19
I woke with a gasp, feeling like I had been buried alive.
I thrashed and twisted, until a great weight fell off my chest and I could breathe again.
When my eyes adjusted to the dark, I was able to make out the dim contours of a room. It was large and nearly empty. Across from me, there was the outline of a closed door, its gaps letting in enough light to fill the room with gray and black shadows. Next to the door was a large cabinet. I saw no other doors or windows.
My muscles ached as I sat up, finding myself in the center of an enormous bed. The weight I felt on my chest was a blanket with down filling, heavy as lead. My clothes were gone and had been replaced with nothing but a pair of soft boxers.
“Bear?” I called. “Nat?”
My body protested as I slid off the bed. The soles of my feet hit the ground and I almost drew them back in shock when they sunk into a thick pile of soft carpeting. Where was I?
I stood up and limped across the room to the door. I grabbed the handle and turned. Locked. In the half- light, I could make out a small table and lamp sitting beside the bed. I made my way back and fumbled underneath the shade until I found the switch and clicked it on. The light stabbed at my eyes, but when they adjusted, I found a tall glass of water, beaded with sweat, beside the lamp. Icy rivulets coursed down my cheeks as I drank. I set the empty glass down, panting.
The bed was nearly seven feet long, covered in a thick gold-and-tan blanket with sheets the color of cream beneath. I searched the drawer on the nightstand and the ones in the dresser, but they all came up empty.
The lamplight revealed a second door on the other side of the room. It led into a bathroom filled with glittering chrome fixtures. I stood in front of the mirror that sat above the white sink. The blood and sweat-caked dirt had been washed off of me, replaced with a faint scent of lavender. Adhesive bandages closed my wounds. Even my cast had been scrubbed clean of dirt and blood. Why would someone go to all the trouble to wash and heal me only to lock me up?
I scrambled for options, but anything I came up with seemed ludicrous. Bust down the door and escape? Even at my best, it was unlikely. Make a racket until my captors finally had to come for me? Maybe, but what then? Attack them and make a run for it, hoping I found Bear and Nat along the way? Ridiculous. I was wracked with cuts and bruises and my muscles screamed at nearly every move I made. There would be no daring escape. All I could do was wait.
I looked down at the floor’s marble tile. Of course that didn’t have to mean I was helpless.
I brought the water glass to the bathroom and wrapped it in a thick towel that hung by the shower. I set the bundle on the tile floor and stomped on it so that the glass shattered with a muffled crunch. A mix of shards remained. I picked through them, taking the largest and sharpest piece I could find. The rest went into the empty cabinet under the sink. The towel went neatly on the rack.
I returned to the bed, tucking the glass shard underneath the mattress where I could get at it quickly. Once it was set, I cut the light and drew the heavy blanket over me. Exhausted as I was, sleep didn’t come easy. I was plagued with thoughts of Bear and Nat. Were they somewhere nearby, alone and afraid?
I saw Nat’s father’s face pressed against the window of the helicopter just before the flash that took them down. What must Nat be going through right now? I hated that there was nothing I could do but wait.
I draped my hand over the side of the bed so my fingers rested by the edge of the shattered glass.
Wait and be ready.
I woke again to the sound of automatic-weapons fire.
It was coming from somewhere inside the building. A jet streaked overhead and then another, the roar of their engines followed by the dragonfly hum of helicopter rotors. I slipped the glass shard out from under the mattress and rolled out of bed. Maybe I could use the dresser to break down the door and then—
The door to the room was open.
“RPG!”
I flinched as the noise from an explosion rocked the house. A barrage of machine-gun fire answered, followed by a scream.
I moved to the door in a crouch. On the other side there was a hallway of sunlit hardwood beneath yellow walls. There were more voices now. Two different ones at least, talking back and forth. There was another explosion, but this time there was something off about the sound of it, something flat and distant.
“Awesome!”
I clung to the dull end of the glass shard and stepped into the hallway. The polished wood was warm beneath my feet. I crept along it, past framed paintings that hung beneath pinpoint floodlights.
“Whoa!”
“Got it! You suck! You! Suck!”
The hall opened up into a sunken den. There was a black couch against one wall facing a TV screen that was at least two feet high and three across. On the screen, three burly soldiers moved down a street that was hemmed in by crumbling skyscrapers, shooting at adversaries that leapt out of alleys and fired from smashed-in windows.
“Use your grenade launcher.”
“Dude, I only have like two left.”
Two guys sat in the center of the couch facing the TV, video game controllers in their hands. They were both thin and tan in shorts and T-shirts, one guy with shaggy brown curls, the other blond. A coffee table in front of them was cluttered with game cases, magazines, and piles of junk food. The room trembled as an in-game F- 18 thundered across the screen.
“Oh my God, would you two idiots turn that down?!” A black-haired girl appeared from an adjoining kitchen, a paperback book open in one hand. “For real, I can barely hear myself—”
Her book hit the floor with a smack the moment she saw me.
“What, Kate?” the blond gamer shouted. “I can’t hear—”
He turned to Kate, then followed her gaze to me. My fingers tensed on the glass in my hand.
“Uh… hey, man,” he said, elbowing his shaggy-haired friend in the side. “How, uh, how are you?”
On the screen the soldiers had paused in the middle of the street, their barrel chests panting.
“Where am I?”
The blond kid popped off the couch and jogged over to the steps.
“Hey, no worries, man,” he said, extending his hand as he came up the stairs. “I’m Reese. We’ll—”
I caught him off balance, throwing my shoulder into his side and slamming him against the wall. The girl screamed when I pressed my cast into his throat and raised the shard of glass.
“Are you Path or Fed?”
“What?”
“Path or Fed?!” I shouted, keeping my eyes locked on his. “Where are my friends?”
“Take it easy. We can—”
Reese tried to move forward and I pushed him back again, wincing as my cast hit his throat. The tip of the glass touched his cheekbone.
“Dude, seriously, we’re just trying to help you. Okay? I swear.”
“Then why’d you lock me up?”
Kate piped up from behind me. “Because you were acting like this!”
I glanced at her, leaving my cast and the glass right where they were.
“Sergeant Mitchell and his guys found you and brought you back here,” she said. “But you went crazy, like you were going to kill us. You even broke Christos’s nose.”
She nodded over toward Shaggy, who had a white bandage plastered over the bridge of his nose. Red and blue bruises radiated from it.
“So we shoved a couple Valium down your throat and locked you up. Figured after you got some sleep you’d be, I don’t know, thankful or something. You know? For saving your life? That’s why we left the door open this morning.”
“Where’s Nat?” I asked. “And my dog?”
