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Jade - Chapter 27 - Now

'Run!' Blue shouts again. Already more congregants have started to spill out of the meeting room, each of them furrowing their brows at the sight of me.

The pregnant girl is still by her door, her eyes panoramically wide. I feel for the items in my pocket I stole from Blue's dorm room. The hard edge of metal runs along the pad of my thumb. I sprint past the pregnant girl, through the double doors and back into the hospital. Dr Jenkins and Belinda are outside the examination room now, standing by the operating theatre. Though they're not touching, Belinda seems bound to Dr Jenkins by an invisible lasso. That their faces are both laced with equal measures of horror surprises me. For a moment I cannot tell the captor from the abductee.

'What's that n—'

'Run!' I yell, yanking at Belinda's arm.

A thunderous collection of footsteps echoes down the corridor behind me. The reaction is delayed, but she must hear it too because suddenly she grips me back and moves. Like a foot on the pedal of an underpowered car, it takes a moment to find its gear, then she jerks forward.

We race past a vacant-looking bucktooth girl—the one with the pony tail— and out into the lobby, towards the revolving door. It doesn't budge.

'Those people are going to get us!' Belinda says.

'The side door!' I run over to it, pushing it back. It croaks. Groans. Doesn't move.

What would I do? Where would I hide a key? I fumble for the bunch in my pocket that I stole from Blue's room. Apart from a car key, there are three others: two Chubbs and a Yale.

'Jade!' Belinda yells.

Behind, the hooligans spill out into the lobby area like locusts.

A yale key works! We push through, then I turn and force the door shut. 'We need to jamb the handles. Give me a branch or something'.

People turn the corner into the hospital foyer. The hands over the heads in rage.

'Forget it, Jade, we can't waste time,' Belinda yells.

'We need to do something!' I lock the door and scan the frigid landscape for something to use. Grabbing at a signpost on its side amongst the bushes, I attempt I slide it through the handles. It's already bent in places, pliable, and it creases the minute they run into the door on the other side. It rattles furiously. Their faces press up to the glass with sneers, snarls, and a cacophony of slurs I cannot decipher.

'Too late! Run!' Belinda shouts.

This time I listen. I run for my life. Over the small roundabout mound, past the yellow brick bin store, across black ice, as smooth as marble. Belinda is ahead. Behind us, it goes quiet. Then there is a sharp popping of shots, so loud, a great echo follows us around the corner, shaking my bones. A great crash pierces the air with a dour melody of splintering glass.

'She's dead when I catch her!' I hear amongst the shouting.

'She'll tell 'em where we are, then we're all dead.'

'Active eggs, when we have none!' another yells. 'She's humiliating the rest of us.'

We run towards the car park where the white transit van dropped me off. Maybe a dozen more cars are around now. I click and click at the fob in my hand until one blinks—an old red Honda Civic, cloaked in a thin layer of frost.

'There!' I rush to get in.

Belinda pulls the passenger door shut as the first of the cohorts turns the corner.

'Keep your head down, Belinda.' I lower mine behind the wheel.

'What? Are you mad? Just drive.'

'No, they'll see us; they're all over the exit. We'll never get away.'

I squeeze the steering wheel to stop the shaking in my fingers.

'Jade, they're gonna get us, we can't just stay here.'

'The cars are all frosted up, they can't see in and they have no reason to think we'd have access to one.'

'Where are they?' one yells from nearby. My breathing picks up, throwing cloudy pools of air in front of me. Belinda crushes my hand, both of us quaking. An image of Belinda's bushy red hair sticking up above the glove box and inadvertently giving us away, stirs the fear in my chest. In The Clinic, surrounded by all those guards, my heart didn't hammer as much as it is now.

'See any footprints?' another male voice says outside. It's clear. So close.

'Can't see nothing in this slush.'

Through the blurry windshield, figures move in loose pools of colour like the examination room door inside, when I'd hoped Blue would be there to save me from Ridley. Now I'm worried Blue could be out there, searching for us with the rest of them, but he'd asked for my patience. He'd told me he would save me. Outside the congregation room, he'd told me to run.

'Jade, I'm scared,' Belinda says, sinking lower into her seat.

She draws her hands up to her mouth to curb her icy breaths, though neither of us really breathe, not properly, as figures navigate between the cars. Pools of colour pass I front of the windshield.

Another is by the door. I squeeze my eyes shut and wait. And wait. And wait.

'Nothing over here,' a voice finally yells. 'Must've headed to the woods.'

When the footsteps finally dull, I slide the key into the ignition. Beside it, two Chubb keys dangle on a brass ring. I slowly untwist the black Honda fob from the others, breaking my nail as I work it loose. Blue is a Virgo—everything in his possession is streamlined to be practical. What are the remaining two keys for?

'What are you doing, Jade? Why aren't you driving already?'

We are attempting to escape from a sea of enraged lunatics, who know the place better than us and are armed and dangerous, but there are more keys on the ring and it bugs me. 'Patience Jade,' Blue had said. 'You will be safe in here. I'm the only one with the key.'

'Not just yet,' I say to Belinda. 'There's one thing I've got to do first.' I press the Honda fob into her hand and making sure there's no one around, I carefully open the door.

'Run Forest Run'. That's what this chapter should be called. Maybe I'll add some titles, and see what the general feedback is.

A short chapter here.. part one of the escape, but will they make it? Find out tomorrow at 5pm, when this chapter concludes. 

Please like, vote, follow and/or comment on this chapter. I've already made so many changes thanks to awesome feedback for you lovely people, so every opinion counts.

CAST LIST

Jade Lively - Lilly Collins (the protagonist)

Blue - Liam Hemsworth (the protagonist / anti-hero and Jade's ex-boyfriend)

Mikey Drosner - Jack Black (Blue's lawyer)

Detective Pike - Viola Davis (Blue's prosecutor)

Dr Pam Jenkins - Emma Stone (the doctor working with Blue at Freedom)

Eddie Maylord - friend and advisor to the Prime Minister

Terrence Ridley - Mackenzie Crook (one of the pirates from Pirates of the Caribbean)

Belinda - Lindsay Lohan (fellow kidnappee)

Adrian Lively - Alex Pettyfer (Jade's husband)

Marcus Lively - William Fichtner aka Alex from Prison Break (Adrian's father)

Prime Minister Christopher Seaford - Gary Oldman