“He said stand the fuck up, Twenty!” Hayes shouted, stalking right past me and pointing his rifle toward the end of the corridor.
Toward the three cells where Twenty, Twelve, and Eight were kept.
I watched in horror as he fired without hesitation. A shock of fear rippled through my body, and one of the hounds started crying.
Was I dreaming?
Twelve ran to the bars of his cell, baring his teeth at Hayes, his bloodshot eyes brimming with hatred. “You killed him! What the fuck?—”
Hayes fired off another round. I was staring right at Twelve when his head blew open. My limbs seized up, and then Hayes shot Eight in the next cell over when he didn’t stand up, either.
Every crack of the rifle, every hound falling in a lifeless heap seemed less and less real.
I didn’t know what was happening, why they were acting like this, why they were killing us like this when they never had before, but?—
“Stand up, turn around and link your hands behind your neck. Next one who says a single fucking word gets a bullet in the head.” Hayes stalked down the aisle between the two rows of cells, gun raised and aimed at the other hounds.
I jolted when a thunderousBOOMcame from somewhere outside, so close that it shook dust from the ceiling and vibrated the concrete floor beneath my bare feet.
“Hayes, get going!” Hunter shouted, picking up the chain Hayes had dropped and tossing one end down to his brother. “We don’t have time for?—”
The world exploded in a violent burst, a powerful blasttearing through the outer walls of the cells across from me. The force of it sent me flying back until I slammed into something solid and the breath was knocked from my lungs. For a long, long moment, all I could hear was the pounding of my heart and a shrill ringing in my ears.
Someone screamed, and then a nearbypop pop poppulled me out of my daze. I inhaled but there wasn’t any oxygen anymore, just dust. I coughed and dragged my shirt up to cover my face. My eyes watered as I looked around at the damage.
There was dust all around me; gray concrete, metal bars, everything was in pieces. The whole row of cells across from me had been blown open on the exterior side, bodies everywhere, mangled, squished, crushed. Only the cells at the far ends were untouched by the damage, and the hounds in those cells were all screaming.
This couldn’t be real.
Movement drew my attention to the right, where a few hounds were scrambling over debris to get to the opening, not even glancing twice at the dead hounds they stepped on to get there. Most of the block had been destroyed; they had a clear shot out of this place.
No.
They were leaving.
It’s not fair.
They were escaping.
No, it wasn’t fair, I?—
The hound that had been climbing out of the hole in the wall suddenly stumbled back, hands raised in the air. A man dressed all in black appeared and pushed the muzzle of his gun into the hound’s chest.
“Get back. Get back!”
Another man came up behind him, clad entirely in black like the first. They had something written on the front of their clothes, but the letters were just meaningless shapes to me. It was English, that much I could tell.
The second man darted out from behind the first when the hound turned and tried to run. He grabbed the hound’s arms, wrenched them behind his back, and tied them together with something and then?—
The hound threw his head back and screamed, falling to his knees. One of the men in black shoved his boot into the hound’s back, pushing him down onto the floor.
I stepped back, keeping my eyes trained on the men. All the fine hairs on the nape of my neck stood on end as I watched him lean over the hound, yank his head back at an angle that looked excruciatingly painful, and shove something in his mouth with his gloved fingers. He held his jaw closed and pinched his nose.
I looked over at Two’s cell and gasped. Agiant slab of concrete had gone clear through the front of his cell and squished him against the wall. All that was left of him was red.
That could’ve been me.
Nausea roiled in my stomach and I gritted my teeth, glancing over at the men in black.
