Page 9 of Remnants
Dane curses, then carefully rolls Cassandra to her back in his lap, freeing me.
I sit up with a soft grunt of pain from my head and shoulder, but freeze when I notice her eyes are closed. “Shit!”
“She’s just passed out. But we’re fucked about getting the kids out of here and help for her.”
“Can’t she heal it?” I ask.
“She can’t heal herself. She needs to go to a hospital.”
The scuff of a shoe snaps my attention back to the group, and my arm with the gun jumps up automatically. “Move that foot forward one more time, and I’ll put a bullet through your skull. I don’t have enough ammo to bother with warning shots.”
They whisper amongst themselves. Probably talking about their odds against only Dane and I while we’re protecting a handful of kids and a wounded and unconscious Cassandra.
But the gun is the least of their worries.
None of them are in the usual black attire worn by GE agents. If I let any of them go, they could slip undetected back into the group. I can’t remember faces well enough to memorize half a dozen at once.
“Dane. Is there anything nearby we could tie them up with?” I whisper under my breath.
He pauses, considering. His lips flatten. “In the kitchens, but I’m not leaving you.”
“It’s just upstairs—”
Dane grabs my arm. “Their lives aren’t more important to me than yours. Whatever we have to do here, we’ll do it. But it’ll be together.”
My heart squeezes, his words filling me with an unfamiliar emotion that floods my chest. I bite my lip and nod.
We’ll have to knock them out somehow, then. It’s the only option with what we have, short of killing them. I’ll do it if provoked, but I don’t want that to be my first answer. I may be capable of being a monster, butI choosewhen that is. Not to mention the young audience we have who have been through enough.
“Get ready to rush them,” I murmur. “We’re aiming to knock them out, so back of the head or jaw hits.” I wish we could do the neck pinch that Jackson did to Dane. He made it seem like an effortless tactic to drop him unconscious in seconds.
Guess I know what I’ll be asking Jack to teach me if I win whatever his next challenge is.
“Got it.” Dane carefully sets Cassandra on the floor. The kids huddle behind us, clinging to each other and crying. They’re lost in the bunker with no idea of where to run to be safe or how many others are here to kidnap them. My gaze stops on Mallory in the back. Her blue eyes are round with fear but free from tears. She catches me watching her and quickly looks away.
It's better than her crying or screaming at the sight of me, I guess.
Vines whip seemingly out of nowhere, wrapping around the four GE agents and yanking them together. They jostle and pull against their bindings, then topple over as one.
“Dane! Raegan!”
Silas runs toward us, Fabian jogging and huffing behind him. They both look tired and disheveled. Fabian leans on his knees to catch his breath when they reach us.
“Where’s Aiden?” Silas asks.
“Fighting GE elsewhere, above ground,” Dane answers. “Have you seen Kellan?”
Silas shakes his head. “You’re the only ones we’ve seen since we left Evie and Cibrina. How can we help?”
“Can you hide the kids somewhere safe?” I ask, motioning to them and then Cassandra. “And she needs a hospital as soon as it’ssafe to leave.”
“I’ve got her,” Fabian declares, bending and lifting her in his arms.
Voices of triumph sound behind us. When I turn, three things spin toward us as fog rolls in at our feet.
A flash of pink darts out toward one of the spinning objects, grabbing it and yanking it from the air. I follow its movement the second time, my eyes widening as Fabian swallows it whole. His tongue, quick like a frog’s, snaps out and snatches the third and final weapon before he devours that one as well.
“Get going,” Dane tells Silas and Fabian. “We’ll hold them off.”
