The Outcast and the Survivor: Chapter Five

Chapter Five

“Where are we going?” I wheeze, feeling the straps of my pack and my bow tugging awkwardly against my ribs.

Wade doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even seem to notice or acknowledge that I said anything at all as we continue moving with light, swift footsteps down the long hallway. I glance back toward the entrance to the room I was in. The guard lies there unconscious on the ground. At least I hope unconscious.

I didn’t notice any blood when we were rushing by, but in truth I tried not to look because I didn’t want to see any. Wade may well be the ruthless person Anastasia wants me to think he is, but that’s not how I want to see him. Not right now. I want him to be the person I need him to be, someone I can trust to help me accomplish what my father sent me to do.

We reach a corner at the end of the hallway and stop. Wade carefully peers around it and then takes a step forward.

“Wait,” I whisper, pulling him back toward me.

“Kaela, we don’t have time for me to—”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” I interrupt, “but there’s no going back from this. I need to know why we have to keep running.”

His eyes squint together and his face tenses up, hardly the look I was hoping to see. It reminds me of being a child again, like he thinks he’s protecting me by withholding the truth.

“You promised honesty,” I remind him.

“Yes, I did,” he concedes. “Did Anastasia say anything about me?”

“She said that she asked you to leave Sanctuary.”

“Hardly,” he lightly chuckles. “To the lava trenches, maybe. She had me locked up and condemned the moment I arrived.”

“But why?” I ask hesitantly.

“For the same reason that I came to get you now. Anastasia didn’t call in my debt because she was desperate to find you, though that’s what she’d have you think. It was because she wasn’t the first one to ask me to. I don’t know how she found out, but she must have. It’s the only explanation that makes a lick of sense.”

“So Eliana did send you,” I cut in.

“Maybe,” he pauses. “Those who seek you rarely use names. They were supposed to be here in Sanctuary, but they’ve gone missing. We’ll search for them, but first we have to escape.”

Footsteps echo down some distant tunnel, interrupting Wade’s line of thought. He looks around in a couple of directions trying to determine where exactly the sound came from. His hands have a slight twitch to them, nervy and not like him, though I can’t blame him since he was a dead man a short time ago. Still, there is one more thing I must ask.

“How did you get away?”

His eyes return to mine, his cryptic guise once more in place.

“I have my ways,” is all he reveals, and that’s all I want to hear as my eyes shift back to the motionless guard he left seemingly lifeless on the cold floor.