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Wade again creeps toward the corner, motioning for me to follow him. Around it is another long hallway, and we move down it and beyond through several more.
The next time we take a break, a dark feeling runs up my back, giving me goosebumps and causing every hair on my body to stand on end. The air is still, so silent that it seems like we could be suspended in time, yet it does not feel empty or quiet, but rather like there is something crawling over every inch of my body. Like Anastasia’s eyes are on me, her fingers slowly draping themselves around my arms and throat.
“The exit is beyond the next room, but it’s watched,” Wade abruptly says, startling me so much that I have to resist the impulse to yelp. “We don’t have time to wait for a change of guard. The only way we’ll get out is to push our way through.”
He finishes there but continues staring at me as though he senses my unease with his apparent preference to solve problems with bloodshed. The straight-faced look he gives me suggests that he wants me to be at peace with what’s about to happen, so I make a request to try and satisfy my conscience.
“Just don’t kill them.”
After a quick nod, he scurries down the rest of the hall and across the room. I try to keep pace, but he seems intent on staying ahead of me, eventually disappearing from view around a distant bend in a corridor beyond the room.
The sounds of a struggle soon follow, but they go silent before I can catch up and see what is happening. As I come around the bend, I find Wade standing at an arched doorway with two guards lying on the ground next to him.
“Hurry,” he calls out. “This won’t go unnoticed for very long.”
The way we leave Anastasia’s palace is different than the way I came, but it leads into the city all the same. The doorway we exit is itself shielded from view by a couple of buildings, but once we get beyond them, we are immediately back in the throng of Sanctuary’s impoverished population.
Wade ushers me through the crowds as we try to blend in, but like before, it’s almost impossible to not stand out. Several people glare at us in a way almost suggesting that they know what we’ve done, so I try to avoid eye contact. Doing so makes it hard to stay out of the way, however, forcing me to keep my head up and accept a few leering eyes now and again.
Once we get a good distance away from the palace, I start telling myself that we’re in the clear, but deep down I know that any second we could be forced to again run for our lives. With each guard we pass, it feels more and more inescapable that someone will recognize us and try to bring us back to Anastasia, and sure enough, this happens as we approach the passageway leading to the lower levels of Sanctuary.
“Stop,” a sentinel near the entrance calls out, reaching down to grip the handle of his sword as he places himself in our way.
Before he can unsheathe it, Wade charges at him and knocks him up against the wall.
“Run,” he then calls out to me.
I get beyond them and turn around just as Wade is slamming his fist hard against man’s jaw, knocking him down against a stack of boxes. Beyond the two of them in the distance, the crowd of stunned refugees parts down the center, revealing a line of soldiers in fast pursuit. I look hopefully at Wade, sure that he must have planned on this and knows how we will still be able to get out of here in one piece.
“Come on now, we’re almost home free,” he reassures, grabbing my arm and pulling me with him down a steep stairway into the first lion-filled room.
Although the room is devoid of people, its caged occupants immediately take notice of us and begin growling and eagerly pacing back and forth within their enclosures. My admiration of their beauty overtakes any fear I have of them, but as they begin to gaze back the way we came, I turn and wince at the sight of our pursuers, who are only moments from catching us.
The next three levels are also lacking in guards, which seems strange to me until I think about who filled these rooms when I first arrived here. The only people I saw appeared to be ca
retakers for the beasts. A couple of them were moving from cage to cage giving the lions meat and some sort of feed. Their absence would be no surprise in the dark of night.
As we approach the final room, Sanctuary’s entrance, Wade slows down. This area, if I remember right, has a number of outposts stationed in it, and Wade’s sudden caution seems to indicate that it will be no easy task getting through the soldiers here without being sneaky.
He looks at me and presses his finger to his lips as we creep out onto the platform that overlooks the wide cavern. To my surprise, the glow of morning light is already pouring in from the opening at its far side, providing an aura of red that overpowers the flames and torches and casts a faint shadow of sorts over where we stand.
The guards scattered throughout the entranceway are faced away from the platform, or are otherwise distracted from looking our direction. Wade quietly descends the ladder, and I follow after him. Once we reach the bottom, we move along the wall of the room away from the light and near some lion enclosures. The lions take notice of us, but to my relief don’t do anything to attract any attention.
What does eventually reveal our presence is the clattering of metal armor as the guards chasing us arrive at the platform. Those between us and the entrance turn around, but just as they begin to reach for their swords, Wade pulls out his gun and points it at them, bringing their movement to a halt.
“You must know what this is, what it can do,” Wade says
with a sly confidence.
One of the guards nods and starts to back away from us, prompting the two soldiers next to him to follow suit. The three of them get completely out of the way, backing up toward the far wall of the cavern where another group of soldiers is standing. This doesn’t stop the soldiers on the platform, who continue to descend and come closer, but it’s enough to keep everyone else from interfering with our exit as we move across the room toward the entrance.
Once we are almost all the way there, a familiar voice yells out.
“Wade!” Severin roars while marching across the room toward us. “You can’t stop us all with that thing.”
“No,” Wade concedes with a soft, unexpectedly playful tone, “but look at your soldiers and tell me which ones want to be the first to charge into a bullet.”
The comment gives Severin pause as he and the rest of the soldiers around him stop their march.
