Page 106 of Resist

Wes glared at Jim before turning away and walking toward Calista. She was quick to place a consoling hand on his back, muttering god knows what to him. I closed my eyes,fighting back the tears of hurt, anger, and frustration that were threatening to fall.

“Hey,” Matias whispered. “It’s going to be okay,” he repeated to me. “Can you see if there’s any information about him being transferred?”

I wiped the single tear that came down my cheek with the cuff of my shirt. “Yeah, let me see if there’s a prisoner transfer record or something.” I went to work, scanning the remaining files, before deciding that they were a lost cause. I shifted gears, searching for anything that looked like a database for the tower, and clicked on a promising option. It brought up a new screen with a search bar. Typing in my brother’s name, I gave a silent prayer. The cursor switched to a spinning circle, letting me know the system was processing my request.

Please…please let him be here.

The circle kept spinning, and every time it spun, I felt my chest tighten a little more, the anxiety climbing. I tried to breathe, feeling a knot forming in my throat as desperation reared its ugly head, and then the cursor stopped twirling. A new screen popped up, showing a picture of my brother.

“Here it is,” I said with a sigh of relief as I scanned the document. My eyes glossed over the words, trying to understand what I was reading. “He’s here,” I said, my heart skipping a beat. “He was transferred to level four to some surgical ward.”

“A surgical ward?” Wes took a step closer.

“It says they moved him yesterday to another cellblock. He was scheduled for some sort of procedure.” I was confused. Why the hell was he scheduled for a medical procedure?

“Did he get hurt or something?” Jim asked.

“I highly doubt Raúl’s going to provide medical treatment to an inmate he scheduled for execution,” Blondie sneered.

“Well why the hell would he—”

“Hush,” Wes snapped. “What’s the deal, de la Puente?”

I gritted my teeth. I hated him calling me that. Not even back at the rebel camp did he ever refer to me by my last name. But I tried my best to ignore him and stay focused on figuring out what the hell Raúl was doing with my brother. My eyes scanned the words…

Prisoner to be modified with NIT-V2…

Modified? What the hell didmodifiedmean?

“Mara?” Matias prodded.

“It…it doesn’t say. It just says he’s being modified with something.”

“When?” Jim asked.

“Earlier today.” This was crazy. What did they do to him?

“Where is he now?”

I swallowed, feeling my anxiety climbing. “In the surgical ward on the fourth floor. He’s under observation.”

“Observation?” Matias ran his fingers through his air, his unease reflecting my own. “What the hell does observation mean?”

“I don’t know!” I snapped. Why did everyone think I knew what the hell was going on? I might be Raúl’s daughter, but I dissented months ago. And it wasn’t like Raúl ever told me about any of this crap anyhow.

“Hey!” Blondie called. “We’ve got incoming. That guard’s mini-tab from the yard is lighting up. If they haven’t figured out he’s missing, they’re going to.”

“We’ve got to go,” Wes ordered. “Now.”

I quickly glanced at my brother’s observation room number, and then we bolted as fast as we could, heading back to the stairs. But my stomach contorted with unease. Something happened. Raúl did something, I just didn’t know what it was. But I had a sick feeling I was about to find out.

59: Yellow, Yellow, Red

We hustled down the flight of stairs. The tower guards had definitely figured out that Yard Dude was out of commission since he hadn’t checked in after his patrol. Chances were, they were going to radio security up in the surveillance room, and when they didn’t get a response from any of them, they were going to figure out something was up. Wes figured we had less than ten minutes before the gig was up and we were going to have to square off with twenty plus soldiers at the chokepoint on the other side of the land bridge. The only thing in our favor was that the land bridge consisted of 313 stairs down to the tower. It would only buy us five or ten minutes, but those five or ten minutes could be the difference between death and making it out alive.

Jim went through the fourth-floor access door first before motioning us forward. This hallway was sterile looking, with white walls and fluorescent lighting that was dimmed for the evening hours. The hallway stretched out in both directions.

“We need to go right,” I stated, remembering the schematic from the computer screen. “We’re looking for the surgical ward and Observation Deck F.”

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