Child of Recklessness (Trials of Strength Book 2) (15 page)

He turned and glared at me, angry at
my unspoken threat. I wasn’t really going to use the weapon in my
hand, but it was a good bargaining chip. Brian pursed his
lips.

‘
The address is in a
warehouse district, a few miles from here, further out from the
city,’ Brian said.

It was good. It sounded right. My Dad
hidden away, playing his games, playing with our lives.

We end it today. We save
Anna’s brother, and we finish this once and for all.

I took a note of the
address, and Brian
slipped from his chair. I watched him edge toward Chris’s room as
Anna and I got ready. I knew what I had to do. I didn’t like it, in
fact, my stomach churned painfully, but I turned, faced him, and he
stopped. Brian’s hands shook, and he clasped them in front of him
as he stared at me. What had happened to bring it all on? We had
been a team, and then…

I dashed across the room, Brian
blinked once, and the butt of my gun smacked into his head. I tried
to watch the force I put behind it, only using enough to get the
desired effect. Anna gasped as Brian crumpled to the
floor.

‘
I’m so sorry,’ I whispered
down at him.

I turned and looked at Anna. I had
promised to find her brother. I had promised to stop my father and
bring our baby into a safe world. I had to keep those promises, no
matter what. I had to.

Anna remained silent, and closed her
eyes. When she opened them, I saw the same determination I had. She
might be horrified, but there was little in our worlds anymore that
wasn’t. She nodded, and we headed for the door, only to be blocked
by Paul. He stood there, a gun in his hand, a black bag by his
feet, and a long blade glinted in his other palm.

I stared into his drooped eyes,
wondering if we would have to fight him too, but he tossed me the
blade. I caught it in the air and held the light but sharp metal in
my hand, wary of Paul’s demeanor. He passed the other gun to Anna,
picked up the bag and handed it to me.

‘
Go take this bastard out,’
he whispered, then slouched clumsily over to Brian’s
body.

The Brother

Anna pulled to a stop on a long
length of road. Ahead of us were
three large navy-blue buildings, and all
of them looked like massive tin boxes. The sun was setting, and the
light from the day dimmed. We had taken our time getting to the
address we’d taken from Brian. Hours and hours spent crawling to
the location, terrified of being caught. Then we’d watched the
buildings Anna’s brother was supposed to be held captive in.
Buildings we didn’t have a clue of what lay inside.

Before we had left the hotel, Anna had
convinced me to grab something to communicate with. We had grabbed
the small oval headsets we’d used before, and easily linked them to
the phone still in the car. They transmitted back to the hotel, and
we’d contacted Paul for an update. All three of the people we’d
left unconscious were still down, but we needed to get
moving.

‘
You ready for this?’ I
asked and my head turned to stare through the dusk at
Anna.

She nodded, but her face had paled,
and sweat clung to her forehead. She swallowed, and gave herself a
shake before nodding more sincerely.

We exited the car, our guns in our
holsters, and my blade in a loop of my trousers. The area around
the warehouses was empty, nothing around for miles. The road we
began to walk down had been taken over by nature a while ago. Weeds
and grass had burst through the cracked concrete, and as we closed
the distance to our destination, we saw the rust that climbed over
the three massive buildings.

‘
Which one?’ Anna asked
when we were near.

She didn’t have to though. The
warehouse in the middle was our place. I knew it. Not from a guess
or a feeling, but from the large black arrow that had been painted
above the huge doors, the one that pointed directly inside. The
hairs on my arms rose and I had to shake out the fear crawling up
my spine.

We can handle
this.

We headed up to the warehouse’s
doors, and I grabbed the chain locking them together and tore it
apart. Anna eyed our surroundings, and I pulled on one of the
hand
les. It
creaked menacingly open and the loud whine rang in the air. I
looked round at Anna, and we headed inside.

We wandered around a few small, dark
rooms. They were empty, and our hearts were almost audible in the
silence. Eventually, we came to a door. It was silver, and compared
to the surrounding metal, better kept and looked after. It made me
wonder whether the disrepair we’d saw outside was to ward off
suspicion from anyone who stumbled past. Not that out there it was
very likely.

I gripped the handle in my sweating hand
and turned it. Anna was at the side, her gun aimed as I wrenched
the door open, and raised my own. The room beyond even brought a
gasp from me. For a second we were frozen, completely mesmerised
and horrified by the sight before us.

‘
My God,’ Anna
whispered.

The room sunk into the ground, and was
deeper than you could tell from the outside. In front of us was a
metal staircase that led down. It travelled so far then stopped.
Around the room at our level were balconies, travelling all around
the perimeter. They looked down on a maze, a maze of sandy-coloured
walls and darkness. Weak yellow light lit the pathways, and pipes
hung from the walls.

Anna was right.

My God.

It was a replica of the tunnels under
Greystone. An almost carbon copy of the nightmare we’d fought our
lives with to escape. Was it a sick joke? What the hell was my
father doing?

‘
What is this place?’ Anna
gasped.

‘
I don’t know,’ I replied
shaking my head. ‘Maybe, maybe my Dad’s trying to recreate what
worked before.’

That didn’t bode well for Anna’s
brother.

I took a deep breath. The only way was
down, and we couldn’t back away. I started down the stairs, each
step, even with my best efforts to prevent it, sent a clang
throughout the air. When I reached the bottom, I stepped back into
a hell I thought I’d left forever. If you didn’t look up, and kept
your eyes focused solely ahead of you, you’d think we’d never left.
I shook the thought from my head.

We turned corners, both our breaths
ragged.

We shouldn’t have come
here. What did I do?

We travelled deeper and deeper,
further into the maze than I would have liked. There were no
sounds, no noises. I stopped and listened, tried to use my
abilities to pick up on somethin
g, anything. It was then a high-pitched
alarm reverberated through the room. I screamed and clamped my
hands to my ears, toning down the sound. Anna rushed to my side,
her face terrified.

‘
Get ready,’ I
gasped.

Footsteps pounded the ground, snarls
and blood curdling screams caught up with us. I pushed the bag Paul
had given us up my shoulder, and Anna and I moved, back to back,
into a room the spitting image of the one we’d slept in three
months before. We knew what that sound was, once people, then
monsters. Those who had been injected with the drug my father
made.

A screaming man entered our room and
caught sight of us. He looked around my age, but with black hair
and brown eyes. He flew at us, barely losing speed as he turned and
barrelled towards us. I opened fire, squeezing the trigger twice.
One of bullets smacked his neck, and the other embedded in his
skull as he dropped to the floor. I heard Anna take down a young
woman, but neither of us turned, keeping our backs
together.

We moved slowly, taking down the
horrifying creatures, people who’d once had lives. My gun clicked
empty as a girl around ten charged my way. I holstered it quickly,
drew my blade and spun, and as my heart stung painfully, I sliced
through the girl’s neck. I righted myself and reloaded my
gun.

‘
What do we do?’ Anna
asked, but before I could answer, my ears picked up a boy’s
voice.

‘
Anna?’ it pleaded. ‘Anna,
please help me! Please!’

‘
This way!’ I
shouted.

I tried to pinpoint the source of the
sound, while the monsters kept on coming. Anna’s gun ran out of
ammo, and we spun, switched places and she grabbed more from my
bag. I took down an older man as he turned the corner.

‘
Anna, where are you?’ the little
boy pleaded. There was something about the sound though, it was
rough and distorted.

‘
Anthony!’ Anna screamed,
and I felt her back leave mine.

I turned, saw Anna sprint into a large
room that was lit with white light rather than yellow. On the
dirt-ridden floor with his back to us, was a small ten-year-old
boy. It was Anna’s brother. It was also then I realised what was
wrong with Anthony Gordon’s voice, the distortion. It was a
recording.

‘
Anna, no!’ I
screamed.

I tried to follow, but bars shot out
of the side of the room’s entrance and blocked my path. I hit the
metal hard, but it didn’t budge. I ripped the bag of ammo from my
shoulder as Anna reached the boy, and I grabbed onto the horizontal
bars and started to climb. Anna’s scream stopped me and I looked
down to see her fly across the room.

No!

Anthony Gordon was exactly the
way his loving sister had described him. Same d
ark red hair and vivid
electric-blue eyes she had. But the boy she knew was gone. Tony’s
face was a sickening snarl, his eyes narrowed and his shrieks
pulled at my heart. What had my father done!?

‘
Anna!’ I
repeated.

I started climbing again. A sharp pain
flashed through my entire being, my breath burst from my lips and
every hair on my body crackled as electricity threw me from the
bars. I hit the floor and groaned while my gun disappeared out of
sight. Before I was on my feet I heard Anna’s pleas; her
heart-wrenching sobs and cries for Anthony.

I looked into the room that reminded me of
an arena, and saw the shell of Tony circle his sister. Anna was on
her knees, head between them, shaking uncontrollably.

‘
Anna, you have to shoot
him,’ I cried, my voice faltering.

I moved to take another run at the
electrified bars when a pair of hands grabbed my top and yanked
hard. I flew backwards in the air and smacked into a wall. A woman
yelled in my ear as she lifted me off the ground again, and brought
me straight back down. I tried to roll and grab my blade, but an
earth shattering kick to my stomach sent me back into the wall, my
weapon clattered to the ground.

I hissed, and kicked out my legs. I
missed and a fist connected with my jaw. I caught her next blow,
twisted her arm in a way no arm should go, and as I rushed to my
feet, heard the crack of its break. I brought my leg up, and it
connected with her jaw, spinning her in the air before she crumpled
to the floor.

I couldn’t see my gun, so I raced over
to my blade, only for a man to block my way. I didn’t stop, but
instead ducked his fist and slid by him. I scooped up the sharp
metal and stood, spun and sliced the man’s head in half. The woman
was back on her feet and she screamed, throwing herself recklessly
within my range. I drove the sword into her stomach and yanked
upwards, letting the blade slice through her until it broke free at
her shoulder.

With my opponents down, I slapped the
headset at my ear.

‘
Paul!’ I cried. ‘I need
Brian!’

‘
It is Brian,’ a flustered
voice came on the line.

‘
What the hell have you done,
Lucas?’ Chris growled in my ear.

I filled them in.

‘
What do you need?’ Brian
asked.

‘
I need you to get these
bars open!’ I shouted.

‘
I don’t know if that’s
even possible!’ Brian cried. ‘If they’re tied in to the main
electrical grid I might have a shot, but if they’re
not…’

I heard the distinct sound of a
keyboard being abused, and Chris came back on.

‘
Jessica’s on her way,’ he
growled.

I stared helplessly as Anna grappled
with her changed brother. Her gun lay at her side. I took another
run at the bars and bounced off with a sharp zap. I searched the
floor for my gun, my eyes off Anna for a second.

‘
No!’ I heard her scream,
and as my head whipped back around, a gunshot filled the
air.

Anthony Gordon sank to the ground as
his sister stared horrified. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell
open as tears streaked her cheeks. The gun slid from her hands, and
she crawled over to her brother’s body. I watched as the hope
drained from her, and felt even a part of my own soul die. We had
failed.

The alarm stopped, and with a clank,
the bars slid back into their holes. I stumbled into the
room.

‘
Did it work?’ Brian called
into my ear.

I couldn’t speak. I just walked over
to Anna and fell to my knees beside her. She repeated no over and
over again. Tears fell from my own eyes. What had I done? I
couldn’t even comprehend how long Tony had been changed, but Anna
and I had almost lost our lives. It was so stupid. We knew it could
have happened, knew how likely it was, and we’d still ran into
danger.