Ava Gray - Skin Tight

“Now diagnostics?”

He grinned. “That was diagnostics.”

“Wow. Impressive range.”

With the air of a kid showing off, he set the lights to flickering. They should be able to move from her apartment now. If anyone interfered with them, Taye could handle nearly anything, and Silas would arrive soon to provide muscle.

She’d been horrified to learn that Rowan held Silas prisoner, too. Staff lived off-site, but since Silas had been part of the original experiments-a failure-the orderly wasn’t permitted to leave. However, the moment Taye shorted the implant in his neck, the life had started returning to the big man’s eyes. Gillie knew they could count on him.

Nausea rolled through her in a hard wave. Now that the moment had arrived, she was frightened of leaving, frightened of the wider world, of which she knew nothing but what she’d seen on TV. Taye misunderstood her expression.

“Is there anything you want to take with you?”

“No,” she said quietly. “There’s nothing.”

“Then let’s go.”

Gillie followed him out of the apartment. In the distance, they heard cries of fear. The electrical problems were growing worse. In passing the first cell, he extended a hand. Blue sparks lit up the keypad and then blazed along hidden connections, giving the wall an errie glow. The doors snapped open one by one as Taye went by.

Most of the prisoners were too far gone to respond. It broke Gillie’s heart, but there was nothing she could do, short of sacrificing her own chance at freedom. Others stepped cautiously into the hall, gazing around like frightened animals. Gillie quickened her pace. Maybe it was wrong, but she was almost as frightened of Rowan’s subjects as she was of the scientist. She knew all too well his gift for twisting humans into beings both wretched and monstrous.

Spotting Silas at the next intersection, she broke into a run. Taye followed, but she noticed him keeping an eye on the escapees trailing behind them. The orderly fell into step as they headed toward the lift. They had no way of knowing whether Taye could make it work as he did the locks on the cells, but it was their only hope. This was the one portion of their escape they hadn’t been able to test.

“Are you all right?” she asked Silas.

The enormous orderly gave a quiet nod.

From the other side of the facility came a distant boom. Something had overloaded. Acrid smoke trickled through the vents, stinging her throat. Gillie tugged her pink scrub shirt up over her mouth and watched Taye at the lift controls.

“It’s much the same as the cell door security,” he said, after a few seconds. “This should work.”

“Then do it. Fast.”

She couldn’t figure out why they hadn’t seen Rowan by now. Someone would’ve called him, and from what she’d gleaned from his odious, egocentric soliloquies over the years, he lived nearby. Still, it was an unexpected boon.

“Here goes.” Taye touched his fingers to the keypad, and a pale ripple of energy flooded outward, enveloping the retscanner.

Orderlies, nurses, and techs sprinted past, but it sounded as if they were running toward trouble, not away from it. Smoke tinged the air; somewhere, something was burning.

The alarms became shrill.

When Mia’s cell door swung open, she didn’t hesitate for a second. She stepped into the hall. Something had gone badly wrong inside the facility, and her first thought was: Søren. But she couldn’t wait for him to find her. With any luck, they would run into each other while she sought the exit.

He had to be down here somewhere. She prowled the corridors, searching for him, but she didn’t know where the corridors led, and she didn’t want to go deeper into the complex. In the end, she turned and ran away from the fire, like any intelligent person.

It was becoming harder to breathe. She imagined him staggering, looking for her. Oh, God, if anything happened to him-

With effort, she forced herself to pull it together. Her flight carried her past the cells, where there were still a number of people who appeared to be beyond saving. Mia paused outside one door, hunched over to stay out of the acrid black smoke. The prisoner inside just sat and rocked, like Madame Defarge.

“Come on,” she said to the man inside, but he didn’t seem to hear her.

Tears started in her eyes. I can’t save you. But maybe there are others.

Toward the end of the cell block, a woman rushed out of the open cell and attacked. Mia fought, horrified by the emaciated wraith. Maybe it wasn’t kind or compassionate, but this creature was scarcely human. Mia took scratches all over her forearms before she managed to slam the female’s head against the wall. The thin woman went down silently, her body limp as a broken doll.

Mia ran on, desperately seeking the exit.

Taye focused on the security panel.

The machinery began to smoke, tendrils curling outward, and then the doors swished open. There was no telling how long repairs would take on this end, which meant it was unlikely anyone would be able to give chase. Access to the facility would be entrance-only for a while, another factor in their favor.

As Gillie stepped into the elevator, a woman came pelting out of the dark toward them. Her dark eyes were focused, her expression determined.

“Hold the doors, please,” she choked out.

There were three others behind her, a woman and two men. Gillie was ridiculously relieved to identify the woman who had communicated with her the other day. All of them wore gray pajamas, and they all looked relatively sane. At least, none of them bore marks of self harm; nor did they seem to have been punished recently, another good sign. Rational people did what they must in order to avoid pain. Well, except for Taye.

“Move it,” he ordered. “We don’t know how long we have.”

The raven-haired woman reached the lift first, and she almost threw herself into it. Silas steadied her as the other three slipped in. The orderly let go of the doors, and they closed at last. Movement offered the first, tantalizing hint of freedom. With a jerk and a groaning sound, they jolted upward. There were no buttons; this ride had only two stops: top and bottom.

“Thank God,” the dark-haired woman was saying. “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, and that’s saying something, considering I once spent a summer in Iran in a burqa.”

The rest of the fugitives stood warily regarding Silas, who said, as the elevator jolted to a stop, “I’m not going to hurt you. I was a prisoner, too.”

They seemed doubtful, so Gillie added, “He’s telling the truth. Rowan stuck a control device in his neck.”

“That sounds like the sick fuck,” the female test subject muttered at last.

As the lift shuddered to life, Gillie felt the heat emanating from beneath her and she prayed they would reach the top.

Killing was too good for Jasper Rowan. While the man was unconscious, Søren had rifled through his belongings, but found nothing to aid in his search for the facility’s location. When the good doctor awoke, he was a touch recalcitrant.

So Søren had had to be persuasive. His knuckles were bleeding now. He studied the bruised wretch currently at his mercy. The man’s icy, supercilious air hadn’t lasted past the first punch. After that, he sat and blubbered, but he still stubbornly refused to give any information.

It had taken half the day to find a safe spot to interrogate the son of a bitch. The building was condemned, slated for demolition. Inside, it stank of urine and rat droppings, a perfect place for this kind of business.

Damn, he hated working on the fly. His plans were always flawless and executed with Teflon smoothness. Not today. He cared fuck-all for finesse. Only results mattered.