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Trying to focus and make my scrambled awareness into something that resembles reality, I flail and come up short.
I can’t quite remember where I was or what I was doing. All I’m conscious of is the ringing in my head, and the hardness of the floor beneath me.
I don’t feel anything for a moment. I’m too stunned. Then I try to take a breath, and my lungs burn. Holy shit. What the hell? Coughing wracks me, and agony hits like a train, sending my senses reeling.
I hit my head when I was thrown, and sharp knives of pain stab into me, feeling as if they’re lacerating my chest to my thigh. Christ, it’s as if I’m being stabbed repeatedly. Have I broken something? Or have I been hit by whatever caused the noise? I blink my eyes open, but there’s so much dust it’s hard to see anything.
Beneath the ringing in my ears, I’m sure I can hear someone screaming. Another person is crying. Someone else shouts for help. A smoke alarm is sounding from somewhere in the building.
The kitchen. I was heading to the back kitchen entrance.
What’s happened starts to take shape. There’s been an explosion. Perhaps I could put it down to a gas leak or something, but knowing a man’s body had been found shortly before the blast makes me believe this was fully intended. Some fucker has driven a bomb onto campus.
As the dust clears, I realize the external wall next to me is now a gaping hole. At least part of the reason I’m in so much pain is that the bricks and mortar that had made up the wall are now piled on top of the right half of my body. Fuck. What kind of damage has been done? I don’t want to think about it, but I also know I can’t just lie here. Where are the others? What was Kenzie doing when the blast happened?
That thought makes me face what I have to do. With superhuman strength and determination, I make myself move. I wrench my body, the way you do when trying to free yourself of a dream you’re trapped in, and some of the rubble falls away from me.
I cry out in agony as I move again and reach to my right with my left arm, throwing the debris from me and trying to ignore the pain slicing into me with every movement. My body hurts, but it’s my head that is pounding as if I have the hangover from hell, and every now and again zig-zags of lightning-like pain shoot over my skull. What the fuck?
I’m going to be screwed up again from this if I’ve been injured all over again, and I hope I can be as strong as I am now when the drugs call to me, whispering their lies of no pain and beautiful oblivion.
Christ, this throbbing in my head is beyond pain; it’s all-consuming, making it hard to think of anything else.
Part of me wants to lie back down and let the darkness take me so I don’t have to face this, but I can’t because I have to know Kenzie is safe.
Finally, I’m free of the heaviest of the shit piled on me, and I manage to sit. Blinking, I raise my hands to my face and wipe the dust from my eyes. I cough some more and then spit the foul, dry crap from my mouth.
“Tino?” The shout to my right has me turning my head to see Kirill barrel through the half-destroyed kitchen doors. He appears unharmed, though he’s also covered in gray dust, and when he reaches me, he bends down and holds out his hand.
“Can you stand?”
“I can try.”
“Try hard,” he commands. “I just saw Mackenzie.”
“What? Where?”
“From the window on the floor above. I was heading down to the kitchen, and I saw Paxton with her, and he was dragging her across the yard at the side to the converted stable blocks.”
On the other side of the stable blocks is where the day staff park their cars. Is he planning on trying to drive straight through security at the gate? He could get himself and Mackenzie killed.
Shit. I have to stand. Grunting, I let Kirill drag me up as I ignore the screaming pain.
“Let’s go get our girl,” I say through gritted teeth.
Chapter 34
Domenic
The boom is distant but distinct. The floor beneath my feet rumbles as if an earthquake hit, and books fall off shelves. A glass rolls from the table and smashes.
Something just fucking exploded.
I stare in shock at my father, but he’s already moving.
He opens the safe and at the same time uses his other hand to place a call on his cell. “Lock it down. Everything. Students to the safe meeting point. Guards at every fucking entrance. Find out what the fuck is going on in my college.” His words are snarled.
He’s angry, but if I’m not mistaken, a little scared. That fact makes my stomach bottom out in dread.
