Chapter 277: Chapter 276 - To The Ground
Sector One held.
For now.
The gate shook again behind them, and everyone flinched. Survivors pressed themselves against the walls, some crying into their hands, some staring at the sealed metal like they expected it to split open.
The mother Iyisha had found in Sector Two sat on the floor with her daughter locked against her chest while the young doctor pressed cloth hard against the bite on her shoulder.
Iyisha stood because Malcolm held her there.
Her legs still shook. Sweat ran cold down her neck. The lab coat hung loose around her body, and the sheet under it kept slipping every time she moved. She could feel the counteragent crawling through her blood, fighting the drug in ugly waves.
She turned toward Malcolm and grabbed the front of his shirt.
He looked down at her at once.
She kissed him.
It was clumsy. Her mouth missed his at first because her head still felt wrong, but Malcolm caught the back of her neck and held her steady. She pressed closer, shaking against him, and the tears came before she could stop them.
"You came," she whispered.
His face tightened. "Always."
She choked on a breath and pressed her forehead to his chest. "They almost did it."
Malcolm went still.
Iyisha’s fingers dug into his shirt. "They almost killed our baby."
His arm locked around her.
For one second, he did not look at the gate. He did not look at the survivors. He looked only at her, and the anger in his face went so quiet it scared her more than shouting would have.
"You’re pregnant?"
Iyisha chuckled. "I told you. I know I am."
Malcolm slowly put his hand over her belly. For a moment, no one talked.
"It’s real." He muttered.
She nodded her head fast, then gagged when the motion turned her stomach. She bent over and vomited again, one hand pressed to his arm, the other over her stomach. The young doctor glanced up from the bitten woman.
"That’s the counteragent," he said. "It is forcing her system up too fast."
Malcolm looked at him.
The doctor swallowed and went back to the wound.
"I’m fine," Iyisha said.
"You are not."
"I’ll be fine. You’re here to save me."
His hand softened at her waist. "I am."
Cedric crouched beside the freight elevator panel at the end of Sector One. The cover had been torn off, and wires spilled out in a twisted mess under his hands. His face looked worse under steady light. Hollow cheeks. Dry lips. Dirt caked along his jaw and neck. His fingers shook every few seconds, but the moment they touched wires, they moved with purpose.
Phillip stood near the sealed gate with a rifle pointed at the metal. He looked too large for how thin he had become. His shirt hung loose on his shoulders. His skin had gone gray with hunger, but he stayed planted between the survivors and whatever waited behind the gate.
A teenage boy pushed through the cluster of survivors.
"Dad?"
Phillip turned.
The rifle lowered before he seemed to understand why.
The boy ran into him hard enough to make him stagger. Phillip caught him with one arm, then both, and for the first time since Iyisha saw him, his body gave out in a way that had nothing to do with hunger.
He dropped to one knee and pulled the boy against his chest.
The boy started crying at once.
Phillip held the back of his head and bent over him, his face pressed into the boy’s hair. His shoulders shook once, then again, and his hand tightened in the boy’s shirt like he was afraid the child would vanish if he loosened his grip.
"You’re alive," Phillip said, but the words broke in the middle. " They said..." He sobbed. "They said you’re dead."
The boy nodded hard against him. "I thought you were dead."
Phillip shut his eyes.
"I’m here," he said. "I’m here."
The boy cried harder.
Around them, the survivors began to break too. The mother from Sector Two held her daughter and sobbed into her hair. The old man who had been whispering numbers covered his face with both hands.
A woman in a torn hospital gown slid down the wall and cried without sound, her whole body shaking as another survivor held her shoulder.
It spread through the room in small broken sounds.
Relief.
Shock.
Fear that had nowhere else to go.
Phillip stayed on one knee with his son locked against him. The rifle lay across his thigh, forgotten for a few seconds. His son clung to him with both hands and would not let go.
Cedric heard them.
His hands paused over the wires.
He did not turn around.
Iyisha saw the stillness in his shoulders, the way his head lowered for half a second before his fingers moved again. Whoever Cedric had come for was not in this room.
Another impact hit the gate.
The metal bent inward by a fraction, and the survivors cried out. Phillip pulled his son behind him by instinct and raised the rifle again, but the boy kept one hand twisted in his father’s shirt.
Iyisha forced her voice through the sick weight in her throat. "Phillip. Cedric."
Phillip looked at her.
"Arnulf thought you were dead," she said. "What happened?"
Cedric gave a dry laugh without looking back.
Phillip wiped his face with the back of his wrist and kept his rifle on the gate. "During the first raid, we were getting the door ready. Cedric had the panel open. We thought we had enough time."
"We didn’t," Cedric said.
Phillip’s son pressed closer against his side.
Phillip touched his head once, then continued. "Soldiers came in. The gate closed before we could get through. We hid in the vents and maintenance spaces. Anywhere they didn’t look."
"You were here the whole time?" Iyisha asked.
Phillip nodded.
His son broke again at that and buried his face against him.
Phillip’s mouth tightened. "We ate what we had in our pockets. After that, whatever we could steal. Water from leaking pipes. Scraps from staff rooms. We were almost done."
Cedric shoved two wires together. The elevator panel blinked once, then died again.
"Then the alarm hit," Cedric said. "Intruder inside."
His eyes flicked to Malcolm.
"We figured our group was stupid enough to come back."
A woman near the wall looked at Malcolm, then at Iyisha.
"You opened the doors?" she asked.
Cedric kept working. "Some of them."
The woman started crying harder. "We thought we are never getting out of here."
The mother with the little girl lifted her face. "Thank you."
More voices followed, soft and rough. Thank you. God, thank you. Please get us out. The words overlapped until they were almost part of the alarm.
Iyisha swallowed hard.
She did not know what to do with it. Cedric had opened cages and monsters. Malcolm had cut through the lab to reach her. People had died in the corridor so they could stand here and cry.
Still, they looked at them like they had brought air back into the room.
Iyisha looked at Cedric. "Thank you."
Cedric stared at the panel. His jaw worked once.
"Don’t thank me yet," he said. "We still have to get out."
Phillip looked at her. "We need to get out."
Cedric leaned closer to the panel. "That depends on whether this elevator still wants to be an elevator."
The freight elevator doors stood shut, broad and scarred, with a faded yellow caution line across the floor. A service lift, not a passenger route. Big enough for carts, bodies, equipment. Big enough for all of them if they packed in tight.
"Soldiers could be waiting above." Phillip said as he kissed and checked on his son.
"Soldiers are definitely waiting above," Cedric said.
The floor trembled under her bare feet.
Everyone looked up.
Another impact followed. Then gunfire. A deeper roar shook dust from the corners of the elevator frame.
Malcolm’s face changed.
"They’re here."
Iyisha looked at him. "Marybeth?"
"Yes."
Aljun’s name hit her next. Lance. Arnulf. Tilly. Chanse. Harry. Bert. All of them above ground, running into whatever waited there.
Her stomach twisted again, but nothing came up this time.
Cedric cursed under his breath and jammed two wires together.
The elevator panel blinked yellow.
Then red.
"Come on," he muttered.
A heavy slam hit the Sector One gate.
The survivors cried out as the metal bowed inward. Phillip fired through the small lower gap when something moved on the other side. A twitcher shrieked, then another impact followed, lower and harder.
Cedric’s hands flew over the panel. Sweat ran down his face. His breathing turned ragged.
"Cedric," Phillip said.
"I know."
The elevator groaned.
The doors shifted.
Cedric pressed two bare wires together and held them with his fingers even when the current made his hand jerk.
The panel turned green.
"Got it."
The freight doors opened.
Stale air rolled out from the lift shaft. The elevator cage waited inside, dim and wide, with metal walls and a grated floor. Everyone stared at it for one stunned second.
Malcolm turned. "Inside. Now."
The survivors moved.
Phillip pushed them in order. The bitten mother first with her daughter. Phillip’s son next. The old man who kept whispering numbers. The women in gowns. The boy carrying a child. Archie would have hated this crowd, Iyisha thought distantly, then realized she did not know where he was and almost lost her footing again.
Malcolm caught her.
She sighed and let him guide her into the elevator.
Cedric came last, one hand still holding the wires until everyone was inside. Phillip stepped in after him and raised the rifle toward the gate as another crash hit Sector One.
Cedric released the wires and slammed his palm against the inside controls.
The doors started to close.
A twitcher hit the narrowing gap.
Phillip fired into its face.
The body dropped, but its arm caught between the doors. Malcolm stepped forward, kicked the arm out, and the doors sealed with a hard metallic thud.
The elevator jerked.
Iyisha grabbed Malcolm’s shirt with both hands.
The lift rose, slowly.
The survivors breathed in broken sounds around them. Someone prayed. Someone cried into their sleeve. Phillip had one arm around his son and the rifle in his other hand. Cedric sat on the floor with his back against the wall, eyes closed, fingers burned and trembling in his lap.
Malcolm stood with Iyisha against him.
She lifted her face to his. "You saved us."
His eyes dropped to her stomach.
Her hand followed his gaze.
He touched her there, barely. "I should have been faster."
She shook her head. "You came."
The lift rattled upward.
Gunfire grew louder above them.
The elevator stopped.
The doors opened.
The ground level of Fort Schuyler was chaos.
Smoke moved across the open yard. Red lights flashed against stone walls. Guards ran in broken lines, some firing toward the gate, some dragging wounded men away from the entrance. The gate hung bent and torn open, one side folded inward like something huge had hit it with its whole body.
Then Iyisha saw it.
In the middle of the fort grounds stood the tank they had escaped from.
