Wings of the Walker - CoraLee June Page 0,135

that. My eye drifted to the flashing light again. On. Off. On on. Off.

“Mia,” I began. She had been meditating in eerie silence since our capture, only speaking up to yell at us when we talked about escaping. “Does that light flashing seem strange to you?” She casually looked at the light, and I saw her busted lip grin.

“It’s Morse code. Some of the camps use it. Someone must be trying to send a message,” Mia said methodically.

“Well, what does it say?!” Jacob pleaded. He was the least calm out of all of us. I noticed blood seeping down his hands from his rubbed-raw wrists.

“A—S—H—I—S—S—A—F—E—" Mia spelled out slowly. “Well fuck, they could have at least told us a way to get out of here,” she joked. The rest of us, even Huxley, collectively sighed in relief. The only person smart enough to hack into the light controls would be Maverick. Leave it to him to come up with a way to communicate with us using a language only Scavengers understood.

“At least you know lover girl is safe,” Mia said with a sigh before closing her eyes and going back into her meditative state. I wondered how she kept so calm. How she could just sit there.

“Thank God for that,” I muttered as Patrick groaned while spitting up blood. I’m pretty sure he bit the hell out of his tongue when the last guard punched him in the jaw.

“For the record, when we get out of here, I’m courting her,” I said definitively. I wasn’t dancing around this anymore. Ash deserved to be loved and cherished. I wasn’t going to waste another second not doing so.

“Get in line, Kemp,” Patrick chuckled.

“So we’re doing this? Really doing this?” Jacob asked. I knew that he would be the least secure out of all of us in this new adventure. We’d have to make sure we were careful. Intentional.

“We’re doing this,” Cyler answered firmly.

We all remained silent, waiting for Huxley to speak up. To confirm what we already knew .

“Do we have to talk about this right now?” Hux complained.

“Yes or no, Hux. It’s not that fucking hard,” Patrick said through clenched teeth, shocking us all. He was the last person I’d ever expect to force Hux into deciding.

“Shut up!” Mia yelled, and the authority of it shocked us into silence. I had almost forgot she was here with us. “Hear that boys?” Mia asked with a grin. I strained to listen but heard nothing. “A bomb just hit the north corner of the building, and sirens are going off in the East wing,” she murmured while closing her eyes.

“How can you even hear that? This room is concrete!” Patrick exclaimed.

“I’ve got good ears,” she replied with a shrug. “And while you were comparing dick sizes and fighting about whether or not you’re going to court Ash, I was conserving energy and figuring out a way to get out of this hell hole.”

I strained my ear to hear what she was talking about. A faint, low boom erupted, and I widened my eyes in surprise. She was right. Something was happening. I looked up at the flashing light and saw that it had taken on a new sequence.

“Mia—quick. What is the light saying now?” I asked.

Jacob started rubbing against his chains again.

“G—E—T—O—U—T—N—O—W,” she spelled out. “Well boys, what do you say we jump this joint?” Mia shimmied out of her cuffs with ease, and if my eyes weren’t swollen and my head wasn’t throbbing, I would have thrown her an incredulous look.

“How?” Cyler asked while she uncuffed him using the guard’s tablet.

“No time, let’s get the fuck out of here,” Mia said before hitting the snoozing guard across the head with a pipe and stealing his electric gun.

We shuffled down the hall on high alert. I could now hear an alarm going off in the distance as the lights overhead flickered. I sniffed and noticed that the air smelled like an electrical fire and a hint of burnt plastic .

“We don’t even know where we’re going,” Jacob complained. His broad hands touched the ceramic-tiled walls, as if trying to prevent them from closing in on him.

“We follow the sounds of the bombs,” Mia whispered. “Where there are bombs, there’s bound to be a hole in the wall—an opening to get out of here,” she explained.

“Sound logic, but where there are bombs, there’s also—well—bombs ,” Cyler bit out sarcastically. I think he hated that he didn’t have all the answers this time.

Huxley coughed, and