United (The Guardians Book 2) (25 page)

Standing, he span back to face the shadow guide with a hard face. “Let's do this.”

Out of nowhere, the earth began to move again. But this time it was ferocious, deadly, terrifying. Like the very ground they walked on had lost control.  

Fortune fell to the floor hard. He felt his wrist crack upon impact as he landed ungracefully on the cement, and he yelled out as white hot pain shot up his arm. He'd never broken a bone before, but he was guessing this was exactly how it felt.

Bangs and crashes sounded all around him. This time it wasn't just smashed light bulbs that fell from above them, but chunks of ceiling too, both big and small. Dust clouded the air, and Fortune choked as he accidentally inhaled a mouthful of it.

They should have listened to Xahlia – the building really was going to collapse on top of them. They were underground and there were two levels above them – the ground floor of the building and another floor above. It would all fall down and there would be no escape!

Outcasts around him began to scream in terror as they realized the same thing he had. They pounded against their bars, yanking and kicking them to no avail. Most of the guards fled in self preservation, though a few remained behind, ridiculously loyal to their boss to the end, or simply that afraid of the consequences of disobedience. Fortune prayed desperately for his powers to return, but he felt nothing – a leech was still with them.

Somewhere down the corridor, a gunshot sounded. There was a blood curdling wail and Fortune knew, he just
knew
that one of the remaining guards had murdered a prisoner. Shot them in cold blood while they were trapped in their cell with no defense and no way of escape, probably out of nothing more than cowardly fear.
 

There was suddenly an almighty crash down at the end of the long room, the opposite end to the steps that led out where the remaining guards had huddled, and a part of the ceiling caved over the top of two cells.

“NO!” Fortune yelled hoarsely, and he wasn't the only one. Outcasts reached their arms through the bars at the destruction, straining, as if they could save the unfortunate prisoners trapped underneath the wreckage.

It was chaos and carnage everywhere.

The earthquake they'd been so sure would be their saviour was killing them instead.

It stopped again then. It just stopped, and for seconds, silence fell. It was a cold, horrific kind of silence. Fortune's ears rang.

Then came the screams, and the guard's shouts, and the sobs and the pleading and the prayers. Fortune blinked heavily, scraping a layer of dust off his face with his equally dusty hands. His throat burned, his blurry eyes burned, his wrist burned, his heart burned. Everything burned. With difficulty, he pulled himself up off his bruised knees as he surveyed the damage around him, holding his injured wrist to his chest.

The earthquake may have come to an end, but it was too late. Too damned late. The building above them was unsteady and beginning to crumble – it wouldn't last much longer.

More dust drifted down, this time into Gelasius and Moisey's cell.

The ceiling creaked ominously.

“Look out!” Fortune warned as a large chunk of concrete dropped down on top of them.

Gelasius' reflexes were quick and he managed to leap back out of the way, but Moisey was less fortunate. He screamed out in agony as it caved on him.

Gelasius rushed forward to pull the rubble away. “Aw man,” he mumbled as he took stock of the damage. Fortune was no doctor, but even he could tell that Moisey's leg was definitely broken. But he was alive. That counted for something.

Without even seeming to think about it, Gelasius ripped the thin mattress from his bunk, and with a strength fueled by adrenaline, yanked out two of the bed frame planks to create a splint. Wasting no time, Fortune ignored the pain in his wrist and tore his own blanket to strips with his teeth and his uninjured hand. He shoved it through the bars so that Gelasius could tie the makeshift splint to Moisey's leg. Years of hunting had definitely taught Gelasius what to do in a crisis.

But Moisey was no longer paying attention to himself or to his cellmate. “Look!” He pointed a shaky finger at where the fallen debris had slightly damaged one of the bars of their cell. It wasn't snapped, but definitely significantly bent.

Before Fortune could explore this more, a shriek from behind him caught his attention. He leaped to the other side of his cell, tripping over Sacha and falling on his bed.

“A crack!” Jaana cried, bouncing up and down. Sure enough, a long, thick crack, an inch or two wide, began on her cell floor and led out into the space between the two rows of cells. She began to chatter in Finnish – Fortune didn't understand most of what she was saying, but from her tone he could tell she was excited.

Both she and Xahlia dropped to the ground and began to pound at the crack with their fists, scrabbling away at it even when their fingers became torn and bloody.

“What are you doing?” Fortune demanded, his voice thick and hoarse from the lingering dust still floating in the air.

“We can make the crack bigger,” Xahlia cried, the desperation to be finally free causing her words to come out quick and jumbled. “If we can make it bigger we could slip under the bars!”

“Be careful,” he warned. “If the guards see you then-”

“They're too busy with everything else,” she said, waving his words away. “They won't even notice us. Now is probably the only time we'll have to-”

Another gunshot rang out. Xahlia froze, her eyes widening in horror, but it wasn't her who'd been shot. Next to her, Jaana slumped to the ground. A screaming Xahlia threw herself back.

So consumed by shock as he was, it took Fortune a moment to realize what had just happened. He gaped in dismay as blood seeped out of a bullet hole in Jaana's head. She lay still, her eyes wide and unseeing, unblinking even as the blood trickled down into them. More blood pooled around her, mixing in with the long red hair fanned out around her head.

She was gone. Just gone, snuffed out in the blink of an eye. How could she just be
gone
? Jaana was the one bright spot in Fortune's existence.
 

And now she was. . .gone.

His head whipped around as quick as lightening. Merche stood just outside their cells, watching on with sick amusement.

“You killed her!” he accused. “You killed her, you evil bitch!”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Xahlia crawl over to Jaana and pull her lifeless body into her lap. She began to rock back and forth, whimpering pitifully. Xahlia hid it well behind her bitchy exterior, but she really had cared about Jaana, deep down.

“You were all warned,” Merche said simply, as if Jaana's death had been her own fault.

Fortune heaved himself against the bars separating him from the woman he hated most in the whole world, his fists clenched. “I'll kill you!” Fury rolled off him in waves; it was an awful feeling he'd never truly experienced before. Merche had been trying her hardest to break him all this time and she had finally won. He could almost
feel
the fire within him again, even with that damned leech still at the end of the corridor. That fire, it wanted to break free, burst forth from within him, consume Merche,
incinerate
her. It bubbled beneath his surface, rushed through his veins, but it was just out of reach.
 

Merche turned her gun on Fortune. “Not if I kill you first,” she sang.

He scoffed. “Are you going to kill every one of us? I'm sure your boss would be thrilled to lose so many of his test subjects.”

She cackled. “Look around you, you imbecile. It's over!” She waved her gun around wildly, indicating the destroyed building and the terrified guards. “IT'S OVER! I can kill every last one of you and nobody would care. Because my boss, you arrogant son of a bitch, he knows it's over too.”

Though her gun was aimed directly at his heart, Merche's words gave Fortune more hope than anything else had. Because despite his and Gelasius' speculations, an earthquake didn't necessarily mean their freedom. So what if they somehow managed to break loose? There were a ridiculous amount of guards out there, all armed to the teeth. Escaped Outcasts would certainly be shot or simply rounded up again while they worked on a new place to hold them.

But Merche's words, and the fear that she was trying to desperately to conceal, meant something. It meant something
else
. Had something caused those earthquakes? Something the guards couldn't control? An inhabitant of the strange world they were trapped on, maybe? Or was it something else? Had somebody found them? Were they finally being rescued?
 

And even if he died right now at the hands of the this monster, at least he could die with the hope that his friends might really make it out alive.

“Turn around,” Merche ordered.

He folded his arms across his chest defiantly. “If you're going to shoot me, the least you can do is look me in the eyes as you do it.” Not that he thought she'd have much of a problem with that, but if he was going to die, then it would be on his terms.

“Fortune, no. . .” Xahlia cried softly. “Not you too.”

“Do it,” he commanded, staring Merche down.

For the briefest second she faltered, and something flashed behind her eyes. It was almost like she really. . .
cared
for Fortune, in the sickest, most twisted kind of way. Perhaps there had been a reason she'd targeted him all this time.
 

But whatever emotion she'd been battling with disappeared immediately. Her face hardened, her gun arm straightened, and he closed his eyes as she shot.

Fortune flinched, but the bullet wildly missed him. It buried itself into the roof of his cell.

He opened his eyes in surprise. Gelasius had somehow escaped, and he was behind Merche, his arms around her as they wrestled for control of the gun.

“He got out,” Moisey whispered, so low that Fortune almost missed it. He stepped back to peer in. Gelasius had somehow used brute strength to snap that one damaged bar, leaving jagged edges behind. The hole leftover was small, almost impossible for a man to get through without some serious damage. Sure enough, a dangerous amount of blood was running down Gelasius' shoulder and chest from where he'd scraped them against the ripped edges of the bar as he'd determinedly squeezed his way through. He must have used Fortune and Merche's argument as a distraction.

Merche screeched something in French as she fought against him. Down the other end of the corridor, the guards, busy dealing with their own chaotic inmates, finally took notice.

“Prisoner escaped!” Fortune heard one of them shout urgently.  

Seeing them approach and sensing their window of opportunity for escape was closing, Xahlia reached through the bars as far as her arms could stretch. She managed to claw a handful of Merche's hair and she tugged hard, slamming her face up against the bars. It was all the help Gelasius needed to take sole control of the gun.

“No!” Merche pleaded, when she'd turned to find the weapon aimed at her head.

There was no time for hesitation, and Gelasius didn't waste a second. He pulled the trigger, and she slumped down against Xahlia's bars, dead.

Fortune knew he should probably feel something. Horror, maybe, at all the death. Disgust at her bleeding corpse. Perhaps even pity. But all he felt was regret that he hadn't been the one to pull the trigger.

If he'd had more time, he might have worried about the person he was becoming, about the person his incarceration had turned him in to.

Without hesitation, Gelasius turned his gun on the guards running right for him and fired with perfect aim. Once, twice, three times.

The whole thing had only lasted seconds, though to Fortune it seemed much longer.

But it wasn't over. More guards, hearing the shots, were running down the steps that led to the cells.

Quickly, Gelasius turned back to the injured Moisey, still barely able to move on the ground. “I'll come back for you,” he vowed, and then he sprinted head first towards the guards, shooting for his life. Shooting for all of their lives.

Being stuck in the middle of the corridor, Fortune could barely see down the other end, and Gelasius was almost out of his sight when he saw his shoulder jerk back. He'd been shot, but it didn't stop him, not even for a second. Fortune realized then how tough the hunter truly was.

The Outcasts screamed for him, cheered for him, almost drowning out the sound of even more gunshots.

He disappeared into the stairwell and Fortune could no longer see him, but it didn't stop him from gripping the metal bars and straining his head against them desperately.

He was tense, completely on edge.

Right now, their freedom all depended on one man. Their
lives
all depended on one man.
 

“The control panel!” he heard Eadgar the Clairvoyant scream over the noise. “Shoot out that damned control panel!”

Fortune wished with all his heart that he could see. His terror for his friend's life went beyond anything else. The gunshots had stopped, but he could hear ominous noises – slapping of fists meeting flesh and painful grunts and moans.

Then there was one final shot, followed by a blaring alarm, and then. . .

“He did it!” cried the witch near the end of the corridor as the electronic lock on her cell beeped and opened with a clang. “We're free!”

Gelasius had done it – he'd somehow disabled the control and locks were opening up and down the room.

Fortune released the bars and stepped back in awe and disbelief. This was it. THIS WAS IT.

If he'd thought it had been chaos before, it was
nothing
compared to the pandemonium of the prisoners finally escaping. They thundered out, high from elation and fury and so desperate for their revenge that they were being careless with their own safety.
 

Frozen in place, Fortune took it all in, his heart pounding in his chest.