Through Glass(74)

“Abran. He’s been trying to find a way to defeat the Tar since this all began. He’d capture them, run experiments, observe them. A few years ago, he tried to gain approval for a new form of testing. Travis and a few others shot him down. Since then, he’s been getting more secretive, hiding himself and his team away for days. Classifying what came out of his experiments. Slowly everyone approved his testing, everyone except Travis. We’ve had our theories, but I never thought he would actually do it—”

Her words cut off as the walls around us shook, the sound of hundreds of feet thundering in the halls around us.

“There’s Travis’s signal. We have to get out of here. If Tee hasn’t been stopped, he should have all the supplies. Now the trick is to get to the wall without being seen.”

“Easy right?” I asked, knowing it wouldn’t be.

“Yeah… easy.” She smiled once before dodging back out of the room and into the white hall.

She took one corner before leading us up a large, tile staircase. Her hand held me back right before we turned the corner onto an upper level.

We held completely still as she waited for something. My ears perked at every sound and my heart beat sounded like a reverberating drum in the stairwell and not just in my chest.

I let out a shaky breath right as we began to move, our steps more slow and calculated than they were a moment before. Bridget took one step after another before stopping at the top, her back plastered against the wall.

At the top of the stairs were shattered glass doors, the metal frames crumpled and broken. I guess I knew where the explosion from earlier had come from. I followed Bridget’s movements closely, plastering myself against the wall as we looked through the doorframe that led into a large, grassy field. A football field.

“I will go first, you follow me. No matter what happens, Lex, just run straight ahead. Travis should be waiting for you in between the green and red bleachers.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke, instead her eyes scanned the sky around us, the bright lights offsetting the black into an odd green color.

“And if he’s not?” I asked, my chest tightening as I looked at her.

“Then it was nice knowing you,” she answered as she looked away. My teeth ground together at what we were about to do.

She said nothing, simply ran onto the field with her gun out in front of her as I followed and burst out on the green grass. We had barely taken two steps in before the gun fire started, but I could tell automatically that it wasn’t the same beams of light that both Bridget and I held in our hands, these were bullets.

“Run!” she screamed as she turned to fire at them, bright beams of light shooting from the barrel of her green gun. Her face was tangled in fear as she yelled. Shot after shot fired from her gun.

I didn’t argue, I merely turned and bolted to the faded red and green paint of the bleachers seeming like an angel’s gate. I had almost made it when I heard Bridget scream behind me. The scream turned into a deranged yell of anger.

I turned at the noise, my eyes widening at the bright red blood that seeped over her arm and down her back. She continued to fire at the dozens of attackers that lined the stands around us, but her arms were lowering, her strength leaving.

I didn’t hesitate, I turned and raised the green weapon still in my hand, pulse after pulse of light flying away from me as I fired at everyone I could, doubting I was hitting much of anything. I backed myself into the shadow of the bleachers, shielding myself from any possible attack.

“Come on!” I yelled at her, my voice barely audible amongst the bangs from the guns that still surrounded us.

Bridget picked herself up and ran toward me, her shoulder still seeping blood.

“Are you all right?” I asked the second she was close enough to hear me, but she said nothing, only walked right past me and into the arms of Travis who came barreling around the corner with his own gun in his hands.

“Bridge!” he yelled. “What happened?”

Again, she said nothing. She just slumped into him, her body sagging at the blood loss.

“I’m sorry, Tee. I didn’t think they would use real bullets.” Her voice was soft as she wrapped her arms around him.

“It’s okay, baby,” he sighed, his voice soft as he pressed his lips against hers.

I felt the intake of my breath, hoping no one had heard it. The two held each other for a moment and I watched, unabashedly at their intimate moment. They were lovers, a couple. They meant something to each other and they had risked it all for me. That knowledge was sharp like barbed wire in my heart. Travis wasn’t alone, not really. Yet, he still risked everything for me. They both did.

“Let’s go,” Travis sighed, his arms tightening around Bridget as he led her toward what was unmistakably a door in front of us.

“No, Travis, no,” Bridget sighed, her voice pained. “I can’t go.”

“You can go,” Travis said, his arm still around her as he led us closer to the door, as the yells of the army behind us approached.

I lifted my gun and turned toward the light that filtered through the opening behind us, expecting them to burst through at any moment.

“I’m bleeding, Travis. If I go, if I bleed out…” Bridget whispered, her voice soft as she pleaded with him.

“It’ll be fine…” Travis said, his voice hard as he continued to move us forward. My eyes darted back and forth, dark shapes were coming into view as they prepared to follow us into the dark.