Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 113051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
He carries me in his arms and runs to the door, where everyone is gathered and Everly is trying to fight her way through.
“Everyone out now. This place is going to blow!” Wes yells.
Everly starts clawing against Rav, trying to escape, but Hernandez brings the butt of the rifle down on the back of her head, causing her to slump. Justin squeezes through to help them drag her up the stairs, the only light in the stairwell coming from the flames rapidly spreading through the operating room.
Everyone clamors up the stairs, yelling, shouting, fueled by the panic of the oncoming flames. Once the door at the top swings open to the learning lab, air blows through and stokes the fire building below us, spreading across to the other room where Clayton is being kept.
“Clayton,” I cry out, trying to get out of his arms. “We have to get Clayton.”
“I’m sorry,” Wes says, holding me tighter as we reach the top of the stairs. “We have to let him go.”
We burst out into the room just as the flames roar out of the stairwell and into the learning lab.
“Go, go, go!” Wes yells as everyone runs for their life through the lab, the heat of the flames at our back. There’s a whoosh, whoosh, whoosh as various chemicals catch fire and start burning, the threat of an explosion imminent.
We scramble out into the storm, the wind blowing inside the lab behind us.
“Keep running, keep running!” Wes shouts. “To the docks, head to the—”
The lab explodes.
Wes and I are thrown to the ground by a wall of heat. My ears ring, and Wes covers my body with his as flames reach above us. I feel like I’m on fire.
I whimper, terrified, and Wes keeps me still, his breath ragged and steady, the only thing I can hear above the din.
“Are you alright?” he asks. “We’ve got to keep moving.”
“Yes,” I whisper, and he gets off me, lifting me to my feet. I can move a little more now, so I lean on him, and we start limping toward the docks.
“Everyone alright?” Wes yells, some of the students picking themselves off the ground, covered in mud, others already running down the ramp.
“We lost Everly!” Hernandez yells.
“There she is!” someone says. “The north lodge.”
We look over to see her running through the door into the building.
“We need to stop her,” I say, but Wes shakes his head.
“We will,” he says. “But first, we have to get all of us to safety. That fire is going to spread along the tunnels. The wind is going to carry it to the other buildings. It might be too wet to catch, it might not, but the whole compound could go up in flames, and there’s no fire department to put it out.”
“Good,” I mutter.
He glances down at me as we reach the ramp and gives me a shaky smile. “Music to my ears, Syd. Music to my ears.”
We run down the rest of the way, the students gathered around Mithrandir, which is hastily tied to the end of the dock where the floatplanes usually tie up. The storm is dying down, and though the swells are large, the waves are less choppy, and the wind is lessening.
“I’m sorry I hit you on the head,” I tell him. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. Didn’t trust you.”
He squeezes me close to him. “You have nothing to apologize for. I’m sorry I’ve had to lie to you the whole time.”
We stop in front of the crowd. I see everyone, their shocked and worried faces lit up by the fire on shore: Lauren, Munawar, Rav. Justin, Natasha, Toshio, Noor. Patrick, Albert, and Christina. Hernandez, who I realize is someone new to Madrona since I had never met him before, and Janet, who was one of my good friends.
I meet her eyes, and she nods at me. Now I know I was the reason she had run out of the lab crying that day. She couldn’t stand to see what they had done to me. Couldn’t stand to see one of her friends die and be brought back to life as someone who didn’t know her.
But I know you now, I think. And I promise I’m not the same person.
“I’m sorry I had to lie to all of you,” Wes says to the group. “You’re all brilliant minds. You deserved so much better than this.”
“I guess we were liars too,” Lauren says, looking at me. “They told us that you were a special case, Sydney. They said that you had a traumatic brain injury and you thought it was 2022. None of us were allowed to mention the year or talk about what was happening in the world.”
I think that over. “Clayton kept calling me special.”
“He played hardball,” Wes says. “He had a harder time lying to you than anyone else.”