Page 72 of Twisted Gift

I don’t have time to turn my eyes away before Max snaps his neck and lets his body drop to the floor.

He wipes the sweat from his brow and settles his gaze on me. “You still breathing over there, blondie?” he checks.

“Barely.”

He nods his chin toward the other end of the hall, toward the stairwell down to the next level. “Let’s go. We’re almost there.”

We hurry down the stairs to the next floor, trying to keep quiet in doing so. Max stops at the door, looking over at me and pressing his finger to his lips. I nod in acknowledgment, and he opens the door a crack. He turns his face toward me and holds up two fingers. Two guards are standing outside the door. I’d bet at least two more are inside the room.

“What’s the plan?” I whisper.

He shrugs. “Kick some ass?”

I glare at him.

“Well, considering I can’t shift in here, we’re going to have to get through these ones just like the others.”

I sigh, leaning my head against the wall. Being human has its pitfalls. I’m just about ready to collapse. All of this high-stakes fighting and running is knocking the energy out of me at a fast pace.

“You can stay here,” he offers. “I’ll go in, get the device, and then you and I can finally leave this place behind. What a great story we’ll have to tell when we get home.”

Home. My chest tightens. Our friends are probably frantic looking for us.

“I can’t let you go alone.”

He nods. “Sure you can. I’ll be ten minutes, tops.”

I bite my lip hard, knowing I should suck it up and “kick some ass,” but I’m not sure I’ve got enough fight left in me to be anything more than dead weight. “You’re sure?”

He just grins at me.

I exhale hard. “Fine. But hurry.”

“So bossy,” he mutters, shaking his head before he throws the door open and charges toward the guards. They pull out cattle prods, zapping them to life, but Max is faster, smacking their heads together before they can touch him.

“Easy peasy,” Max calls out, probably for my benefit—or his amusement.

I open the door wider and step into the hallway as Max swipes a card off the one guard’s belt and taps it against the panel on the door. A light above it flashes green, and the lock flips open. Max rubs his hands together, smiling like a kid in a toy store, and kicks the door open.

Another alarm goes off, and the room Max broke into thunders with what sounds like heavy objects being tossed around. I can only imagine those heavy objects are people, and Max is taking care of business in the most violent way possible.

I gasp when he steps back into the hallway five minutes later. “That was fast,” I comment, still a little breathless.

“Time to go, blondie,” he says in a harsh tone, the detonator in his grip. “Now.”

I couldn’t agree more.

We return to the stairwell and continue downward. The alarms blaring everywhere have become background sound as we stomp down the stairs as fast as possible. Max is starting to slow down, but I don’t have the energy in me to offer him any. Once we get out of here, we can get him to a feeder unit to recharge.

Pushing through a set of double doors on the ground floor, we stop dead in our tracks. There, at the end of the long hallway, is a door to the outside.

Max turns to me. “Race you,” he offers with a faint smirk.

“Funny,” I mutter as we both start running. “Get ready to press that button,” I force out in between huffs of air.

“Trust me. I’ve been ready since the moment I woke up here.”

On that, we’re the same.

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