“The guards are on the way,” Mariella added. “We don’t have much time.”
“We have to get the baby.” Jenny hurried to the airlock door of her cell, and Seth ran to meet her.
“You had the baby?” Seth asked. “The baby is...”
“Alive, Seth,” Jenny said. Her eyes glistened. “She made it. She’s alive.”
“A girl. And she’s alive.” Seth slowly smiled at Jenny.
“They’re keeping her at the clinic,” Mariella said, pointing northwest. “I’ve been listening.”
“There’s nowhere to swipe the access card,” Seth said, studying the door’s control panel, which had a small numbered keypad. “It’s a combination lock.”
“I’ve been watching them do it every day,” Jenny told him. “It changes every week, but right now I’m pretty sure it’s 335598.”
Seth keyed in the code and pulled open the outer door. He ran into the airlock and opened the inner door, and Jenny jumped on him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and holding him tight.
“Seth, it’s been so awful without you,” she whispered. “Horrible.”
“I missed you so much,” he said. “But the baby’s really okay?”
“A healthy little girl.” Jenny smiled through her tears and kissed him.
“We really have to get going now,” Mariella said, touching Seth’s arm.
“Stay where you are!” a voice commanded over the intercom. This time, it sounded like Ward. “Guards are on the way.”
The five of them hurried out the door. Mariella again watched the ever-shifting future and picked out the safest route through the base.
They made it to the short corridor in front of the clinic’s closed double doors.
“We’re done!” Mariella shook her head. “The clinic is full of staff, and the armed guards are almost here...” Everyone could hear the sound of boots echoing on tile. “I don’t see what we can do.”
“Tommy, can you panic the medical staff?” Seth asked. “Send them out here to block the guards?”
“Maybe.” Tommy cast a worried look behind them.
“Let’s go!” Jenny opened the door and led the way in, Seth at her side, followed by Tommy, Esmeralda, and Mariella.
The medical staff were already in a panic, the doctors and lab techs running out to the front desk area, where the nurses at the desk were on their feet and shouting. It looked like everyone had just been warned that the escaped prisoners were on the way.
Several of them screamed at the sight of the five paranormals charging into the clinic. All eyes went to Jenny, but it was Tommy who attacked, unleashing a plume of dark red droplets from his mouth, which settled over the medical staff like a mist of blood.
“Where is my baby?” Jenny screamed at the terrified nurses, letting the pox blister her face. “Where?”
“Down that hall...” A nurse pointed to a door, her finger shaking. “Last exam room, very last on your left.”
“There are bombs all over this base!” Mariella shouted. “You have five minutes to get outside the walls, or you’re all dead! Run that way!” She pointed to the open doors through which they’d entered, and the fear-infected medical staff ran out screaming, a dozen people or more. Esmeralda slammed the doors behind them.
“That won’t block them for long,” Jenny said, looking anxiously toward the door that led to her baby.
“Do you see all of them wearing gas masks?” Tommy asked Mariella.
“More than half of them, rows of them,” Mariella said. “There are some extra guards near the back who aren’t wearing any...maybe they didn’t have time to suit up or they joined at the last minute...but...”
“That’s good enough,” Tommy said, approaching the doors. “You’ll want to barricade these doors after I leave.”
“You’ll get killed.” Esmeralda touched his face. “You can’t do that.”
“I just want you to get out safe,” he told her. He pressed the gold Indian-head coin into her hand, the one they’d traded back and forth all their life. “I’ll see you again. You know this isn’t the end. Maybe I won’t be such an asshole next time around.”
“I doubt that.” Esmeralda smiled, but her eyes gleamed with tears. She kissed him, then held the coin against her heart.
“I love you, Esmeralda,” he said.
“I love you, too,” she whispered back, and he couldn’t help smiling. At least he would die with those words in his ears.
Tommy steeled himself, then hurried out through one of the doors, closing it again behind him. He hoped they would take his advice about blocking the clinic from the inside. If his attack worked, the entire base would soon become chaotic and dangerous.