Page 22 of Consume
“Ellison!” I shouted. “Stay where you are. Don’t move.”
Pain stitched into my side, but I ran faster.
“Ellison,” I yelled again.
Why wasn’t she answering?
My throat stung, my heart caved in, but I kept going.
From behind me, a BioWave’s shadow began to engulf me. I darted right down the aisle with Ellison’s cell. Where Ellison should have been waiting for me and not trying to outrun the wheels.
But she wasn’t.
I opened my mouth to scream her name once again, but the sight ahead ripped my voice away. A door cut into the darkness where the wall once was. It stood open. Bright light spilled through, and the silhouette standing inside the doorway...
My breath caught. I would know that silhouette anywhere because I’d memorized every inch. The cut of that jaw, the slope of that nose.
“Mase,” I whispered.
He didn’t hear me, didn’t look in my direction. It didn’t matter. Seeing him again made me feel like I was glowing.
A BioWave rolled in front of him, blocking my view, and turned right toward me. With the one still chasing behind, good thing I’d lifted the walls of the glass cells. I changed course out of the aisle and through the cells.
The BioWaves stayed in the aisle and barreled toward each other, not following me through the wall-less cells. A spark of hope kindled in my chest. Maybe I really could get out of here alive.
I glanced right toward Ellison’s cell, completely empty except for her bed. She was with Mase. She had to be. He must’ve been in one of these cells and then escaped.
In the split second between my pounding heartbeats, he looked back. He had to have seen me charging toward him underneath the dangling glass walls, but I whipped my gaze over my shoulder. I couldn’t bear to see his reaction to my scales.
That should’ve been the least of my worries. I knew that, but there it was, my own vanity on full display.
The sight behind me tamped that down though. The BioWave coming down Ellison’s aisle had changed course. It cut into a cell and sped toward me as if someone had adjusted its programming. The top of it skimmed the bottom of the hanging glass walls and made them swing like so many blades.
And in the perpendicular aisle I needed to shoot across to get to Mase, two charged from opposite directions. It looked as though the three BioWaves and I would arrive at the exact same point at the exact same time.
Maybe.
I had seconds to find out and only five feet to get there.
With my fangs clenched, I poured on more speed toward the love of my life.
“Absidy.” A gasp. A realization. A promise. Mase held out his hand.
Shadows swamped me, the BioWaves about to bear down. Four feet to the door.
A scream climbed up my throat, but there were only enough breaths for running. I poured on more speed, my lungs heaving with desperation.
Three feet.
Mase shouted something, but I couldn’t hear anything above the roaring panic in my head.
Two feet. Only two, and I knew I’d never make it.
So, I leaped.
