Breaking Free

Chapter Fourteen

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"Hope... Sometimes that's all you have when you have nothing else. If you have it, you have everything."

-Unknown 

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Time never felt so slow as it did in these few minutes. My palms are starting to sweat and I am walking back and forth trying to calm myself. Zeke is kneeling down besides the safe trying to crack it open while the mere thought of even finding the plans is rolling around my mind. After a while I am about to give up but a sudden click caught my attention. I whip my head to Zeke and see him just staring at the safe.

"Aren't you going to open it?" I whisper.

He shook his head. "You do it."

I look at him in confusion but I went towards him. My hands start to shake as I turn the knob of the safe open. As the door opens my heart beat starts to accelerate and my hands slowly reach for the yellow envelope. Taking them out as if it was an infant I set it on my lap.

I open the side of the envelope and take out a folded white sheet of paper, unfolding it the plans slowly come together. I stare at the plans but instead of feeling happy I felt numb.

Many live were destroyed over this.

I have to destroy it. It is too dangerous to just have it laying around but I couldn't bring myself to do it.

In front of me is the only thing that I have that my mom made. These plans are practically her whole life and who she is. No matter how much I know this will bring destruction I simply could not even fathom tearing it apart.

"I can't," I whisper.

Zeke is silent since I opened the envelope that I forgot he is even next to me. He grabs the plans and brings it up to the light. His eyebrows are scrunched together and he keeps on tilting it as if he is trying to find something.

"Zeke what are you doing?"

"These aren't complete," he mumbles.

"What?"

"Where is the rest of the plans?"

"I still don't-"

"Look these only show how to make the actual tech itself it doesn't have anything over the software and without the software it's pretty much useless."

I look at him confused and look more closely at the plans. To me it is all a big chaotic mess of drawings and numbers.

"Why would my mom make all these clues to only lead us to something useless?"

"These don't have to be the plans your mom hid. Your mom and the group she worked with gave the plans which included the software and the structure of the tech to Black. She didn't have to steal the structure because it's pretty much useless without the software."

"Then Black doesn't have the software."

"It's a huge possibility. I mean he's a man of power and money if he wanted to he could have already manufactured millions of these."

"But without the software that would have impossible." I look up at Zeke with relief in my eyes.

It all made sense, the reason why I heard nothing about Black mass producing this is because he doesn't even have the actual plans.

"Then that means the lead we thought we had about the last clue was wrong."

Zeke shrugged. "Seems so, do you have the last clue?"

A frown forms in my face as I try to think back on where the clue might be but nothing came up. I remember putting them in my pocket before I got attacked but the rest was a blur.

"I don't-"

My sentence is cut off by Zeke's hand covering my mouth. I glare at him and try moving his arm but his arms are strong as steel. He pushes me against his chest as he leans against the wall. I really want to punch him but voices that sound far away but still too close echo across the tunnels.

"I think I know a way out of here but you need to be quite."

He releases me and I help him gather the plans up into his backpack. Zeke pulls my hand dragging us towards the door of the room. I can hear the waterfall behind the thin layer of wall that separated us and the heavy footsteps getting near. Zeke pulls me toward along the tunnel and we emerge outside with the waterfall right next to us.

"Okay we have to climb up these rocks and there should be a small opening leading outside." 

"Should be?"

"We have a 50% chance of getting out."

"What about the other 50%?"

"Dying from falling off the rocks or the people who are walking here shooting us."

I just stare at him and he pats my back. "No worries though."

"Right," I say slowly.

We start climbing up the rocks and I am just about a few feet away from reaching the top when a bullet went through the rock right besides my head. More shots sound afterwards and I try to shield my body from them. Zeke is already at the top so he is firing his gun and yelling at me to hurry up.

Once I reached the top I crawled over to Zeke. "Where's the opening?"

"Right there," he said pointing towards a small hole on the roof of the tunnels. I run over the opening and jump up to grab the edge of the rocks. Slowly I pull myself up and the sun blinds my eyes as I use all my strength to get out of the hole. Zeke follows suit and we quickly get up and start to run away from where we came from. As soon as we start to run I can tell we are only a few feet away from the mansion.

"Zeke why are you running to the mansion?!" I yell as we run past the field.

I try to keep up with him but I fail miserably. Finally I reach the gates of the mansion when Zeke climbs over them disappearing from sight.

What the hell is he doing?!

Confused I stay near the gates and wait for him. I lean against the wall and close my eyes trying to calm down my body.

My plan crashes when I hear a gun cocking and cold metal touch my temple.

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Wanted to update after reading all the new comments and votes I been getting :) Also I may or may not be trying to not write an essay that's due tomorrow. 

This is one of my favorite quotes in the book and just for fun who ever comments on who says it first will get a shout out in the next chapter: 

"But even the strong needs someone." 

Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, if you did then don't forget to hit that star on the bottom/side, comment your beautiful thoughts, and share :) 

(PS: Something big is gonna be uncovered on the next chapter!)