I put a boot to the first step, fumes choking me, a slow thump entering my temple. Someone behind me shouted my name, but I couldn’t tell who. My brain was slowing, streamlining my cognitive function to the basics: breathing, moving, searching.
The first step became the second, then the third and the fourth. I hit the landing and wide-open space we used to store packaging and chemicals. The smoke was dense, thickening by the second, flames licking the rolls of plastic and cardboard from the blaze on the left side of the building. I was running out of places to look. My name echoed in my head. Footsteps pounded behind me. “Saint!”
Hands grabbed me, spinning me around.
Alexei’s furious gaze greeted me, blood and mud on his face like me, eyes wild, hair that made mine look tidy. He didn’t look like himself, and yet he did. He looked so human that I wanted to climb inside him and never come out. “Get out,” he growled. “Come on.”
No.I shook myself free and pointed at the last corner of the floor, hidden by stacks of flattened boxes.
Alexei’s fury morphed to something else, but I couldn’t sink into it.
Not yet.
“Saint.”
No.
Alexei snarled and a heartbeat passed between us. Then he threw up his hands and followed me into the smoke.
Keeping a grip on him, I pushed on, the air around us turning black, sparks flying from the ceiling. My chest was so tight it barely moved with each snatched breath, but I untied the bandana all the same and passed it over my shoulder to Alexei.
He shoved it back.
In the struggle, I lost track of where we were and tripped, stumbling forward. My hand hit flesh—softflesh—and I reared back, crashing into Alexei.
The push and pull left me dizzy. He steadied me, then reached beyond me, wrapping his hand around an arm that became a whole body, gagged and tied at the ankles.
Alivebody.
A girl.
And she wasn’t alone.
We’d found them.
My head cleared like I hadn’t inhaled a shit-ton of smoke. I scrambled forward, Alexei at my side, and picked the knots at the ankle of the nearest girl, shoving her at Alexei when I was done.
He seized the girl’s shoulders and shook her. “How many of you?”
She stared back at him, eyes wide with fear and confusion.
He tried again in Russian, then another language and another, until she finally screamed back at him, holding up ten fingers.
I was on my fourth set of bound ankles. Coughing, I worked faster, scraping the skin from my fingertips, picking and picking and picking until I came to the final girl.
She was unconscious. I slung her over my shoulder and planted my feet on the overheated floor, hauling myself from my knees.
Alexei was right behind me, girls already lined up by the stairs. “Lead them out,” he shouted. “I’ll make sure we don’t lose any.”
How he could speak, I had no fucking idea, and the thought of him being out of my sight chilled me to the bone. But it was the logical plan. I knew the site better than him.
Ihadto lead.
With one girl a dead weight over my shoulder and another clinging to my waist from behind, I felt my way to the stairs, testing every foot forward for the top step.
It felt like a million years had passed when the floor descended.
I felt it out, and then down and down and down, every fucking second borrowed. Static crackled in my ear, Rubi’s voice flickering in and out, no words, just noise.