Page 31 of Rescuing Air

“As I was being led to that room, I memorized everything so I could get back to the others. They had us in individual rooms like that one, so it’s impossible to use our powers to get out if we managed to bypass the poison they gave us.”

“Wait, so even if we free the others, they might not be able to use their powers? How does that help anything?” I asked, frustrated. Makoto seemed to have covered all his bases.

Parker glanced at me over his shoulder. “As the love of my life told me—one thing at a time. The first step is getting to someplace that I can shut the security system down, or at least the cameras. With them blind, it will help to keep us hidden as we break the others out.”

“And I’m guessing you have a clue to where that would be?”

“Sure do. They brought us to their command center when we first got here, to have us debrief them about the situation with Pride. If we can get into the room, I should be able to do most of the things I need to,” Parker informed me, confidence in his voice.

It seemed that Parker had a solid plan. I just couldn’t help but worry that this was too easy. Makoto ran the top private military in the Eastern Hemisphere. There’s no way they couldn’t just shoot us on site and end this whole thing in a second. Sure, it could be that the Dark Lord wanted us to live but that might have changed since our last encounter in my dreams. I wasn’t his scared little puppet anymore. I’d cast him out and purged his hold on me. I decided to do the scariest thing I could right now and trust that Parker could do all that he said he could.

We reached the end of the hall and Parker kicked open a door leading to stairs going up and down. He pulled me up a flight of stairs to another level but this time he let go of my hand and motioned for me to keep quiet and to wait. I nodded my agreement as he slipped out the door. Standing there holding my breath, I tried to listen for any sound of what might be happening on the other side of the door, but it was too thick for me to hear. Then the door was yanked open and there stood Parker, a little worse for wear with a split lip but otherwise just as he left.

“Come on, it seems they weren’t expecting us to get out of that training room. With the amount of possessed people he has on the base, most of the men must be down there dealing with them. Demons don’t give a shit about who you are or if you work on the same team. If they’re pissed, they’ll kill you,” Parker said, wiping his lip with the back of his hand.

Stepping out into the hall, I saw three men knocked out and their hands cuffed behind them. “You dealt with all of them on your own?” I asked, impressed and equally worried for him. “They could have killed you! What if one of them pulled a gun on you?”

“Easy, Trouble. They apparently are under orders not to kill us unless it’s the only option,” Parker assured me. “Although to be safe, I did take their guns away from them. Here, you keep one so you can watch my back.”

I took the handgun, checking to make sure the safety was on so I didn’t accidentally shoot my foot or something. Jay made sure I knew how to handle a gun since we didn’t always just deal with demons who were trying to kill us.

“Come on, the room is up here and we don’t have much time until they notice the guys in the hall.”

The large double doors in the middle of the hall must be where we were headed and just as we reached them, a man stepped out with his gun at the ready. Parker must have anticipated this possibility and got a shot off first, killing the man.

“Shots fired on the third floor. I repeat, shots fired on the third floor,” a man yelled from inside the room.

Parker wasted no time moving into the room and shooting the two men in there before I even registered there were people. I always saw Jay as the soldier of our group, but the reality was that all five of them had the same training. Yeah, it was meant to deal with demons but right now, these men were our enemy and helping the demons take over the world. With those two dealt with, Parker settled down before a computer and started to type in gibberish.

“That makes sense to you?” I asked, peering over his shoulder.

Parker grinned. “This is my first language, that of computer code. It’s complex but I recognize the style of code so it shouldn’t take me too long to make some tweaks and get us hidden for a while. Who knows, I might be able to have their doors unlocked before we get there. It would certainly save us time.”

“War room, come in.” A walkie-talkie crackled. “War room, come in, report your status.”

Well that wasn’t going to happen, and I doubted they had a woman working for them at all so it wouldn’t help for me to pretend. “How much time did you say you would need?”

“War room, if you do not report then we are sending backup your way.”

“Looks like this will have to be good enough. I just need one more minute to shut down the cameras and the lights....”

As he spoke, the room went dark, the only light coming from the computers and blinking lights of electronics in the room. A hand grasped mine, twining our fingers together, letting me know it was Parker. “Come on, Trouble, let’s go get the others.”

nineteen

Lailah

Even with the main lights out, the emergency strobes helped light the way even if I thought I was going to have a seizure. Parker had intentionally set off some sort of alarm so sirens were blaring, making my ears hurt. If his goal was to make it a horribly disorienting atmosphere, then he did the job. If I didn’t have him to anchor me, I don’t know what I would have done or if I’d be able to make sense of anything going on. He pushed forward, leading us back down two flights of stairs, then down a winding hall to a third set of stairs that only went down. Here, the place was pitch black with only the flashing lights from above giving us any light to see. Parker let go of my hand and light bloomed into existence. On the gun he had in his hand was a flashlight which I was extremely thankful for as we moved through the unfamiliar layout.

“I didn’t get the door open like I hoped but I disabled the secondary handprint lock on each of the doors. Shorting out the keypad will be easy enough so we shouldn’t have too much trouble getting them out. The only problem I have is there are ten rooms and only four of them. I have no idea who or what could be behind the other six doors,” Parker informed me as we stopped in front of one of the doors.

“Do you think he would keep a demon down here? This seems rather specific to dealing with the Elementi,” I reasoned. “Either way, it’s worth checking all the rooms. One of them could have Jay’s mom in it.”

Parker’s brows shot up at this idea. “Fuck, you might be right. Alright, as I work on getting the doors open, I need you to use the flashlight on your gun and watch my back. This hall is a dead end that way, so if you stand shining the light on what I’m doing and facing the stairs, we should be good.”

Nodding, I did as he asked, watching for a moment as he pulled out a knife and got to work prying open the keypad. Pulling my attention, I watched the shadows and listened the best I could with the alarms going off. The reality of my life right now made me want to shake my head. No one would have ever pegged me as the warrior princess type. I was more of the goofy sidekick but here I was with a gun in hand ready to break out the men I loved. That was only the beginning. Once that happened, we still had a dark overlord to kill and then had to save the planet. Maybe I should have taken Cami’s advice and read more of those fantasy books she kept pushing on me, then I might have a clue how to end this all.

“Got it!” Parker exclaimed as the door lock clicked. Tucking away the knife, he pulled his gun back out and stood to the side of the door before he pushed it open. Peering around the corner, I let out a sigh of relief that it was just empty and nothing was trying to kill us. “On to the next one. Now that I’ve done one of these, the others should be easier.”