I swallow the trembling panic in my throat, realizing he got on one knee to shoot. He has a gun, like Angel.
“Let’s move,” Angel calls, and then he’s striding down the hall. Father Salvatore helps us up, his eyes lingering on Mercy’s for a beat before he turns and follows Angel. Heath brings up the rear, his Glock clutched in his good hand.
“We’ve got another door, Nathaniel,” Father Salvatore calls into the phone.
“It’s open,” Nate says. “Disarmed the siren too.”
We open a thick, sliding door, and inside, a long hallway stretches before us, rooms on either side, each with huge glasswindows that make them look like displays you’d see at a museum.
They’re all empty, except for one, where a ghostly figure sits in a rocking chair in the center of the room, a white veil over her face, her body clad in a long white nightgown. I have to look at the others to check if they’re seeing it too, or if I’m seeing ghosts now.
“Well, that’s fucking creepy,” Heath says, swinging his gun from one side to the other as we hurry down the hall.
“In there,” Mercy says, pointing to a window. “That’s my room.”
“Oh, hey, Mercy,” Nate says through the phone. “How you been?”
“I’ve been better,” she says shakily. “You?”
“Never better,” he says, taking a sip of Mountain Dew but never looking away from his screen. “This is epic.”
“Do you have access to the cameras?” Father Salvatore asks, looking up at one mounted in the ceiling.
“Affirmative,” Nate says, tapping away. “They’ll start getting them back up soon. Want me to get you out of there?”
“No,” Mercy says. “They’ll be crawling all over the island looking for us. This is probably the only place they won’t look.”
“I can put a still frame of the hallway,” Nate says. “If no one’s likely to go there, it won’t look suspicious that it’s empty. They won’t even realize their camera is down for a while. They’ll be busy working on the ones that are still out.”
“There’s one in my room too,” Mercy says. “Can you disable that one?”
“I’ll put a still frame there too,” Nate says. “I’ll let you know if anything changes. In the meantime, I’m going to try to override their controls and lock down the building remotely. No one will be able to go in or out the doors. Have fun.”
He winks at us, and then the video call ends.
“Let’s get inside,” Father Salvatore says. “Before he locks us out.”
The door in front of us pops open when he hits the handle, and he drags it back, letting us in before sliding it back into place behind us.
We look at each other, taking stock for the first time.
“Is anyone hurt?” Father asks.
For once, no one got injured on the way in.
“Mercy,” I say, stroking her hair back from her forehead. She hangs on my neck, staring up at me. A purple goose egg is forming on her brow, and her lip is split, as well as several other scrapes and cuts on her face. She’s wearing a sports bra and shorts, which are both dirty and bloody.
“I’m okay,” she whispers, her blue eyes holding mine.
“Fuck,” I mutter, because suddenly, the stress and fear of losing her is too much, and it all overwhelms me now that she’s in my arms. I don’t know what to do with myself, how to say all the things clogging my throat in a painful fist.
I gently lift her chin and press my lips to hers.
She shivers against me, and for the first time, I let the realization sink in that she might be different now, that the things that have happened to her in the past two weeks might have changed her in ways we can never truly understand. Tears blur my eyes, force their way between my lids, and the pain in my throat spreads to my chest, my head, my heart.
“Mercy,” I whisper, breaking the kiss, cradling her face between my hands. “I love you.”
“I love you,” she says, and she presses in closer, squeezing her legs around me.
