Rose Tinted (22 page)

“Almost done,” she said after a moment and all Brynn could think of was how perfectly everything was working out.

If Rusty and Ty were able to install the bug without them, it would be easy for Brynn to sneak away and find Jonah. Of course it also meant that it was completely pointless for her friends to have come to the facility in the first place, when they could have just sent one person in to complete the task rather than risking all of their lives.

As they neared the control room
, Brynn let herself fall to the back of the group, wondering if she should even try reasoning with her friends or if she should just make a break for it and hope she didn’t run into any Workers. It definitely would have been easier if her friends were on board with the idea of finding Jonah. Then she’d be able to use Hadlock’s Worker tracker as a resource and she wouldn’t have to worry about turning a corner to find a group of A.I.s standing there.

But, as it was, no one believed her that Jonah was actually innocent and it wasn’t likely that they would any time soon.

“Done!” Rusty said, just as Brynn and the group reached the control room.

“We’re coming in to meet you guys,” Amber said and Brynn knew she couldn’t quite escape yet.

If they were all meeting in the same room, Ty would be looking for Brynn to make sure she hadn’t somehow gotten captured by Eris.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Ty said as they entered the small white room.

“Why isn’t anyone in here if this is such an important room?” Bennett asked, looking around at the many computers that lined the walls and impressing Brynn with her curiosity.

“They usually come in shifts and right now they’re between people,” Hadlock explained. “But they’ll be coming soon so you guys need to get out of there now.”

“How are we going to get out if the vents are on the ceiling?” Amber asked, voicing the concern that had come to Brynn’s mind as well.

“A few stories up there’s a floor vent I want you guys to crawl into. You’ll have to use the elevators though,” Hadlock said, sounding apologetic when in reality, this prospect thrilled Brynn.

Elevators would be a perfect way for her to break away from the group since they could only fit one person at a time. If she wasn’t successful, she could even claim that she had accidentally pushed the wrong button on her elevator in the hopes that they wouldn’t kick her out of The Alliance for disobeying their orders.

“Which way do we go?” Rusty asked, poking her head out of the control room and looking left and right before stepping out into the open.

Her bright red hair cascading down her white clad back reminded Brynn of Eris covered in Cambria’s blood and for a moment, she felt the world go lopsided. She grabbed the wall for support and quickly straightened herself once more, hoping no one had seen her momentary weakness.

“Turn left,” Hadlock said, and the group instantly obeyed, following Rusty down the hall in a line of white clad rebels. “Hang on. My tablet just glitched out. Stupid thing.”

“Please tell me he’s joking,”
Ty sighed, looking like he was trying not to panic.

“
There we go…Wait, stop!” Hadlock shouted suddenly, causing everyone to freeze almost immediately. “There are some Workers coming up in the elevators. Turn around and go the other way. Fast.”

They didn’t question him, but instead turned
instantaneously and walked as fast as they could without breaking into a full on run in the other direction.

“Turn right,” he told them, and they obeyed, entering into a sm
all white room with glass tubes that resembled the elevator system Brynn had seen in the facility before.

“Are these elevators as well?” Amber asked skeptically.

“Yeah they are… why? What’s wrong with them?” Hadlock asked, obviously confused by the apprehension in Amber’s tone.

“They’re glass,” she said.

“They’re normally metal,” Brynn explained, also feeling a bit uneasy.

Something was definitely wrong.
The group looked at the clear glass tubes suspiciously for a moment before Bennett stepped into hers.

“They look fine,” she said with a shrug as the glass door rotated closed, drowning out her words.

She watched Bennett for a moment, who stood with a happy smile on her face. She waved at Brynn in the silence of her tube to show her nothing sinister was going on. Though a wave from Bennett was hardly an all clear, she relented, not knowing what else to do.

“I guess they’re okay
,” Brynn said slowly, stepping into her own tube and watching her friend’s follow suit.

Still feeling uneasy about the whole thing she looked at the place where the buttons should have been. But there were no buttons there.

“Hadlock these elevators don’t have buttons,” Amber said over the comms unit, reading Brynn’s mind.

“Something’s wrong,” Ty agreed and Brynn could see him trying to open his door.

That was when she heard the faint hiss below her feet. She looked down at the grate, trying to understand why it might be making noise before Hadlock’s voice came in a panic through her ear piece.

“Those aren’t elevators,” he shouted, saying what the group had been trying to tell him all along.
“Why did you get in them! What’s wrong with you guys?”

“What are they then?” Brynn asked a little too loudly.

“I’m not sure, but they don’t go anywhere. Hold on a second I’m overriding the doors to let you guys out,” he said, before silence permeated their ear pieces.

“Hadlock,” Amber said slowly, trying to hurry him as the hissing grew louder.

“Almost done,” he promised just as the glass doors slid open, releasing the captives from their tubes.

“I don’t know what those things were but that probably wouldn’t have ended well,” Rusty said, giving herself a little shake.

“Was your tube hissing?” Brynn asked her friends.

“Yeah mine was,” Ty answered just as they heard a pounding behind them.

Turning around they could see Bennett still in her tube, looking confused by the fact that her door hadn’t opened with the rest of them.

“Hadlock, Bennett is still in hers,” Amber said, suddenly sounding
very scared.

“I can’t seem to override it,” he told them. “I’m working on it.”

“Oh, don’t mind me, I’ll just be hanging out in the creepy tube all day,” Bennett said sarcastically, cocking her hip and looking unconcerned.

“We’re going to get you out,” Amber promised, placing a hand against the glass wall.

“You’d better,” she threatened playfully. “We still need to analyze certain conversations between two certain people.” She smiled with her perfectly straight, white teeth, her eyes crinkling up in the corners.

Had the situation not been so dire, Brynn would have actually laughed at Bennett’s lack of subtlety. But as it was
, her friend was trapped in a mysterious hissing tube, and that was just never a good thing.

“I can’t seem to get into this one,” Hadlock said in frustration just as Bennett’s smile faded.

She turned to her friends in mild confusion and furrowed her brow before saying, “Do you guys smell sugar?”

Chapter 2
6: Apart

“Hadlock, get her out!” Brynn shouted, not caring about keeping her voice down anymore.

“I’m trying,” he yelled back as Amber began pounding her fists against the glass tube.

Bennett still seemed confused by what was going on, looking around at her friend’s sudden panic.

“Get her out!” Amber screamed,
repeatedly pounding against the glass so hard that her fists began leaving bloody marks on the tube. “Now!”

“Bennett
, hold your breath,” Rusty instructed desperately, trying to think of the only thing that could keep their friend safe.

“Guys
, I’m fine,” Bennett tried to assure them, looking like she was absolutely terrified but keeping a brave face for her friends.

She let out a nervous little laugh.

“Hadlock?” Brynn cried, wondering why he had suddenly become silent.

“They’re coming!” he finally shouted. “The A.I.s are coming
, you guys need to run.”

“I’m not leaving Bennett,” Amber said resolutely, breathing hard as she continued to beat her bloody fists against that glass that would never break.
“Bennett are you holding your breath?” Amber asked just as Bennett stopped flashing her friends a fake reassuring smile.

She looked dazed for a moment as she met Amber’s eyes and swayed slightly on her feet.
For a moment she looked like she was shifting her weight back and forth.

Then, without warning her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she fell against the glass tube with a sickening thud.
Her body slumped heavily against the small space at an awkward angle; not quite lying down but no longer standing.

“Bennett!” Amber
whispered into the now absolutely quiet space, everyone’s eyes fixated on the scene before them.

“Get out of there,” Hadlock commanded them again. “You have to get back to the elevators you were supposed to go on originally. They’re coming down the right hallway. You
have
to outrun them to the elevators. I’ll get the car started up.”

“Bennett,” Amber
said again with wide eyes, unable to comprehend her friend’s limp body in the tube in front of her.

Rusty grabbed Amber around her waist and hoisted her over her shoulder, exactly as she had with Devey when her sister had died. Not for the first time
, Brynn wondered what Rusty had seen in her life to make her so immune to hardship, though her thoughts didn’t plague her for long before her instinct kicked in.

“Come on,” she called to her friends, running out of the white room and leaving one of her best friend’s behind, knowing she was already gone.

Had she been in her right mind Brynn would have cried. She would have screamed and thrown herself on the ground and kicked her feet. But Brynn was running on pure adrenaline as she ran down the white hallway with Amber’s silent lack of comprehension ringing louder than any cries could have. Her mission was to get her friend’s to safety and mourn Bennett once the threat of losing more friends was gone.

“Take the elevators to the fourth floor and the grate will be right outside. It’s a straight shot out after that,” Hadlock instructed.

“Everyone get in an elevator,” Brynn commanded.

Rusty unceremoniously shoved Amber into an elevator and pushed the
button for her before hopping into her own. The metal door closed in front of Amber’s confused face. She still wasn’t crying, and Brynn then knew there
was
a point where you were too shocked or sad to cry.

Brynn could hear the Worker’s yelling to each other down the hallway as she looked at her own elevator, Ty standing beside her and waiting for her to get in.

This was her only chance to get Jonah back.

She had
just had a friend die and she wasn’t about to let Jonah die because of her. Her hands were shaking as she stared at the open elevator in front of her. Ty looked over as comprehension dawned on him.

Before he could stop her
, Brynn ran into her elevator, pulled out her comms unit and pressed the button that would take her to the room Eris had held her in.

“Brynn
, don’t!” Ty yelled as the doors slid closed.

She could see him rushing forward to pull her out but he was too late.

Muffled yells could be heard over her comms unit that she had removed, so she whispered a quick, “Don’t come after me,” before dropping it on the floor and stepping on the small bud, silencing her friend’s and hoping they would leave without her.

Brynn didn’t let herself think of Bennett in the silent elevator ride that she hoped would take her to Jonah. Her mind tried to replay the look on her friend’s face as the life left her eyes but as soon as the images would come
, she’d rub her hand over her head and try to envision saving Jonah just in time. If she couldn’t bring Bennett back, she could stop another life from being taken.

“Bennett,” she whispered,
her throat aching as she suppressed any emotion attempting to well up inside of her. She wouldn’t think about it. She wouldn’t let herself comprehend what had just happened, not when she still had work to do.

Only
a few days ago, Brynn could say she’d never had to face losing a friend. Since then she’d lost Jonah, Cambria, and Bennett. She hoped she wouldn’t have to lose anyone else to save the world. The exchange hardly seemed fair at the moment.

The elevator began to slow down and eventually stopped, opening on the room that Brynn had burned into her memory.

The white padded walls and floor gave her a literal pain in her neck as she remembered the needle Eris had stabbed into her. She rubbed the spot tenderly and wondered what horrors lay in store for her this time.

Against her better judgment
, she stepped out of the elevator and looked around the cell. It wasn’t a particularly large room, and was therefore, easy to search. It became obvious to her after only a few seconds that Jonah wasn’t there. She let out a frustrated grunt that the one place she’d thought he would be was a dead end. She had been positive Eris would hide him in an obvious place, offering him up as bait to lure Brynn in.

Instead, she stood alone in the white room, knowing the elevator had already locked her in.

Though she knew she was trying in vain, she attempted to wedge her thin fingers in the small gap in the elevator door, wondering if there was any way she could possibly pry it open. It wasn’t just her life she was worried about, it was Jonah’s.

Eris wouldn’t kill her. She knew that. She had too much information for the Angel to simply end her life. She also knew there would be true horrors in store for her when the Angel found her, but somehow the motivation to save a friend she’d left behind was much stronger than her own well-being.

She continued to pull on the door that wouldn’t budge, letting her eyes dart wildly around the room for any sign of an air vent or weakness in the walls.

A small hole in the wall
above the door, just out of reach seemed to be the only other access to the outside world and Brynn jumped in vain to reach it, knowing there was no way it would be of any use to her, even if she could get to it.

“I hate this place,” she said under her breath, wondering if she’d have more success if the playing field were a bit more level.

It was easy for Eris to always win when she was always the one holding all of the cards. Still, even with the Angel in control of the entire facility, Brynn and her friends had managed to break in
and
escape more than once. That had to lend something to the Angel’s flaws.

Sighing deeply, Brynn allowed herself to stop searching for a way out. It was obvious to her that she was trapped, but giving up didn’t seem like the right option. Rachel hadn’t given up. Even when she’d fallen into her fatal silence
, the girl had kept fighting Eris by never saying a word.

Brynn wondered if she really had it in her to be as calm as Rachel. Could she really mosey around the room without a care in the world when she knew her fate was on its way, ready to kill her?
As hopeless as her situation seemed, she knew the only way to take control of things, was to be like Rachel.

She could accept the fact that she was trapped and Eris would be there at any minute to take her, but it would be on her terms. It would be because Brynn had decided that she was at peace with dying if it meant her friends could live. She could find solace in the fact that she had tried desperately to save Jonah and her last act of rebellion against Eris would be her own silence, just like her brave DNA donor.

She may have been trapped, but she was still in control of how she would take on the Angel. If the only thing left in her arsenal was silence, she would use that weapon until her last breath left her.

Brynn was vaguely aware of
a hissing noise emanating from the small hole she’d tried to reach above the door and she knew what that meant; Eris was leaking gas into her room. She didn’t smell the sugar but she knew it was only a matter of time before the scent hit her nose and her nose hit the ground.

Taking a steadying breath and a leaf out of Rachel’s book, Brynn walked over to the bed that she
had spent so many of her nightmares strapped to. Suddenly it didn’t seem quite so frightening to her. It was the place where she’d make her last stand.

She sat on the scratchy white comforter and rubbed it between her fingers. She hadn’t ever noticed befor
e how uncomfortable the bed was, though she attributed that to the fact that she was usually being drowned or tortured and so an itchy blanket was the last thing on her mind.

In a state of morbid curiosity
, she laid down on the bed, resting her hands on her stomach and looking up at the white ceiling, trying to channel the girl who was so much braver than her so that she could honor her memory in the only way she knew how.

She would keep Rachel’s secrets. She owed her that much

“This is how you spent your last days,” she said to the room, wondering if Rachel could hear her now.

She wondered if the girl was disappointed in her for failing
, or if she was proud of the fact that she had tried; despite the difficulties. In reality, Brynn had done exactly what Rachel had done. She’d tried to save her friends and she’d gone down swinging; doing the right thing in the end, even if the right thing was simply keeping secrets for those you loved.

“You were so much stronger than me,” she admitted, finding that now that she had begun speaking, she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
The time for silence would come soon enough, but until Eris arrived, Brynn would speak to her long gone DNA donor, hoping that by some miracle, she could hear her. “I promise I really tried.”

Her mind still attempted to replay her last moments with Bennett, but she quickly blocked the fresh memory, opting instead for the feeling of Ty’s pinky interlocking with
hers as they both kissed their thumbs to make a promise. It was a simple gesture they had shared a million times, but for some reason, right at that moment, the memory brought a smile to Brynn’s tired eyes.

In her mind, she could see the freckle below Ty’s warm brown eyes as he grinned at her, his face blurry from how close they were when they’d make their promises. His cheeks would always turn slightly pink at their closeness, then he’d clear his throat and lean away from h
er. Always trying to be a grown-up and hide his feelings from her.

“At least we succeeded a little,” she whispered, still smiling at the thought that Ty had escaped the facility.

If the only good that had come from Brynn staying behind was the fact th
at Ty had enough time to escape, she was fine with that. He was the most genuine, kind person she knew. He put everyone before himself, and
that
was exactly the kind of person worth saving.

“I think I love Ty,” she told the room, almost laughing at how trivial the statement sounded when she knew she’d probably be dying soon.

But somehow, that statement almost made her feel more connected to Rachel than any of the adventures
she’d had.

Rachel loved Maxwell.

She would have understood the awful feeling of never seeing him again, even though in this case, Brynn would be the one to die instead of Ty.

“I hope he knows that,” she said, just as the elevator door slid open and Eris stepped out.