Chapter 150

Listening to the motorcycle speed away from her, Rain took careful aim at the tree across the wooded area from her. She could see the form of the sniper sitting on a high branch. Her dark brown uniform didn’t blend in well with the green leaves.
Rain supposed her black uniform didn’t disappear while she was standing next to the tree either. She pulled the trigger on her gun several times, hoping to distract the Mother long enough that Adam could get out of her range.
The Mother shot back at Rain. She ducked around the back of the tree and came out the other side, keeping most of her body behind the slender trunk as she squeezed the trigger a few more times. More fire came her way, but the sound of the motorcycle had faded. Adam had to have been out of range.
Rain also realized that the five-minute countdown had to be up. She hadn’t heard any explosions yet. Was it possible that the Mothers were just supposed to start their retreat at the five-minute mark? Or did Mother White lie about the entire scenario?
It wouldn’t surprise Rain if the woman had been lying--about everything. There was no reason for Rain to think she could be telling the truth about being her biological mother. After all, that information was supposed to be impossible to access. Sure, Mother White had been a high-ranking military official, but that didn’t mean she’d be able to get that sort of information.
Rain could tell herself that the Military Mother had been lying, but the fact of the matter was that her gut was telling her that Mother White had been telling the truth.
Now wasn’t the time to be dwelling on that anyway. With Adam out of range of the sniper, she needed to either kill the woman or get away from the shooter herself. She wasn’t doing anyone any good standing there.
Maybe she should go back inside of the building and try to find Mist. Adam had the thumb drive now, so she didn’t need to worry about that getting lost in the debris if the building came crashing down around her. The Quebecians would have what they needed, assuming Adam made it back to camp. And he would.
He had to.
Rain looked back at the medical building. She could access the same door she just left. It would mean running over open ground with at least one shooter trained on her, but she had to do something, didn’t she? How could she just stand there and let Mist and Adam take all of the risk?
Determined to go back, Rain spun around the tree and fired at the place where the sniper had been sitting.
But she was gone. Puzzled, Rain took cover and surveyed the woods. She didn’t see even a hint of brown uniform anywhere in the foliage around her, nor had the shooter run back to the building.
“Where the hell did she go?” Rain asked.
The mystery would have to wait. Beneath her feet, Rain felt a tremble and realized that the timer had gone off after all. The ground was shaking because the medical ward was exploding. Visions of what it must be like inside of there as the ceiling started to fall down on them, made her stomach twist in knots. Mist was in there! So were Seth and Josie.
She had to go back in.
Rain tucked her gun into her holster and shot off across the open ground again, hoping that, if the shooter was still around, any bullets she fired would hit Rain’s bulletproof uniform and not her head or a weak area. She’d been incredibly lucky so far not to have sustained any life-threatening injuries.
Running back into a building that was being blown up from the inside out was probably not the best way to keep that streak alive, but she had to try.
The closer she got to the building, the more she could feel the tremors. The ground was shaking, and then, after a few seconds, she heard an explosion. They didn’t sound like the huge earth-shattering, ear-splitting fireworks Mother White had described, but a whole lot of smaller bombs could do just as much damage as a couple of big ones if they were placed in the right location. And she had to assume that the Mothers would place them all in the right position.
Rain reached the door and stepped inside. The lights were all out. The first explosions must’ve knocked out power. Did that mean all of the doors would be unlocked or impossible to unlock? Had they knocked down enough doors so that everyone could get out either way?
She tore down the hallway, trying to figure out which way Mist would’ve gone and where she could be now. It didn’t take long for her to hear the sound of boots thumping along the ground as troops ran from the center of the building, trying to get out. Rain turned a corner and nearly collided with several people wearing the same uniform as her, all of them covered in ash, their faces black with soot. “What happened?”
“Dirty bombs!” someone shouted. “Get out while you can!”
Rain’s mouth fell open. She wasn’t even sure what a dirty bomb was. She had to assume she’d find out soon enough. She wasn’t turning back.
It was much easier to get to the center of the building with no one shooting at her. She saw plenty of people, but none of them were Mothers. None of the living ones, anyway. Rain managed to slip between the Quebecian forces that were running out. A smart person would’ve run with them. It wasn’t as if she even knew whether or not her friends were still in the building. She had a feeling that they were, though.
Another explosion shook the building. This time, she heard large pieces of ceiling and walls come crashing down further inside of the structure. Screams and shouts followed. Where was Mist?
“Come on! Get out! Now!”
Down the hall and around the corner, Rain heard a familiar voice and headed in that direction. The crowd of retreating soldiers was thicker now, so it made it harder to get through them, but she had to get to Seth.
“Let’s go! Get out! Our work is done! Come on!” He was standing in the hallway, directing traffic, urging the soldiers to run out of the building. Many of these people were dirty but not bloodied. She had to imagine they were the troops that had been poured in after the rest of them had breached the building earlier that day. How clever of the Mothers to trick their enemy to bring in everyone they could only to blow them all up.
A screaming woman with hair the same color as Rain’s ran past her, running into her and knocking Rain backward into a wall, hard. The breath was knocked out of her, and before she could recover, another person slammed into her, trampling her foot. This was proving to be even more dangerous than the sharpshooter, and there weren’t even any bombs exploding over Rain’s head.
The troops started to thin out as another explosion went off, closer to their location this time. Rain managed to suck in enough air to take off running again. “Seth!” She slipped between a couple of more soldiers and the wall. “Seth!”
His eyes were wide as he recognized her voice. “Rain? What the hell are you doing in here? Get out!”
“Have you seen Mist?”
His forehead crinkled in confusion. “Not recently. We got a call on the comm that the data had made it out and we needed to evacuate. By then, a few explosions had already gone off. We need to get out of here.”
“Where’s Josie?”
He pressed his lips together and sucked in a breath through his flaring nostrils. “Carried out a while ago.”
“Is she--”
“I don’t know yet,” he said, but he didn’t look hopeful.
The thought that they could lose Josie and Walt on the same day made Rain sick.
She had to find Mist.
“Mist came back in to warn everyone. Are you sure you didn’t see her?”
“I’m sure,” he said. “She could’ve gone a different way. We had troops all over the center of the building.
The building shook again. This explosion was bigger--and closer.
“Rain! You need to get out. Mist wouldn’t want you in here looking for her. She’s probably already out.”
He could be right. Mist might have already left the building.
But Rain didn’t think so. She couldn’t explain why, but in her gut, she had the feeling that her best friend was still inside of the building somewhere.
And that she needed help.
“Which way did you come from?” she asked Seth as another explosion rocked the building. This one was closer to them. More debris from the ceiling fell down on them.
“Up there to the left,” Seth shouted, still ducking from the explosion. “We were almost to the records room when the first explosion started. Then, a few seconds later, I got a message to get out.”
Rain nodded. If he hadn’t seen Mist, and he came from the left, she’d go to the right. “Thanks, Seth.”
As she turned to go, he grabbed hold of her wrist. “Rain! You can’t go that way!”
“Seth, you know I’m going. So either come with me or let me go.”
He looked into her eyes, and for a second, she saw the same emotions she’d seen that night when they’d danced together.
But he didn’t love her like that anymore. Now, he had Josie. And that was okay.
“Let me go, Seth. Go check on Josie.”
His mouth fell open. Even with grime and ash streaked across his face, he was ruggedly handsome. “Rain, be careful.”
She nodded, and Seth let go of her.
Rain turned and ran toward the sound of another explosion.