The Gender Fall (The Gender Game #5)

There was a crash beside me, and I jumped, whirling, only to see that Owen had pushed one of the stacks of empty filing cabinets over in front of the door, helping to block it, and was in the process of toppling another, a pained look on his face. It crashed to the floor with a noise that seemed about to bring the roof down. The whole camp will hear! I shouted at him, and he snapped back, They know we’re here already!

Just get over here! I darted toward the window on the east side of the trailer, Owen leaping over the overturned cabinets to keep pace with me. Through the transmitter, I could hear Violet speaking, giving us more information, her voice sharp and focused.

Go—I’ll cover you. I stepped aside and let Owen get to the window first, pulling my gun and training it on the door. Behind the scattered, piled-up filing cabinets, the doorknob rattled, and I clicked off the safety, sweat trickling down my forehead. I heard Owen grunt and threw him a look, alarmed when I saw him struggling with the window.

Shining my flashlight on it with my left hand, I exhaled another expletive as I saw that long metal spikes had been driven through the window frame, securing it closed. The doorknob rattled again, the door opening a crack, but getting stuck on the piles of cabinets, and the sound of low, urgent voices outside came to my ears.

Owen, I vocalized, throw another one of those cabinets.

Owen didn’t argue, just found the nearest stack and began to topple them, the sound exploding into my ears again. As soon as the first crash sounded, I drew my hand across my chest and slammed the butt of my gun into the glass, shattering it loudly—but not, I hoped, loudly enough to be heard over the racket Owen was making. I used the muzzle of my gun to sweep away the shards that jutted out of the remains of the frame, telling him, Enough!

Just then something heavy slammed into the door, and it scraped open another foot. I leveled my gun at the door and fired three shots at it, the silenced gun making little sound, but the guards outside yanked the door closed as the bullets struck the frame. Go, I ordered Owen, and he ran back to me, diving headfirst through the window. I kept my gun trained on the rattling door, but used my free hand to grab the top of the window frame, lifting my legs up and out of the window, then dropping down into the dirt outside.

My landing wasn’t hard, but it wasn’t graceful, either, and I dropped to a knee as I tumbled out. I could hear the sounds of muffled voices and movement just around the corner; Owen was at the edge of the building, his own gun drawn.

They’re still trying to get inside, he transmitted, his eyes wide as he looked back at me.

Good. If they hadn’t heard the window breaking, they would be expecting us to still be inside. That gave us a few precious seconds.

I stood up and fired two more shots through the window, hoping it would confuse them further and buy us some time. I kept careful count of my bullets—already I was running lower than I would have liked. Five down, six more to go in this clip, with another twelve in my backup.

Violet, which way?

“Go to your left, straight down that path—you’ve got fifteen seconds!”

I was already moving, patting Owen on the shoulder as I passed him and headed down the long path, flanked by two more trailers that ran perpendicular to the one we had just left. I kept low to the ground, stopping as soon as I reached shelter on the other side, covering the gap for Owen as he ran across it. All the time, my ears were trained for the sound of running feet; I thought I could hear shouting, but from where? Had they discovered yet that we weren’t in the trailer?

As soon as he was across, we ran again, making a straight line for the rows of tents just past the trailers. We were three rows deep when Ms. Dale’s voice was in our ears, shouting at us. “VIGGO, GET IN A TENT, NOW!”

Her order was delivered with such urgency that I grabbed Owen out of instinct, jerking him with me as I dove for a tent, yanking aside the dangling flaps that separated the interior from the outside air. We came to a stumbling stop just inside the tent, and I turned and grabbed the tent flap, trying to hold it still from our rapid entry. Just as my fingers touched the fabric, something dark whizzed past, moving at impossible speed.

I froze, glancing over at Owen, finding his face drawn and his eyes wide, as though trying to stare through the gap in between the tent flaps. Good—that meant I hadn’t been hallucinating. He had seen it too.

Taking a slow step back, I heaved in a deep breath of air as calmly and silently as I could, my stomach turning at a slight but deeply unpleasant stench in the air. My skin crawling, I subvocalized to our team, What the hell was that?

There was a pause before I got any response, and the wait felt longer than it was, the silence chafing on my raw nerves.

Finally, Violet announced, “Viggo, there are two enhanced humans there.” I could hear an angry bite in her voice, but I wasn’t sure whom her anger was directed at. “Their bodies are way hotter than the average human’s. We thought they were running a fever when they appeared on the infrared, but it seems we were wrong.”

I felt the air escape my lungs as I took in her words. That meant we were either dealing with two new princesses from Matrus… or we were dealing with the boys. As much as I hoped it was the princesses, I sincerely doubted Elena would risk any more of her sisters after losing three to us. Not that she was sentimental. To her, the boys were just more expendable.

Owen waved a hand, catching my attention. I frowned as he pointed to the ground, and then my eyes followed his fingers. I froze.

Visible in the dim light that filtered in through the tent material from the bright overhead lights, on the floor beneath us, men were stacked up like cordwood, one atop of the other. They had been stacked on either side of the tent, three on each side, all with bullet holes in their foreheads. Now that I knew they were there, I recognized something I had tasted in the air the moment I had stepped into the tent: the smell of death. These bodies had clearly not decomposed enough yet to smell too bad, but it was there all the same.