Free The Arena by Bradford Bates Page B

could make it out of here before someone tried to stop us from leaving. We started to pick up the pace, our jogging slowly turning into a flat out run. My ankles groaned in protest, but I started to feel better about making myself stretch while I had been waiting for my chance to escape.
    When we reached the end of the hallway, we entered a large square room. Video monitors completely lined one of the walls. Desks were placed against the opposite wall, giving whoever sat at them visibility of both the doors and the video feed. This was clearly a guard room of some kind, but there were no guards. As we headed through the room to the open door on the opposite side, I noticed a foot sticking out from behind one of the desks. I started to point, but then I noticed the rest of the body. It had been ripped in half by God knew what, and someone had tried to hide as much of it as possible by shoving it under the desk. I didn’t ask any of the questions that were tumbling through my mind; I just followed Steven and Vanessa through the door and kept running.
    We made our way through several more guard rooms, all of them empty except for what was hiding in the corners or under the desks. It was weird to be running through empty room after empty room. The only thing left in these rooms was pure destruction and death. I could only imagine that my new traveling companions were the ones responsible. Why hide the bodies, though? We hadn’t encountered another living soul since we left my cell.
    We finally made it to a closed door. Steven hit the door at a full run, with Vanessa right behind him. I caught the door as it started to close, and all I heard was a hurried, “Go up.” Then the real fun started. We were running up endless flights of stairs. I could tell it was taking its toll on the man running next to me. His breath was getting ragged. Every now and then it would be accentuated by a gasp for air, and he was starting to slow down. Just when I thought he wasn’t going to be able to make it, we burst through one last door into the glaring sunlight. I had to stop running, the glare of the bright sunlight momentarily blinding me.
    After my time in the dark cell and being unconscious, my eyes just couldn’t adjust fast enough to the light. I felt an arm on my shoulder guiding me forward. We reached a dark SUV of some kind, and as soon as the door closed behind me, we were moving again. We were going fast, like the devil was nipping at our heels fast. My mind was reeling with the thoughts and emotions of the day. Not too long ago, I was just a normal kid going to school and coming home at night to my family. Now that I knew that I was adopted, my adoptive parents had been murdered. I had been kidnapped and imprisoned. All of that had happened in the last day, as far as I could tell. My sense of time was a little muddied from being unconscious. Now I found myself on the run with people I didn’t know. Not to mention that I wasn’t one hundred percent sure that I could trust any of them. I did feel like I knew a few things, though. These people saved my life by getting me out of that hole, they were killers, and at least one of them had some kind of superpower. Crazy as all of that was, I had a feeling it was just the beginning of things to come.
    I woke up, jumping violently out of my seat with the memories of my parents’ deaths still haunting my thoughts. Bumping my head on the roof of the car brought me back to reality rather quickly. I had forgotten where I was, and ended up paying for it by adding another bump to my head. We had to have been driving for hours, at least I thought so. When we left the prison, it had been bright and sunny, but now it was dark without a trace of the sun in the sky. I felt something bump against my shoulder and almost banged my head on the roof again.
    Vanessa only smiled at me. “Don’t worry, you are safe with us.”
    I looked down to see what had bumped into my arm, only to see she was