Ice (17 page)

We heard the boots grow closer. We all slid back even further into our places, no longer peeking at the door. They stopped near the door and talked amongst themselves, wondering which room we went in.

They decided to split up. Our door opened slowly. I heard a heavy boot hit the floor. I stayed as still as a statue, locked into a squished, crunched up sitting position. He took a few more steps, walking slowly. His boots stopped in front of my desk. I stayed quiet, still holding my breath; we all were.

And then suddenly the chair from the desk beside mine
shot across the floor, bouncing off the desk Tartok was sitting behind. Tartok stood up, aiming the gun at the man. Our cover blown, I kicked the chair in front of me as hard as I could. It hit the man, earning a curse, but before the man could finish, he was struggling with Kavick. I quickly crawled out of my space to see Kavick punch him in the face and knee him in the stomach before slamming him down on the keyboard of the desk Tartok was standing beside. Kavick grabbed his double barrel shot gun and tossed it aside. He held the man down and said, “Is Tupit Skarling here?”

The man groaned and stuttered, his speech slightly impaired since his face was being pressed against the hard plastic of the keyboard. I didn’t wait for his answer; I immediately turned on the nearest computer.

“I…I-I don’t know….” The man mumbled.

I glanced behind me as I typed the username and password that was written on the back of Doug’s nametag.

Tartok brought the end of his rifle to the man’s temple. “Think hard.”

“I-I didn’t bring anyone in by that name. I swear!”

I hit enter. Red letters appeared that read: ACCESS DENIED.

Kavick asked the question this time. “A Husky! A black and white Husky was brought here!”

“Uh, y-yeah! I think there was one brought in the other day! His name was Skarling!”

Kavick rolled his eyes.

“Wrong one, idiot,” Tartok sneered. “
Tupit
Skarling!”

Kavick glanced at the door and then at Tartok. “This is useless. He doesn’t know.”

I glanced at the door nervously, too, making sure no one was near it. “I tried to check the computer, but they blocked Doug. They probably know we’re using his card, so we might not be able to open anymore doors.” I nodded to the man they were questioning and said, “We need his nametag.”

Kavick ripped it off his coat pocket it was clipped to and handed it to me. I checked the back. He hadn’t written his information on the back like Doug had. “I need his username and password.”

Tartok pressed the gun a little harder into the man’s temple. “Tell us!”

“Gee Newman!” The man shouted, his dark skin shining with sweat. “Password is
eleven fourteen zero five!”

I grabbed a permanent marker from the cup of pens and quickly jotted it down on the back. I typed it in the computer. An hour glass appeared on the screen.

“It worked,” I announced.

Tartok glanced over at the computer and Kavick watched the door, still firmly holding the man down.

The screen turned white, loading text and a search engine, and then it suddenly turned black. White letters appeared that read: SYSTEM DOWN.

I growled in frustration.

“What’s wrong?” Kavick asked.

I turned around and slipped Doug’s and G. Newman’s cards into my coat pocket. “Something started to show up, but then it said the system was down. They don’t want us getting away with any information.”

The brothers just stared at me as the words sank in. I could see the little glimmer of hope they had fading away. I shifted uncomfortably, feeling my own spirits tumult. “I’m sorry.” It was all I could think to say.

“They don’t want us leaving with information, that’s fine. We won’t,” Tartok said so calmly, I wondered what had happened to him.

He approached me and handed me the rifle. He gave me a hard look with those unnerving amber eyes, like he was telling me I better point it at the man, or else. It was as if he could sense my fear. I did, but I didn’t press it to his head like Tartok had. Tartok pulled his lighter fluid out and started squirting the monitors, modems, and keyboards, except for the one Kavick held the man down on. I would have thought Tartok was a mean, crazy pyromaniac if it weren’t for the fact this place had killed and kidnapped his family and friends. Once he had ignited the flames, he pocketed his tools into his coat again and took the rifle from me. I could immediately feel the heat as the electronics began to spark and smoke in the bright orange flames.

“Let’s go,” Tartok said as he motioned his head for us
to leave. Tartok held the man down as Kavick and I headed for the door. I saw Tartok knee the guy in the stomach to keep him down as we ran out of the room. I could hear the man groaning as I followed Kavick.

Just as we exited through the door, the door across the hall was opening. Tartok shot the man in the shoulder, making me jump and my ears ache. The man yelped and grabbed his shoulder, causing him to drop his own rifle. The man
cried out, holding his free hand up in surrender. Kavick kicked the firearm, sending it skidding a couple of feet away. Tartok lowered the rifle and we dashed down the hall, occasionally glancing behind us. I could hear them pursuing us in the distance, but I couldn’t see them.

We finally got to the last door in the hallway. It had one of those metal boxes with a keypad beside it. I slid the hunter’s card through it. The light turned green. Just as we shut the door, the two men we had encountered caught up to us. Kavick and Tartok pushed against it and held the handle as the men tried to enter. The light was green above the keypad still. I tried to think of something to stop them and remembered the can of mace in my coat pocket. I pulled it out and sprayed through the crack in the doorway at their eyes. The two men clenched their eyes shut, their faces turning red. They
screamed and stopped pushing against the door that Kavick and Tartok were able to shut it. The door finally locked.

Kavick and I started to run away, but Tartok wasn’t following us for some reason. We stopped to figure out what the hold up was. Tartok stood back from the door and aimed his rifle at the keypad. He fired and the red light went dark. He rejoined us, saying, “Maybe that will stop them.”

We headed for the door in the corner, just like the last room that had cells and pens. This one had only dogs and wolves in it, unlike the other.

Just as we got near the door, it opened. There were three men walking in with Suka and her father, holding them forcefully with their arms behind their backs.

We stopped dead in our tracks.

They did, too.

Suka’s yellow eyes were huge, bigger than her sister’s. I don’t think she expected to see us again, let alone Kavick.

The men yelled commands at us.

“Put your hands up!”

“Drop the gun
!”

“
Drop it, or I’ll shoot!”

The man who held Suka released one of his hands to draw a pistol. That was all Suka needed in order to fight back. In just a couple of second’s time she had al
ready elbowed him in the jaw, and broke her other hand free. She took his gun and aimed it at the man who had a rifle pointed at us. The one who held her father drew his gun, but managed to keep Adrik in place. My eyes widened at the bloodstain on Adrik’s right leg.

Suka
commanded them to release her father and for them to drop their weapons, but they yelled again for us to drop ours and put our hands up.

The one holding her father moved his pistol up to
his head. “Drop your weapons, or I’ll shoot him!!”

Suka
and Tartok glanced at each other. I wondered if they were going to surrender to save her father…and then all at once Suka was a mass of gray fur lunging at the man in front of her who had the rifle, while Tartok turned into a black wolf and pounced on Suka’s father and the man that held him hostage. The hunter screamed at the sight of Tartok, firing his pistol, but missed because he was already falling backwards. The bullet hit one of the florescent lights, splattering glass on us. Kavick and I instinctively ducked. During the couple of seconds we were down, there were snarls, rips, and more screams amongst the tinkling of falling glass. Kavick and I slowly stood, looking at each other.

“Are you okay?” he asked me, grabbing my arm. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to steady me, or himself.

“Yeah,” I breathed. I silently wondered how long I had been holding my breath. “Are you?”

“Yeah.”

We shook the bits of glass off of us and looked at the scene in front of us. The two hunters were lying on the floor, bleeding, but still alive. Her father appeared to be fine, Tartok helping him up as he pulled his black jeans up with his other hand. Suka had her camouflage pants on and was wiping her bloody hands on her gray shirt. “We know how to get out of here through the lab. We can’t go the way we came in. They’ll be waiting for us,” Tartok said as he and Suka quickly finished dressing. He handed Adrik the rifle and headed for the door.

Tartok and Suka finished putting their coats on as we hurriedly walked down the hall. We couldn’t run because of Suka’s father.

“They’ll be waiting for us at every exit,” Adrik said breathlessly. He then stopped walking.

We all stopped and faced him. The middle-aged man handed Tartok the rifle he had just been given. “You’ll need this. Go on. Suka and I won’t be far behind.”

“But then you’ll need it even more,” Tartok said as his amber eyes jumped from the man to the rifle and back again, but never taking the weapon.

Suka dug her hand under her coat and pulled the shiny pistol from the waistband of her pants. “We’ve got this. Take the rifle. You have to get Kavick out of here, or this will all be for nothing. We won’t be far behind.”

Kavick shook his head, clearly distressed by the decision. “No-!”

Suka cut off his protest. Her voice was firm and her lips were pressed into a tight line like I had seen her father do before. “We aren’t letting you guys drag behind with us. Now go!”

I pulled out the keycard we had taken from the man in the computer room and quickly read the numbers on the back I had written earlier. I slipped it back into my pocket and said, “If you come to a door with a keypad, type those numbers in. It should let you through.”

Suka nodded, and to my surprise, Adrik seemed sincerely grateful as he said thank you. It was the first time he hadn’t treated me like I was an annoying lower form of life.

I nodded a welcome as we took off running. I felt even more scared than before because I wasn’t just scared for us, I was scared for Suka and her father, as well. It didn’t feel right leaving them behind and I couldn’t shake the fear that they wouldn’t come back.

Our feet pounded against the floor in time to the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears. We passed under a speaker in the corner of the ceiling and I thought I was going to go deaf from the siren.
A moment later, I thought I heard gunshots. I looked back, but I couldn’t see anything except curved cement walls. Kavick was looking back with me and lurched away from us, but Tartok grabbed his arm and said in a low voice, “Come on. We’re almost there.”

Finally the sign for the lab came into sight. We took the door on the left that had the white
sign beside it we had been desperately searching for, and used the stolen nametag to enter. As we passed the computers and refrigerators and microscopes, Tartok covered it all in lighter fluid. He didn’t ignite it, though, since Suka and her father were on their way. Once we reached the door at the back of the room, I slid the nametag for the last time and we turned the metal handle.

Bitterly cold wind instantly hit my face and blew my hair back. As we walked out, I pulled my hood over my head. I thought it was strange that there was nobody waiting outside of the door with guns raised. It was just the dark, c
old night awaiting us. The snow was heavier; flakes were dotting the black sky when I looked up.

We trekked into the dark woods, panting as we struggled through the sn
ow. Kavick was struggling the most, holding his wounded side. I wrapped an arm around his back and helped him through the thick snow. Tartok was a good distance ahead of us with the rifle. Suddenly, he stopped and turned around. “Do you think you can get him to the SUV from here?”

I got my directions together in my head for a moment and then nodded, remembering how we had gotten here earlier.

He didn’t seem quite as confident as he was earlier, though. “I’m going to head back and make sure Suka and Adrik make it out okay.”

Kavick told him to go on, looking a little relieved that they wouldn’t be on their own anymore. Tartok raced back to the Factory through the snow, kicking up the white dust as he ran. In a few seconds
, he had disappeared into the black mass of trees, and Kavick and I resumed our journey to the SUV. As we trudged through the deep snow, I tried to keep us on course despite the maze of darkness I was navigating through. I slowed down a little to make it easier for Kavick, but we were still breathing heavily.

Just w
hen I thought we weren’t far from the road, we heard something that made us both instantly stop. It was a voice I never wanted to hear again, and it was at the worst possible time. It made my blood freeze.