I tried to listen, to see if there was any buzzing in my ears, any whisper of power left that I could try to harness. But all I could hear were Milton’s weak excuses. He backed away from the other man, moving closer to us. “I didn’t know that was there,” he said. “I swear I’ve never seen that room before!”
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried again to draw on my power. None of this was going according to plan. No one was ever supposed to find the hidden room. I had to disable the Inspector if any of us were going to make it out of here alive.
I closed my eyes and tried to call on my telek. Moments earlier, my power had nearly consumed me. Now, no matter how much I strained, it wouldn’t come. The beast was gone.
I shook my head frantically at Adrien. He seemed to understand and tugged me forward while the Inspector was busy looking through the things in my alcove. But we weren’t fast enough. As soon as we rounded the corner of the table, the Inspector’s voice rang out. “You there! Stop!”
Adrien bolted for the door, dragging me along with him. My feet were heavy from the weighty suit, but I managed to stay upright. Milton ran after us.
The Inspector’s voice rang out behind as he spoke into his arm com, “Possible fugitive sighting in sublevel lab 810. Subjects are heading west!”
I cursed. Reinforcements would be coming.
“They’ll be covering the west stairs,” Adrien said.
I nodded and when we came to a fork in the hallway, pulled him left instead of right toward the stairs. “Let’s try for the freight elevator in the central lab.”
I tried to shut out all other thoughts and focus on moving one foot in front of the other. Adrien pulled Milton in front of me as we ran down the narrow hallway. “Get your elevator access card ready!”
The floors and walls were made of a dulled gray metal and our pounding footsteps broadcast our every move. Ahead, I saw where the hallway opened into the central lab.
Almost there.
We raced toward the opening, close enough now that I could see the elevator across the expanse of the lab.
But right as we closed the distance and were almost into the room, a shadow darkened the opening, and then another and another. Three Regulators stood in front of us, the metal plating on their faces glinting from the light in the hallway. They were the Community’s soulless soldiers, almost as much machine as they were man. Adrien stopped cold, but Milton wasn’t as quick. He tripped over Adrien, taking both of them down. My breath stopped in my chest and the moment seemed to slow. I looked from Adrien to the Regulators right as they raised their forearms, each with a triple-barreled laser weapon attached.
We were all going to die.
A jolt rocked involuntarily through my body. I must be hit. They must have fired in the instant I’d taken to blink. But I was shocked when I realized it was the Regulators who were blown backward, not me. They landed heavily on their backs halfway across the lab, bloodied chunks of alloy flying from their chests and arms as they went. I felt my eyes widen as I looked down at my outstretched arms in shock. My power. It had worked.
Adrien was on his feet. He pulled Milton up again just as one of the Regulators stirred.
“Go back!” Adrien shouted. He pulled a gun from his hip and let out several bright red blasts.
Milton and I raced back down the hallway. I looked over my shoulder. All three of the Regs were getting up now. Two of them were bloodied and one looked like he was missing an arm. But still, I knew I hadn’t done enough damage. I’d only slowed them down for a moment. Regulators never stopped, no matter what.
Adrien kept firing behind us, but I didn’t pause to look again. I was too slow already. The hallway was long and straight. The Regs would have a clear shot at us as soon as they were on their feet. We’d never make it if we kept going forward. My mind raced as we passed several numbered doors down the hallway. I thought about the schematics of the lab I’d memorized. These were research rooms. If we went into one of them, we’d only get ourselves trapped. Unless …
Two more doors down, I paused and slammed my gloved hand on the door release pad. Milton kept going.
“In here,” I shouted. Adrien ran a few steps past me and grabbed Milton, yanking him through the doorway right as a quick stream of red burned into the wall where we’d been standing only moments before.
Adrien closed the door behind us. The door was made of reinforced steel, meant to seal shut in case of any pathogen leaks or disruptions to the ventilation system. But even though it shut with a satisfyingly heavy clang, I knew it wouldn’t stop the Regulators for long.
“What now?” Adrien asked, clicking the button for the lock mechanism.
“The waste chute,” I said, nodding toward the wall where a small door was embedded in the wall. We were eight stories underground, and the lab had a separate waste-disposal system for the hazardous materials they dealt with.
This was the central disposal room. Bottles of thick liquids lined the walls, full of acids to break down organic matter before it was loaded into disposal barrels and sent up the chute. The whole place smelled like antiseptic and lye. “Milton, can you get it open?”
Milton’s whole body shook, his face pale. He gave a quick nod and went to the control panel beside the small door. His fingers tapped quickly on the interface. Adrien slid another energy tube into the bottom of his gun handle and aimed it at the door to the hallway. He didn’t have to wait long.
A sizzling noise sounded as a bright molten line appeared from the Regs’ laser weapons, firing from the other side.
“Hurry,” I said to Milton, who was still typing furiously.
“Got it!” He let out a triumphant whoop as the chute door slid sideways into the wall. My eyes were on the chute—it was a rounded chamber three feet in diameter, meant for sending barrels of waste up to the trash room by the loading bay.
“You two first,” Adrien said, walking backward across the room toward us, his weapon still trained at the door. He pushed me toward the opening.
Then the door to the hallway blew inward and the Regs charged into the room one after another.
Adrien fired, blasting one straight in the chest. The laser round knocked the Reg backward, but he got back to his feet with only a singe on the front of his metal breastplate.
The other Reg lunged toward Milton and me. I stumbled backward, tripping over the heavy suit and landing half in the chute. I pulled my legs inside.
“Come on, Milton!” I screamed. But when I looked up again, the Regulator had clapped his hands on both sides of Milton’s head. In an instant, he crushed Milton’s skull like an overripe watermelon. I stared in shock as Milton slumped to the floor.
A shriek of grief and terror ripped its way out of me, and suddenly all the bottles lining the wall started vibrating. Adrien dropped to the ground and rolled behind several barrels stacked beside the counter as the bottles exploded. The acid spray from the broken containers hit the three Regulators straight in the face.
They stumbled blindly, one falling into the other until they tumbled into a heap. Adrien took the moment of confusion and launched past them. He pushed me to my feet and squeezed into the chute with me. The chute door closed right as a Regulator climbed to his knees and aimed his weapon.
Adrien wrapped his arms around me as a deafening rush of air surrounded us, and then we were sucked upward with nauseating speed. But the chute was meant for barrels, not people. Adrien and I bounced painfully back and forth between the walls. Within a few heartbeats, another chute door opened and we tumbled out into a trash container half-filled with barrels labeled HAZARDOUS WASTE. The back of Adrien’s tunic was ripped up and the skin underneath looked scraped raw. He got to his feet as if he didn’t feel it and hurried over to me.