at him. And someone else.”
I try to remain calm and not react to this statement. She must have missed the exciting announcement in the lobby about who they were looking for when they first burst in. I doubt she’d help if she knew these guys were after me.
Sam and Jerry run up ahead of us. Nurse Jenner is remarkably nimble as she climbs up the stairs to the third floor, leaping over fallen concrete blocks as she goes. She’s about to open the door to the hallway when Sam steps forward. “Jerry and I will go first to make sure it’s clear.”
Jenner is about to follow. “Wait,” I say. “They’ll let us know when it’s okay.”
She doesn’t like having to listen to me, but she does.
“Is there some way to put out a distress call?” I ask her.
“Of course there is,” she snaps. “You can’t have a hospital full of people like you and not have an evacuation plan.”
“So how do we do it?”
“There’s a panic button on the wall behind the security desk in the main lobby. If you hit it, there’s a Special Forces unit that’s supposed to come. Not that it’ll do us any good in this storm.”
I hear two knocks on the fire door. Sam’s signal. “Quickly,” Sam says, crouching low next to the main desk.
Though the outer windows are riddled with bullet holes and some of the monitors have fallen onto the floor, the nurses’ station is still full of equipment that’s gone onto battery backup. Something is beeping urgently. We duck down and make our way along, staying hidden behind the desk. Jenner crawls to the medicine cabinet, punches in a code, and quickly prepares a syringe. “Give Oscar this.” She reaches into the cabinet again and pulls out another syringe. “And if he gives you any trouble, pop him with this. Just touch it to his skin, press the button on the top, and the syringe will automatically inject the sedative.”
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