“Whenever you two are ready,” Reed said to Tom and Paige. He was sitting on the floor of the observation room a few feet from where they lay sprawled together, picking pieces of glass out of the front of his shirt.
Paige tried to sit up but Tom didn’t move.
“I don’t know if I can get up,” Tom said. “I think I might have hurt my shoulder.”
Paige said, “I’m going to hurt something else if you don’t let me up from here.”
Tom grinned at her, then slowly pushed himself up. Once he was standing he reached down and gave her a hand up.
“Your shoulder seems fine now,” she observed.
“I heal fast,” Tom said innocently.
Paige allowed herself a half smile then turned to Reed. Her oldest friend had been willing to sacrifice himself to get the rest of them to safety. Once he had climbed to his feet she threw her arms around him and hugged him fiercely.
“Thank you,” she told him.
Reed laughed.
When Paige released him, Tom offered him his hand. “That was pretty gutsy,” Tom said, as they shook hands.
“Not as gutsy as you holding up that elevator,” Reed said.
“Okay, okay,” James interrupted, stepping between them. “I declare this meeting of the mutual admiration society officially closed.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Now how about we get the hell out of here?”
Tom nodded. “Yeah, James is right. We need to move. Danny, you said there was a way up to the surface from here.”
“Down this way,” Danny said, pointing to the far end of the room.
As the others turned to follow Danny, James elbowed Dimitri. “Nice trick with the shirt, dude. How about next time we try it on Magda?”
James started to laugh when Magda strode over to him to give him a shot in the arm.
“Ow!”
Before he could respond, Paige turned and also punched him in the shoulder.
“Hey!”
From Dimitri’s other side, Shay reached around and slugged him as well.
“Alright already! I was only joking. Geez!”
Just then, a small electronic component from one of the exploded panels rose into the air and sailed at James, striking him in the back of the head.
“Oh, come on!”
The girls exchanged looks with each other and giggled.
As they started through the observation room Tom looked around. When he noticed the bodies of the technicians he stopped. He looked at Dimitri and raised his eyebrows in a silent question. Dimitri shook his head, a disgusted look on his face. Then Tom looked down at the sprawled forms of Dr. Brooks and Ramona.
“What about them?”
“They’re alive,” Dimitri said curtly.
Tom stood staring at them. He knew that Dr. Brooks would come after them again as soon as he regained consciousness. The doctor was obsessed with them. Even after they escaped from here he knew that Dr. Brooks would never stop trying to kidnap them. In his twisted mind he really seemed to believe that they were his property. The safest thing to do would be to kill them now. He could do it easily enough. A quick twist of their heads and it would all be over. Since they were already unconscious they wouldn’t even feel it. He stood there for several long moments trying to decide what he should do.
“Let’s just go,” Tom said eventually. He wasn’t a murderer. Yet, even as he made his decision, the thought came to him that he might come to regret his choice.
At the end of the room they found a surprisingly ordinary looking door in the back wall. Through a narrow window in the door they could see a stairwell with steps leading up. Dim, emergency lights prevented the stairs from being completely engulfed in darkness. Danny was just reaching for the handle when he noticed a small red light on the wall beside the door. At first he thought it was a ready light on one of the control panels. Then he remembered that the power was off in the booth. As he turned to look at the light he noticed that it was slowly moving across the wall.
His legs suddenly went out from under him as someone tackled him from behind. Just then Danny heard a shot ring out as a bullet ricocheted off the edge of the door frame right where his head had been barely a moment before. He looked down to see Matt clinging to his knees.
A moment later a volley of rapid-fire shots tore into the booth through the open window, causing the rest of their group to drop to the floor. While they all hunkered down on the floor of the observation room, Manny scrambled over to the window and peeked down into the Arena.
The door at the far end of the room had been pushed wide open and dozens of armed guards were swarming into the room. The smoke which had been billowing into the room from the corridor beyond had been reduced to a trickle and he could not see any signs of a fire. Somehow they had gotten the blaze under control. Several of the guards were holding assault rifles to their shoulders, sighting into the observation room window. He could see the telltale flash of laser sights as they swung their weapons back and forth while they looked for targets. The rest were hurrying toward the lower elevator doors.
Staying on his hands and knees, Manny crawled back to his friends and reported what he had seen. Over their heads a number of red dots slowly moved across the back wall of the observation room, paths crisscrossing as the snipers below searched for them.
“It won’t take them long to realize that the elevator is out,” Reed said. “Then they’ll head for the main elevator and cut us off.”
“We need to get out of here,” Tom said, looking at Danny.
Danny was already reaching for the door handle. “I’m way ahead of you.”
He yanked down the handle and pushed open the stairwell door. Shots rang out when the guards saw the door opening, but they could not hit the teens who were keeping low to the floor. As soon as they were out of the line of fire the teens jumped to their feet and fled up the stairwell.
They hurried up the stairs, following the switchbacks up several flights until they reached the top landing. Danny was in the lead. As he reached the door he realized that there was no handle on this side. Just like the alcove that led from the warehouse into the office area, they had blundered into another man-trap. As he dropped his forehead against the door panel in frustration the rest of the group crowded in behind him.
“What’s wrong? Why are we stopping?” Magda asked.
“Dead end,” Danny said, slapping the blank panel facing him.
“Let me through!” Tom called.
The others made space for him as Tom squeezed past. He examined the steel panel briefly, then motioned everyone else back. The others took several steps down the stairwell to give him room. Tom backed up a few paces then lunged at the door, slamming into the panel with his shoulder. To his surprise he rebounded from the door with no effect.
Regrouping, he stood back from the panel again and picked up his foot to drive a solid kick against it. The stairwell reverberated from the blow, but once again the panel resisted his efforts. He was not going to be able to break this door down.
He turned and looked at his friends. “Anybody?”
Reed stepped forward and pressed his hands to the door. After several moments he stepped back and looked at his friends in shock.
“I can’t sense anything!”
“There’s an electrical field around the door,” Danny said, his eyes closed in concentration. “They rigged it so we can’t use our powers.”
For several moments they stood there looking at each other.
“We need to go back,” Tom said eventually. “We’re going to have to fight our way to the main elevator.”
“We didn’t do so well in that elevator on the way down, remember?” Amanda said.
“She’s right,” Manny said. “If we could have gotten to the elevator without them knowing where we were we might have been able to use it to get out, but they’re ready for us now. That elevator’s just a trap just waiting to be sprung.”
Another brief silence hung around them. They were runnin
g out of options, and time.
“I might be able to screw up the gas delivery system,” Reed said. “At least long enough for us to get to the surface. It shouldn’t be that hard.” He looked expectantly at the others.
“We don’t have any other choice,” Shay said. “I say we go for it.”
One by one the others nodded.
James let out a breath. “Now all we need to do is get past all those guards—and their machine guns.”
Tom set his mouth in a hard line. “Come on, guys. We’re not just a bunch of kids. We have powers that scared the crap out of Dr. Brooks. That’s why he wants us dead. He’s afraid he can’t control us. And you know what? He’s right. He can’t control us. And he should be afraid of us. Guards or no guards, we’re getting out of this place, and God help anybody who tries to stop us.”
Grim determination filled the teens. They were going to let those men know that they were a force to be reckoned with. Tom turned and had just started to lead the way down the stairs when Manny sensed something behind them.
“Hold up, guys,” Manny said. Turning back to the sealed door he stretched out with his senses again. He could have sworn he felt…yes, it was still there. Although the door was opaque to his perception he found that he could still sense things around the door. Off to one side he felt a presence. It was at the edge of his perception but he still felt it.
“There’s someone out there!” Manny exclaimed.
Manny felt a very tenuous connection with another person somewhere on the other side of the door. The person was to his right, out of line with the electrified door. Even so, the close proximity of the electromagnetic field was interfering with his senses. He squeezed his eyes closed in concentration, focusing on the presence he sensed. Slowly, the contact he felt came into focus and he had a sensation of déjà vu.
Then it hit him. It was the fake security guard from the warehouse. The man had regained consciousness and was patrolling the office space. That’s what was on the other side of the sealed doorway. They had found a second entrance to the warehouse. They were almost free. Now if he could just make the man open the door from his side and let them out.
Even as he thought about it Manny realized that without being able to see into the room he would not be able to direct the guard. He had no idea where this second hidden door opened into the office and no way to orient the guard to do what he needed. Frustration welled up inside him. He mentally shoved at the guard, lashing out in anger—