Chapter 137

Adam flew down the hallways as quickly as he could go, trying not to think about what might happen to Rain and Lightning while he was gone. He had to let the men out of the storage closet and get them outside. Getting them out of the closet would be easy. Getting them out of the building would be harder, especially if the Military Mothers had caught on already that tactics had been changed, and rather than trying to find the records room, at least part of the Quebecian forces were trying to circumvent it.
Seeing the storage room up ahead, Adam sped up and then skidded to a stop in front of the door. Lightning had changed the code, so all he’d have to do was type in the new, easy-to-remember code and then throw that latch, which should be easy enough. As long as the Mothers didn’t sneak up and shoot him in the back.
He knew that the men on the other side would have no idea who was opening the door, and they wouldn’t be able to hear him if he said anything before he got it open, so he decided to throw the door open and jump back out of the way until they saw that it was him--or at least that it was a man. They’d know it had to be someone on their side if it was a man whether they recognized him as a former Dick or not.
Adam punched in the code, threw the latch up, pulled the door, and jumped out of the way as the men did exactly what he thought they would do, came out swinging.
“It’s me! Twenty-four C!” Adam assured them, his hands up. One of the men connected with a right hook that hit him in the side, but he was okay, just a little winded. Unfortunately, the men were in no shape to fight.
“Twenty-four C!” one of them shouted. “Oh, my God! It really is you!”
“Yeah, it is, and we need to get out of here. Now.” He hated that they wouldn’t be able to stop and get some clothes, but he needed to get them out of the building as soon as humanly possible.
“The closest door is this way!” one of them shouted. It was the same door Adam already knew about and had in mind to take them out. He nodded, and they all took off running toward the door near the cafeteria.
Now would’ve been a great time to have a comm. If he could’ve told the commanders what was going on, let them know that he was coming out with a bunch of Dicks that needed their help, it was possible they might have been able to help. Perhaps they could have sent more troops to meet them or even come into the building to assist the exit. But he had the idea that he was going to hazard getting shot at as he stuck his head out of the door.
Assuming he even got to the door. They had a distance to run, and there was no guarantee that the Mothers weren’t going to find a way around the locked door they’d come through.
The idea that they might want to go at a slower, quieter pace would’ve been a waste of Adam’s breath if he’d even bothered to make it. They were in such a rush to get out of the building, they might’ve run right into a line of Mothers with guns without thinking twice. Hopefully, he wasn’t about to find out.
They turned left at the next hallway, the slap of bare feet behind him echoing off of the linoleum floors. Adam was still in front, his rifle at the ready. If he could’ve armed some of the others, he would’ve felt better about their chances, but he only had the one weapon, and he was pretty sure none of them knew how to shoot a gun anyway.
The cafeteria was right ahead of them. They just needed to run the length of it, turn the corner, and there was the door. The exit. The only reason he knew it was there was because Lightning had told him about it in the planning phase of the Rebellion. From the cafeteria, the men had no idea there was a door less than twenty feet on the other side of the wall. The only doors they used were on the other side of the room, and that was always under strict supervision from the Mothers and weren’t exits. The men that had attempted to escape from the cafeteria during the Rebellion would’ve had to go out those other doors and all the way around through hallways they’d never navigated before toward an exit they didn’t know was there into a world they couldn’t imagine.
“There it is!” one of the men shouted as the door came into view on their left. Twenty feet away at best. Just as the lead group began to turn the corner, a barrage of gunfire rang out in the hall behind them. Men screamed and ducked, covering their heads. Adam had paused at the turn to make sure everyone got around the corner. Now, he could see through the scattering Dicks that there was a group of Mothers coming from down the hallway at full speed, shooting as they ran.
There were only four or five of them. He couldn’t tell because of the men in the way, and they weren’t that good at hitting their targets while they were running. A spray of blood told him at least one man was hit, but it didn’t look to be life-threatening because no one was on the ground. They hurried around the corner as Adam stepped between them, trying to take aim at the attacking force.
“It’s locked!” one of the men shouted. “We can’t get out!”
Adam opened fire on the Mothers, aiming for the lead women first. He hit one in the forehead, knocking her backward into the one behind her, who stumbled but didn’t fall. He shot the other one in front in the shoulder, but it didn’t penetrate her uniform, so he had to fire at her again. She managed to get a shot off that hit him in the leg before harmlessly bouncing away. It stung a little, but it didn’t hurt.
The men were panicking at the door, trying to pound through it. He didn’t understand why Lightning didn’t get the door unlocked already. She had to see this on the cameras, didn’t she? Unless… something had happened to Lightning. And if something happened to Lightning, then that meant something had probably happened to Rain.
And he couldn't let himself think about that.
Adam continued to shoot at the women, hitting two more before they were close enough that he could move in and take them out another way. They weren’t expecting that. He grabbed the lead woman’s rifle, shoving it, and her, backward into the wall before throwing an elbow in the face of another, spinning the rifle he’d yanked out of the first Mother’s hands and shooting the second one in the forehead. He kicked another in the stomach, knocking her to the ground and stepping on her neck as he grabbed the last woman by the arm, yanked her arm behind her back, hearing a sickening crack as she screamed, and then grabbed her neck and twisted until she stopped screaming.
He’d managed to kill five women in less than three minutes--and he didn’t feel bad about it at all.
“The door is locked, Twenty-four C!” one of the men shouted as Adam came running back to them.
He looked up at the ceiling, trying to see if he could find a camera somewhere to let Lightning know that she needed to unlock the damn door, if she was still alive, but he didn’t see a camera. Surely, she had to know which door they’d gone to.
“Damn it,” Adam mumbled. “All right. Everyone move back,” Adam insisted.
“What if more Mothers come?” A blond who couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen asked, sniffling.
“It’ll be all right,” Adam insisted, even though he didn’t have any reason at all to think that what he’d said was true.
There was no keypad on the door, so that might have been why Lightning couldn’t unlock it, but he thought that all of the locks were controlled by the same computer system. It might be easier for him to blast through the door without a keypad, though.
First, Adam tried slamming his shoulder into the door a few times, but that only rocked it slightly and didn’t cause the lock to pop. He would’ve asked some of the other men to help him, but none of them looked strong enough to do any good. Visions of men on the floor with broken bones from him requesting they throw themselves at the door came to mind, so he pushed that thought away quickly enough.
“I’m going to try and shoot the lock open, okay?” Adam said, looking at the men behind him. “So back up and cover your heads and faces the best you can.” He didn’t know if he’d put them in danger this way or not, but it was the only other option he had available.
Adam aimed at the locking mechanism, near the handle of the door, and pulled the trigger quickly four times. The door stayed closed, but when he grabbed the handle and pushed it while throwing his shoulder into the door, he felt it crack slightly.
“I’m shooting again!” he warned them and then hit the door again with three more rounds. This time, when he tried the door, it popped free, and pushing the bar enabled him to force the door open.
Adam swiveled his rifle around to his back and stuck his hands out through the small opening first, so that any soldiers on the other side of the door would see his uniform and understand that he was on their side. He expected there to be Quebecians everywhere around the building, but he heard nothing.
Tentatively, Adam peeked out the door. They were at the back of IW, on the opposite side from where he’d first entered the building that day, far away from the woods where their camp was located. But not seeing anyone at all gave him hope that the Mothers had all been run off or taken captive.
“Come on,” he said to the terrified men behind him. “Let’s get you out of here."