The Seven (23 page)

Fury suddenly silenced the wail and Posey spun on her best friend, grabbing her by the front of her sweatshirt and almost lifting her off the ground. "You don't know that! You're not some freak from hell!" Posey tossed Holly backward. Off-balance, Holly fell backward hard and her head hit the ground with a heavy bounce. Holly looked terrified for a second, and then her eyes rolled back and her head lolled to the side.

Instinct flooded Posey, an instinct that hadn't existed before. Her brain suddenly commanded her second set of arms to flee and the wings began to churn. With three strong pushes, her feet left the ground. Another push and she was truly flying, slipping through the air with ease. As she gained height, the extraneous feathers on her body picked up the thermal waves coming off the ground. She instinctively tilted her body and an updraft launched her several feet higher. She curled around in a lazy circle and caught the thermal again. In moments, she was several hundred feet in the air. She looked back at the people on the ground. Her eagle-eyes spotted them easily, focusing with perfect clarity. She could see individual strands of hair on their heads.

Tears still combing her cheeks, she forced herself to look away. Freaks don't belong with humans. She was going away. She was going to find herself some rocky peak somewhere, far away from people, and she was going to sit there until she died. She tilted her body into the sun and found a stream of air. With her wings spread to the sides, she allowed herself to glide along the air current and slowly rose into the clouds. In no time, she disappeared into the emptiness of the sky, the only family she knew stood on the ground blow, helpless.

Sarah woke, her teeth chattering and her skin prickling with goose-bumps. She was shivering. At some point, the blanket had slid off of her and rolled to the floor. She had been dreaming tormented dreams of horrific tests, vivisections, and being put on display in a zoo. She sat up on the cot and wrapped the blanket around herself, closing it in front and trying to get warm. Her hands were bandaged, but they didn't hurt nearly as much as they had the night before and the swelling was down considerably. She unwrapped the gauze from her hands and surveyed the damage. There was only a bit of discoloration. She was healing very quickly. She closed her eyes and shivered, concentrating on tightening her muscles. She tightened her thighs until they shook with strain, her toes curled and her legs began to tremble. Her legs were still bound tightly by the cables. If she wasn't a prisoner, why did it feel so much like she was?

She hopped over to the door of the cell and peered out the little rectangular window that was in the middle of the door. The clock on the wall across from her cell told her it was in the late afternoon. Past the locked metal gate just outside the corridor where her cell was, she could see a couple of guards sitting at a table. One was doing a crossword puzzle and the other was eating some sort of pasta dish. The sight of food made Sarah's stomach rumble. She called out loudly, "Hey---can I get some food in here?"

She stood up and saw the guard doing the puzzle lay down his paper and get on his feet. He walked to a refrigerator a few feet from the desk and pulled out a tray. On it were several sandwiches pilled high with meats and lettuce and tomatoes, a small bottle of mustard, a dish of mayo, and a gallon of milk. Sarah backed away as the guard opened it with a key. He gave her a half-smile and handed her the tray, quickly closing the door after she took it.

Sarah collapsed to the floor in the middle of the room and did nothing but inhale food for several moments. The sandwiches and milk were very chilled, and she was already cold, but they tasted amazingly good. She poured mustard over them thickly and bit down hard. Mustard slopped out of the sandwich and onto her thigh. She wiped it off with her fingers. She rubbed the mustard between her thumb and forefinger for a moment. It was slippery. She looked down at her bound ankles. The cables were tight, but they weren't like handcuffs. It was just cable looped around her legs, binding them together. Sarah pushed herself to her feet and looked out the window at the guards. They were still just sitting there. Quickly, Sarah bent over and squeezed the contents of the mustard bottle between her ankles and the cords, trying to move her legs to allow the thick yellow smear to coat everything between her skin and the polymer cable.

Pulling with her legs and pushing with her hands, she tried to pry her ankles out of the cords. They were slippery, but they were still tight and they were unyielding. She took a deep breath and began again. This time, she could feel her Achilles tendon bulging beneath her skin like a steel rod. Her feet flexed as she pointed her toes. They were like hardened metal. The skin on her feet began to pull and scrape, despite the mustard lubricant, but Sarah tried to block out the pain. She kept pulling and pushing. She gritted her teeth and hissed a breath out between her lips. In an instant, Sarah went from the intense pain of her skin ripping and pulling to the joy of accomplishment: Her right foot suddenly slipped free of the bonds. Sarah collapsed to the floor and used her right foot to push the cables off her left foot. Her legs were free. She glanced at her feet and saw red streams mixing with the smears of mustard. The thin skin on the top of her foot, and a few patches near her ankles had split open. She grabbed the blanket from the cot and held it on the wounds. It hurt, but not badly.

She stretched her long legs, flexing her toes as she did. She could run now. She needed some blood flow back in her legs, but she knew she could run. She stood and steadied herself with a hand against the wall. She bent deeply at the knee and righted herself. As she did so, she thought of the rest of the group. She needed to find them.

Sarah knelt and opened the flap in the door again. "I'm done!"

She moved back a few feet and took a deep breath. The guard's face appeared in the window of her cell and Sarah heard the key in the lock. The second the door began to swing open, Sarah clicked to speed and hit the door for all she was worth. The impact blasted the door open and sent the guard into the wall of the corridor so hard that he put a hole in the drywall and slumped to the ground unconscious. The other guard began to leap from the desk, but Sarah hit him like a missile. She drove him into the cinderblock wall behind him, trying to slow up enough to keep from putting her hands through his chest. He gave a sick grunt and his eyes closed; he slid to the floor in a heap. Sarah hoped she hadn't killed him. She walked back and pulled the keys from the first guard. Keys might help her escape, but she had no idea where to go.

The hallway outside of the jail area was empty. Sarah listened for noise and could hear a few low murmurs of people talking, but it all sounded like it was coming from behind doors. All the tricks from all the spy movies she'd seen in her life started to pop into her mind. She checked the corners of the hallways for cameras. She let her eyes drift down the length of the hall, and there in the middle of the hallway was the tell-tale dark plastic half-globe that protected a camera.

She ducked back below the window in the door and pulled her thoughts together. The memory of one of those "mysterious world" shows came into her mind. She and Andy had stayed up late one night and watched this episode about UFOs. It had talked about a phenomena called "rods," weird rod-like images that couldn't be seen with the naked eye, but showed up on film as blurry wands of light. One of the skeptics interviewed showed how a bird, moving at top speed, could show up as a rod. It also showed how, if a bird moved fast enough, it could barely be seen by a video camera. The believers tried to give their side, and show how they clocked the rods at more than 300 miles per hour, much, much faster than even a Peregrine falcon could dive. Sarah could go faster than the speed of sound. She didn't know where the corridor led, but she reasoned that as long as she kept moving and moved fast enough, the cameras wouldn't even be able to pick her up, let alone some security guard half-asleep starting at a black-and-white CRT monitor. She just had to make sure she kept it under the sound barrier. To create a sonic boom in the hallway would probably not be the safest way to keep a low profile.

"To hell with it," Sarah whispered. She shoved the door open and blasted out of the jail, in less than a heartbeat she was at the end of the hallway slowing up greatly to negotiate the ninety-degree corner, and then flying up the stairs. At the top of the stairs, she wrapped around and flew down another hallway, her feet barely feeling the cold floors as they moved. Every time she passed a bulletin board or a poster in the hallway, the vacuum behind her ripped it from the wall and left it flipping down in her wake. It felt like she was playing a video game, one that was moving too fast to comprehend. She reacted from gut instinct, not thought. Her legs propelled her down the halls, changing direction before her conscious mind had a chance to register the turns. She turned down a set of stairs and went to the bottom. Ducking under the final set she stopped and tried to get her bearings. She was breathing hard, still unable to get a breath when she moved that fast.

There was a small map on the wall next to the doorway into the next corridor. Sarah glanced around for a camera and couldn't see any. She snuck over to the map and tried to read it. There were no words on the map, only odd codes with numbers and letters. The numbers meant nothing to her, but she supposed if she were in the military like everyone else in the complex, things like "GS-102" would mean something. The map showed the entire installation, six buildings in a loose U-shape surrounded by a wall. From the outlines of the rooms in the building, she guessed that she was in some sort of office building, lots of small, square boxes in a row. Maybe a hospital? The corridor beyond the doors she was next to led to a new building, a larger one with a large, wide room like a gymnasium or an airplane hanger or something. There was a definite exit in the next building, though. It had to be. It was labeled in red with a fire icon and an arrow on it.

She tried the door: It was locked. The keys she carried would probably get her through it, but the door at the other end of the corridor was most likely locked as well and there was a camera globe in the ceiling. I could chance it, she thought. Maybe the guard wouldn't watch that monitor at that moment. It would take her a few seconds to try different keys if the key that opened the near door had a different lock. She would need a lot of luck, but she didn't have a better plan.

At that moment, an ear-splitting siren above her head began to wail. Above her, in the stairs, she heard feet thundering around, and men calling out directions. Her escape had been discovered.

Several rather choice words raced from Sarah's lips. She was pretty much out of options. She began trying keys, flipping through the ring as fast as possible. Once she found the right key, she flung open the door and raced to the next door. Different locks. She tried more keys. Nothing was working.

A male voice suddenly came over an intercom, "Visual with the prisoner. MM---128. Move to intercept. MM---128."

A pair of guards suddenly appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Sarah ducked below the narrow windows in the door and moved against the wall. The doors opened as the guards came in and Sarah crushed the first one against the wall, grabbed the door, and raced past the second one, lashing out with her fist as she engaged her powers and sending him spinning. Her hand was throbbing, but she didn't slow down. Sarah flew up the stairs. At the next floor, guards were racing down the hallway. The male voice on the intercom was trying to keep tabs on her position, constantly relaying coordinates. Sarah kept moving up. She banged around the landings and kept moving. At the top of the stairs, she was left with only one set of doors. She grabbed the handle and ripped it open, engaging speed as she did and launching down the hall.

A guard came around the corner at the end of the hall moving in slow motion. She lowered her shoulder and rammed him, smashing him into the wall, and kept going. The hall was long, very long, but she made it to the other end in an instant. There was a room to her right and another corridor.

"Suspect confirmed: GS-400 Hallway. Consider dangerous. Use non-lethal force. There is a no-kill order. Repeat, use non-lethal force." They were closing in on her position quickly. Sarah could hear them thundering up the stairs at both ends of the halls. She could try running through them, but with each body in her way, she would be slowed. She would have to go out a window. Moving quickly, she began trying doors in the hallway. Locked. Locked. Locked. The lights in most of the rooms were dark. Sarah kept trying.

Finally, one door gave way. Sarah slipped in and slammed the door behind her. There was no lock on the inside of the door. Sarah grabbed a chair near the door and wedged it under the handle like she'd seen them do in movies.

"Who is there?"

Sarah spun around. It was a makeshift hospital room. A TV on a mobile cart was playing some mindless daytime TV program. A long window on the far wall allowed a few speckles of sunlight to filter through gauzy curtains. There was a bed in the center of the room surrounded with a few machines and a wooden armoire along the other wall. Sarah couldn't talk. She looked for some sort of escape, but leaping from the window was the only way out.

"I say again, who is there?" the voice was crisp and even. Sarah recognized it in an instant.

Sarah hesitated, she didn't want to speak if the doctor was going to rat her out.

"Who are you?" repeated Cormair.

"Sarah, Dr. Cormair. It's Sarah."

"Sarah!" Cormair's sounded surprised.

Sarah moved to Cormair's bedside. He looked much older than she remembered, as if he had aged a decade in a few hours.

"Sarah, what are you doing?"

"They had me, Doctor. I was a prisoner. I got free, though. I used my powers. I'm going to escape. I've got to go find the others. Please don't tell the soldiers that I'm here!"