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For half a second I’m wondering what he’s said, but there’s no time to waste.
I shove down my momentary shock and rush for the door.
We set off in the opposite direction the guards come from. Straight for the door that Volchok says leads to the boiler room. After sustaining so many injuries and being starved and left to rot away in the dank darkness of a cell for who knows how many weeks, I’m not moving as fast as I’d like. My body aches in protest as I push myself harder.
Volchok’s no speed runner either.
He hobbles a couple steps behind me as we make it to the steel door marked with a capital B.
We pry it open and then rush inside in the same second the guards flood the corridor on the other end. It’s unclear if they see us, but they must hear the door slam shut.
We don’t hang around long enough to find out—we hit the staircase, leaping down several steps at a time, descending deep into what feels like a pit of darkness.
Either this will lead me to freedom as we planned, or it could be the biggest mistake of my life. It could mean the end.
“We must hurry,” Volchok croaks. “They will be down here any second.”
He’s wheezing, barely able to keep up.
It’s no wonder if he’s been held captive for as many years as he’s claimed. If I’m struggling at half his age and with only a few weeks of malnourishment, there’s no telling what it’s like for him.
The farther down we make it, the more he wheezes, slowing down.
“C’mon,” I growl. “Almost there. We’ll make it.”
“Only one.”
I ignore his comment and push on. If I can pull it off, we’re both getting out of this hellhole tonight.
Once we make it down another narrow hall, sparsely lit by blinking light bulbs dangling from the ceiling, we’ve reached our final destination—the boiler room Volchok’s told me about.
I grip the cold steel handle to the door. He claimed this door is so heavy it requires two men to pull and hold it open. However, as I grip the cold steel handle, I’m prying it open with relative ease.
“You said—”
“No time! GO!” he barks between another sputter for air.
We dart into the room and draw the door shut with a twist of the lock. I catch snippets of footsteps from above, meaning the guards have figured out we’ve escaped and have already begun chasing us down here.
“The window,” Volchok says, pointing a damaged, fleshy hand across the stuffy room.
It’s the first time I notice them in a good enough light—the burn marks all over him. The glow from the boiler casts him in a good enough light. He’s disfigured… some of his skin melted off, from his neck to parts of his ear and his hand. Probably his whole body.
Years of torture while in Lucius’s captivity.
The truth’s staring me in the face. Everything that’s happened and why we’re here.
Why he’s brought me down here and what his intention is.
“You knew you weren’t going to make it out,” I say, the closer he stands to the levers on the boiler. “You never planned on making it out. You could’ve done this alone. You didn’t need me.”
“Butyouneededme.”
“You knew who I was. From the moment I was brought here.”
The same glint from earlier lives in his blue-green gaze. “I did not expect you. For many years I have been fed lies—your arrival made me see what has been stolen from me. If only I had not given up. I stopped fighting.”
“Let’s go. They’ll be busting through any second.”
