Free Invincible (The Aerling Series Book 3) by DelSheree Gladden

Aerling, Levi’s sister, to be
specific. She came to help rescue you. Everything else is going to have to wait
until we get out of here.”
    Even what little I just told him is enough
to shut Hayden up for a good long while. He stares at Sloane in shock as I drag
his barely functional body out of the cell. Sloane isn’t much better, but she
has enough presence of mind to rush over to Hayden’s side and make dragging him
around a little easier on me. Only the sound of our shuffling feet follows us
through the empty hallways. The going is fairly easy until we near the end of
the cell block.
    “Can you get to him through the glass?” Sloane
asks in reference to the guard sitting inside the glass booth that monitors the
exit. On our way in it wasn’t that difficult to short the lock and wait until
he turned his back to slip through. That’s not going to happen while we’re
towing Hayden along with us.
    Shaking my head in answer to her question,
I know I won’t be able to maneuver my power through the small opening under the
door with enough strength to suck the breath out of his body. My mouth turns up
in a vicious smile as I realize I can certainly do the reverse, though. I can’t
remember where I learned about oxygen toxicity, but the information was filed
away in my brain somewhere and I dredge it back up now. Concentrating, I
separate the bits of molecular oxygen from the surrounding air and start
funneling it into the guard booth under the door.
    Oxygen poisoning can kill a human, but I
know I won’t be so lucky with a Sentinel. It should be enough to incapacitate
him for a while, though. Sloane watches raptly as the guard first seems to
experience a high. As I shove more and more oxygen into his booth, things start
to change. The guard stands, noticeably disoriented. We all watch as he
stumbles about for a minute before dropping to the ground as a seizure overtakes
him. We all look away then and slip out the door. I don’t feel any remorse for
damage done to Sentinels, but that doesn’t mean I want to sit around and watch
it either. Unfortunately, he’ll be fine once the seizure ends and the oxygen
levels even back out.
    “Mason, two Sentinels, ahead to the
right.”
    We all stop immediately, though we can’t
see anyone yet. The elevators are down the same hall, and we have to get to
them if we have any hope of escaping. This area is too conspicuous to leave a
couple of bodies, though. I scan the hallway ahead of the intersection and spot
what looks like a janitorial closet. Shoving Hayden into Sloane’s arms, I say,
“Wait here.”
    Sloane fumbles, trying to get a good grip
on Hayden, but she has him in hand by the time I step out into the hallway
fully visible. It takes the two Sentinels a moment to process what they’re
seeing. One reaches for a walkie talkie on his belt, but I zap it before he
gets a chance to raise the alarm. The other guy doesn’t bother with an alert.
    He whips out a gun and has it pointed at
me before I can blink. The muzzle flash lights up the dim hallway and I panic.
The shield I used to protect Olivia that night on the river bank springs to
life as an automatic response. The gale of wind I slam into the bullet drives
it into a wall, instead of my head. Instinct takes over, then, and my anger
sucks the heat out of the room. Crystals form on their lips before they realize
what’s happening. Both fall stiffly to the floor, frozen from the inside out.
    Sloane must hear them fall, because she
barrels around the corner to help me drag them away before they’re fully
settled. She’s shaking her head as she reaches out to touch one of the
Sentinels. “Are they…dead?” she asks.
    “No, but it’ll take them a while to
recover from this.”
    Wordlessly, she helps me drag them both to
the janitorial closet. I wonder how Tū managed to create humans that were
indestructible to Aerlings, all but Wardens, anyway. What is it about them that
makes it so hard for us to kill them? Other