Subordinance

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

For the first time since arriving at the Enemy building, I feel peace.

It may be a twisted, conflicted, selfish kind of peace, but peace all the same.

And peace is what I need right now.

The quiet of the halls amplifies the sound of my feverish panting, my breaths dragging in air that fuels my thoughts. The tracker in my hand is on, the red light blinking.

I wonder how long it will take for Delta to get here.

I wonder what I've just done.

For now, though, in the silence after the storm, I sink to the floor, stretching my legs out in front of me and releasing the crippling tension I've balled up in my shoulders since we walked into the woman's study.

Snapshots of her presentation spin through my mind on replay, and I squeeze my eyes shut to stop it.

And it does.

I'm slowly regaining control over my emotions, it seems. I breathe heavily, slowly, shutting my eyes and laying against the wall. My hands are splayed on the tiled floor, unconsciously tracing the patterned tile. I push back loose tendrils of hair and finger the ends of the cropped strands. The russet lock glimmers in the light, greasy from days of not showering. Suddenly self-conscious, I smell myself.

A little musky, but not bad.

Phew.

I stare at the ceiling, trying to process all that I've heard. I try to make sense of the frenzied emotions that have knotted themselves into a ball in my chest, a ball that weighs much too heavily on my thoughts. I sort through and I process. I attempt to make sense of everything.

In spite of my efforts, the tangles and snarls of my feelings remain and drag me down.

The quiet of the halls I'd welcomed minutes before now seems eerie. I shift, sitting up straighter against the wall and bracing my palms on the floor.

Isn't anybody wondering what happened to the enemy soldier who escaped?

The woman?

The Quadrant Officer?

BOOM!

An explosion ripples through the building, the glass panels in the wall shattering inwards, raining down shards of sharp-edged glass. The walls shake violently, the acrid smell of explosives staining the air with smoke and vapors. Instinctively, I crouch, covering my head with my arms and running through the hallways on bent legs. The lights flicker and cast the hallway in shadow. I run faster, the calm stolen from my breath and replaced with a painful surge of adrenaline that keeps me alive. My heart pounds, beating harder with each leap of my legs. The ceiling rains down bits of plaster, and I spit the flakes from my mouth and continue running. The building is alive, sirens wailing over the tremors and shakes, shouts and cries harmonizing in a symphony of panic.

I'm skidding down a hallway in a fervent search for a door when another earth-rattling BOOM!shakes the building. I dive, throwing myself to the floor as the lights surge violently, the sirens crescendoing with a new kind of urgency. Panting, I scramble to my feet in search of an exit and run into a young woman, her lab coat billowing behind her, clutching a screen in her arms. She stops when she sees me.

"You!" she cries, her finger pointing at me. "That's all they want!" Her eyes hold a frenzied kind of panic—I can safely assume she's never been in a situation like this before. I shake it off, not stopping in my sprint and pushing forwards. The siren's wail grows louder, the shouting and urgency tangible in a terrible cacophony of panic.