Unstoppable: Breakaway Part 14

Gotcha, Amy thought.

"That was quite a stunt you pulled with those reporters."

Amy whipped around to find a man standing at the end of the aisle, leaning casually against the shelves. He was tall and broad and dressed all in black gear, which made his shockingly blue eyes stand out all the more. Amy hid the silphium packet behind her. Her muscles tensed, ready to run.

"Luckily, we're pretty adaptable," he said with a shrug. "Traveling lighter now so we don't raise any media eyebrows. Adapt or die. That's the rule, right?"

The refrigeration units kicked on again with a loud blast of air, and the man turned. Amy exploded off the floor, swinging her backpack hard as she ran straight at him. It struck the man on his shoulder, taking him by surprise and knocking him back long enough for Amy to speed past him, arms pumping. The door was in sight. She'd be out in seconds and then she'd - Amy hit what felt like a brick wall and went flying backward. She slammed into the floor and the package of silphium shot across the concrete. Another one of Pierce's men stepped through the door, crossing his arms over his enormous chest.

The blue-eyed man laughed as he walked up behind Amy. "I said we were traveling lighter. You didn't think that meant I was dumb enough to come all the way out here alone, did you?"

The mercenary by the door reached for the gun on his hip, but the blue-eyed man waved him away.

"Go get the truck."

The ma.s.sive man faded back into the corridor. Wind howled as the outer door opened and closed. The blue-eyed man took the package of silphium off the ground as he approached her.

"Why would you come all the way out here for a package of seeds?"

His eyes bored into Amy, but she said nothing. The man shrugged and tore the package open, upending it so the seeds fell out onto the concrete floor. He lifted his boot over the pile.

"No!" Amy rushed to stop him but it was too late. His boot heel fell. When he lifted it again, the seeds had been ground to dust.

Amy stared at the powder, a dark chasm yawning open inside of her. The next thing she knew the man grabbed her by the ankles and pulled her toward him. Amy struggled, but he was too strong. He held her down with one hand while he systematically stripped off her cold weather gear with the other.

"Now, let's try and think of a good headline," the blue-eyed man said as he gathered her gear into a ball and stuffed it into her backpack along with her phone and the rest of her supplies. "How about, Internationally Known Troublemaker Vandalizes Famed Landmark Only to Get Trapped and Freeze to Death."

"You don't have to do this," Amy said as the man slung her pack over his shoulder and headed toward the door. "Please, listen to me. You can't -"

The door slammed shut behind him. Amy leaped up and threw herself at it, pounding on the steel as the locks fell into place. "Wait! Please!"

The outer door closed with a deep boom and then there was silence. Amy slid down the length of steel door and hit the ground. The refrigeration system kicked on again, sending fingers of icy wind in all directions. The man had left her in a thin sweater and thermals. No coat. No hood. No gloves. No snow pants. She could feel her skin freezing and then the cold sinking deeper, reaching out for bone. Amy wrapped her arms around herself as she looked across the concrete-and-steel vault that would be her tomb.

Amy got to her feet and walked the perimeter of the vault, shivering as she examined every corner of her prison. She felt a moment of excitement when she found a refrigeration duct within reach. Maybe she could crawl through it and out into the main office, where she could crank up the heat. But that dream was dashed. The slotted steel cover on the vent was bolted down, and her freezing fingers couldn't so much as budge it.

Another burst of hope came when she discovered a computer terminal fixed to a back wall, but all it seemed to do was search the seed database. It had no control over the doors and wasn't connected to the Internet.

Amy fumbled with the mouse next to the terminal and started clicking through menus in Norwegian, her hands so cold she could barely control them. She stumbled upon a map of all the computers inside the facility. There were notations for three computers sitting in a row, which must have been three terminals inside the vaults, and then four together in a separate location. Those must be the office! Amy had to use her palm to move the mouse. Her hands were growing more and more numb, making her fingers thick and heavy. She rubbed her hands together and tried again, clicking on each computer in turn until her screen went black and a small green cursor appeared at the bottom. Got it!

Pony! she typed. 911. Emergency. Trapped in the vault. Need help!

Amy hit SEND, then stood back from the computer, hugging herself and stamping her feet to fight the cold. Come on, Pony. Come on. The refrigeration cycled on again, sending a cruel blast of freezing air over her body. Tremors shook her arms and shoulders.

Amy knew she couldn't stay still any longer, she had to get her body temperature up. She moved away from the terminal and started jogging around the shelves, her white breath trailing behind her. As she ran, Amy worked through every escape she had made over the last few years. How many hopeless situations had she found her way out of at the last second? A hundred? More? One of them had to have something in common with where she found herself now, one of them would offer her a solution, an escape. But every scenario she came up with hit a wall. Why? What was the difference between now and then? In answer, a single word dropped into her mind.

Dan, she thought. He was the difference. Dan and Jake and Atticus and Ian and Hamilton. I wasn't alone then.

Amy pushed the thought out of her head. Having other people here wouldn't make the vault any less escape-proof, all it would do was get the people she loved killed alongside her. Amy forced herself to take another lap around the vault. She could feel how much slower she was already. Her legs felt thick and numb, and the cold seared her lungs with every breath.

As Amy came back around toward the computer terminal, she stumbled and went crashing into the concrete. She got her hands under her and pushed, but the cold was creeping into her arms. Come on, Cahill, she insisted. Push yourself up. You can do it. Amy strained, but her arms were shaking so badly now that the best she could do was throw herself onto her side and then slowly curl up to a seated position, with her back against an icy wall. The terminal was just a few yards away. The screen was black, nothing but her own words mocking her on the screen.

Amy pulled her knees up to her chest, hugging them close to her chest, trying to trap every degree of heat. The shivering was growing more intense, almost like convulsions now. She tried to still it, but it was no use. She felt as if she were trapped within a fist of ice. The tips of her ears stung badly, as if a small creature were gnawing at them with needle teeth. Most alarming were the itchy spots of red growing along her fingertips. It was the beginning of frostbite. In a short time, her skin would harden and blister. Then the red would turn to black, and her fingers would be gone.

Amy tucked her hands in her armpits and dropped her forehead to her knees. She wondered where Dan and the others were right then. Maybe swimming in the Mediterranean? She could almost feel the warmth of the water and the weightless feeling of floating in it, under that intense blue sky. Amy's eyelids began to droop and she felt a strange sensation in the back of her mind, like the approach of a dark storm front. It wasn't frightening, though. In fact, Amy could tell that when the ma.s.s of roiling black clouds finally overtook her, she would feel calm and at peace. She would simply drift away.

A voice in the back of her head urged her up, reminding her that Pierce was still out there, that she had to stop him, but that voice seemed to grow fainter and fainter. Soon it was little more than a whisper.

Amy's hand slipped and hit the concrete with a bony crack. She hissed in pain, then tried to lift it again, but it was so heavy. Her whole body was. She had never felt so sleepy. Maybe if she rested for a little while . . .

There was a metallic ping somewhere far away. It was m.u.f.fled, like a bell wrapped in layers of cotton, but it persisted. At first the sound was only a tiny p.r.i.c.k against Amy's skin, but it sank in like a hook, dragging Amy up through layers of darkness. The ping grew louder. Something in the refrigeration ducts? Amy gritted her teeth. One ping every few seconds. Amy got her eyes open a slit and searched the vault. The ping sounded again and this time she saw the computer screen brighten as it did.

A flare lit inside Amy and she seized it before it went out. She began to move, slow and dumb, each turn of her joints a rusty torment, but she was moving. She dug her spine into the wall behind her and flexed her legs until she began to rise. She made it up, trembling, and planted a palm flat on the wall. She staggered forward, the whole time feeling like there was an anchor attached to her chest, trying to pull her down. Amy kept her eyes locked on the computer, and her brother's image fixed in her mind.

The computer pinged again.

"Coming," Amy said, her voice slurry and indistinct. "I'm coming. . . ."

Amy collapsed into the wall beside the computer. A message flashed on the screen. What's going on? Where are you?

Amy lifted her hands to the keyboard. The red splotches covered her fingers now and were creeping up to her knuckles. Her hands were as numb as lumps of clay. She lifted one hand with the other and set a finger down on key after key.

Valt 1. dor lcked. Need u to opn Amy mashed ENTER, then slumped against the wall beside the terminal, staring at the blinking cursor until her eyes closed again and the dark pulled at her. The refrigeration system roared again, sending icy needles into the air. Hurry, Pony, Amy thought as her eyes drooped. Hurry.

There was a click across the room. Amy's eyes snapped open and she turned toward it. The door was open. Amy pushed off from the wall, reeled across the s.p.a.ce, and threw herself into the hallway.

The office. Pierce's men had smashed the computer monitors before they left, but she didn't care about them. Amy crashed through the desks until she got to the far wall and reached for the thermostat. Her fingers. .h.i.t shards of gla.s.s and broken plastic. Wires hung uselessly from the wall.

. . . troublemaker vandalizes famed landmark . . .

Amy turned away, a sound bubbling up inside her, something between laughter and a sob. The animal strangeness of the sound terrified her. She lurched away from the wall, trying to get her thoughts in order. They needed to make it look like an accident, she thought. Like I came here and got careless. Maybe that means they left behind . . .

Her backpack sat on one of the tables and her coat hung from the back of the chair. She fumbled with the coat, able to summon enough strength to get her arms through it and lift the hood, but not enough to work the zipper. The two sides of the coat hung limp, away from her body, nearly useless. She jammed her frozen hands into the gloves, expecting a surge of warmth now that she was dressed, but none came. Her body was so cold that the coat and gloves had no heat to trap.

Amy went for her backpack next but wasn't surprised to find that her phone was gone, along with all of her other supplies. Her frozen hand hit a padded envelope, and it was like a tuning fork was struck inside her. She pulled it out and opened it. Sammy's vial of serum was tucked inside. Amy stared at it as she shivered. One drink and she could probably sprint back to the airport but she knew the serum wouldn't just save her. It would make her into a monster, too. A monster like Pierce.

Amy thrust the serum into the pack and made it back out into the corridor, pulling herself toward the outer door. The hallway offered shelter, but it was still so cold inside that all it would do was kill her marginally more slowly. If she wanted to live, she needed to find help. Fast.

Amy threw her shoulder into the door, digging her feet into the concrete until the door gave and she fell out onto the roadway. She hit the ground hard and rolled, tipping over the edge of a hill and tumbling down an embankment. Outcroppings of stone struck her back and arms as she fell, but with the numbness she barely felt them.

Amy hit bottom and lay puffing on her back, the wind blowing across her body, carrying away any sc.r.a.p of heat she had left. Have to keep going. Keep moving. She made herself roll over and climb onto her feet. It was night now and the snow was swirling around her, a white fog in the blackness. When Amy turned around, she couldn't even see the vault entrance or the aqua glow of its marker.

The wind howled in her ears and bit at her body. Though most of the landscape had been wiped away, Amy could make out a flat depression in the white, like a ribbon that ran down and around the mountain. A road? But to where? Amy felt sure she knew, but her brain was running as thick as sludge and no answer came.

Amy turned south toward an outcropping of dark structures down the hill. They appeared and disappeared in the drifting snow but she was sure she made out walls and roofs. Surely she could reach them and then someone would help her. Take her in. Just like Bhaile Anois. Everything became perfectly clear in an instant. And now that she looked at the buildings more closely, the buildings weren't dark at all, were they? There were lights on, warm amber lamps glowing in the windows and the doorways. And couldn't she smell the woodsy plume of chimney smoke and cooking fires? She could hear the warm din of voices, all talking excitedly over one another.

The sounds reached into Amy and pulled. She yanked her foot up out of a shin-deep drift and got moving. Her pace was agonizingly slow as she fought the snow and the darkness and the wind striking her with all its force.

Amy pulled a last bit of strength from the wispy images of all her friends waiting for her down below. Dan. Atticus. Jake. Ian.

Evan.

Amy's mind hitched at the name, struck by the strangeness of it. A nagging voice in the back of her mind told her that Evan couldn't be there, but she didn't know why. How could Evan be gone when his face was so clear in her mind? When she could hear his voice, as clear as if he was standing right beside her? Amy lowered her head into the wind and marched through the snow, the promise of seeing Evan like a fire, urging her onward.

Time pa.s.sed strangely, stretching and contracting, speeding up and then slowing to a numbing crawl. Amy barely even felt the cold anymore. Her body didn't shake. In fact, a strange warmth was growing in her. Her gloves fell off her hands and her coat slipped from her shoulders and dropped into the snow. She left it behind and continued on. She didn't need it anymore. She would be home soon.

Eventually, the snow stopped and the clouds retreated. Above Amy, stars glittered hard in the black. The white landscape stretched out before her, clean and still. Her foot struck something hard and Amy threw her hands out to keep from falling. They touched wood. Amy looked up and saw dark timbers stretching into the sky. Rough planks stretched to either side. A wall.

Amy reeled forward into a wide doorway, fully expecting to see Grace and Dan and the others waiting for her, and to smell food cooking. Instead she found herself in an empty room covered in ivory sheets of snow. The floors were white. The walls were draped in it. Amy craned her head back and looked up. The roof was riven with gaping holes. She could see the stars through it.

Amy fell backward and struck ground without any pain. She sank deep into snow so soft it felt like a feather mattress. She felt herself float, weightless and dreamy, looking up at the dark sky. Some part of herself told her to get up, keep moving, but the voice was faint and her body wouldn't listen anyway. Every part of Amy was retreating deep within her, forming itself into something wrinkled and hard, like a seed or the stone buried in a piece of fruit. Her body became a sh.e.l.l, thick and unfeeling. The world fell away except for the distant whispering of air from somewhere high above.

"Amy! Amy, can you hear me?"

It was Dan. He was standing right beside her, looking exactly as he had when she left him. Amy used every ounce of her strength to reach out to him, but her hand only brushed air.

"I'm okay," she croaked. "I found Bhaile Anois."

There was a flash of white light and Amy was weightless, rising out of the snow. Dan was gone now and it was Jake at her side, gliding along, his lips moving without sound, his hand wrapped around hers. There was a gust of wind and Jake became Evan and Evan became her father and then her mother. Amy felt her heart turn painfully. She was so happy they were here. So happy to be going home.

Cara closed her laptop, settling her aching body into her executive chair. She had been training nonstop for her next bout with Galt and was feeling it.

Down the hall, the door to her father's study opened and slammed shut. Galt had gone in hours ago. Since then, all Cara had heard was murmuring voices interrupted by spikes of laughter.

Laughing at me.

Ever since her defeat in the gym, her father had been spending more time with Galt while she was stuck helping out with her mother's annual teddy bear inventory. If she had to count one more bear, she felt sure she'd scream.

There were footsteps as Galt and her father went to their separate rooms, shutting the doors behind them. The house settled into quiet. Cara left her room and wandered in the dark. She moved from the kitchen and through the den to the open doorway of her father's empty study. When she and Galt were kids, they would test each other's courage with escalating dares. I dare you to touch his door and come back. I double dare you to step one foot inside.

And now Galt went in and sat down behind closed doors and had hours of conversations while she was shut out. Why him? Cara racked her brain.

Because he beat me. Because he's faster. Stronger. Smarter. Better.

The realization hung on her shoulders like a sheet of lead. Cara left her father's study and headed back to her room. Maybe if she slept on it, she would feel a little better in the morning. She stopped and jumped back at the sound of someone else moving through the house. It was her father. What was he doing in the kitchen at this hour?

Her father clicked on an overhead light and reached into a cabinet. He pulled down a juicer and various powders, and then the family's protein shake bottles.

He's making our morning shakes, Cara thought. He's been giving us these things for ages, and I've never actually seen him make one.

He started by juicing a number of different fruits and vegetables: apples, grapes, peaches, broccoli, kale, some strange-looking gra.s.s. He poured equal amounts of each juice mixture into each bottle, followed with a scoop of protein powder. Then he took something out of the pocket of his robe and held it up into the light.

It was a squat gla.s.s vial, full with a thick-looking greenish liquid. Her father took a syringe out of his pocket and tore off its sterile wrapper. He plunged the syringe into the vial and filled it with the liquid.

Cara looked on, shocked. That's not protein powder, Cara thought. That's a drug! What's he doing?

Pierce held the needle tip over Galt's bottle and carefully pressed the plunger. A long stream of the drug shot into Galt's shake. When the needle was empty, Pierce shook the bottle vigorously and put it in the refrigerator. He turned to Cara's bottle next, but this time he filled the syringe less than halfway before squeezing it into Cara's shake. He capped her bottle, shook it, and put it in the fridge next to Galt's. Once the kitchen was spotless, he hit the light and left.

When she heard the door to Pierce's bedroom shut, Cara crept toward the refrigerator. She pulled the bottles out and set them down on the counter, feeling her rage build as it all became clear.

Galt wasn't better than her. He wasn't stronger or faster and he certainly wasn't smarter. He was cheating! Worse than that, her father was cheating for him.

Cara stood quietly for a while, staring at the bottles. Then she grabbed hers and worked a fingernail beneath the label. She switched her label with Galt's so she got the full boost and he got the sc.r.a.ps.

What will it be like, Cara wondered, to feel all that strength? To show Galt once and for all who's number one?

Cara's stomach knotted with anger, and a strange sort of hunger.

Let's see who the fittest is now, Dad.

Amy woke in a half-lit room, bleary, her body as heavy as a sack of concrete. There was a strange tearing sound in the air, like paper being ripped again and again. Her muscles ached as she pushed herself up. She was in what looked like a generic hotel room, white and beige walls, big-screen TV, shaded windows.

"You're in Oslo."

Dan was sitting at a desk across the room. As she turned to him, a sc.r.a.p of paper fell from his hands into a trash can by his feet.

"How . . . ?" Amy began, recoiling from the pain of what felt like ground-up gla.s.s in her throat.

"The boat captain got Attleboro on the radio," he said, his voice a flat line. "They sent a helicopter to pick me up and then I came to get you."

"So you really were there," Amy said, almost to herself. "That was you."

"If we'd gotten there a few minutes later, you would have been dead."

Instead of relief in Dan's voice, Amy thought she heard something harder, like an accusation. Her arms were weak but she managed to haul the down-filled comforter off. She recoiled at the sight of herself. Her legs were covered in ugly purple bruises and so were her arms and her side. The tips of three fingers were numb beneath white bandages.

"We need to get moving," she said, trying not to groan as she pushed herself to the edge of the bed. "We can still get the seeds in Tunis. Maybe if we -"

A plastic bag rattled as it flew across the room and landed on the bed. It was full of small tan seeds. She looked up at Dan. "How?"

"Atticus and Jake got a plane to Tunis. They tracked the seeds down through their dad's friends."

"Everyone's okay?"

Dan said nothing. Just nodded. He wasn't even looking at her.

"Dan -"

"Explain how you could do something so completely insane!" Dan said, exploding out of his chair, his face red with anger. "Do you have any idea how worried all of us were? You could have gotten yourself killed!"

"I did what I thought was best," Amy said, trying to control what was building up inside her. "I'm the leader of the -"

"Don't give me that 'leader of the Cahills' junk!" Dan yelled. "We work together! We always have. Everything good we've ever accomplished, we accomplished together!"

"Then why are you leaving!?" Amy's cry felt like it was ripped from the very center of her. It battered the walls of the small room. "I saw those brochures, Dan. The ones you've been hiding from me. What? It's okay for you to go off on your own but not me?"

Dan's face was so red it looked as if it was burning. "I told you, I was going after this is over. After."

Amy couldn't control the tears coursing down her cheeks. "This is never going to be over! You said that yourself. After we deal with Pierce, someone else will come along, and then there'll be someone else after that. If you want to leave so badly, go now!"