Chapter 128: The Girl Behind the Door

Astrid Vale

We waited until the corridor outside the medical facility fell quiet enough that Liora deemed it safe to move, and even then her hands trembled around the stolen key.

"We can still turn back," she whispered, more to herself than to me, I thought.

"You can," I said. "I can’t. Not now."

She nodded, and we moved.

The medical facility looked different at this hour, sparser, most of the ordinary staff gone. As we pressed deeper, the atmosphere shifted noticeably, cold panels lining the walls, small blinking lights I didn’t recognize embedded above certain doorways, sensors of some kind tracking movement in ways I couldn’t fully understand. Liora’s nerves visibly climbed the further we went, her eyes darting toward every panel we passed.

"This section is monitored more heavily than the rest," she whispered. "We shouldn’t be here."

"I know," I said. "Keep going."

At the sealed door leading into the restricted corridor, her hands shook as she pressed the key against the mechanism. For one agonizing second, nothing happened. Then it clicked open.

We slipped inside, and the door eased shut behind us. Several smaller rooms lined the corridor beyond, each sealed, none marked. A sound reached us then, muffled, desperate, coming from somewhere down the hall. My whole body went cold.

I knew that voice.

"Ivy," I breathed, already moving.

I found the door and pressed my ear against it, and the sound came again, a scream fighting against something covering her mouth. My hands found the mechanism, and Liora worked the key beside me with fingers that shook harder than mine.

The door gave way.

Ivy stood restrained inside, wrists and ankles bound in a way that forced her upright, a cloth tied cruelly over her mouth. The moment the door opened, she thrashed violently, screaming through the gag, certain they’d come back for her.

"Ivy," I said.

She stopped fighting instantly.

Her eyes found mine, wide and disbelieving, staring like she was certain her own mind had finally broken.

"It’s me," I said, moving closer. "Ivy, it’s me."

Tears started falling before she made another sound. I reached her and pulled the cloth free from her mouth, my fingers already working at the restraints.

"How did you find me?" she asked, the words breaking apart as they left her. "Astrid, I thought you were dead."

"I thought the same about you," I said, my own tears spilling over.

Her eyes shifted past me then, catching sight of Liora hovering near the doorway, and her entire body went rigid, panic flooding back into her expression.

"Who is that?" she demanded, pulling back from me sharply despite the restraints still binding her wrists.

"She helped me find you," I said.

"She’s one of them," Ivy said, her voice climbing, fear overtaking whatever relief she’d felt a second ago. "Astrid, how do you know she’s not one of them?"

Liora didn’t move closer, didn’t try to touch her. "I’m not going to hurt you," she said quietly.

"That’s exactly what someone who was going to hurt me would say," Ivy snapped, and I understood, watching the raw terror still gripping her, that nothing about her fear was unreasonable. These people had taken her, questioned her, restrained her, kept her underground for however many days had passed since the east wing. Of course another Elarisi standing beside me looked like a threat.

"Ivy," I said gently, "she helped me get here. She’s the reason I found you at all."

Ivy’s eyes stayed locked on Liora for a long moment, distrust still radiating off her even as her breathing slowly steadied. She didn’t relax, not really, but she stopped fighting long enough to let Liora move toward her ankles.

Together we freed the last restraint, and the moment it released, Ivy’s legs buckled. I caught her before she hit the floor, her weight sagging against me hard.

"I’ve got you," I said.

She found enough strength to stand on her own, leaning heavily against my shoulder. "We need to go," she said immediately. "Now, Astrid, please."

"Carefully," I said. "We can’t just run blindly—"

A sharp electronic tone cut through the room.

All three of us froze.

Liora’s head snapped toward a small panel embedded near the door frame, its light shifting from a dull glow to something flashing red.

"What is that?" I asked.

"The restraints," Liora said, her voice tight. "The system registered them being released. It knows the room’s been breached."

"They know," I said.

"They know," she confirmed.

"We don’t have minutes," Liora said, already moving toward the door. "There’s no time to figure anything out here. We have to leave right now."

"Is there another way out?" I asked, keeping Ivy upright against my side.

"There’s an older section of the complex," Liora said. "It’s not monitored the same way, not anymore. Follow me. Quickly."

We moved fast down the corridor, Ivy stumbling with every other step, her body clearly weakened from however long she’d been held immobile. I kept her arm looped over my shoulder, half carrying her as Liora led us around one turn and then another, deeper into a part of the medical complex that looked older, dimmer, less maintained than everything we’d passed through so far.

Behind us, an alarm began sounding through the restricted ward, a low, rhythmic pulse that seemed to vibrate through the very walls.

"Keep moving," Liora said, not looking back.

We turned another corner, and Liora stopped so abruptly that I nearly ran into her.

A soldier stood farther down the corridor, already facing our direction.

For one frozen second, nobody moved.

Then his eyes swept over Ivy, restraint marks still visible on her wrists, over me, and finally landed on Liora standing between us in her medical trainee uniform, clearly somewhere she had no business being.

His expression shifted from confusion into immediate, sharp understanding.

He raised the device clipped to his shoulder, his voice carrying loud enough to echo down the entire corridor.

"Security breach! Restricted ward! The surface girls have escaped!"

I looked at Liora. Her face had gone completely pale, all the color draining out of it at once.

We were exposed. Completely, irreversibly exposed, with nowhere left to hide and an alarm already spreading through the entire complex behind us.

Oh shit.