36. - Corey -
Chapter thirty-six
- Corey -
I nstinctively, Corey didn’t want to take the elevator. She figured the stairs would be safer. But Archie had assured her that no matter how fast she thought she could sprint up eight flights of stairs, the elevator would be faster, and she’d be too winded once she reached the top of the stairs. He had also promised her that he would keep the elevator safe. She had no idea who this man was, but Kayden had deferred to him on everything so far, so she figured she may as well too. His instructions in their ear had kept them alive, and not just today.
The elevator music was still playing, some stupid jazz song. It eased her into the moment, that small aspect of normalcy. Despite everything happening right now, the chaos helped her focus. She was used to chaos. When everything was falling apart, she felt her sharpest.
As the elevator climbed up the floors, she stared at herself in the mirrored walls. The night vision goggles they’d used on the main floor were on her head. Archie had reinstated light on the upper floor, not wanting to interfere with the surveillance feed he’d also re-established while they’d been separated .
Corey could barely recognize herself after the last few months with the twins. There was a self-assurance in her that hadn’t been there before, a hardness in her that showed she was dangerous. Her upper body was well-muscled from all the training she’d done. She had more knives strapped to her waist and grenades and guns on her person than she knew what to do with.
She looked like a soldier. And she liked this version of herself.
She was ready to unleash on anyone and everyone who had harmed Jase. He had said he would always come for her, but now she was coming for him.
The elevator stopped, and Archie’s voice flowed through her earpiece. “Guns up. I’m going to open the doors in five seconds. Just remember, you’re on your own up here, kid.”
She always had been, until the twins. Now they were a team, and she was going to help get them out of here.
The doors opened and Corey stepped out of the elevator, both guns raised.
“To your right.”
She unleashed a rain of bullets before the words had even registered in her ear, and three bodies fell. She was moving on instinct alone, fully submitting to the voice in her ear.
“Down the hall and to the left,” he directed.
She sprinted down the hall, a gun in each hand, feet light on the linoleum. She skidded to a halt before making the left-hand turn.
“There’s four men running towards you. Use a grenade. Throw it as hard as you can and get back behind the wall and cover your ears.”
“I feel like I’m in Call of Duty ,” Corey said into the earpiece. She jumped out from behind the wall, whipping the grenade down the hallway and diving for cover. She had her hands over her ears and counted to five before the explosion racked her body .
“Only difference is, if you die, you die. Send another grenade. They’re not all down.”
Corey did as instructed. She only had five grenades left now.
“They’re incapacitated, but not dead. Shoot them as you move. Go.”
Again, she sprinted down the hall, her adrenaline pumping through her veins. She unleashed bullet after bullet into the bodies that were writhing on the floor, killing indiscriminately as they screamed in pain. The deaths didn’t even register. The only thing she was thinking about was how grateful she was for her cardio endurance, and how fast she could sprint. Corey moved down the hall like the wind itself was carrying her, like she was the wind.
Two men lunged out of a door up the hallway.
She saw them at the same time he did. “Fuck,” Archie cursed into her ear.
They lifted their arms up, but she was pulling the triggers on her machine guns before they could loose any bullets, and they both ducked back into the room as she kept sprinting towards them. Her left gun stopped firing before the right one. It was out of bullets. Fuck .
“Can I stop to reload?” she whispered.
“Yes, quickly.” Kayden had showed her how to do it back at the car, and she frantically fed another roll of bullets into the rifle.
“Corey.” She halted the step she was taking towards the door at the tone of his voice. “He’s not in good shape. Don’t let yourself look at him. You need to take out the two men guarding him. I can’t have you freeze. If you freeze, you’re dead, and so is he, and then Kayden too. They’re my family.” His voice broke. “Please.”
From some fucked-up place inside of her, a laugh bubbled up. “You’re putting a lot of pressure on me. I’m just a dog from the streets, Archie.”
“No, you’re everything to them.”
“And they’re everything to me. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m just a girl who picked up a gun for the first time today. ”
“But look how well you’re doing. I just don’t want that to stop.”
She let the words settle over her like sun rays on a hot morning. She had always been a fighter. She wasn’t going to stop now.
Corey stepped through the doorway.
“Don’t look.” It was a warning in her ear.
She looked.
Jason was chained to a chair in the back of the room, a red mess, skin flayed. His eyes weren’t open, and one of his hands was obviously broken, fingers sticking out at odd angles, blood dripping from where his fingernails had been.
The sight didn’t cause her to freeze like Archie had expected. Instead, blinding rage consumed her.
She lunged, not drawing her two guns. She knew it would be too close quarters for her poor aim and untrained hand. They’d only worked in the hallways because she was blanket shooting large targets. She couldn’t risk Jason.
One man met her, and she dodged the arm he’d thrown out, kicking his hand hard enough that he dropped his gun. She unleashed everything she’d learned—everything the twins had taught her. She raked her new claws across his face, tearing through his flesh and his eyes as he screamed in agony.
The sound was music to her ears.
He fell to the ground, searching for his gun. She kicked it away before landing another kick to his head. He went down, and she threw a knife right into his throat.
Then she was knocked down too, and her head hit the floor hard. She saw black for a minute before she rolled quickly to the side, springing onto her haunches, ready to launch herself at the second man who’d come up behind her while she was taking down the first. Then she noticed her earpiece on the floor. It must have fallen out when she hit her head .
The man fired off a shot in the split second she’d wasted considering the earpiece. She jumped up, letting the shot hit her in the bulletproof vest.
Fuck . It still knocked the wind out of her and sent a searing pain into her ribs.
She pulled out her own gun and pointed it at the man in front of her.
They were at a stalemate, both of them with guns trained on each other. She started walking towards him and felt a trickle of wetness run down her face. She must have split her skin when she hit her head. It ran into her mouth, and she licked the coppery substance off her lips, tasting pennies.
The man took a step back, and she felt a feral smile take over her face. His eyes widened at her.
She took a few more long strides toward him, and he let off another shot, aimed at her shoulder. She dropped to the ground so fast that her vision swam, but she lunged for his legs before he could make another move, knocking him to the floor. He threw his weight around, and somehow, he landed a punch to her face. She felt her teeth grind together, sediment peppering her tongue, and more blood flooded her mouth. A chipped tooth.
Corey ripped her hands away from his legs, driving her claws deep into his thigh. He howled in pain. It took some effort to pull the blades out, they were embedded so deep. A maroon fountain spurted from a punctured artery.
Despite his fatal wounds, the man didn’t let up. It would still take him time to bleed out. He flipped them and kicked her hard in the shoulder, aiming the pistol at her face. She knocked the gun away and scratched him across the face, blinding him. He screamed. Then she sliced his throat, cutting off the sound. She watched him slump to the floor, the gurgling of blood barely audible above the roaring in her ears.
“Behind you.” It was a rasp of breath from the chair at the side of the room. From Jason .
Her mistake was that she turned to look at him rather than behind her. Someone else kicked her in the back, and then she was the one screaming as the man kicked and kicked, yelling profanities at her.
He didn’t seem to have a weapon on him, which was the only reason she was still alive. She curled in on herself to protect her organs from his boots, but she could already feel he’d hit her kidney. She was going to piss blood tomorrow. If there was a tomorrow.
In the fetal position, she managed to pull her other gun from the holster under her arm. Only because she was facing away from Jason, she pulled the trigger and let the bullets tear through the body that had already done too much damage to her.
He was dead before he hit the ground.
On aching limbs, she pushed herself up, stumbling over to Jason. The chains holding his wrists and ankles were mechanical. She ripped herself away from him, scrabbling for the earpiece forgotten on the ground.
She got it back in her ear.
“Oh, thank the fucking devil.” Archie’s rich voice was back with her, still underscored in terror. She had to battle to hear it over the ringing that was only growing louder.
“I can’t get him out of the chains.” Her voice sounded far away.
“Get to him and put the earpiece to each one until they unlock.”
“What?” She made out his words, but his instructions made no sense to her.
“Please, Corey. There’s still one guard unaccounted for up here. I’m sweeping the surveillance, but I need to unlock Jase, and I can’t do both.”
Still on hands and knees, she shuffled to the chair, pulling the earpiece out and pressing the tiny piece of tech to each lock until they clunked heavily to the floor.
Just as the last manacle dropped, another man burst through the doorway and hurled himself at her .
She fell to the ground, the force of the impact pushing her into the metal chair, which toppled over. Horrified, she watched as Jason was knocked down, landing in a pool of his own blood and vomit.
She had lost stamina, and the man had successfully pulled out one of her knives. He jammed the steel into her unprotected shoulder. Through the searing pain, she watched Jason’s fingertips gripping for purchase on the cold floor, pulling himself to her, clawing for her with broken hands.
The man on top of her dug his knee into her gut, using it as leverage to rip the knife from her flesh. She was screaming.
Then she heard a gun go off.
Her mind was a black hole of pain and confusion. She waited for the bullet to execute her. When nothing came, her head lolled to the side again. Jason held her lost pistol in his mangled hand. She saw his hand twitch on the trigger again, and another shot struck the man’s head, blowing his brains out. Chunks of wet tissue and bone fragment landed on her and bile crawled up her throat, angry burning acid.
Jason was at her side.
“You came for me.” He could barely get the words out, a hoarse whisper along sandpaper.
She swallowed, holding back everything she wanted to say to him, mostly pathetic apologies for being the catalyst to this hellish endeavour. There was no time for that now. “Kayden’s downstairs, holding down our exit. We need to get you to the elevator.”
He touched his forehead to hers on the ground. “I never got to tell you. I thought I was going to die, and then I thought you were going to die, and I never got to say it. But here you are—a death’s wish. Corey, I lo—”
“Stop!” she sobbed, covering his bloody mouth, cutting his words off. “Don’t you dare fucking say it. You’re not going to say it when you think this is goodbye. This isn’t fucking goodbye, do you hear me? Tell me when we’re out of here.” The sobs were wracking her body now, the carnage catching up to her as her adrenaline gave way to blinding agony .
Somehow, with an oozing shoulder and crushed organs, she managed to pull herself off the ground. Jason’s eyes had closed in the time it had taken her, but she could see the slow rise and fall of his ruined chest, a latticework of flayed skin.
“Archie, how do I get him out?” She’d almost forgotten he was with them.
“There’s three syringes on the metal tray by the chair. Read them out to me.”
She grasped for the syringes, trying to ignore all the other tools that were there, ones so similar to what Jason had shown her just weeks ago. She squinted at the tiny print, trying to stop the letters from swimming away from her. Finally, she sounded out. “Epinephrine.”
“It’s adrenaline. Corey, you’re going to have to hit him with that. It’s the only way he’ll be able to walk out of here, and you can’t carry him.”
“He’s in too much pain. This could send him into cardiac arrest.”
“Give him one and count his pulse.”
With shaking hands, she stabbed Jason in the thigh with the syringe, pushing the adrenaline into him. She knew they must have used this to wake him up after he’d pass out from the pain of their torture and now, she was doing the exact same thing.
A silent sob escaped her.
Jason’s eyes bulged open as he gasped a breath in, his pupils blown wide.
Corey counted his pulse. “I think it’s hitting 120 beats per minute”
“One more, Corey,” Archie said into her ear.
She hit him with another one, and his pulse raced under her fingers. She wedged her good shoulder under his armpit and pulled him up to sitting as his eyes bugged out.
“Jase, you have to get up.” Her voice was so strangled.
“I can’t.”
“Corey, there’s a morphine syringe in the back of your vest. Put it in his bicep.”
She did as she was told, cursing Archie for not telling her before.
“Can you handle morphine, Corey? There’s a second one in there.”
She didn’t know. Had never used it, but reached for the second one anyway, fumbling with the pocket behind her. She pressed the needle into her own bicep and felt the slow warming of the drug as it melted into her system.
“Hit him with the last shot of adrenaline and pull him to standing.”
She had to keep wiping the blood out of her eyes, spitting blood from her mouth so she didn’t choke on it, but then she had him on his feet, practically dragging him down the hall to the elevator, her own limbs becoming heavier and heavier as the morphine gripped her in a haze.
The elevator doors opened, and she had to use the force of her whole body to topple the two of them inside. The jazz music was still playing. She laughed while she lay slumped on the floor, a broken, grating sound. Laughed at how stupid she’d been, thinking this had been too easy.
The doors opened again, and Kayden was standing there. A half sob, half whimper left her as she saw his solid frame, perfectly intact in front of her, his face like stone, not willing to crumble again.
Kayden, with his strong arms, scooped Jason’s body from the ground. She tried to get up, but just crashed to her knees, her body dead weight. The pain she’d ignored was consuming her now that Kayden had taken Jason from her, even with the muffling of the morphine.
“Archie, you need to call Sophie.” Kayden’s voice was steady. It was his turn to keep his shit together, Corey thought, because her battery was empty.
“Dude, already done. She’s almost at the penthouse.”
“Come on, Little Fox. We’re so close. The door is right there, and then I can take you both home.”
Corey moaned, clutching her stomach, and coughed out more blood .
“Baby, please,” his voice was louder, less contained now. “I don’t care how you have to get there. Crawl if you need to, but get yourself out that door. I can’t carry you both.”
Still, she couldn’t move.
“Please, Corey. I need you. I need you to make it out of here.” He was angry now, any semblance of control lost to his growing fear.
She nodded her head, and with her ears ringing and vision swimming, she crawled behind Kayden, unable to make herself stand and it wasn’t worth the effort of trying again. She had to climb over the piles of dead bodies that littered the hallway, her only anchor the sound of Kayden begging her to keep going.
Finally, Kayden had them both in the back of the Range Rover.
“Arch, the explosives are already around the perimeter.”
“Get down the drive and I’ll set them off. Burn this fucking place to the ground.” The words were static in her ear.
She pulled out the earpiece, needing to give her head a break, but the static just got louder.
Once again, Corey was in the back seat of the Rover—only this time, Jason was limp across the back with her, his head in her lap. The Rover swerved and she slumped against the door. They’d come a long way since the first time she’d been in this vehicle. She breathed in deeply, the rich smell of fresh leather mingling with the stench of their bodies. It was putrid and disgusting, and in that moment, it smelled like heaven to her. She was gripping his arm in her hands, holding onto him with the last dregs of her vitality.
She was scared that if she let go, he’d disappear. Or maybe she’d disappear. Maybe they’d disappear together.
Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe they should both let go.
In her cloudy, pain-filled mind, she realized that something would be missing in that scenario. Not something—someone. Kayden .
It was the last thought she had before everything went black.