Chapter 12 #2
I hear footsteps behind me, but I don’t turn, don’t wait. The others can catch up. I follow the noise as another cheer goes up. At last, I find my way to a downstairs hallway with a sign that says “Rec Center.” Blood pounds in my temples in rhythm with my fury.
This is what they call recreation?
I yank at the door, but it’s locked.
“Fecking hell, slow down,” Heath says, arriving beside me, panting like a dog. “Some people haven’t respawned all their blood.”
“Move,” Angel commands sharply. He turns his face away and kicks the glass hard, sending a spiral of cracks through it. It’s the reinforced kind, though, and a tough plastic barrier remains even when the glass is splintered.
“You could have let me do that,” Heath says. “I’m the kicker.”
“Gotta save your foot for the field,” I reassure him.
And then a female scream sounds from somewhere inside, turning my blood to ice water.
I dive at the glass, tearing through with my bare hands, not caring about the cuts or anything else.
I have to get Mercy. I rip through the reinforcement, taking half the panel with me.
I kick it away and charge down the hall, bellowing her name. No one hurts my sister. No one.
My feet pound up a set of metal stairs to the next level, where the crowd is stomping.
I shove through another door labeled “track” and find myself in a group of a few dozen.
That’s when I realize my mistake. I went the wrong way, toward the voices, the cheers, thinking that’s where I’d find her.
But I find myself in the crowd instead of at her side.
A few people glance at me, but most are captivated by the spectacle. They’re all standing at the huge glass windows, like VIPs at a football game, eagerly watching the scene below unfold.
The scene in which Mercy is being dragged by the hair across the bottom of an empty swimming pool by a man three times her size.
They’re both bleeding, and Mercy is twisting frantically back and forth, trying to free herself.
My first instinct is to throw myself through the glass, but it’s a long fall, and landing on the tiles beside the pool would incapacitate me, if it didn’t kill me.
The man stops at the side of the pool and swings Mercy, slamming her body against the side.
The hollow thud echoes around the pool room, all the way up to us.
I turn and bolt back down the stairs. I reach the door to the pool room just as it’s swinging closed.
I kick it open and barrel through, shoving past Angel and Father Salvatore, leaping down into the pool without looking first. A loud crack sounds, reverberating through the room.
I barely hear the screams from above, barely see her attacker fall.
Mercy is lying on the floor, clutching her head.
I charge across the empty pool and scoop her into my arms, crushing her to my chest. Nothing else matters.
For a second, all I feel is the relief, so deep it hurts like a toothache, down through my roots, the marrow of my bones.
“Saint?” she murmurs, staring up at me, confused. Her soft fingers brush my cheeks. Her nails are broken and bloody, her body bruised.
I brush her hair back from her face. That’s bloody too.
“I’m here,” I say, and my voice cracks. “I’m here, M. I’ll never let you go again. I promise. You’re mine. You were always mine.”
“What about…” Her gaze moves behind me, searching. “Where’s Dr. Jekyll?”
“That’s what you want to know?” I can’t help but smile. “He’s with Annabel Lee.”
“Where’s Dr. Augustine?”
“Is that the guy beating the shit out of you?” Heath asks, his head appearing over the edge of the pool. “That guy’s toast.”
“No,” she says. “We have to get out of here. He’ll be coming—the guards—”
Another loud crack sounds, and we all flinch.
“Also toast,” Heath says, looking up at something I can’t see.
“Get out,” Mercy says frantically, scrambling to free herself. “You don’t understand. We have to get out of here.”
“Okay,” I say, pulling her back. “We’ll get out. Just hold onto me, baby. I’ll get you out.”
I stand and see what I didn’t notice in my rush to have her in my arms. The big man is lying on his back beside her, blood spreading around him, his eyes open but unseeing, a hole in the center of his forehead.
“Let’s go,” Father Salvatore calls from above. “We need to get her out.”
“Hold onto me,” I say to Mercy, and she wraps her arms and legs around me like a monkey.
I quickly scale the ladder and see another dead man on the floor, this one in a guard’s uniform.
The spectators are screaming and running, half of them already gone, leaving the area above mostly empty.
We start for the door, but suddenly, a deafening alarm starts to blare.
“Through there,” Mercy yells, pointing to the door. She tries to dismount, but I clamp my arm around her, refusing to let her go again.
Angel goes first, gun in both hands, pointed at the floor. Just as he pulls open the door, a loud clanking sound echoes through the place, and a second alarm chimes through the hallways, this one higher pitched and localized to the one door we’re exiting.
“Hurry,” Mercy calls. “They’re locking down the place. We won’t be able to get through any doors!”
“Give me the phone,” Dante calls over the noise.
I don’t have to ask which phone. I hand over Walker’s phone, and he hits a contact. A second later, Nate’s nerdy face appears.
“Looks like you’re having fun,” he says, though I have to read his lips as much as hear him. Angel strides ahead, stopping at the next door. Like Mercy predicted, it’s locked.
“Give us a code,” Father Salvatore calls.
Nate looks away, and his fingers flying over the keyboard. “Door’s open,” he says, not looking up. “Another alarm’s going to sound.”
The same sharp, tinny sound starts when we open that door. The overhead alarm is still blaring, and suddenly, three guards turn into the hall in front of us.
“Get down,” Angel bellows.
I drop to the floor on top of Mercy, shielding her with my body. Five shots ring out in rapid succession, echoing around us in the blaring chaos of the alarms.
I turn my head and see Heath on his knees, and my heart stops. This cannot happen again. It can’t. We’ve come so close to losing him twice already.
“Heath,” I scream, grabbing for him, trying to drag him under me too.
“Get off me, you fucker,” he says, kicking at me. “It’s hard enough to shoot with only one hand.”
I swallow the trembling panic in my throat, realizing he got on one knee to shoot. He has a gun, like Angel.
“Let’s move,” Angel calls, and then he’s striding down the hall. Father Salvatore helps us up, his eyes lingering on Mercy’s for a beat before he turns and follows Angel. Heath brings up the rear, his Glock clutched in his good hand.
“We’ve got another door, Nathaniel,” Father Salvatore calls into the phone.
“It’s open,” Nate says. “Disarmed the siren too.”
We open a thick, sliding door, and inside, a long hallway stretches before us, rooms on either side, each with huge glass windows that make them look like displays you’d see at a museum.
They’re all empty, except for one, where a ghostly figure sits in a rocking chair in the center of the room, a white veil over her face, her body clad in a long white nightgown. I have to look at the others to check if they’re seeing it too, or if I’m seeing ghosts now.
“Well, that’s fucking creepy,” Heath says, swinging his gun from one side to the other as we hurry down the hall.
“In there,” Mercy says, pointing to a window. “That’s my room.”
“Oh, hey, Mercy,” Nate says through the phone. “How you been?”
“I’ve been better,” she says shakily. “You?”
“Never better,” he says, taking a sip of Mountain Dew but never looking away from his screen. “This is epic.”
“Do you have access to the cameras?” Father Salvatore asks, looking up at one mounted in the ceiling.
“Affirmative,” Nate says, tapping away. “They’ll start getting them back up soon. Want me to get you out of there?”
“No,” Mercy says. “They’ll be crawling all over the island looking for us. This is probably the only place they won’t look.”
“I can put a still frame of the hallway,” Nate says. “If no one’s likely to go there, it won’t look suspicious that it’s empty. They won’t even realize their camera is down for a while. They’ll be busy working on the ones that are still out.”
“There’s one in my room too,” Mercy says. “Can you disable that one?”
“I’ll put a still frame there too,” Nate says. “I’ll let you know if anything changes. In the meantime, I’m going to try to override their controls and lock down the building remotely. No one will be able to go in or out the doors. Have fun.”
He winks at us, and then the video call ends.
“Let’s get inside,” Father Salvatore says. “Before he locks us out.”
The door in front of us pops open when he hits the handle, and he drags it back, letting us in before sliding it back into place behind us.
We look at each other, taking stock for the first time.
“Is anyone hurt?” Father asks.
For once, no one got injured on the way in.
“Mercy,” I say, stroking her hair back from her forehead. She hangs on my neck, staring up at me. A purple goose egg is forming on her brow, and her lip is split, as well as several other scrapes and cuts on her face. She’s wearing a sports bra and shorts, which are both dirty and bloody.
“I’m okay,” she whispers, her blue eyes holding mine.
“Fuck,” I mutter, because suddenly, the stress and fear of losing her is too much, and it all overwhelms me now that she’s in my arms. I don’t know what to do with myself, how to say all the things clogging my throat in a painful fist.
I gently lift her chin and press my lips to hers.
She shivers against me, and for the first time, I let the realization sink in that she might be different now, that the things that have happened to her in the past two weeks might have changed her in ways we can never truly understand.
Tears blur my eyes, force their way between my lids, and the pain in my throat spreads to my chest, my head, my heart.
“Mercy,” I whisper, breaking the kiss, cradling her face between my hands. “I love you.”
“I love you,” she says, and she presses in closer, squeezing her legs around me.
“I’ll never hurt you again,” I promise. “I don’t care if it’s wrong, I don’t care what our parents think. Dante is our father now.”
She nods, hungrily seeking my mouth, her lips bloody and broken but eager for mine.
“What do you want?” I whisper, thumbing a teardrop off her chin—my tears. I don’t care. I don’t even wipe them from my face. I don’t want to stop touching her even for that long.
“Kiss me,” she says, tugging me toward the bed. “I want you to kiss me and never stop.”