Jenna Black - Resistance

“My guess is that there’s a single guard in each,” Nadia said, reaching into her pocket and fingering the canister of knockout gas. “I’ve got some handy supplies thanks to the people who tried to kill me, so I ought to be able to get into one of the towers and subdue the guard. Then I’ll just have to jump down and hope I don’t break my legs.” She hadn’t ever gotten an up-close view of the towers and wasn’t sure how high they were, but out with broken legs would be better than inside in one piece.

“Meet me at the second tower from the right of the entrance, and make sure no one sees the car driving up.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line. Despite everything, Nadia couldn’t help smiling just a little, imagining the looks on their faces when they heard her, a sixteen-year-old gently bred Executive girl, claiming she was going to take out an armed guard all on her own.

“It won’t be as hard as you think,” she assured them. “I’ve got a key card and some knockout gas. And these aren’t prison guards braced for trouble. I doubt any of them has seen any action ever, so they won’t be prepared to deal with me.”

Still silence.

“Unless you have a better idea…?”

Someone—or maybe multiple someones—let out a heavy, frustrated sigh that she took for a no.

“All right, then. I’ll see you in a few minutes.” She crossed the fingers of her free hand, knowing there were about a thousand things that could go wrong, no matter how easy she had made her escape plan sound.

“Be careful,” Dante said, as if there were any doubt that she would.

“You too. And thanks for coming for me.” Her throat tightened with grateful tears, but as with everything else, she didn’t have time for them right now.

Bracing herself for another plunge into danger, she hung up the phone.

Nadiaexited the building onto the back porch where people had gathered for the funeral. Unlike at Tranquility, there were no discreet little lights marking the edges of the walking paths here. During the day, there was a clear view from the porch straight to the fence, though it was at least a quarter mile away. At this time of night, however, there was nothing but an intimidating pool of darkness out there. The fence itself and the watchtowers were well lighted, but getting there would require a nerve-jangling run in the dark.

There was no sign of the moon or the stars, which Nadia took to mean it was overcast. The air had a wintry bite to it, and she could see her breath steaming. Spring took its own sweet time to visit upstate, and Nadia shivered with a combination of cold and nerves as she took off across the lawns. The overcast sky would work to her advantage, she told herself even as she stumbled over the decorative rock edging of one of the paths. It might make for a stubbed toe here and there, but it was far less likely anyone would see her as she ran toward the tower.

Nadia forced herself to slow down when she approached the band of light that stretched out from the watchtower. She stood still under the protection of the darkness and took stock of the situation.

The tower was narrow and circular, a utilitarian concrete cylinder with a glass-enclosed control room at the top. As she’d expected, there was a single guard stationed in the control room, sitting on a tall stool and facing out over the fence. But he wasn’t actually looking out, or even looking at the feed from the security cameras on the various screens built into the console; his attention focused instead on something he held in his lap. From his jerky, urgent movements and the occasional flashes of colored light, Nadia guessed he was playing some kind of game on his handheld.

He was exactly as alert as Nadia had hoped he would be. She watched for a minute or two and saw that he spared the console a brief glance every once in a while. Nadia couldn’t see the images on the console, but she was pretty sure the cameras were pointing outward, designed to find people trying to sneak close enough to get forbidden photographs of the Executive residents.

Getting her key card and the canister of knockout gas ready, Nadia sprinted toward the tower, her whole body tense with nerves when she stepped into the light. She half expected lights to start flashing and sirens to start blaring, but nothing happened, and the only thing she could hear over the pounding of her heart was the thump of her feet hitting the turf.

She made it to the base of the tower without being seen. Sure enough, there was a card reader at the base of the tower by the door. Nadia cursed in a way that would make her mother cringe when she tried Lily’s card and it didn’t work. Apparently, the security crew had their own access cards.

So much for that plan.

But Nadia had to get into the tower. It was her only hope of escape, and she was painfully aware of every agonizingly slow second that passed by. Surely Lily and Athena were awake by now, probably had been for a while, and were making noise in an effort to attract attention. Though come to think of it, they’d be pretty hard-pressed to come up with an explanation for what had happened, so maybe they weren’t in such a great hurry to raise the alarm after all.

Reminding herself for the millionth time that the man in the tower was a night watchman, not a trained, paranoid prison guard, Nadia took a gamble and pounded on the door with her fist.

“Help!” she cried. “Open up! Help!” She let out a muffled sob that sounded forced to her own ears, but that she hoped sounded real to the guard.

An elongated man-shaped shadow formed on the grass behind her as the guard stood up and stepped to the window to investigate, but he couldn’t see her where she stood in the protection of the doorway.

“Help!” she cried again, and gave the door another pound for good measure.

“Who’s there?” the guard called out. “What’s wrong?”

Nadia just sobbed and gasped, making as if she were so panicked she couldn’t even talk. If the guard called for backup, she was in big trouble, but she was gambling it wouldn’t even occur to him.

He called out again, but she kept making incoherent sobbing sounds. Sure enough, she soon heard the clank of shoes hitting metal stairs as the guard came down to investigate. She readied the canister of knockout gas.

The moment the door opened, she stuck her foot in the gap to stop it from closing and discharged the knockout gas straight into the guard’s face.

He had about two seconds to register surprise before his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed. He was too heavy for Nadia to move, so she merely stepped over him to get inside. Because another weapon couldn’t hurt, she relieved the unconscious man of his sidearm before she sprang for the stairs. She held her breath to avoid accidentally breathing in any gas until she made it to the top.

The windows around the control center allowed the room to be climate controlled, which Nadia supposed was only reasonable, considering how fierce the winters could be. But it didn’t make sense to station an armed guard behind windows if he couldn’t open them to shoot, so she fiddled around with the center panel until she found a catch and popped it open. She swung her legs out and sat on the ledge, looking down. She was definitely up higher than she’d like to jump from, maybe ten feet or so, but she didn’t have a choice.

Ahead of her, just outside the reach of the lights, shadows moved in the darkness. Thinking that she was quite literally making a leap of faith, Nadia jumped.

Abouthalf a mile shy of the Sanctuary, Dante pulled the car into the parking lot of a small grocery store that was closed for the night. He parked around back by the delivery entrance so that no one driving by would see the car. Not that there was any traffic out in the middle of nowhere at this time of night, but you couldn’t be too careful.