Winter's Legacy: Future Days (Winter's Saga Book 6) (9 page)

16  Fly, Fly Away

Her footsteps were naturally light and agile.  She ran through the corridors as though she had memorized their every nuance years ago.  Her senses were heightened to the point that she could even feel the presence of the rats scurrying between the walls, scratching their way to their next morsel of food.   She could imagine where each dank, acidic smell originated and tried not to breathe through her nose for fear she’d get sick from the sulfuric assault. 

Just one more right
, then a left and I’m there,
she prodded herself. 

She felt every bit like a rat herself scurrying between the cement walls on either side of her.  She rounded the last corner with less than three minutes to spare.  Down the dimly lit corridor she saw what she knew to be the locked cells of those poor souls “in training.”  In her mind
, she let herself feel their despair to fuel her rage.  Her psychokinesis was a newer aspect of her gift.  She hadn’t tried to control so much mass since accidentally creating a psychic tornado in her room all those months ago. 

She stood in the middle of the hallway, five door handles down to the east, five to the west. She stood feet shoulder’s width apart, raised her arms and released a silent scream so powerful the air around her shook, the rats froze in the walls.  Everything vibrated under the extreme fury she unleashed.  The doors didn’t just unlock, they shattered off their rusty hinges, smashing into the dank walls opposite them.  Meg crouched for a moment, willing herself to calm down and her equilibrium to right itself. 

She waited for the children to come pouring out of their cells—to run for their lives.  But there was only the sound of silence.  The only movement came from the dust settling back to forgotten corners.

Standing cautiously, Meg ran to the room nearest her.  What she saw inside would haunt her all her living days.  A child was strapped to a bed.  Torture changed the look in
the girl’s eyes as she stared at nothing, unmoving.  The skin on her chest had been removed in places.

Skinned, they skinned this poor little girl!
  Meg swallowed the lump of bile rising in her chest.

She ran to her and worked on her straps.  “Come on, honey
.  Let’s get you out of here,” she whispered.  The girl stared at nothing and lay completely still.  Meg knew she wasn’t going to move on her own, as she tested the girl’s emotional psyche carefully. 

“I’ll just carry you, sweetie,” Meg started to say when the girl opened her mouth and began to scream like a banshee.  She hit with her small fists and scratched at Meg’s face, desperate to be let go.  Meg was sure that her cover was beyond blown
when she felt the alarmed emotional signatures of guards who had seriously slacked off on their duties.  She tried not to panic.

With a broken heart, and the girl’s blood staining her black clothing, Meg carefully put the
child down.  Meg was crying when she ran to the next room only to find the boy screaming just as violently. 

Oh dear God, they’re too far gone. 
Meg ignored the tears streaming down her face as room after room confirmed her worst fears.  They were all in the process of being tortured one way or another, but all of them screamed like sirens when she approached to try to rescue them.

All except the last room.  She found a little boy, whose eyes were closed, his body still, curled in a protective fetal ball in the corner of the room.  He was covered with feces and urine, but Meg didn’t care.  She yanked the soiled sheet off the bed and wrapped the emaciated child and waited for him to wake screaming like the others, but he didn’t.

“You’re coming with me, little one,” Meg spun and bolted from the room, back down the corridor, across the opulent foyer, down another two corridors until she found the kitchen.  She heard voices barking angrily over the sound of the screams that echoed ear-piercingly through the asylum.

They would be on her at any moment.

She ran to the back door and blew it wide open with her mind, easily finding the rage inside to fuel its destruction.  True to his word, Niche was waiting for her with a black sedan idling quietly. 

The screams and voices licked at her back as she ran down the steps with the little boy jostling in her arms like a floppy doll.

“What the hell did you do?” Niche yelled, eyes wide with terror at the chaos right behind the frame of the door that no longer existed.

“Drive!” Meg screamed, sending her will directly into Niche’s terrified mind. 

He responded immediately, flooring the sedan away from the building, down a back road that led to a service entrance to the compound. 

“The gate!”  Meg grimaced as they sped directly toward a ten
-foot iron fence.

“I stole the key from Ermos,” Niche snapped.

But the closer they got, the more sure Meg was that soldiers were there waiting for them.

Their headlights had been turned off, but Meg reached over Niche and threw them on. 

She felt herself vibrate with anger at what she saw. 

The squad of
eighteen metamonarchs she’d sensed running the perimeter at 2am were there, waiting for them.  They hadn’t had time to gear up, but it didn’t matter.  

Meg carefully laid the little boy
on the back-seat floorboard.  When she turned around, Niche was holding out a gun to her, butt end first.

“I also grabbed some weapons from the locked cabinet. 
SHIT!
  That’s probably what triggered a silent alarm.”

“Too late for regrets,” Meg said, her fingers deftly handling the weapon, checking the clip and realizing she was only working with six bullets.  She slammed it back into place, safety off and ready to do some damage.

“I promised I’d get you out of here,” Niche was saying, “And damn it, I
will
keep that promise!”

He pulled the car to a stop twenty yards away from the hulking mass of mindless soldiers. 

“I promised him I would save him, and I’m damn well keeping my promise!” Meg growled, glancing back at the silent pile of sheets behind her. 

“Niche, how good a shot are you?” she asked, weighing their odds.

“Guess we’re about to find out,” he risked a glance at the girl who’d changed his world.

“Damn I wish I weren’t so weak, or I’d level them all myself.” Meg said more to herself realizing her head was pounding hard enough for her to feel like her ears were about to start spilling blood. 

She took a deep breath and opened her door.  She heard Niche do the same, following her lead.  That’s when she felt the attack coming from behind them.  They had only minutes before they would be flanked by Arkdone’s men. 

Panicked she forced herself to breathe the fresh scent of grass and clean air of the freedom she could almost taste on the other side of the mob in front of her. 

A smile crept across her lips as a thought burned like an ember in the dark. 

I don’t have to level all of them.
  She thought
.   I just have to control enough of them.

Without a word, all eighteen soldiers ran full speed toward them.  Meg opened fire, emptying her weapon into the kneecaps of six of the soldiers, not missing o
ne.  Niche hit another four, each in the chest.  The remaining eight were on them.  Meg used the butt of her gun to break the jaw of the first guy who reached for her.  The second, she attacked.

Jumping into his space, she elbowed his sternum, watched him double over and kneed his face, then jabbed him in the throat with
her palm.  He was down before he could cough.

Niche was fighting his own battles giving Meg a moment to pull aside and focus on the remaining seven.  The three nearest her were her targets.   She concentrated the last of her energies on them, willing them to fight against the remaining four.  She felt their confusion at her demand, but pushed through it, manipulating.  She locked eyes with each in turn and watched as undefined acknowledgement glinted in their eyes. 

So accustomed you are, my puppets,
she thought. 
Fight for me. 

She managed her last push against their will and immediately saw the surprise on the
faces of those soldiers remaining as they attacked their own with renewed aggression.  They were on a mission. 

After the initial shock, the remaining four began to fight with renewed anger.  One of the four split off
, attacking Niche with a knife.  Meg looked on with weakened horror as one soldier threw a knife at her.  The world moved in slow motion as she watched it spin end over end, black and sleek moving so close she could almost read the maker’s name etched in the blade.   She tried to find anything she had left to fight back, but she was quivering, barely standing with the effort it took to control the first three.

Maybe I shouldn’t have tried for three,
was her last thought before she saw Niche dive in front of her attacker.  His eyes flashed with determination, as black as the Punisher’s, when he dove into the knife’s blade.  It didn’t just graze him.  Not at that angle of impact.  The seven-inch blade buried itself to the hilt deep in his chest with a sickening
thwump
. 

Meg gasped in terror as she saw blood
pump from the wound.  She shoved the bleeding metamonarch into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.  With anger she had never known herself to feel, she screamed at the remaining soldiers.

“STOP!”
her voice echoed through the vibrations she sent from herself into the world around her, and the world stopped. 

Meg watched the vacant stares of the remaining soldier
s.  She heard a distinctly animalistic guttural growling and realized it was coming from her own throat. 

She rounded the car and sat herself in the driver’s seat.  Her anger was boiling to the point of creating utter destruction—even her own.

That’s when she willed the gate to burst open and stomped the accelerator.  She flew through the gate as it became shards of iron spinning wildly through the night air.  Her fury was as powerful as C4 blocks yanking the world a part, piece by piece. 

She drove over bodies as she floored the sedan forward, too emotionally raw and drained to let herself care about the injuries she was causing.  Her only concern was for the two bodies in the car with her now.

“Niche!” she screamed his name.  He was slumped against the passenger door, blood still gushing between his fingers as he yanked the blade from his chest.

The bloody knife fell from his trembling hand.

“Meg—” Niche’s voice hitched painfully.

“Don’t talk.  I’m getting us the hell out of here,” she said, her body shaking so badly, she white-knuckled the steering wheel out of fear her hands would vibrate off and she’d crash the car.

“I’m sorry—” he managed.

“Don’t you dare apologize to me!” She barked angrily.

She risked a glance at the child in the back seat.  He hadn’t moved since she first laid him there.  She did notice they were working with half a tank and driving in the wrong direction.  She knew she wanted to head south.  At the first highway she found, she adjusted her direction. 

“Niche, are you still with me?” she asked after several quiet minutes.  Before now, he’d been panting, desperately trying to breathe.

He moaned in response.

Oh
damn,
she thought. 

She needed to secure his wound, but she had nothing except the bandana she wore on her head.  She yanked it off and pressed it to Niche’s chest.  “We need to keep compression on the wound, Niche.”  She drove with her left hand while her right reached across Niche’s slumped body.  Her head kept whipping back and forth from him to the road and up to the rearview mirror. 

There’s so much blood,
Meg watched it pool into his lap and onto the seat beneath him. 

Niche was drifting in and out of consciousness
.  When lucid, he watched Meg’s wide, dark eyes glance into the rearview mirror every few seconds to see if headlights were following them. Then he’d slip away from reality and dream they were back on the dance floor and she was in his arms smiling up at him.  He knew he should hold the bandana to his spilling chest, but part of him wanted only to bury his nose in the cloth and inhale the strawberry lilies of Meg’s scent. 

Her face was gaunt with fright as she drove like a bat out of hell.  She didn’t care about police, knowing she could talk herself out of any ticket.  She just needed to see the Red River.  That was her goal. 

Just get me to Texas.

***

Senator Arkdone was made aware of the breach in security the moment the silent alarm on the gun cabinet went off. 

He watched with a mixture of anger and curiosity as the escape unfolded on the digitally enhanced images from his security cameras.  He saw the stupid girl try to rescue one of his Monarchs in training. 
He watched as she leaped into the car driven by one of his most trusted metamonarchs, Gideon Niche. 

He shook his head in disgust at the fight
by the perimeter gate between his soldiers and the two traitors.  And found himself rewinding no fewer than a dozen times the scene where Gideon took the blade intended for Meg.