you. Got it?”
A little girl, ten at most, lifted her hand. It took Vida a moment to realize she was supposed to take it. Once she guided her forward, the others fell in line behind them, taking each other’s hands and forming a chain. Priyanka brought up the rear, gently urging them toward the door as Vida pushed it open with her shoulder. She leaned into the stairwell, aiming up, then down at anyone who might be coming.
I waited a beat longer, just to make sure no one was coming up the elevator, then ran after them. The gun was slick in my hands, but I didn’t want to risk letting go of my grip to wipe them off against my jeans. I kept my gaze, and the barrel of the gun, on the stairs above us, mirroring Vida as she cleared the path below. A few of the kids screamed as the bodies, wounded and dead alike, rolled down the steps.
Bullets pinged off the railings, and the shouted orders from the uniformed security officers became roars of pain. Vida slammed her shoulder against the door to level three. I counted the kids’ small heads as they trailed after her, the chain ending with Priyanka. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
But there had been eight doors. There were eight kids.
Breath slammed in and out of me as I turned and ran back up the stairs, bursting through the door again. My shoes slid through the pool of blood, tracking it across the floor. I shoved back against the panic that was rising in me like a wave, focusing on scanning each room for places where a child might be hiding. I concentrated on the memory Ruby had given me, trying to sort through the glossy-bright images to match their faces to the ones I’d seen. The last room on the left was identical to the others, with one major difference: the sleeping cot was bigger. My stomach bottomed out as I realized exactly how stupid panic had made me.
Ruby. Ruby was the eighth one on this floor. There wasn’t another kid.
The elevator chimed, the doors dragging themselves open. Bootsteps thundered out, and it was all the incentive I needed to run back for the stairwell, legs and arms pumping harder than ever. I took the stairs too fast, barely catching myself from tumbling down onto the second level’s landing.
Steady, I thought. Calm down.
I tried to look through the door’s glass panel, but a bullet had left a web of cracks in it. After reaching out with my power to see if there were any electrical signatures nearby, and finding none, I pushed it open slowly, stepping out gun-first.
The alarm wailed through the corridor. Its red lights swept over the bodies scattered across the floor. I swallowed bile as I wove through them, running for the doors marked QUARANTINE.
It wasn’t until I reached for the button that I remembered.
“Shit,” I breathed out.
The doors slammed shut as soon as I lifted my hand from the button. I hit it again and darted forward, only for the heavy metal to snap shut in front of my nose. I pressed my face up to the small window on the right-side door, searching the darkness of the hallway there for any sign of the others. I pounded on it, holding my breath…and releasing it again when no one came.
Think….There had to be something on that floor I could use to pry open the doors, or keep them from completely closing.
My breath was ragged as I rolled one of the chairs out of a nearby office, trying to cram it into place, but the doors shut with such force they splintered the chair’s plastic frame and sent the wheels sliding through to the other side.
There were the downed security officers and soldiers on the floor, but…I shook my head to clear the gruesome images from it. Bones would break, but a Kevlar vest might be enough to withstand the force of the doors’ impact. My whole body shook from the effort of stripping one off a soldier, feeling the hot blood that had soaked through the fabric.
I held the button to keep the doors open, then slid the bundled-up vest between them with my foot.
They didn’t cut through the fabric, no. But the force of the impact flipped the vest out of position and into the other side of the hall. I slammed my fist against the button again, shouting, “Hey! Priya! Vida!”
But I could