Page 14 of Verses and Blooms
For the second time today, I rushed toward the front conference room. There was still just one man in there now. I would’ve questioned it if he wasn’t moving between computers, talking to himself as he typed freakishly fast, like he had a superpower.
“Sanchez,” Cooke called out. “Rydell found a door. We think it’s remote accessed, there’s no way to get it open in there. We found the indention but nothing more.”
Sanchez’s productivity came to a halt, head tilting to the side as he considered it. “There’s no indention in the door? It just fits perfectly?”
“Yes,” Rydell said firmly. “There was a small groove that felt worn in, and that was it. No light escaped, we were just looking for it or we’d have missed it. Once we had it pinned down, then you could see this minuscule crack that outlined the door. It was so perfectly done, as if it was made when they redid the place. Otherwise, how would it get there without someone knowing that construction was going on?”
“Because it was never construction,” Sanchez said, slapping his hand down on the table. His face lit up, not with excitement but with understanding. “I need the blueprints right now, old ones, the originals and new, all of it.”
At first, I thought he was talking to one of the guards with us, but apparently, he was talking to himself. He popped his ass right back in that chair and was sliding toward one of the computers.
We all moved silently to stand behind him, watching as he pulled up floorplans. I recognized ARC’s logo. Then the other had to be the former school.
That was fast.
“I knew it,” he said, slapping his hand down on the table again, making me jump. Kane and Caspian noticed, both turning to look at me. Caspian barely stopped himself from moving, body tensing to lock himself in place. I shook my head to tell him I was fine.
A little jumpy, sure, but that was to be expected. We’d been through hell and it was nothing compared to what Audrey was likely enduring.
My nerves were fried, panic was riding me, and my omega mate was gone. Sanchez didn’t even realize what he’d done, so focused on his own virtual world.
“When we were still in the earlier days of understanding the dominant gene with alphas, there were failsafes in place to protect the rest of the population. Especially in places like this where they would be enclosed with the other designations. Not that they were let in often with omegas. But should any alphas present later in life they wanted to be safe. Again, it was early days. The science wasn’t there to back up that it was all genetic. They were born with markers in their DNA. Anyway, I digress. They built escape routes in as if the alphas would tear apart everyone and anyone. Think of it like a secret tunnel leading outside. Everybody knew they existed. Hell, it was a selling point to most schools like this. But they were created so the alphas couldn’t force them open.”
Cooke and Rydell both growled at the insinuation. They always considered dominants as monsters. Rydell had told us as much during therapy.
They were wrong.
He wasn’t terrifying or violent, but this sure made it sound like it. Sometimes you never really knew how deep the fear and ignorance others treated dominant alphas with until you saw it firsthand. Maybe I should have seen it during my time in the cages, but I was trying to survive back then.
I cleared my throat before speaking. “How would they get to it quickly if it was remote accessed?” I could feel everyone’s eyes on me now. My cheeks burned at the attention, but Sanchez shot me a smirk.
“You’re a smart omega. It wouldn’t be remote. Not like they assumed,” he said, gesturing to the others. “They didn’t keep the control in the same room.”
“Not exactly efficient,” Kane said, shaking his head. “Why set it up like that?”
“They’d put it in a room that the students couldn’t access. It’s not meant for anyone outside of faculty to know about. The location anyway, everyone obviously knew it existed. It ended up making it a ‘sacrifice-one-for-the-many’ type of thing.”
“We scoured the other rooms in the clinic already,” Caspian argued. “Including the treatment rooms, storage, intake, all of it.”
“Yes, but I would suggest checking this one,” Sanchez said, pointing at the blueprints. It was labeled as the Dean’s office on the old map, but was now a break room for the staff. Definitely a room none of us would have access to.
But Malik would. An easy coffee break location. If he timed it right, it’d be empty.
Like when they forced us all into the dining hall or we were asleep.
“Let’s go,” Rydell said, already running out of the room. Out the door. I started to follow. but stopped to turn back to Sanchez. “What exactly are we looking for?”
“See, you’re always the one with the right questions, aren’t you?” Sanchez said with a wink. “It depends. Sometimes there are floor panels. It would be in the corner of the room somewhere people aren’t gonna step on often, or inlaid into the molding. Rip pictures off the walls and look behind them, the works. You’ll know when you see it. It’s going to be a whole lot more obvious than that door, I promise.”
“There’s enough of us, we’ll find it fast,” Vance said. “Let’s go.”
He led the rest of us out. Rydell and Caspian were already walking ahead of us. There were some shouts of protest from the nurses that could see us from the lobby as we kicked open the door. They no longer got a say in where we went.
We didn’t bother looking for keys. It would have been a waste of time when we had alphas like Cooke and Rydell on our side.
Oddly, Cooke and Vance didn’t scare me like most alphas. Maybe it was Rydell’s quick acceptance or the fact Ares vouched for them. Either way, it was a relief not to be crawling out of my skin.
My focus was on my mate. Where it should be.
