The air snags sharp in my chest, panic tearing through me in a rush that makes the edges of my vision blur. For a breath, I can’t move, can’t think–I can only feel the sick weight of realization that maybe she’s been moved to another compound.
Maybe she’s gone, maybe I’ll never find her.
Then the thought sharpens, landing like a knife in my gut.
Terrance.
His patterns, his obsessions, his need to watch suffering up close, to drag it out until it bled into containers to store. If she isn’t here, then there’s only one place she could be.
His favorite room. The one where he tortures his victims.
CHAPTER 35
BRIAR
Idon’t waste another second standing there with panic chewing at my mind; I pivot hard and take the right stairwell, remembering from the maps that it's on the second floor with the labs, hidden away behind a secure door where only those with the highest clearance are allowed.
Before anyone further up in the stairwell fighting can see me, I dart up from the third floor to the second. I don’t hesitate to kick the door open and storm inside. My breathing is ragged as adrenaline consumes me, ready to tear down anyone standing in my way. However, an eerie silence fills this level, aside from the alarms pulsing a steady beat.
Instantly, I feel a little disoriented trying to recall the layout to this level from the map, trying to figure out how to best get to the room from where I am now. I was too hazy during my time that involved this room, unable at the time to firmly pinpoint the spot in this maze.
Now my anxiety and fear cloud my critical thinking skills when I need them more than ever.
Then I remember:I’m not alone in this.
My hands tighten around Lyra and Kael and I tip my chin just enough to catch the nearest lens and say, “Dante, route me to him, or to my mother if they aren’t together.”
If anyone can find where Terrance is hiding her, it’s Dante. I can’t waste time with presumptions and half-thought out plans. Every single second counts.
A green blink flares to life on the camera in front of me, then another at the middle of the hall where another path crosses perpendicularly. I run toward it, trusting in him with everything in me. My head darts all around, trying to find the next camera that blinks. A brief flash catches my eyes on my right at the far end and I rush toward it. Then there’s another blink to the left at the far end of this hall.
I take that as my answer and run toward it. Just as I’m about to cross under it, the light flashes red three times and immediately I’m on high alert. As I round a corner, I find two guards with weapons drawn in front of a door. I quickly slice through the guards without breaking stride, thanks to Dante’s warning. Lyra opens one of their throats while Kael drives between the other’s ribs and to their heart. Both bodies crumple to the ground as I rip my daggers from them.
The building tries to pull me into old memories, to slow my feet with the gravity of what occurred to me here, but the present need of finding my mom keeps ripping me forward and I let it consume me.
I don’t have space in me for other noise right now, only the straight line between here and wherever she is.
The door hisses open and my body tenses as I drop into a fighting stance, prepared to find guards on the other side, but it's another hallway and the vivid green light at the end of it spurs me on.
Another camera winks green as the corridor opens wide to my left and there it is: reinforced doors I’d recognize anywhere. Ican’t even recall how many times I let myself zone out looking at them, while imagining my family bursting through them to save me from my torture.
The smell in this corridor makes my stomach tighten, the air thick with the odor of antiseptic over the unmistakable copper scent of blood.
The camera above it blinks green three times and I rush to the door, prepared for it to hiss open like the other, but as I stand there with my heart practically in my throat, nothing happens. My focus falls to the keypad and a growl rumbles through me as my fangs bear. It’s been smashed in and had the wires cut.
Do they really think that’s enough to stop me?
I plant my feet and slide Lyra and Kael back into their sheaths at my thighs so I have both hands free without dismissing their forms.
A feral scream rips from me as I curl my fingers into the seam of the door and pull with all my might. My muscles strain and burn from the exertion as the frame groans, moving inch by inch. A tremble rolls through me at the effort and my eyes and jaw clench as I readjust my feet to press against the wall and use the strength of my legs to assist as I get a better grip around the edge of the door.
“Open the fuck up!” I scream until the frame gives way enough that the gap is wide enough for my body.
Relief pours through me as I quickly slip through sideways, shoulders turning, breath held for whatever sight might greet me.
The lights of his torture chamber are too bright as always, the counters are lined the way they always were. The multiple trays of weapons sit where they always did, and strapped upright in the metal table that was designed to hold us against all our might is a figure with her head bowed, her short, uneven white hair matted with blood against her cheek.
For a heartbeat I can’t make myself move. I can’t make my feet bridge the last stretch of clean floor between us, because my mind is trying to protect me from the possibility that it’s someone else, or that she isn’t alive.
