Bound to Ashes (The Altered Sequence Book 1) (16 page)

He’s gone. The silence is back.

My heart feels like it might burst. I let my held breath go and my knees bend under me, letting gravity pull be down. I unzip my pack and shove the shotgun in. The barrel sticks out stupidly from the back but I can’t worry about it, I won’t. Sixth level, concessions. I finally have more of a goal. The road ahead is still dark, though.

The only sound in the dark hall is my breathless whisper, “I’m coming, guys.”

My parents never took me to ball games when I was little. Dad was always working and gone for months at a time. Mom was always sick. I’d seen games on TV but never imagined the first time I’d be in a stadium would be like this. I try to imagine the place crowded with jostling fans, smells of hotdogs and pretzels coming from the concession stands.... but all I hear is my own heart clogging my ear drums and the stench of waste. It’s hellish. The only proof that people actually live here is the smell. I never took our plumbing at the facility for granted until now... every breath makes me sure I’m going to throw up. Each time I don’t, it’s surprising. I can’t tell if it’s just sewage, or sewage
and
something dead. The urgency to get everyone and leave wasn’t nearly as strong as it is now.

One more flight of stairs, one more bout of burning legs, and I’m almost there. So far every floor has been deserted. If they have men posted as guards, where are the civilians...? Better off this way, though. How long can I count on that guy with the shotgun not to tell anyone I’m here? My mouth twists into a frown. Probably not long.

My lungs feel like they’ll shrivel up and my legs are burning, my joints surrounded by sand.... Every hesitation, every break between staircases and my body begs me to stop, just stop, rest for a second. The possibility of holding still grabs me like a magnet. But I push past it.

The shotgun is in my pack, the handgun is in my hand, and my wits are... well. Not exactly with me. I stop on a platform and brace my arms on my shaking knees. Is it sweat or rain water that’s dripping off my hair and nose? Dammit, I’m so close....

My legs spring to life with a new fire: Don’t let them down, Aless.

[Dev]

They’re going to come and kill us. They’ve taken too long.

The camps are crowded. They packed us in tiny rooms. Bars on the windows. Me and the others: age fourteen, twelve, fifteen, sixteen. The same awkward, gangling teenage bodies that human kids go through, but the similarities end there. We’re powerful, strong, but so vulnerable in the clammy room all pressed up against each other, shivering. Then the door flies open, we jump, one tries to run and gets gunned down. His body is still but the blood keeps pumping. We run, the window shatters, two fall, I linger. I can’t move. Behind me the man with the gun is on the ground and screaming. One of us, another kid, came from the hallway and is beating his face into a bloody pulp, the butt of the rifle rising up and down and up and down. He pulls back like a wolf from a kill. Slick with blood. He gets to his feet shakily and tears down the hallway.

Out the hall. Down the stairs. Running until my lungs are on fire. Skid to a halt in a puddle of blood flowing from the neck of another man, faceless mask cracked. I don’t know where to go or what’s going on, I just follow. Everyone’s running, flowing towards the doors. Outside is hell but it’s better than inside. Shots are firing everywhere and screams are made null by the sirens. A fire starts somewhere in the yard near the razor fences. The faces all rushing past me, contorted in fear, could I have recognized them? Did I know them? Did it even matter anymore?

A guard tower is silhouetted by the growing fire and I see a man standing on its roof. Just standing there. Watching the madness below. Everything is silent, now, but the fire keeps lunging back and forth in a wild dance, threatening to burn the whole structure down. The man drops the broken helmet of a guard and it clatters to the ground. And he just smiles.

I fall back to consciousness and find my hand pulling at a tuft of hair, like the pain on my scalp will be a siphon and suck the nightmares out of my skull.

I curl in and clench my teeth and force the remnants of the nightmare out. The revolt was a long time ago, just let it go... Inhale, exhale....

I look up. Ashton is still standing at the gate with his head resting on the grate. It bows slightly in at his pressure like a geometric spider web. And here we are caught in the middle like blind, stupid insects. There are a couple segments of the gate that I guess he tried to pull apart, they’re wider and irregular.

“How’s your head?” His voice startles me.

“It’s better.”

“Good, then c’mere.”

I almost roll my eyes—what could I possibly do that he hasn’t tried? I force myself to my feet and head over. He stares out of the grate oblivious to the metal pushing into his forehead. He doesn’t even look at me when I approach.

“What—”

“You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t... urgent,” he says slowly. He finally looks over at me, blank and cautious. “But I bet your fire could get us out.”

My breath catches in my throat and sits there like a rock. “It’d take too long to melt, Ash. This isn’t just a... quick burst...” A sustained flame, for that long? Even the thought pulls my throat tighter.

“I know,” he says, pulling away from the grate and facing me. “I know. I’m sorry. But if we don’t get out of here soon, I mean....” He grimaces and lets his hands fall. “They’ve been gone for a while. It’s only a matter of time before they make a move. We have to get out and find Alessandra and James.”

My sigh comes out angrier than I mean it to. “I know we can’t just do
nothing
, but isn’t there—”

“We’ve tried everything else. There’s nothing here, no other tools at our disposal.”

Tool.

The heat turns up, my skin goes prickly.

Ashton slowly realizes what he said. “Oh, no, I mean—no,” he touches his forehead and looks down, then back to me, plaintively, “I’m sorry. That was wrong.”

I know he didn’t mean it but I still slump down against the metal cabinets and stare at the dirty floor—tool. Using. Useful. Be useful. Utilize a tool to achieve an end.

Ashton comes over and falls to his knees—his
knees
. That vulnerable position, it’s so weird seeing him like that. I look up.

“I didn’t mean that,” he says, swallowing, tight-lipped.

“I... I know,” I say. I want to add, ‘But you’re right,’ but the words sit heavy in my stomach.

He slides over to sit next to me and pushes his back against the metal. His head tilts up to face the ceiling. I keep trying to force the words out, but the silence is so much easier. It feels like it can go on forever, just sitting here, listening to the rain pick up outside. Waiting for something to happen.

The grate rattles. A small whisper, “Hey!”

I’ve never seen Ashton scramble to his feet so quickly. Jules rouses from her sleep in the corner by Vinder and Peregrine, still out cold, and blearily looks up. A grin forms on her face and erases all former sleepiness. “Damn.”

I follow Ashton to the grate and behind the pile of crates, Alessandra crouches on one of the prongs of the forklift like a little sneaking animal. She’s smiling but the look in her eyes hints something else. More dire.

I realize my mouth’s hanging open when she forces and laugh and says, “Don’t get all excited or anything....”

Ashton crouches down and says, “How’d you get here?!”

She puts her finger to her lips and whispers, “I snuck in.”

His head bobs on his shoulders and he whispers, “Sorry.”

“I’m gonna get you out, just, hold on a second. Is there like a latch or something?” She looks up and down the length of the gate.

“It locks down there,” Ashton says, gesturing at the holes in the ground where the gate clicks into place.

Alessandra slowly glances around the gate’s perimeter. Probably realizing it’s a seamless fit, the locking mechanisms imbedded in concrete. She looks up and says, “Hold on.”

She scrambles off the forklift and disappears around the corner.

Jules sputters, “Wh—hey! Where’re you going?”

Cain slowly pads over, silent and passive, watching without looking like he cares one way or another that Alessandra is alive. Or that we might actually have a way out.

She runs back, crouched low, cradling something under her body. She squeezes back in her little alcove and unfurls a fire extinguisher. “Here.”

By our blank stares, she adds, “It’s cold. Focus it on a few links and it’ll be brittle enough to break through. Can you push this stuff out of the way after that?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Good.”

Ashton is already at work bending the grate links wide enough to pass the extinguisher through.

Alessandra takes a breath and pauses, glancing around the interior of our cell. “Where are Vinder and Peregrine?”

“They’re okay, just sleeping.” I glance over and they look the same.

She lingers on them for a minute and I watch her expression shift from tired to determined. “Wake them up if you can. We’re going to get out of here and get James. Any idea where they took him?”

Ashton grabs the extinguisher and turns it over a few times in his hands, reading the instructions with a critical eye.

I shrug. “No idea.”

“We’ll find out,” Alessandra says. It sounds like a promise.

“Okay,” Ashton says. “Back up.”

Alessandra nods and retreats out her alcove, watching from nearby. I can’t help but watch her and wonder what it feels like to be so submerged in a task or goal so it becomes your whole life. I feel like I just float around things, watching them and barely interacting, but Alessandra has the whole world in her hands, molding it to what she wants.

For once, I’m pretty glad I’m on her side.

[Michael]

I really should be glad the holding cell is so far away. After my fourth flight of goddamn stairs I’m on the right floor. It’s cold down here. No one lives here and all the supplies had been used up a while ago, guess no one has a reason to visit. Haven’t had to use the holding pen in a while, either.

Etcher wants it done quick, and I’m glad to get this thing over with. It won’t be the first time I have to kill someone. That’s just life now. But I can’t tell if my heart is beating from the stairs or from anxiety.

I round the corner. The pizza place, that’s where he said they were. The one with all the shit piled in front of it. I stop.

The piles of boxes and palettes and stuff is moving.

It inches slowly farther out and out. Smaller things on the pile tilt and fall. Are they... dammit, they’re pushing it out, they got out—

I aim at the gate and fire. One of them swears and I see someone inside duck. “Go, go!” someone shouts.

Like hell am I letting them out.

The pile of stuff gives another huge heave and it’s apparently far enough out for one of them to squeeze out. The forklift screeches when it gets pushes out of the way. A metal clanging, like a canister hitting the ground, echoes through the concrete hall. I fire again. It barely misses. Fuck, this little gun is useless, I’m so used to the rifle—

I see him, there he is, that tall one, shit he’s fast—

His grip is vicelike and my gun is toast. He wrenches it out of my hand like I’m a child and sends it flying. My back pounds on the ground and his big foot is pressing on my throat. My head might be bleeding. Everything hurts, the hot pain on my throat—

Someone—some woman, not the same one we got, a white chick with long hair, she leans over and gets in my face and says, “Where is he?”

I try to cough but—

He eases up and I cough until I think I might cough up blood.

“Where
is
he? You know who I mean!”

The other freaks are standing around, and the others with them, the black chick and Indian kid, fuck, my throat....

“Oh, fine.” A different voice. One of them reaches for my face. Dammit, it’s the one—those guys are vegetables now, we had to shoot them, they were brain dead, she’s gonna do it to me—

Her hand is cold.

[Dev]

“Agh,” Ashton says, pulling his foot back. “
I
felt that.”

“Yeah, get over it. James is up four floors in the season ticket holder’s booth,” Jules says, shaking her hand out.

“Whoa, whoa,” Vinder says, bracing his head. “You can read minds?!”

“Sorta,” Jules says. “Now let’s go before they start to miss little Michael here.”

“Wait,” Cain says. Ashton looks ready to let him have it. Cain returns with the silver handgun, checking its stock and safety with distaste. “Okay.”

We rush past the lifeless guy on the ground. As we climb the stairs, Cain says, “Jules.”

“What?”

“Any idea where the armory is?”

“You’re on your own.”

One floor to go. Vinder grabs my arm. “Hey,” he breathes. “Look. We’re just going to get in your way. We should go look for our supplies or something.”