Redemption Prep - Samuel Miller Page 0,92

instructor shouted, loud enough to draw their attention, and Aiden dove for an upright chair, toppling it back into Rick. Rick recovered quickly, accepting a punch while wrapping his arms around Aiden in a firm bear hug, trapping him and cutting off air. The other worker came over and took his time setting up for a military-grade right hook. Aiden heard a crunching sound from his own jaw.

“You’re killing him!” an instructor screamed. “He’s a boy!”

“Shut up!” the bearded man spat at her. “You’ll wake the other students.” He dragged Aiden’s body to the middle of the lounge. “Bring him to his room.”

Aiden rolled over to a hunch; the fire danced across a stream of blood pouring from the center of his face. He lifted his head slightly, woozy.

This wasn’t his breaking point. Not yet.

He pulled himself up and charged at the guards. Reaching for the backs of their heads, he managed to slam one into the doorway before tumbling off, completely out of control of his own body.

“What the fuck!” the other screamed, and spun on him. Aiden rushed to his feet, dancing around the far edge of the room. Blood was pushing his hair back up out of his face; he felt himself smiling.

It didn’t last long. The first worker grabbed him by the shoulder and threw him to the ground. The other drove a straight kick into his back so hard that Aiden’s head snapped forward.

They began to circle him. “Don’t make us hurt you any more, kid. Whatever this is, it’s not worth it.”

The workers who had been guarding the exit doors had abandoned their posts. Three instructors huddled in a far corner together. Aiden’s vision was slipping in and out of focus. One more shot to the head, and he’d be out. He raised his hands to protect himself.

From the hallways that converged on the Human Lounge, he heard running, banging, a voice shouting, muffled through the walls at first. The maintenance workers looked away from him, their hands dropping as the voice became clearer—“Fight! Motherfuckers, there’s a fight!”

Students began to stream onto the landings of every floor, rushing out from both directions to see what the commotion was. They filled in, faster and faster, the instructors trying to urge everyone back to sleep, but the students were too electrified to care. They formed an arena around him, four floors of landings, packed with students.

To his right, Peter fought his way to the railing of the second-story landing. He’d come to Aiden’s rescue. He screamed down at him, “Go, buddy!”

Aiden charged for the nearest guard. The students exploded with excitement.

The guard closest was still focused on the students, and without turning, took a jab straight to the face, backing into the other guard, and giving Aiden an angle to slide past, continuing to fight with his back to the fire. The other guards were slow to advance, exchanging wild glances with each other. One shot a look to the instructors, who were panicked and hiding in the corner. “Do someth—”

But Aiden was on him, crashing a fist down just in time to catch his chin, again landing a punch without taking one, causing the crowd to go crazy and the workers to recoil as a unit, none of them sure whether they were even allowed to touch Aiden with this many students around.

One of the maintenance workers had turned to crowd control. “Go back to your dorms,” he shouted at the wall of students, at least a hundred. “Return to your dorms immediately, or everyone will be—”

Their screaming swallowed his sentence. Aiden had run straight for another one of the guards, ducking a punch and driving him backward to the ground. Aiden continued to bulldoze over him, landing on his feet at the other end.

Rick had given up on trying to de-escalate the situation or trying to handle Aiden with care. He turned on Aiden just as he regained his balance and threw a hard left hook into the side of Aiden’s gut. He ran at Aiden again, catching Aiden’s fall by driving a knee into his chest. He finished by grabbing Aiden by the shoulders and throwing him back into the center of the four workers. Aiden’s head snapped back, twisting and popping joints in his neck that had never bent before. Every joint and muscle that was used to holding him in place had begun to cave, shredding like thin plastic stretched over old toothpicks.

He tried a massive swing at one of the