Page 144 of Alpha Awakened
Chapter 53
December 6, 1982
10:28
Wilmington, Delaware
Cursing to himself, sweat dripping down his back and into his eyes, Hazard checked every room on the fifteenth floor. But the shadow lands councilor wasn’t in any of them.
“Where the fuck is she?” he muttered.
He’d listened to everyone sound off so he knew she was the last councilor they needed to rescue. Had Cortez stuck her in the basement with the bombs?
His comm link crackled to life and Ortiz’s voice sounded in his ear piece.
“Hazard, you need to get out of there.”
“I haven’t found the last councilor yet.”
“Too bad. Leave now. That’s an order.”
“Fuck!” He was turning to go when he spied a door set back in an alcove on the other side of the elevator. Hoping this was it, he went over to the door. It was locked, so he kicked it open. Jackpot.
Inside, the councilor was on the ground of what looked to be a utility closet. Her hands were behind her back, tied to a metal column that ran from floor to ceiling. Her ankles were also bound and duct tape covered her mouth. Tears streaked her dirty face and her hair straggled out of pink sponge rollers.
“Hazard, you’ve got no time!” Ortiz shouted over the comm link. “There’s less than two minutes left on the clock!”
“Found her!” he yelled back. “She was in a fucking closet.”
“Goddamnit, Hazard! Get the fuck out of the building!Now!”
Hazard whipped out his knife and freed the councilor from the pipe. He cut her ankles loose so she could run but left everything else. Quickly pulling her to her feet, they left the closet and sprinted down the hallway. They’d just made it to the emergency exit door when the countdown timer he’d set on his watch beeped.
Zero minutes left. They weren’t going to make it all the way down and out of the hotel to the safe zone.
Hazard spun around. Tugging the councilor behind him, he raced into the closest empty room. “Here. In here.” In the bathroom, he shoved her into the tub. “Stay there!” he ordered sharply.
Her eyes big with fear over the tape, she gave a shaky nod.
Hazard dashed back out to the bedroom and grabbed the mattress off the bed.
“If it works for tornados...” he muttered as he dragged the mattress into the bathroom. He got in the tub and lay down on top of the councilor, pulling the mattress over them both.
In the next instant, a loudboomthundered up from below. The boom was followed by a distant rumbling and groaning of metal, the noise chasing all the way up to the highest floor where they waited with nothing but a tub and a mattress to protect them.
The rumbling grew louder, closer until everything around them shook. A chunk of the ceiling fell, hitting the mattress over them.
The councilor screamed, the sound shrill and terrified in Hazard’s ear. All he could do was give her shoulder a reassuring squeeze as more debris landed on their protective barrier.
There was a loudcrackas the bathroom floor shattered. The floor gave out beneath them and they started to fall. Then everything went black.
Chapter 54
Ice watched as the hotel came down in a shower of falling debris and a massive cloud of dust. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t hear anything but the ringing in his ears. Hazard was inside that building buried under the rubble. He’d lost him just like he’d lost his parents. Hazard was gone and he’d never told him—.
“Ice.”
Someone was calling his name but they had to be far away because he barely heard them.