Chapter Fifty-Five
Addie
The Zodius soldiers are coming.
My father darts for her computer screen, scans it, and then takes off toward the door, leaving me to gape after him. He’s leaving us. He’s leaving me. Jocelyn’s hand is pressed to her forehead. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I don’t know what to do.”
“Release Creed!” I shout, eyeing West, who lies face down and unmoving. “He’s our only chance to survive. Let him go.”
Creed rips away the ties around my hands and pulls me to my feet. “Let me go, Mother. I’ll get us out to safety.” Jocelyn just stands there, frozen and panicked. “Damn it, Mother!” Creed yells. “Let me out!”
I plead again. “He’s the only chance we have to survive this.”
Wide-eyed, Jocelyn stares at me and nods choppily. She punches a key. “It’s unlocked!”
My heart explodes in my chest as a Zodius soldier appears in the doorway, his weapon drawn. Creed moves so fast, I barely know what’s happening. He’s out of the cage, charging the soldier, colliding with the enemy.
I rush to Jocelyn’s side, and she sits down at the computer. “I have to destroy Red Dart. I have to kill the program.” She punches a button.
“There,” she says, and I eye Creed right as he places a bullet between the eyes of the Zodius.
So far, the only Zodius soldier, but more are coming. Of that, there is no question.
I refocus on Jocelyn. “There? What does ‘there’ mean?”
“I have an auto-destruct set-up on the lab and everything inside. Part one is done. Part two will take another two minutes.”
Creed shuts the steel lab door, locks it, and arms himself with the soldiers’ weapons. He’s already rushing toward us. “Let’s go.” And then to his mother, “Where’s the door to the upstairs?”
“In the back of the room, down a hallway, but I need a minute. I have to—”
“We don’t have a minute,” Creed grinds out, grabbing my hand. Voices sound outside the lab, an argument about how to bring down the door and not the entire lab.
“That’s it,” she says, and punches a button. “We have exactly five minutes before the lab and all my research on Red Dart goes up in flames.”
A blast sounds in the hallway. The door rattles but doesn’t come down.
“We can’t leave Brock!” Jocelyn insists.
Creed half growls. “He’s a walking tracking device.”
“I can use him to make an antidote in case Red Dart ever surfaces again. Please. We need him.”
With a conflicted grimace, Creed releases my hand and is in the cage, checking Brock’s pulse in a flash, shaking his head, and rushing back to us. “He’s dead,” he announces, already motioning us toward the rear exit, his gun in his hand as a blast finishes off the lab door. “Go! Go! Go!” he yells, firing off a round of bullets.
Creed is still behind us, firing away, as Jocelyn punches in a code in a panel, and steel doors slide open, exposing a stairwell. I yank at Creed’s arm, urging him inside, and then Jocelyn punches a button again. The doors slam shut—a barrier between us and our attackers—and we’re already running up the stairs.
Gunfire sounds behind us and above, but they aren’t shooting at us. Renegades. The Renegades must be here. Or maybe the human soldiers. Creed pulls us both behind him, and when he reaches the next door, he calls out over his shoulder, “Code!”
Jocelyn shouts it out, and in a moment, Creed has it open but holds our position, yanking his phone from his pants and dialing. “We’re in the house,” he says to Caleb, I’m guessing. “The kitchen. The entire thing is going to blow. Get everyone out.” He disconnects, focusing on getting us out.
Almost instantly, more Zodius soldiers are on us, and Creed is fighting. Me and Jocelyn hide in the stairwell, but the minute I see a soldier down and a weapon in reach, I go for it. I start firing, but they come up behind us, and suddenly I’m being yanked by my hair down the hallway.
“Creed!” I scream, but it’s too late. The soldier has me out of the house—which is a good thing since it’s going to blow—but he could windwalk me someplace that I’ll never come back from. “Creed!”
That’s when the blast happens, and we go flying in the air with the impact.