The Countdown (The Taking) (9 page)

I WOKE ON A GASP, BUT IT WASN’T THE PAIN OF sunrise. This was more like I’d been jolted awake by Lucy, that ten-thousand-volt bitch of a cattle prod. My entire body convulsed and my eyes rolled back in my head, and all I could do was wait for whatever was happening to pass.

When it did, my head collapsed against the metal stretcher behind me with a solid
thunk.

A new number rattled through my brain—
fourteen
—and I realized I’d somehow missed the new dawn.

Gasping, I looked around, surprised to discover I was alone. There was no one who could have electrocuted me, at
least not with Eddie Ray’s cattle prod.

The room, me and everything in it, was a landscape painted in darkness, which meant not only had I missed the morning, but most of the day as well. Of course they’d drugged me again, they must have. It was the only explanation for the way my brain felt like mush, and my skin buzzed like Lucy had just been jammed into the side of my neck.

For several seconds . . . minutes . . . maybe hours, I waited for someone to call out the alert that I’d regained consciousness. But no one seemed to be manning the equipment monitoring me.

I glanced down to my bound wrists and wondered how much time I had left. I thought about Natty, and tried to imagine how I’d misjudged her so badly. I thought about Blondie and her “Do I know you?” routine back at the diner, and Eddie Ray with his stupid cattle prod. I squeezed my fists.

Still, no one called out the warning when I knew for damned sure my pulse spiked.

I focused my thoughts the way Simon had taught me, concentrating on more things that upset me . . . things that would make my blood pressure rise . . .

The attack at Blackwater . . . the way Agent Truman had shot Griffin—his own daughter—just to prove a point . . .

I flexed my wrists, but they held tight.

Simon and Jett and Willow, and all the others we’d left behind. Who might be dead for all I knew.

My skin tingled and burned.

Tyler. Oh god, Tyler . . . there were so many things I needed to make up to him. So much I owed him.

The glow from my eyes intensified, and I heard . . . no,
felt
the buckles at my wrists vibrate. I glanced down at my right hand and realized the buckle was loose, not fastened at all. The tiny silver pin had never been secured into the leather strap. It only took a little jiggling for me to liberate my one hand.

And then use that one to release the other.

Without waiting for an alarm, or for someone to cry for help, I groped for the restraint at my neck. It was another buckle, easily undone. My feet were just as simple.

Like that, I was free.

The fog in my brain cleared in an instant as I yanked off every wire and probe and electrode attached to me.

The game had just changed.

Despite the darkness, I could see with perfect clarity and I made my way to the doorway. The sign outside the door read room #14—giving me that same strange sense of déjà vu.

Fourteen.

The hallway beyond my room was long and wide with crumbling brick slabs and broken-out windows high overhead. There were mounds of discarded furnishings, broken chairs and splintered tables.

There was no one around. Not a single person in sight—not Blondie or Natty or Ed. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn the entire building was deserted.

Spasms continued to rack me, and my legs were all rubbery like I’d just finished sprinting several miles. I had a hard time staying upright, but I didn’t have time to be unsteady, so I heaved myself toward one of the walls, using it to support myself.

I still wore the flimsy blue-green hospital gown, which only added to the surreal sensation I had that I was some sort of escaped mental patient. This whole situation was just that, insane. Being kidnapped from the diner, held hostage in this crumbling building . . . being shackled and tortured.

Finding Natty . . . here.

It was more than crazy.

My feet were bare, so I walked as carefully as I could, but it was impossible not to step on shards of broken glass and jagged chunks of cracked concrete and brick. There were even split tiles with edges sharper than any knife. It was like navigating a razor blade obstacle course.

After just a few steps I had deep gashes in the soles of my feet and ankles that made me wince. It didn’t matter that they healed almost as fast as they occurred. That didn’t stop them from hurting like a mother.

I refused to give up, though. I couldn’t afford to coddle myself, no matter how incredibly-horribly-
brutally
painful it was.

This might be my one and only chance to escape.

My pulse thrashed, propelling me forward, and I was hyperalert as I searched for signs that someone had noticed I’d awakened and was trying to get away.

So far though, it was still just me.

If someone came around the corner or anywhere in my line of sight, they’d surely see me—the glow from my eyes would be a dead giveaway.

All I could do was run . . . across the carpet of glass and broken tiles beneath my exposed feet.

I passed several open doorways, each one another glimpse into the asylum’s past. There was so much old junk—trashed hospital beds and gurneys, old-fashioned wheelchairs, outdated medical equipment and instruments discarded in piles and heaped in corners. Graffiti streaked the walls, which meant this place wasn’t entirely out of reach, the way Blondie had led me to believe. But I had no way of knowing how long ago anyone aside from my captors had stepped foot in here.

I saw no way out, though. There were no exterior doors, and the windows I did see—even the smashed-out ones—were barred.

Claustrophobia crept in on me, a sensation I was far too familiar with, as I realized I might never get out. Each breath become harder and harder to find, and the walls began to narrow just as the ceiling suddenly seemed like it was pressing right on top of me.

I told myself it was all in my head—the hallway hadn’t changed—but I ducked all the same.

I had to get outside.

I had to feel air . . . real air . . . fresh, nondusty air . . .

My feet continued to tear and heal . . . rip and repair . . . split and mend in an endless rhythm. I tried to concentrate
on that rather than the part where I was suffocating.

I reached a corner near the end of a seemingly endless corridor, and stopped as something caught my eye.

Ward 14
was painted high on the wall in faded blue paint. I’d probably passed other wards and never even noticed the numbers.

My heart bucked when I heard something. A voice.

I waited, to hear it again. For someone to shout for me to stop, or to call for reinforcements.

Instead, when it finally came again, it was ragged and weak and not at all a cry for backup. It was one tired simple word:
help.
Just that, “help” coming from behind a doorway I’d just passed.

I froze, trying to convince myself in a million different ways to keep going, to . . .
ignore it
. It wasn’t my problem. I couldn’t save anyone if I didn’t save myself. Someone else would come . . . someone else would
help
.

Not. My. Problem.

But who was I kidding? What kind of person would I be if I sneaked away and pretended I hadn’t just heard that? What kind of
monster
. . . ?

I dropped my chin to my chest and took a step back. My feet bled as the cracked tiles beneath me sliced them again, and I had to hope whoever was in there wasn’t human, or else I’d already sentenced them to death—maybe not this second, but within a day or two. And knowing the way Tyler had suffered, they’d be begging for the end to come.

But it wasn’t a human I found, at least not a full human.
And I couldn’t decide whether I was glad I’d come back when I realized who was trapped in the room.

The idea of leaving, taking off the way he had when Blackwater was attacked, became real again. Make him someone else’s problem.

Except he didn’t look like the Judas I’d thought he was. I’d been sure Thom had been the one to send out the message, letting the Daylighters know I existed, sending them our coordinates.

But here he was . . . tied to the same kind of ancient table I’d been strapped to, so I had to wonder . . . had we been wrong? Was Thom a victim too?

“Thom,” I whispered, keeping my distance.

“Kyra?” His voice sounded like a dried-up riverbed. No way that could be faked. This wasn’t a trap. He’d been tortured too.

“It’s me.” I went to him, but my fingers shook as I unfastened his neck and his hands. If you’d have asked me five minutes ago, I would have called Thom a backstabber. Now . . . now, I was setting him free. His skin was cold and I wondered if that was a bad sign. He didn’t have electrodes or machines hooked to him. No IV. But he seemed weak. “Are they drugging you?”

“They were,” he said as I worked to get him upright. His shaky grip clutched my shoulder. “Do you have water?” Even his whisper was feeble. “They haven’t given me water in”—his black eyes searched the room helplessly—“I . . . I don’t know how long.”

The Returned might not need as much food, but that didn’t mean they—that
we
—could survive without it. Same went for water. If Thom had been here since the raid of Blackwater, which, if I’d counted right, had been at least five days ago, maybe more if they’d kept me comatose through any other sunrises, then no wonder he was so weak. He wasn’t hooked up to an IV the way I had been.

“Come on. Let’s get you outta here.” I hauled him up, and he leaned heavily against me. It wasn’t ideal; I wasn’t superstrong, at least not the kind where I could carry a grown man, but he wasn’t able to carry himself.

I was sweating within seconds, my arms and legs trembling beneath his weight. Neither of us had on shoes, but my wounds healed at speeds his never would. He barely winced though, and I couldn’t help wondering if he was even aware of all the cuts and gashes, or if he was too far gone from dehydration or starvation or whatever else they’d put him through.

“Just a few more steps,” I told him. I kept repeating that like a mantra, to urge him on whenever he slowed. The truth was, I had no idea how much farther we had.

When I saw the exit, I nearly buckled from sheer-elating-
thrilling
joy.

An
honest to goodness
exit
.

The door was clearly marked, with a sign and everything. But just like the rest of this place it was blocked by debris—a discarded mattress with stuffing and springs erupting from it, a lopsided heap of worn and broken strips
of timber, garbage . . . so much garbage.

No big deal; they’d be easy enough to clear.

“Stay here.” I propped Thom against a wall, as if he had any say in the matter. It’s not like he could take off or anything.

I climbed over the garbage mound, and began shoving it out of my way. After several minutes, I’d already made a serious dent when I felt rather than heard the presence of someone creeping up behind me.

Even without looking, I knew it wasn’t Thom. I don’t know how I managed
not
to puke.

This couldn’t be happening. Not now, not when we were so close.

“Eddie Ray . . .” It was the defeat threaded through Thom’s voice that somehow reminded me where I’d heard the name before.

I turned to face him.

Eddie Ray.
How had I not recognized it sooner? The name wasn’t common.

Eddie Ray—the guy Simon had told me about when he’d been explaining his long and complicated history with Griffin—his back-in-the-day story. As in, Simon had known Eddie Ray back in the day, when the two of them, along with Thom and Griffin, had all been recruiters at Blackwater Ranch . . . years earlier.

I tried to remember the things Simon had said about Eddie Ray, in case there was anything useful. But he hadn’t said much. Just that Eddie Ray had gone missing around the
same time the camp’s former leader, a guy named Franco, had vanished. Simon had made it sound suspicious, like Eddie Ray might’ve had something to do with their leader’s disappearance, mostly because he’d also said something about Eddie Ray being some kind of power monger.

In my brief experience with Eddie Ray, Simon hadn’t been wrong.

Standing over me now, Eddie Ray gave me a look that made my skin pucker. “You didn’t think we were really letting you just walk outta here, did ya?”

I glanced back toward the exit, evaluating my chances for escape. I might be able to make it, but not if I had to carry Thom. I’d have to leave him . . . send help for him later.

But if I gave up now, neither of us stood a chance.

At the back of my neck, the prickling in my skin had begun to stretch. It expanded until it spread across my shoulders and down my arms.

I was trapped, I told myself, feeding on the growing panic. Letting it fuel the weapon inside me.

It consumed me, buzzing all the way to my fingertips.

I focused on Eddie Ray. Eddie Ray . . . and the garbage around me.

I didn’t stop myself with worry over whether I might actually hurt him. He’d hurt me. I concentrated, instead, on getting out of here, reminding myself he was standing between me and freedom. Between getting help for Thom.

It happened then, like a whirlwind . . . the first pieces
of debris shooting up and hitting Eddie Ray from behind. Pelting him in the back of his skull.

He tried to shield himself, the way anyone would. He raised his arms to defend himself. But even I saw the pieces he couldn’t guard against, tearing his cheek and chin. A jagged-edged brick cut into his forehead, slicing wickedly down and across his face. If he hadn’t been Returned, he’d have been left with a gruesome scar.

Blinking through the screen of blood, he tried to wipe his eyes. But the debris kept coming at him.

It was more than I’d meant to summon, but I had no idea how to curb it. Maybe I didn’t want to.

Thom took some hits too, smaller stuff mostly, and I felt bad for that, but it couldn’t be helped. I didn’t have enough experience. I couldn’t control where it struck.

I didn’t stay to watch. Instead I bolted, leaving Eddie Ray curled in a fetal position, crippled by the rubble that viciously pelted him. I’d come back for Thom, but one of us had to get out.