“Stairs, got it,” was his succinct reply.
As far down as we’d descended on the elevator, the steps truly seemed to never cease. The only reason I knew I neared the top was because I made out muffled voices. I strained my ears, but it proved too difficult to hear over my pounding heartbeat and bursts of breath.
A smile spread across my face when I realized I’d nearly reached the end.
It was short-lived.
A blast of air jostled my feet. My shin slammed into the edge of the step, but the pain didn’t register. Acrid smoke and melting plastic stole my senses. I glanced up when fine dust coated me like a powdered donut. The ceiling had spiderweb cracks, moving and growing even as I watched. They fissured and edged along like hundreds of slithering black snakes.
“Andrea?”
More earth rained down from above and the fractures became deeper, dislodging larger pebbles and shards of rock that cut and bruised.
“Go! Get out, Callie!”
I didn’t know who made the command, but I obeyed anyway. I used hands and feet to scramble into motion, all-out sprinting for the exit. Wouldn’t it be something for the ceiling to collapse ten yards from safety? With my luck, it’d bury me alive right at six feet deep after climbing nearly a hundred feet of stairs.
Fresh air from the night wafted over me to combat the dust-laden breaths I’d been gasping in, and I knew I was close.
I broke into a coughing fit at the same time the ground lurched. A terrible rumbling deafened all other sounds over my choking hack. Larger rocks pelted me from the ceiling as the earth continued to shake, getting even louder in a crescendo. Unable to see through the tears in my eyes, but knowing only two steps remained, I launched forward blindly. My body hit the hard dirt of the forest floor with a dull thud that was swallowed by the growing growl of tumbling concrete.
I rolled to my butt and scooted back. The collapse started down deep, with hundreds of tons of dirt maxing out the bunker’s design. Dusty air exploded out in a pressurized burst from the mouth of the stairs like a gargantuan dragon exhaling a plume of smoke that blasted the hair clear back from my face.
I got to my feet to put more distance between us, having this fear that even above ground the earth would open up and swallow me whole.
My path had me slamming directly into a tree, bringing me up short. I clung to it while I tried to catch my breath. Loud tumbling drew my attention.
Behind me, the ground sank and dropped several yards. Trees, much like the one I clung to, creaked and groaned as their roots ripped free. Branches crashed and snapped as trunks took a tumble into the rapidly expanding sinkhole.
I backed away another ten paces before I froze dead still. “Andrea,” I whispered, then again at a higher volume. “Andrea?”
With more time to process, I knew it’d been him that’d bellowed at me to run and get out, but I couldn’t recall if he’d been next to me when he yelled it, or if it’d come through the earpieces. I scoured the surroundings, ignoring the pale blond that kept popping up just outside of my line of vision. Officially, I’d begun losing my mind. It wasn’t so much shocking as it was a grievance at this point. I needed a clear head about me.
When I made a full loop and still hadn’t spotted Andrea, I called out to him through the headset. “Andrea?”
“I’m—” Panting broke out over the line. The voice laced heavily with pain. “I’m here, tech girl.”
I sat up, not daring to hope. “Andrea! Oh my God, where are you? Are you okay?”
Nothing but labored breathing came over until he finally strained out, “I’m in one piece, for the most part.” Fluid-filled hacking interrupted his speech. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. Just get to Veseli.”
I paused, knowing from recent experience that all his coughing meant he hadn’t gotten out. He’d ended up in a pocket of rubble somewhere, breathing in all that cloying dust. How long could he last like that?
“Callie,” he repeated. “Find Veseli.”
I twisted the twine bracelet on my wrist. It never left me nowadays, a reminder of why all of my actions mattered, why I kept pushing forward.
Even if Andrea didn’t have much longer, I had to move on. If I got to Veseli, then he could come up with a plan to dig Andrea out.
“Okay,” I whispered. My feet betrayed my reluctance, taking a while to get going, but my ears led me on a path straight to the voices I could hear to the right. “Okay. We’ll get you out, Andrea. Just hang on. Veseli will know what to do.”
I halted behind a tree when I spotted two dark figures in the moonlight. The voices reassured me they were the people I’d been looking for and not some lucky stragglers from Ivanov’s army.
I peeked out to watch them as they stared off with each other. I couldn’t make out what they said, but I caught the glint of knives in Veseli’s hands along with Tarasovich’s gun.
Veseli was in danger.
I glanced at the gun in my hand, pulling back the slide. A bullet rested in the chamber in all its brassy glory. With my heart pounding, I backed away a little to get a shot that wouldn’t risk Veseli. That meant I’d have to backtrack quite a bit considering my lousy aim.
As soon as I turned to go, I gasped.
Standing in front of me stood a small, pale blond, seven-year-old boy. I blinked, but the figure didn’t vanish like it had before. “Kaz? Kazimir? What—how?”
He smiled at me.
“Callie?” Veseli called in confusion, having heard me talking to a child that was supposed to have been long dead.
At that moment, two shots rang out—pow, pow—and a body crumpled to the forest floor.
“Veseli!” I screamed, turning back even though I already knew what I’d see.
Veseli’s form lay in a broken heap just beyond Tarasovich in the pale moonlight.
Tarasovich slowly turned and aimed his gun at me.
That didn’t matter. I couldn’t take my eyes off of Veseli’s broken body bleeding out on the ground.
“Veseli!” I shrieked again, rushing forward.
“Ah, Callie. You should know better than to send your hound dog after me,” Tarasovich scolded.
I shook my head in denial. “I didn’t. I swear—”
“It’s a little late for excuses, my prize. However, I’ll allow you to bid him farewell. I promise to behave.”
How could a young man—a boy even—have gotten the drop on Tarik Veseli?
The answer hit me like a freight train to the chest. I’d distracted him. He’d heard me gasp—heard me whisper Kaz’s name, and it’d cost him his… I couldn’t say it.
I stumbled forward. I had to see for myself. Veseli had been dead before. I refused to believe it without confirming it with my own eyes.
“I’ll kill you,” I swore to Tarasovich when I was abreast of him.
He hummed deep in his throat in a noncommittal sound that said a lot of nothing.
I carried on, my steps feeling leaden with cement weights.
My breath left me when the toes of my shoes brushed Veseli’s arm and he remained immobile. I dropped to my feet and leaned over him, sobbing uncontrollably at the sight before me. I kept repeating “no” over and over again in strained whispers, hoping Andrea would pop on over the line to demand what had happened.