“I can’t leave you. It’s not enough time. You’d die.” My voice is as jagged as the broken glass, and suddenly I am on that field again, watching the blood fall from his shoulder and thigh, abandoning him when he needed me most.
“Go!” He shouts the word, his hands balled into fists at his sides. “Let me set the bombs. Let me know you’re safe.”
Another crash. Glass trickles down. The hole is getting larger, and I can hear the guards now, yelling in the opposite room.
“I’ll set the bombs. You leave.” I don’t know how he hears me over the falling glass, but he does, and then he’s right in front of me, his hands clasped around my upper arms.
“We’ll both leave. We’ll abandon the mission. We can find another way.”
“No. We can’t.” My voice is hard, unyielding. “You know we won’t get another chance to stop the Project. We have to do it now.” I reach up to cover his hand with mine. “We’ll both stay. Thirty seconds, right? We can make it, I know we can.”
His eyes scan my face and he opens his mouth to respond, but then a louder crash echoes through the room, and we turn our heads to watch a large chunk of the mirror fall, splintering into pieces when it hits the floor. The guards can’t get through, but they see us now, and one raises a gun.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay.” I try to smile at him. Thirty seconds is a suicide mission and we both know it. But I would rather die here with Wes than know that I’d left him here to die alone.
“You pull the chair away from the door,” he says quickly. “There’s a lighter in my bag. I’ll set the fuses and then we run.”
“Got it.” I take my hand away from his so he won’t feel me shaking.
Wes steps away to light the fuses and I pull the last piece of furniture away and put my hand on the doorknob. Bullets fly into the room, but the angle is bad and can’t reach us. I hear the shots ricocheting off the TM, see the tile floor cracking and breaking.
“Now,” Wes says from behind me.
I rip the door open. The hallway is empty, the guards all in the room with the two-way mirror. But they see me open the door and I hear shouting as they order some men into the hallway after us.
“Hurry!” I yell at Wes. I step into the empty corridor and turn back to make sure he’s following me.
He is standing in front of the doorway. Behind him, I see that the fuses haven’t been lit yet, the bombs lying quietly in front of the TM.
“What—?”
“I love you,” he says, his eyes wet and locked on mine.
“No,” I whisper as I realize what’s happening—and then he shuts the door in my face.
“Wes!” I throw my body at the door, but it will not budge. “No! Wes!” I pound on the warped metal. My arm throbs and the wound starts to bleed again. I slump forward.
“She’s there!” a man’s voice shouts from down the hallway. I keep my hands pressed to the door.
“Please,” I whisper into the metal, tasting copper and salt. “Don’t do this. Wes. Open the door.”
The guards are running toward me. I hear their footsteps getting louder. But then the first blast erupts in the TM chamber, flinging me away from the door. I hit the opposite wall and sink onto my knees. My ears are ringing, a sharp noise that will not fade. “Wes.” I crawl forward, but the second blast blows the door off, and I see into the room beyond: fire and ash and debris. The TM is destroyed, a hollow burning chunk of metal, and the ceiling melts down around it, the flames so hot they make my face burn. There is no way Tesla’s papers survived in this room. There’s no way anything could have survived. “Wes!” I scream his name.
The guards who were after me sprint past, but one slows, grabs my arm, and pulls me to my feet. I fight against him, trying to run back into the room, but he tugs me forward. “The ceiling!” he shouts. I look up. The tiles in the hallway are starting to crumble, the dust floating down to coat our hair. “We have to get outside!”
He pulls me to the end of the hallway. I wonder why he’s helping me now, when moments ago he thought I was the enemy. I push his arm off, trying to get back to the chamber, to Wes. But then the third and final blast goes off, and I watch the hallway fill with flames.
“There’s nothing left!” the guard yells, and he yanks me forward. I stumble after him. He’s right. There’s nothing left.
Outside is chaos: soldiers and shouting and trucks and smoke. I see Dr. Bentley in the crowd and he runs for me. “Lydia.” He wraps his hands around my shoulders. I know he is jarring my elbow, but I can’t feel the pain anymore, not with my heart broken open and bleeding like this. “What are you doing here? Are you okay? What happened to your arm?”
“Wes. Wes. Wes.” His name is a mantra. “He was inside. He’s—he was—the fire—I think he’s—” I fall to the ground near the door of the bunker the guard just dragged me out of. It was the same one I traveled through the very first time I wandered into the Facility.
Dr. Bentley crouches down next to me, his face lined and tired. “Are you saying Wes was in there? The whole ground caved in. I think there was some kind of underground explosion. The army base is trying to rescue people now. If Wes is still alive, we’ll find him.”
But they won’t find Wes. I was in front of the exit. The only other way out was through the two-way mirror, filled with guards who wanted to kill him.
Wes is
