Three minutes passed. Then five. Then seven. How much longer could Mike keep up the cloaking spell?
The flap on the tent building rustled. The wind, or an outcast?
The crowd at the far end of the building began to get antsy. Someone whispered “did it work?” too loudly and was hushed by several others.
The guard building's door opened a few inches and stayed open. Two more minutes passed. I glanced at Hayden in time to see a bead of sweat slide down his temple despite the cold before he reached up and dragged his hoodie’s sleeve across his forehead.
Suddenly, our building’s door moved out of Hayden’s hand. At the same time, Mike and Harvey reappeared before us.
Mike grinned, his eyes tired but relieved. “Done.”
I blew out a long breath. “Good job, guys.” Maybe we’d actually get out of this place alive after all.
Hayden turned towards the rest of the group and gave the thumbs up.
Muffled whoops and whispering broke out as parents rushed to find their children and remove the drugs from their systems. I hurried to the back end to find my dad intently watching Pamela, the female healer who had fixed his concussion, as she bent over a tiny blonde version of herself. When the little girl woke up and said “Mommy!”, Pamela’s teary smile brought tears to my own eyes. Dad grinned too, but his eyes still looked worried.
Pamela wasn’t the only happy parent as more kids were detoxed. But the relieved parents’ smiles didn't last long.
“What's the matter with Mommy?” one little girl asked as she joined the group.
She was the kid who had been leaning against her mother while her baby brother or sister died.
Pamela, who held her hand now, froze then crouched down beside her. “She's still asleep, honey.” Then she looked to Hayden, her eyebrows raised.
Wanting him to decide whether to wake up the girl's mother into a living nightmare.
The hint of Adam’s apple in his throat worked as he swallowed hard, and my chest ached. No one should be forced to make this decision. Who would want that woman to ever wake up and have to deal with such a loss?
“Detox her only enough for her to be able to walk,” Hayden said, his voice gruff. Then he glanced down at me and caught me staring. “It’ll be safer and easier on everyone if the mother doesn’t have to be carried out completely. And this little girl needs her mother at least semi-awake too.”
But there was a haunting tightness around his eyes. Was he worried that he was making a mistake?
I slipped my hand into his. He stared at me for several long seconds, then squeezed my hand.
Pamela touched her sister’s wrist. After a couple of minutes, two men helped her sister to her feet. She was obviously woozy, her eyelids only half raised, her eyes unfocused. And yet she still never let go of the bundle in her arms, even as she reached out to take hold of her daughter's hand.
Hayden’s jaw muscles clenched and unclenched as he took a few deep breaths and seemed to assess our group. “Everyone ready to get out of here?”
Nods all around as families joined hands with their loved ones, all of them looking to Hayden to lead the way out.
“Then let's get out of here.” He opened the door wide and stepped out into the lights that flooded the camp like a football stadium, blinding me and forcing me to raise my free hand to shield my eyes until they could adjust to the radical change in light. He continued to hold my hand, guiding me while I couldn’t see. My dad shuffled behind me, the heel of his left shoe squeaking with each step in a reassuringly familiar way.
After a lot of blinking, my eyes finally started to adjust. As we walked across the rocky, hard ground towards the gates, I looked back over my shoulder at the massive exodus of people following us to freedom. There must have been at least a hundred people in our group, maybe more, and every single one of their faces was so eager and hopeful. And all because of Hayden. In that moment, I had never felt so much pride for someone as I did for Hayden.
Again he caught me looking. One corner of his mouth hitched up as his eyebrows rose in question.
“You did it,” I told him, wondering if he had any idea just how huge his actions tonight were, what they meant for all these people here.
One corner of his mouth tightened in a half grin. “Nah. It was really Mike and John who got us in here. And then all the healers helped out once they were awake. Not to mention how that guy Harvey really saved our butts with the freezing spell. All I did was buy a few flashlights and some bolt cutters.”
I shook my head. He was just being modest. If not for him, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that we would all still be drugged out of our minds in that building, prisoners here until either the government changed its collectively crazy mind about descendants and outcasts or found a way to stop their magic. Or maybe killed all the outcasts instead.
Hayden had saved us. And I had a hunch I wasn’t the only one here who would never forget it.
He reached for the gates' control box and hit the green buttons. Both gates started to slide open with a loud clatter of metal. This was it. We were free and taking everyone with us!
Jeremy would be so jealous. He was always talking about how much luck and determination it took to be in the position of having a firsthand account of an event like this. I glanced around me, wanting to remember every single detail so I could describe what this moment was like to him. He’d be able to write one heck of a story about it.
“Hey!” a man shouted from the opposite end of the compound.
Hayden dropped my hand as we both spun around to find a perimeter guard running around the buildings towards us.
Then the two at the prisoner building entrance stumbled back to life.
A fourth emerged from the guards’ building, sleepily rubbing his eyes.
Either the freeze team had missed a few guards, or the freeze spell wasn’t lasting nearly as long as our guy had expected. Whatever the reason, we were all totally screwed.
“Stop or we'll shoot!” one of the guards yelled.
Three of the guards raised their rifles. The fourth froze then took off for the officer tent. Probably to call for backup.
Hayden burst into a sprint towards the tail end of our group, yelling, “Everyone run! Get out of here now!”
Then he started throwing energy orbs from both his hands at the remaining three guards.
I wanted to run, knew Hayden was right and I should turn and lead everyone through the gates as fast as we could go. But I was paralyzed. I couldn’t look away from Hayden, his face set with determination and complete focus as he fought the guards single handedly with his magic.