Connor and Vince fight their forbidden attraction as they attempt to rescue themselves and fellow residents of the underground Refuge facility from a toxic breach.
*****
Conn...
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"I need to speak to my dad." Vince limped to the panel. "Give me a minute to talk to him. I can convince him to call off the order."
"I can't allow that." Em placed her hand on his chest, preventing him from getting close to the screen. "If Randolph or his men know that Dr. Smith is communicating with us, he'd be exposed as our ally and they'll kill him. We promised to keep our communication a secret. We swore to die before we let our associations be known." She looked to me. "That's the same promise your father made, Connor."
"They arrested Dr. Price Cutler and his wife." I nodded to the panel. "They already know of your associations."
Em put her hand up. "Let's not jump to conclusions. We're still not completely sure why they were arrested or how much Randolph knows. He could've arrested them to question them, for all we know. Maybe he removed them from Control to test his suspicions about them being our accomplices. Let's not give him a loaded gun if all he has is a blank shooter."
I paced back and forth, following the same short trail each time. "Well, he knows something. It can't just be a coincidence that they were arrested hours before Dr. Randolph announced a breach and ordered everyone to defend Nine."
How much did Dr. Randolph know? Had he known hours before that the upper hemi would break through the barrier onto Ten, as I suspected? He did mention evacuating some residents. Or had he purposely, strategically waited until the exact moment they broke through to wake us, rush us, and send us up to kill, knowing we all would be too disoriented to ask the right questions, the questions that would have save lives, and too amped up on fear not to follow the orders of a man we trusted? A few times during training he'd mentioned how we fight better when adrenaline fuels us, when we act on instinct and let our engrained skills guide us.
An urgent knock on the door startled me. Our heads snapped toward the noise. We had been so consumed in our thoughts and figuring out what to do next that we became the peas in the pod me and Vince had always joked about, locked in Control away from everyone.
A panicked voice forced its way through the closed door. "They're inside Ten. We need you down there, Emily."
Em opened the door to reveal the frightened young man, breathing heavily while gasping for his next breath. She hiked her thumb back over her shoulder. "Get everybody up to Eighteen, Nineteen, and Twenty. And have the others defend Thirteen until I get down there. They're gonna try to collapse Eleven. Go, go, go."
"Yes, ma'am." The man ran off toward the stairs.
Em turned to us. "Randolph is trying to send his men up here to strategically place explosions that will collapse Eleven onto Ten like he did to Twelve." She slammed the heel of her fist onto the half-opened door. "Damn it."
I calculated it all in my mind and realized she was right. "To force Ten to hold all the debris from Eleven and Twelve is a hazard for everyone in the facility. A floor wouldn't be able to hold that much weight. And it'll put a larger gap between the hemis."
