“Run,” Noah said to me, his voice almost a whisper. It was soft and desperate.
I couldn’t leave him. It would have been smart, maybe, but I couldn’t do it.
And I couldn’t leave Jamie and Stella trapped either. So I ignored Noah’s plea and attacked the tie on Jamie’s wrists and feet with an even greater fervor.
They came free. Jamie sprang up on startlingly quick feet and Jude dove forward, toward me, just as Noah lunged for him.
Jude knocked me down. The shard fell from my hands.
“Get them out!” I screamed to Noah as Jude’s arms snaked around my body. As a steel blade pressed against my skin. It would take nothing to break the flesh. To plunge it into my neck and bleed me out like an animal in front of Noah.
Noah, who watched me with an expression that others would take for rage. But I knew better.
It was terror.
A hot tear slid down my cheek as Jude lifted me up and held me tightly against him, my back against his broad, awful chest. I stared at Noah, his perfect face frozen, his limbs radiating tension as he stared back at us, motionless.
But Jamie had set Stella free and they stood. Stella cradled her broken wrist. Megan and Adam were unconscious, but alive. Jamie hauled Megan up beneath her arms, dragging her toward one of the hallways with Stella by his side. We were still locked in the building, but Jude would leave them alone now that he had me.
“Go,” I said to Noah, even knowing that he never would. His jaw was iron and his stare was fierce. I would miss it.
I was saying good-bye, I realized.
Noah saw it in my expression and shook his head slowly. His voice was calm and strong, just for me. “You’re going to be fine,” he said.
I will fix this, he meant.
But Jude’s grip tightened, and the blade pressed into my neck. The breath I was holding escaped and he gripped me tighter. A trail of warm blood trickled down into my shirt.
“I will give you anything,” Noah said to Jude. His voice was quiet. “Anything.”
Jude spoke to Noah, but his lips were at my ear. My flesh rotted beneath them. “There’s nothing you have that I want. Not anymore.”
I met Noah’s eyes and watched as something in him died.
I couldn’t take it. I wasn’t afraid anymore for myself; just miserably, desperately sad. “He won’t kill me,” I lied to Noah. “I’ll be okay.”
Jude inched us up against a white, bare, empty Horizons wall, crushing me in his arms. He edged us slowly toward the hallway, flanked by patient rooms on each side. I was trapped by him again.
Trapped. The word triggered a memory. I remembered—
A different hallway. Illuminated by the flash of Rachel’s camera.
Jude and I walked together behind Rachel and Claire, sticking to the middle of the cavernous hall. Patient rooms flanked it, and I didn’t want to go anywhere near them. When Rachel and Claire disappeared behind a corner I sped up, terrified to lose them in the labyrinthine passageways.
I had been trapped before.
And I escaped before.
With nothing more than a bruise on my cheek, which wasn’t even from the collapse. I remembered seeing the blossoming purple stain on my cheekbone in the hospital mirror. It was from Jude. From when he hit me.
I brought the asylum down, but I made it out unharmed. Safe.
But Jude escaped, too, my mind whispered.
His arms gripped me tighter and I knew his eyes were locked on Noah’s. The blade edged into my skin and I felt a rush of warmth and pain. Jude was eliciting every last drop of malicious glee from hurting me and being able to make Noah watch.
I wanted to hurt him back.
And maybe I could. Yes, Jude escaped—but without his hands.
Which meant I could hurt him, but not kill him; I’d tried so many times to kill Jude before and it never worked, but I did escape. I brought the asylum down and maybe if I brought this building down, I could get free.
And Noah. He might be injured if the building collapsed but he was different, like me—so he would survive like me. Even if he was hurt when the building collapsed, he would heal. He always did. Noah would be safe.
But Jamie? Stella? They were different like us, too. Like Jude. Which meant they would probably survive, but they might be wounded.
Noah could heal them, though. He healed my father. If I hurt Jamie and Stella by trying to get us out, he could fix them.
Jude’s hot breath tickled my neck, making me turn my head before we edged into the shadows. I saw the blood-soaked girl in the garden. I saw Adam lying in the sand.
Me and Jamie and Stella and Noah would survive. But we weren’t the only ones here.
Adam was probably still alive. Megan was when Jamie dragged her away. There might be others locked in their rooms behind their doors, too.
If I brought this place down like the asylum, anyone who wasn’t different would die like Rachel and Claire. Adam. Megan. Anyone else, anyone normal.