The Gender Plan (The Gender Game #6)(6)

I fumbled with it, the darkness suffocating, until I managed to work the clasp open. Getting on my knees, trying to ignore my growing anxiety, I began pulling things out hastily, letting them shift down and clatter to the floor before feeling them one at a time. There were several items I couldn’t identify in the dark, then a long plastic tube that felt promising. I found the button on the side and clicked it back.

Nothing. I clicked the button three or four times, harder each time, without success. I shook the stupid contraption and heard a clinking sound. Whatever had happened to it, it wasn’t working.

Breathing out in sour disappointment, I checked the bag again, and then began searching his pockets. Each second felt like an eternity, like this nothingness would forever be my reality.

I gasped when I felt something rectangular and metal brush against my fingertips as I dug my hand into one of Owen’s pockets. Grasping it between clumsy fingers, I was pleased to find that it had a familiar weight. I pulled it out and held it to my nose. The smell of the flammable liquid teased my nostrils, and the smile that broke on my face must have looked kind of manic. It had to be a lighter.

Flipping open the lid, I struck the spark awkwardly, and was rewarded when the device ignited, its bright orange-and-blue flame erupting bright enough to make my vision gray for a second.

“Tim,” I whispered, turning to the stairwell. The flame bounced and flickered, the darkness rushing in and out as I spun it around, but it remained lit, casting a circle of hazy orange light around me. The light cut over Owen’s face, and I paused as I saw the trickle of blood coming from his forehead. I spared a moment to check his eyes, peeling back the lids. His pupils responded to the light, even if he didn’t wake up. The rest of his body seemed thankfully intact.

“Tim?” I repeated as I began to move slowly toward the stairwell. Stepping around a twisted, broken metal shelf, I picked my way around overturned boxes, screws and bolts that had spilled out onto the floor, and large bits of rocks. It looked as though some of the sides of the secret room's walls leaned in, and most of the area around the door to the stairwell had collapsed. Something overhead creaked, and I stopped, raising the lighter up and looking at jagged, deep cracks in the ceiling where the broken concrete, brick, and mortar bits seemed to barely cling to each other, radiating outward from the area of the door like fingers.

I lowered the lighter and moved forward a few steps before stopping again, realizing that the pile of debris blocking my way toward what had once been a stairwell was bigger than I'd thought. A long counter was lying on its side, partially obstructing my path. Draped across it at an angle were several thick wooden boards, topped by broken bits of mortar and brick that looked precarious in their positioning. The boards were holding for now, creating a small gap in the rubble underneath them, and that was my only way through toward where I remembered the door was. A massive shelf had fallen on it at an angle, the objects and boxes under it propping it up slightly. It was a maze of chaos. Nothing looked sturdy at all.

I knelt down to try to peer down the accidental tunnel, and then gave a small, involuntary cry as I saw Tim lying there. His eyes were closed, his cheek resting on the floor. Blood was running from his nose in slow drips. I scooted forward into the hole, sticking my fingers over his mouth and nose before I had time to think. My heart beat twice before I could feel his slow and steady exhale. I held my fingers there for several more seconds, reassuring myself that he was breathing. Then I sat down, close to the boards. Eyeing the distance between myself and Tim’s hand, I braced my foot against the cabinet. I pushed on it a few times to ensure that it wasn’t going to shift as I began to pull. Taking a deep breath in, I closed the lighter. I carefully placed it in my pocket, and then leaned slowly forward, stretching out my hand for where I remembered Tim’s was. I had to adjust my hand a few times, but eventually I grabbed his arm, just above the wrist, and pulled.

Tim shifted forward easily, and I gasped as my ribs pinched together painfully with the effort I was exerting. I didn’t let go of Tim, but relaxed my effort before taking another deep breath and pulling again. Once Tim’s shoulders were clear of the boards, I slid both arms under his armpits, and then squat-walked back with him a few feet. I stumbled on pieces of brick and banged the backs of my calves on a fallen table, but I made it clear of the worst of the debris.

My baby brother definitely wasn’t a baby anymore, I thought as I sat down for a moment and let the warm, dusty, stifling air of the basement do its best to dry the perspiration that had formed on my skin. My breathing was ragged from exertion and fighting through the pain, and my head had begun to ache. After a few moments, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the lighter, flicking it on again.

Tim’s pants were torn in a few places, and there were cuts on his legs and thighs. He wasn’t bleeding profusely, but he was bruising horribly, the skin around the wounds already almost black. This was another side effect of Queen Rina’s experimentation—not only was Tim hypersensitive to touch, so much so that it bordered on pain, but the capillaries just under his skin would rupture more easily and in greater amounts than an ordinary person’s. He was going to hurt for the next few days.

I stroked my fingers through my brother’s hair and then stood up. Ashabee’s secret armory had another exit on the opposite side of the room, a secret driveway for the cars. When Viggo and Owen had explored it—I found myself thinking bitterly of the days when Viggo and Owen worked together, and had to refocus—they had found that there were tunnels that branched off out of this room, one to the fields, another to a location inside the house’s walls. They were both well-disguised on the outside, so there was a good chance Desmond didn’t know about either of the hidden exits. However, opening it now would reveal that advantage to her and her guards, and if she was alive and looking for me, there was no way I would be able to get Owen and Tim out as well. At that moment, I wished desperately for Jay’s strength, knowing that with only my own two arms, it would never work.