The Original Crowd (A Whole New Crowd 0.50)

I reached for the doorknob and opened it.

What I saw inside almost made me weep.

Grayley was inside, tied to a bed.

I couldn’t speak, but I ran to his side and quickly cut through his bindings.

“What?” he mumbled, sitting up and squinting at me.

“It’s me,” I whispered.

“Taryn?”

“Yeah. Can you walk?”

“What? What are you doing here?” He was so fucking groggy.

“You gotta wake up and you gotta be okay to run. Not walk, but run. We have to get out of here.”

“We can’t. I don’t know where we are.”

“I do,” I snapped, the fucking drugs were working miracles on him. “What’d they give you?”

“Nothing. I’m just…Taryn, what are you doing here?”

Oh my God. I yanked him upwards and dragged him to the door.

Grayley dropped to the ground.

“Get up,” I snapped again, and this time I slapped him. The fucker needed to get up if he wanted to live.

I could hear my heartbeat in my ears again. I hated that sound. It was so deafening.

I had Grayley. He was alive. It was as if I’d been numb until that second. But now that I had him, I was near panic—Tray was out there.

“We have to go. Now!” I insisted, trying for anything short of shouting.

“Taryn, where are we? Where’s Brian?”

He didn’t know. My heart stopped for a second. I didn’t want to be the one to tell him about Brian.

“We’re going. Now!” I don’t know if it was the adrenalin, I don’t know if Brian was there with us, but suddenly Grayley stood and I had him on my back. I was almost carrying him out the door and down the hallway.

Tray said to meet him halfway. He’d come in from his end and there was supposedly a tunnel that wound up, right underneath the football field. That was our exit. It was an old tunnel on the original blueprints, but the most recent blueprints hadn’t shown it. Gentley insisted it was there. There hadn’t been any changes around the football field, so it meant the tunnel was there and possibly ignored by Jace. That meant a safe exit for us.

We were almost

to the meeting point, I was swiftly counting each step under my breath. Twenty more to go.

Grayley stumbled a few times, but I always managed to lift him back up and keep him going.

Again, I have no idea how it was even possible.

The adrenalin was starting to wear off, but I needed enough to get to Tray. That’s all I was focused on right then and there.

Pop!

Gunshot. My heart stopped. Everything went silent. Grayley fell to the ground and I stood. Still.