Dedication (The Medicean Stars Saga Book 1) (15 page)

Jon, learning from the close call and being, in general, much less agile than Sara, takes his time crawling into their niche. Once they are all settled, Ryan turns off his light, and they all sit in the darkness, listening to their hearts beat. Jon can’t believe for how loudly his heart is beating that those searching the building can’t hear it, even through the concrete walls. Surely they can feel its thud through the soles of their boots. It must be shaking the entire stadium like an earthquake. Yet an eternity edges by, and, eventually, he begins to relax, each beat of his heart seeming to get just a little bit quieter, each breath a little bit shallower. If one of them had bothered to illuminate their timepieces they’d be able tell that only a few minutes have passed. Feeling slightly more secure, he turns to where he knows Ryan and Sara are sitting in the dark.

“Do you think…” he starts to whisper, but stops when the door clicks as it unlocks. The warm blackness of the store room is suddenly cut by a cold white light, as a flashlight is flicked around the room.

“I can’t believe they’re having us search all these rooms,” says a voice from the doorway. “I mean, how could they have even gotten this far? All the doors are locked, and the security is tight enough that even our code breakers are taking a minute to open the doors.”

A muffled response from farther outside in the hallway lets the three in hiding know that this member of the search party isn’t simply talking to himself. They can’t make out what the response is, but it must be humorous, because the voice in the doorway laughs before continuing.

“You’re right,” he says. “Sure beats what we could be doing. Anyway, this room looks clear. Looks like no one has even been in here in five years, let alone any time in the last five hours. Moving on.”

With that, the light that had been constantly bouncing around the room swings out into the hall, and, for a few seconds, its light reflects through the door before it closes, leaving the trio in darkness once more. Jon lets out a breath that he doesn’t remember choosing to hold and reaches out to reassure himself that he is not alone. Finding Sara’s hand, he gives it a gentle squeeze. She returns the gesture, and they all begin to relax a little. At first, it is nothing more than breathing again, but after a while, they lie back into the nest of shirts and foam padding.

It is hard to say how long they lie there, listening to the whir of a ventilation fan and the soft rhythm of each other’s breathing. But eventually, they fall asleep, cocooned in the darkness and connected by touch.

Western Mountains

Underground Training Facility

The access crawlway is dark. William can hear the distant throbbing of the emergency alarm, but everything is going according to plan. Before him, a girl with mousy brown hair and a rakish grin turns back to look at him, her face illuminated by the glow coming through the vent opening between them.

“Signal them,” she says. “I’m ready.”

William pushes the key on his radio twice. Without a response, the lights cut out. Three seconds pass before the emergency lights kick in, and when their glow illuminates the passageway, she is gone, and the vent cover is kicked in.

Through the opening, there is no sound, until a male voice shouts: “Behind you!”

The sounds of an entire squad of guards turning in confusion is cut short by the staccato burst of gunfire, as one of them is able to bring his weapon to bear on the interloper. Soon, the confusion is slowly dwindling, as gunfire is interrupted by the thuds of armored bodies hitting the floor. It would seem that her knife is serving her quite well in the small confines of the conference room.

William begins to edge closer to the opening to see if he can lend a hand, but before he can reach the edge of the vent, an explosion rocks him back against the wall. As the fireball engulfs him, he wakes from his dream.

Sitting up in his cot, he sees David struggling to consciousness through the haze of sleep, as a strobe light and alarm blare from the hall.

“I hate that stupid alarm,” David says, leveraging his eyes open.

Letting his mind wander in the half dream state that is the standard result of being forced awake, William is unable to remember choosing to go to sleep. One minute, he had been lying in bed, waiting for the guards to pass on their rounds so that he could find out something about his teammates, and now he is sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at the floor, trying to get this alarm out of his head.

The klaxon quiets, leaving only the murmuring of so many confused and sleepy teenagers. The peace, of course, is not meant to last. Within a minute of the alarm turning off, the silence is shattered by the guards pounding on doors, ensuring that everyone is prepared for the morning’s activities. Being a few doors from where the guards started, William and David have ample warning. As their door is thrown open, they are already standing in the middle of the room, waiting.

“Team leaders, bring your folders,” the guard says through his thick mustache. “Now fall in line for breakfast. Once in the cafeteria, assemble at your team’s designated rally point.”

As the two shuffle out to join the crowded hall, William, clutching his folder in both hands, pauses so that Maria can slip out in front of him, and they exchange a whispered “hey.”

Foothills of the Western Mountains

A University Campus

Jon opens his eyes. It remains completely dark. He closes them and opens them again, faster. It is still dark. Trying to move his arm, he finds it trapped under something soft and warm. Extracting it slowly, the thing pinning his arm stirs, allowing him to slip it out the rest of the way, and he hears a barely audible murmur. Sitting up, he rubs his eyes to make sure that they are, in fact, open. Then the previous day comes rushing back to his consciousness.

The boring day, sitting in his office, the mountain of papers to grade, Sara and Ryan bursting in; then the escape, the explosion, the gunfire, running through the tunnels, and, finally, almost being discovered all flash through his mind. If the darkness were not pressing so heavily on his eyes, he would be able to see that Ryan is already lying awake, his eyes staring straight up into the concrete ceiling, and that Sara, having been disturbed by the removal of Jon’s arm, is starting to wake up as well.

“What is it?” she asks, her mind still as clouded as Jon’s was a moment ago, her last word trailing off as her mind engages and her own recollection returns. It only takes a few seconds for her voice to return, much less groggily, out of the darkness.

“Are you guys still there?”

Ryan, still lying on his back, grumbles out an affirmative noise as the only proof of his continued existence. Jon catches himself nodding his agreement, then instead adds his own “uh-huh” to the dialogue. Once they have both confirmed their presence, they can hear the sound of sliding cloth, and a luminous watch face suddenly winks into existence, its radiation bright enough to their light-starved eyes that they can make out each other’s forms in the dark. Jon is now leaning against the shelves behind which they are hidden. Sara is sitting cross-legged in the middle, and Ryan is lying on his back on the far side.

Before any of them can say anything more, there is low gurgling sound that steadily increases in volume before stopping as suddenly as it began. As they turn towards Ryan, the apparent source of the noise, Jon’s stomach chooses to answer in kind. Ryan leverages himself up into a seated position and begins rummaging through his pockets.

“Well, that answers what we should do first—I’m starving,” Ryan says, realizing that he hasn’t eaten since lunch the day before, probably a new record for him for longest time period without eating. There must have been something about running for one’s life that distracted him from stopping and grabbing a bite to eat. He stops going through the contents of his pockets once he finds the small light attached to his keys. As he flips it on, they are all momentarily blinded by the small point of light. But once their eyes adjust, they are able to make out boxes of nutritional supplements stacked on the shelves around them.

Ryan grabs the closest box, rips off the lid, and hands each of them one of the foil-wrapped bars within. He rips the wrapper cleanly off of his and eats half of it in the first bite. Jon and Sara struggle a bit more, lacking the same degree of practice with this particular packaging, and hesitate only slightly before putting the strange-smelling mystery food in their mouths. They both nearly spit it back out.

“What is this?” Sara gags.

“How can you possibly eat this?” asks Jon, chewing determinedly at the clay-like bar.

Ryan, already most of the way through his second bar, swallows before answering.

“It’s an acquired taste, I guess. Don’t worry you’ll eventually learn to ignore the taste. They’re supposed to be really good for you. I mean, I pretty much lived on them for most my freshman year, and I haven’t died yet.”

Shaking their heads at him, they manage to force down another two each, and, surprisingly, after they are about halfway done with their second one, the bars don’t taste particularly bad. More importantly, they have the benefit of filling the gnawing hole in their stomachs like a brick dropped in an empty cup.

With their starvation sated, it is time to see just how far up the proverbial creek they have actually travelled. Reaching out, Ryan gently grabs Sara’s wrist. Bringing her hand close to his face, he examines her watch. Adjusting the settings, he switches the display to show the day of the week. Satisfied with what he sees he looks up at the others.

“So it is around five on Sunday morning,” he says. “To my memory, this place doesn’t start stirring until at least ten or eleven, especially on weekends. We should be fine sneaking around and checking out the situation.”

“You’re acting like this a normal day,” Sara returns. “What part of the army posting guards around campus, chasing us through the steam tunnels, and shooting students on the quad makes you think that everyone is just going to go about their business today?”

“Sara’s right,” Jon adds. “Campus is probably closed and they’re probably still looking for us and anyone else that managed to escape.”

“We can still see if we can figure a way off campus,” Ryan insists.

“But, what about the troops trying to find us.” Jon says. If we’re caught in the open we’re dead. We can just hide out down here until things calm down a bit.”

“True, we could, but we can’t stay here forever. Our best bet is going to try and make our move now, while they think they’ve cleared this building and before they try and increase their security. Hopefully they haven’t had time to organize too much.” Jon and Sara both reluctantly agree with Ryan’s reasoning, lacking a viable alternative, and they carefully extract themselves from their nest.

Ryan takes the lead as they pick their way through the maze of boxes and equipment that had served so well to hide them last night. Reaching the door, he pauses and listens. Hearing nothing, he slowly opens it enough to poke his head out. The lights in the hall are completely out. Not even the keypads on the doors or the emergency signs at the end of the hall are lit. His penlight isn’t bright enough to penetrate the darkness down the length of the hall—it is barely bright enough to show the wall on the far side and the slightly ajar door of the storage room that is located there.

The three of them steal out of their storage room and stand huddled in the pool of light projected from Ryan’s hand. Looking up and down the length of the hall, they see only darkness. The ends of the hall are completely devoid of light, leaving their eyes and brains the task of filling the space with fanciful, half-glimpsed forms of soldiers and monsters coming to get them.

Ryan, after pausing to get his bearings, leads them decisively down the hall towards the end where he thinks the stairs are located. It seems to be a nearly endless walk, each step bringing into the light some strange form, hulking crouched along the wall. The shadows cast by these forms seem to shrink away from the light, at times revealing what is hidden behind. All of the forms along the hall end up being nothing more than boxes, crates, and carts, loaded down with the paraphernalia of a university’s athletic depart, despite their initial appearance as soldiers waiting to ambush. Once they reach the door to the stairs, it becomes clear that their fear of a platoon of soldiers waiting in the dark is completely foolish, for the building feels abandoned.

The stairwell seems as dark as the hallway at first, but as they make their way slowly up the metal stairs, a faint radiance starts to surround them. Pausing at the ground floor door, they can see nothing but an empty hallway, with the light of the rising sun reflecting off the polished floor. A shadow passes across the windows that have been letting in the sunlight, briefly darkening the hall and causing them to freeze where they are standing, peering through the stairwell’s door. The sunlight returns as suddenly as it disappeared.

Waiting to make sure the shadow does not return, they wait and count the seconds. But before they can get to ten, it returns, then vanishes again. As the three fugitives look at each other, their glances of recognition confirm that they have all come to the same conclusion: Someone is pacing back and forth just outside the doors that might lead to freedom. Ryan motions them back from the glass, and they slowly back away, then continue up the stairs one more floor.

This time, the hall is only faintly lit by the light, sneaking past closed blinds, but fortunately devoid of any moving shadows or people to cause them. Sara and Ryan head towards the office at the end of the hall, while Jon lags behind to ensure that the door closes with the smallest sound possible. By the time the door is shut, the two of them have disappeared into the office. Jon walks as quickly and quietly as he can down the hall, knowing that the smallest scuff of his shoe will be translated into an echoing squeak by the polished floor.

Each door he passes is unlocked and slightly ajar. Peeking into one of the offices, he sees that it is deserted. Not empty, like the office’s tenant had packed up and left as usual the night before, but deserted, like they’d been dragged out while in the middle of something and hadn’t had a chance to come back yet. There are papers scattered about the floor, a coffee cup sits on the table next to a half-eaten sandwich on which the lettuce has wilted. The room is as still and quiet as a crypt. Not even the ventilation system stirs the air.

Jon continues down the hall. Eventually reaching the door at the end through which Ryan and Sara had disappeared, he enters. This room is a world away in terms of comfort and style from the first one he looked in but seems to have been left in the same state of disarray. Whereas the first room Jon had poked his head into was cramped with only a desk and one chair for a visitor, this office is spacious, despite the monolithic conference table around which eight chairs are placed.

Atop this table sits sheets of paper in front of every chair, each labeled with an agenda, some with notes taken in varying neatness of script. The chair closest to the door has a leather folio with a note terminated mid-word on the open page. Part way around the table from Jon, another seat has a stack of folders that bear the school crest placed in front of it. All around the table sit glasses of water, some barely touched and others almost empty. This room is just as still as the rest in the hall, except for Sara and Ryan peeking out the blinds behind the large wooden desk on the far side of the room. Sensing Jon’s entrance, Ryan waves him over.

“You have to see this,” he whispers, the noise seeming to soak into the silence. Jon walks over to join him, his feet sinking into the plush carpeting. The building is located on the edge of campus, with normally only a parking lot separating it from the neighborhood beyond. But today, something more separates it. Running down the middle of the parking lot is a chain-link fence, which was certainly not there the night before. The fence stretches around campus as far to the left and right as they can see from their vantage point. As Jon watches, a work crew comes into view along the northern edge of his field of vision. The crew members carry a spool of razor wire in the back of a military truck, and they are driving along, mounting it to the top of the fence. Looking closer, he can make out individual soldiers posted at regular intervals along the outside of the fence. Each is holding an assault rifle and continually scanning the activity along the inside perimeter.

“It looks like they have the whole campus surrounded,” Ryan says. “I don’t see how we’re going to be able to get out.”

“They’re probably searching building by building until they clear everyone out, like they did here last night,” Sara adds, indicating the deserted room behind them. They leave the window and congregate around the massive desk.

“If we can’t get off campus, then I guess we’d better hole up,” Jon suggests, resigned to their fate. “We might as well stay here. They might have people watching the steam tunnels, and I doubt we can walk out the front door past that pacing guard. There’s food and water. I doubt they’re going to be searching in here again anytime soon, considering the number of buildings on campus.”

“And here I thought I’d never have to spend any more time in this stupid building,” grouches Ryan.