Whispers in the Dark - Maya Banks [127]
He took out his handheld unit that hooked to a key card and swiped it through the security keypad. Within seconds, the door slid open and they rushed in, guns up.
As Resnick had warned, there were three hallways, one to the left, one to the right and one down the middle.
Sam pointed at Donovan and Joe and motioned for them to take the right hall. He directed Garrett and Nathan to take the middle and then jerked his thumb at Ethan to come with him to the left.
Garrett glanced at Nathan as they started down the hallway. “We’ll find her, man. We’ll get her out of here.”
CHAPTER 40
A tear slid down Shea’s temple and disappeared into her hair. It worried her that she seemed to slip away with each passing hour. She was beyond the pain. She didn’t really feel it any longer. But she had a hard time conjuring up the simplest of things.
Her mind was a vast landscape of nothingness. Every once in a while she would try hard to remember what her purpose was. There was something she had to do. But when she did so, she was immediately assaulted with more pain and so she let herself slide farther into the abyss because there the pain wasn’t present. Her fear and anxiety faded to nothing. And she floated. Free.
Even as she knew this was all wrong, she was helpless to change it because she no longer had the strength to fight. She’d been brought to this place to be poked and prodded. Studied and observed. A nameless, faceless test subject with no feelings or rights. Her humanity had been wiped away as if it had never existed. Here, she mattered to no one.
She heard whispers in her mind. They called her name, but she desperately shoved them away and closed herself off, wanting to avoid the inevitable crush of pain if she allowed them to grow louder or, God forbid, she responded.
What did these people ultimately want? Did they already have Grace? Was it why they weren’t questioning her about her sister? It was Shea’s worst fear, that everything she’d done in the last year was for nothing.
A distant explosion rocked the tube she was imprisoned in. It shook one of the electrodes free, but there were still three attached, and fire sizzled through her body as fear spiked her brain waves. Above her one of the fluorescent lights crashed to the floor, just missing her makeshift prison.
The lab went into chaos. Screams, yells, equipment falling and being turned over as they all scrambled like rats to flee the room.
Shea strained at her bonds but there was no budging the bands. Panic set in and she started hyperventilating as the tube seemed to close in on her. Oh God, she couldn’t breathe. What was happening? Was it an earthquake?
Her mouth opened in a silent scream and then she yelled hoarsely as another electric current bolted through her body. She closed her eyes and retreated back into the void where insanity was the preferable alternative. To a place where there was no pain and no fear while everything around her went to hell.
JOE slammed back against the wall just as Donovan flattened himself against the other. Bullets zinged from the opposing hallway and into the wall a short distance away.
“Motherfuckers,” Donovan swore. “On my count, you go high and I’ll go low. One, two…three!”
Joe turned the corner as Donovan went to the floor, guns up. Joe took out the two armed guys on the left while Donovan downed the remaining one on the right.
“Let’s go,” Donovan barked.
An explosion rocked the building and Joe reached back for the wall to steady himself. “Sounds like Garrett’s already having his fun.”
“It’s going to get interesting now. Keep your eyes peeled. Shoot first and don’t get your ass shot.”
“You have such a knack for stating the obvious,” Joe muttered as he broke into a run down the hall.
They passed the downed men, and Donovan stopped long enough to snag a security badge from one of them.
“Oh,