Jenny Plague-Bringer(137)

“Keeping us alive.” Mia gripped him tighter as they approached the door to the central corridor. “Two guards coming through there in a second! Juliana, watch out!” She ducked, pulling Sebastian to the floor with her.

Juliana turned against the wall by the door, tucking herself out of sight as the door opened and two S.S. guards bolted through it, their pistols drawn. Juliana stepped out behind them and exhaled a cloud of her plague, and it ate into the backs of their heads.

On the floor, Sebastian raised his pistols in case he needed to shoot them anyway, but the two S.S. men crashed to the floor with the back halves of their skulls eaten away.

Sebastian stood, and Mia stood behind him and embraced him. She lifted his shirt and pressed her hands against his stomach.

“Stop cuddling!” Juliana shouted.

“I’m healing,” Mia said. “Some of your...whatever that was hit me. How did you do that?”

“I just imagine that I’d like to see everyone in the room dead,” Juliana replied. She looked closer and saw the small, dark sores fading from Mia’s hands and arms.

She turned and ran through the door, momentarily indifferent to whether they followed her or not, feeling a flash of hate for both of them. Even though Alise had entranced them, Juliana couldn’t help how she felt.

At the moment, all she wanted to do was kill. She ran up the central corridor of the base, hoping to see Kranzler or Alise, the plague boiling and blistering all over her.

“There is a guard station ahead!” Mia warned, clasping hands with Sebastian as they ran, trying to catch up with Juliana. “Juliana, be careful!”

Juliana realized she’d miscalculated. She was accustomed to moving one level below where they were, and she’d expected to reach the wide corridor between the big concrete laboratory rooms. Instead, on this level, they were approaching the observation deck from which Kranzler and Wichtmann had watched the experiments.

She stopped and turned. With the alarm clanging and echoing, there was no point in whispering. “Mia, how many of them? Where?”

Mia closed her eyes and explained the layout of the guard station next to the large double doors to the observation deck, and predicted where each guard would be sitting. “I keep seeing us getting killed here,” Mia added.

They spoke quickly to work out their attack. Juliana went first, blowing out the thickest, darkest cloud she could muster, taking out the guards who hadn’t put on their gas masks. She fell flat on the floor and rolled aside, making herself as small and difficult a target as possible. The cold darkness inside, the thing driving her forward despite her pain and exhaustion, seemed to know all about fighting, as if she carried the experience of many battles inside her.

Two of the guards had already strapped on their masks, so Sebastian had to shoot them. He rounded the corner after Juliana, knowing exactly where to point his pistols, killing the guards before they had time to see him and register that he was there. Mia followed, touching Sebastian’s neck.

“We’re safe for a minute,” Mia announced. “Then the guards from the barracks are going to come up behind us, with gas masks and machine guns.”

“Then we’re going to charge through these doors onto the observation deck,” Juliana told her.

Mia squeezed Sebastian’s hand again. “Nobody there is wearing gas masks.”

“Good.” Juliana smiled, then approached the double doors and flung them open.

The observation deck was in a panic, people shouting questions at each other, talking on phones, trying to find out what was happening. Heads turned at the sight of Juliana in her bloody dress—scientists, typing pool ladies, and a cluster of S.S. officers at the center of the room. Frightened whispers spread as it became clear that the guards outside had been defeated.

Juliana spotted Kranzler standing behind his desk, smoking a cigar and glaring at her, flanked by more S.S. officers.

“What do you want?” Kranzler growled, not appearing particularly shocked that she’d managed to escape the cellblock.

“I want to go home,” Juliana said. “But you’ll come after me if I leave. Won’t you?”

“You’re free to leave,” Kranzler told her. “No one will stop you. I’ll give the order.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s the truth.” Kranzler sat down at a desk in front of a pile of paperwork. “Go ahead.”

Juliana looked at the frightened faces in the room. The S.S. men had their hands on their pistols, waiting for Kranzler’s order.

She walked deeper into the room, watching people shuffle back from her on either side, bumping against the windows overlooking the labs. Kranzler’s Nazi officers stood where they were, watching her closely.