Page 49 of Consume
She touched her finger to his lips as her eyes filled with tears. “No.” Briefly, she kissed him, then turned to me, twined her fingers into my hair, and kissed me too. “I fucking love you both.”
Before we could say or do anything, Moon and Jezebel fled back through the stairwell door.
This wasn’t what I wanted. None of this was supposed to happen this way. Franco and I weren’t meant to be the last few hurtling ourselves toward the Saelises. I liked Franco, respected the hell out of him, but like me, he wasn’t even armed.
Despite that, he curled warm fingers around mine, a desperate gleam in his eyes. “This is the way. Come on, Absidy.”
I blinked at the large door straight ahead that read Toxic Materials, Keep Out in bold yellow letters. That had to be it. As Franco pulled me toward the door, terrified screams behind us ripped shivers up my back. A victim of Jezebel, probably.
Franco peered inside and then pushed the door open farther to reveal an octagonal room. A narrow walkway ringed the walls above eight large glass tubes with control panels inside each of them. A large shower of sorts surrounded by a circle of frosted glass took up the center with bright yellow protective suits and helmets hanging from hooks inside. The sign hanging above it read Decontamination.
Franco hurried to the center of the room. “Let’s get suited up. Think they’ve been decontaminated already?”
No hesitation. He was going. I could force him to change his mind, but the truth settled into my bones with chilling clarity—we were really doing this. We had to. This was the only way we could think of to try to defeat the Saelises, and I would never, ever let Franco do it all alone.
“One way to find out.” Swallowing hard, careful of my precious iron cube, I followed after him and searched the room for more. Everything appeared to be made of glass, though. Modern architecture had rejected iron. As I pulled open the narrow glass door in the center, a cleaning chemical burn singed the air. “I’ll guess yes on decontamination.”
“Good enough for me.”
We dragged on the bulky suits over our clothes in silence, the weight of what we were about to do like hooks in my skin. The suit swallowed me up and squeaked noisily with the slightest movement.
Our helmets dangled from our fingers, the last of our protective gear, when a shadow moved across the frosted glass outside.
Franco and I froze, but our suits still made noise with each stuttered breath. My pulse spiked between my ears.
The shadow circled the room, their footsteps whisper-soft. Was the glass shower wall thick enough to be bullet proof? Did they even know we were in here?
Soon, the footsteps faded and the shadow vanished. Seconds later, a slight click sounded. Franco and I snapped our gazes to each other in silent question. We waited a beat. Two beats. I nodded toward the shower door, and as silently as we could, we crept out.
No one lurked inside here with us, and we breathed a sigh of relief.
“They’ll be back,” I said.
“As soon as they realize the transporter tubes are being used, most definitely.” Franco marched toward the nearest tube along the wall and pulled the lever on the curved door.
“Password, please,” a robotic voice said.
Franco jerked, his eyes widening. “Password?”
“Incorrect,” the robot said. “You have ten seconds to say the password.”
Rusted balls. I didn’t even know my own passwords, let alone those of the places I broke into.
Franco stared at me with wide eyes. He didn’t know either.
Ten seconds.
With furious speed, we blurted random words and numbers.
“Password123!” he shouted.
“Smixton College rocks!”
“Dirty sanchez!”
“Xylophone2420!”
Blue lights lit up under our feet. An alarm blared. Time was up.
