The Gender War (The Gender Game #4)(27)

Viggo was by my side immediately, his fingers pushing mine away. Within seconds I was free of the cuffs. The rest of the group was throwing their cuffs off as well, exposing our ruse.

King Maxen recoiled in horror. “TRAITOR!” he screamed, pointing at Viggo. “GUARDS! SHOOT THEM!”

There was a metal snap, followed by a chair hurtling through the glass. King Maxen ducked, his arms going over his head, and his guards were forced to leap to the side as shards of heavy glass showered down on them. Then Jay leapt through the remaining glass and slammed into one of the king’s guards while his eyes were still shielded. He picked the man up and simply flung him at the other guard, leaping after them as they both went down in a tangle of limbs. He hauled back his arm, and I could hear the impact of flesh on flesh.

King Maxen was back on his feet, dropping into the worst fighting stance I’d ever seen. “HELP!” he screamed, looking back and forth. He then prepared, apparently, to attack—clumsily throwing himself onto Jay’s back.

The king’s face morphed into an expression of confusion as Jay stood up and turned around. He reached back and dragged the man over his shoulder, easily holding him up by the neck. The king gagged, his feet kicking, and I saw his face turning red.

“We need him alive, Jay,” I shouted, and then Ms. Dale was moving, scrambling through the window after them. She ducked down for a second and came back up with a pair of handcuffs, which she slapped on the king. As soon as they were on, Jay dropped him, and the king gasped, collapsing to the floor.

A moment later, Ms. Dale tossed Viggo a guard’s gun through the shattered window, then picked up the other one, pointing it at the door in their room. “We need to see if we’re pinned down,” she shouted.

I nodded to her. The sound of gunfire in the corridor outside had stopped, and that was ominous. “Everybody, get away from the doors! Somebody grab the king and get him over here.”

“Don’t you dare touch me, you bastards,” I heard the king say, and I shook my head at him as Jay pushed him through the window, sideways, having no trouble lifting the man. The king landed on his side hard, and then looked up at us, his eyes wide in fear. “Please don’t kill me,” he wheezed.

I gave him a disdainful look as Jay, having delivered the king through the window, went to help Ms. Dale secure the fallen guards. “We’re not going to kill you, sad to say. If you’re lucky, we might actually get you out of here alive. Tim,” I said to my brother, who looked like he was about to follow Jay across to the other room. “Would you keep an eye on this guy for us?” It seemed like the safest task I could assign Tim at the moment.

He nodded and came to stand watchfully by the king. The king gaped at me as I stepped over him and stooped to pick up, with my left hand, a piece of the mirror glass that glittered on the floor.

Viggo was right behind me. “I’m going to open the door,” I told him. “I’ll use this to see around the corner. Give me some covering fire, but keep it high—I don’t want to kill them if we don’t have to.”

Viggo nodded and held his gun up. “Ready,” he said.

I pulled open the door for him, and he fired a few rounds down the hall. As the shots rang out, I darted down low, under him, and stuck a piece of the mirror glass beyond the doorframe just in time to see a familiar flash of red hair as one of the attackers ducked back around a corner.

“It’s Amber,” I gasped, and Owen looked at me, his brows furrowed. Viggo pulled back into the room’s cover and pointed his gun at the floor.

“Not to alarm anyone,” Ms. Dale’s voice came calmly from the other room. “But they’ve got people on this side too. They might be trying to—” I heard her fire a few rounds down the hallway.

“Ideas?” I asked, ducking back from the doorway as more gunfire went off.

“How did they even know where I was?” cried the king. “This is a secret facility!”

I looked at Viggo, whose expression showed sudden understanding, and then felt a surge of annoyance as I came to the same conclusion. “Please… please tell me they didn’t follow us here,” I said, looking over to Owen.

He shook his head and gave a shrug. “You know I haven’t heard anything from the Liberators since you stopped the bombing,” he replied. “But that sounds exactly like Desmond.”

I groaned, massaging my forehead against my growing headache. “That was why they stopped trying to chase us from Matrus? This is like jumping out of the frying pan, expecting fire, only to find out you’ve been in the oven the whole damn time!”

“Look, let me try something,” announced Owen, creeping over to us.

I looked up at him. “What?”

Before Viggo and I could stop him, he stepped into the hall with his hands up, a slight cringe on his face. “Don’t shoot!” he called.





11





Viggo





I bit back a curse as Owen stepped into the hallway. I was preparing to grab him by the back of his uniform and haul him back in, when the gunfire suddenly stopped, as if someone had flipped a switch. There was a long silence that seemed louder than the sound of gunfire.

“Owen,” called a familiar, older voice from down the hall. I looked through the broken window at Ms. Dale, who was jamming a chair against the door in the other room.