Nada's Escape: Fighters' lies

32.3 Race

Through slitted eyes and in a daze of agony, I watch three dark clad figures sneak in past Darcell. I recognise the three musketeers at once, blinking at their apparitions. They don't seem to realise I'm awake. Fern lingers by the door; lookout.

Laura fiddles with something beside my bed and I slide my aching eyeballs there to see her unhook a bag of fluid from a long metal pole. What a strange dream. Why would there be an IV drip in the Huntsmen's world? Josie sweeps the covers off and reaches for my feet. I try to help, rolling onto my side so that they swing from the bed.

"She's awake," Josie hisses, a voice built for clandestine escape, not glaringly white rooms.

My great green skirts are gone, replaced by a crinkled white night gown. My head reverberates like a beating drum. Still, I stagger upright, the effort leaving me gasping. Josie's a warm body to my left, catching my arm. A physical arm, warm and real. I sink my fingers into the skin in amazement.

Breathing aches, walking hurts, but I don't question the help Josie gives me to the door. My little toe stubs the door jamb with a pain so intense I cry out, tears springing to my eyes. What the hell?

Laura takes my other arm, greasy hair rubbing against my cheek. Fern creeps stealthily ahead, checking each doorway with the sharp attentiveness of a Hollywood spy. Black spots in my vision become one with the dark hallway. Why did I leave my bed again?

"What the hell?" I gurgle, resisting the urge to spit with Laura's hair pressed so close to my mouth. My gait feels drunken, the walls swaying on either side like a carnival ride.

"Shh. We're taking you with us," Josie whispers. "Can you run?"

An ugly chuckle rattles my belly. I can't even walk. But I survey the swaying corridor before me, watching it lengthen before my very eyes. It's lined with the smudges of doors, poised to reveal the hospice's Huntsmen, ready to raise the alarm.

We have to run, I tell myself with gritted teeth.

So I stumble forward, ignoring the parts of my abdomen that are bouncing. They shouldn't be. I grind my feet harder into the ground. Awkwardly. Like one of those wooden ducks on a pole. Slap, slap, slap. I bounce off Josie, the wall.

Only a few seconds and I'm breathing pure mucus so I cut off my breathing, holding back the cough even as my gorge rises to match it, whole body heating like an induction stove top. I'm going to vomit. The realisation's as acerbic as the burning in my oesophagus. I trip to the carpet but they're hauling me up again.

No time for weakness. No time to lose. What a messy journey, says some strange part of my brain, wholly unconcerned about my body. I stumble against a window in the wall, a sort of reception desk, coughing.

And then someone comes out of a door behind it. A figure holding a newspaper in one hand. The figure sits, and lifts the newspaper to read. I hold my breath, trying not to make a sound as the figure's face comes into focus. Mildrith raises her eyes from the paper, her stoic gaze meeting mine. A flurry of panic batters at my pain-soaked thoughts, my heart trying to lurch further up in my throat, trying to make me vomit for some horrible reason.

But Mildrith's eyes return expressionlessly to her newspaper. I gasp and she ignores the sound, running a finger down the page instead. I retch against the counter and the musketeers pull me back. But I see the phone on the desk, untouched.

"Did she see us or not?" Whispers someone as I stumble further down the hall. I peer at the doors in despair. I'm not going to make it.

"Obviously not," Laura hisses, hauling me forward with a lurch. "But we'd better keep it that way."

I force myself to go on even as everything screams to stop; I force myself to keep up with the hands on my shoulders even as I fall; I force myself to fall ever forwards towards escape even as my body gives up.

Maybe this is a dream, says that disconnected piece of me. Maybe we'll run down this hallway forever and never get to the end.

But we don't. We break into the air, the night, and I'm faced with a surreal setting. Our desert camo truck idles, back to the doors, the whole side of it exposed to the marketplace and the Academy. Light still streams from the ball room's windows, painting the ground yellow, spreading daubs of colour across the truck.

Row upon row of little houses lay beyond that, the streetlamps blurring like stars in my watery eyes. I imagine them, the Huntsmen behind every window, the enemy behind every door. Just waiting to spring the final trap. We're a duckling in the middle of a firing squad. My hands won't work on the truck's side and so soft hands haul me in. I don't care what's happening anymore, there's a restless fear in my heart. We won't make it. We won't make it.

"Go!" I rasp, a million other voices seeming to echo it. I grab hold of my shaking, panting self and force the urge to vomit back, clutching the metal beneath my face. Everything still hurts. That, I can be sure, is real.

Despite my struggles, I still sink like a rock towards unconsciousness; the mask of all pain. The familiar voices around me fade to black.