At first I thought that Coden wasn’t going to follow me when I ran, and I hesitated.  Despite the fact that fear was trickling down my throat, threatening to suffocate me, the thought of leaving Coden here to fend off Samantha terrified me even more.  Images of his cut up body flashed before my eyes, and I had to swallow down bile.  If Coden wasn’t going to run, I wasn’t going to either.  It didn’t matter that I’d just gotten done promising him the opposite.  No one deserved to die alone.

But it seemed that Coden wasn’t planning on staying behind and battling a battle that probably could not be won.  Instead, he grabbed onto my arm, yanked me backwards so hard that I almost toppled over, and pulled me back down the hallway we’d just come from.  In an instant I twisted around and tore down the hallway, Coden right by my side. 

Samantha was right behind us.  I could hear her laughter, could practically taste her exhilaration as we sprinted down the hallway.  There was something wrong with her, my mind shouted over and over again.  Something completely and utterly wrong with her.  What had to happen to someone for them to live off this sickness, this violence?  Was she born this way?  Or had life ripped her layers away until nothing was left but a sadistic monster?

“Turn left!” I heard Coden whisper, his voice hoarse.  At first I thought I imagined his voice, but when he grabbed onto my hand and practically tossed me into the aligning hallway, I realized that I hadn’t.

I couldn’t even bring myself to try and recognize our surroundings as we ran.  Had we been down this hallway?  Surely we had.  It felt like we’d crossed every hall—every room—in this entire building.  Of course we hadn’t; the place was too huge.  But still, it felt like we’d been trapped here forever.  Searched every possible corner.

Another turn.  And another.  A glance back to see if Samantha was still on our heels.  She was.

My lungs screamed.  My legs burned.  My body begged for me to sit down, to stop running.  But I couldn’t.  If I slowed down at all, I would die.  And, more importantly, if I slowed down Coden would slow down just to protect me.  And then he would die, too.

And I wasn’t about to let that happen.

“Oh come on,” Samantha cooed from behind us.  Her voice was unbearably close.  “Why don’t you stop running?  You must be exhausted by now.”

Coden replied by grabbing onto my hand and tugging me into a faster pace.  He didn’t have to say anything, didn’t even have to look at me.  I could tell by his labored breathing that he was exhausted.  He was relying on pure adrenaline to keep him alive now.  And, from the way my legs picked up speed without even having to think about it, I realized that so was I.

Samantha snickered, a sick, twisted sound.  “Oh, I see.  Playing hard to get, huh?  That’s quite all right.  The chase has always been my favorite part.”

We veered to the left again, this time entering a hall that I instantly recognized.  It was the hall that we’d left Valarie and Rosalie in a room by themselves.  Being in this hall splashed multiple emotions through me.  Besides the nearly uncontrollable fear, this hall added comfort from recognition and dread from the new anxiety that unfurled in my stomach.  But I couldn’t concentrate on that feeling right now.  If I set my mind on anything but running, I was going to slow down.

And I could not slow down.

My eyes locked on the set of stairs at the end of the hall.  What were we going to do?  Were we going to take the stairs or turn another left, going down the adjoining hall?  Which path would we take?  I wanted to ask Coden what he wanted to do, but if I asked Samantha would hear and that would defeat the point.

Coden didn’t seem to agree.  “Stairs!” he called to me, his voice raised just loud enough so that Samantha would be able to hear.  My eyebrows creased.  What was Coden thinking?  If I knew Samantha hearing where we planned on going next was a bad idea, surely he was aware.  As it was, I barely functioned.  Coden had his head together.  For him to slip up like this…

Oh god, my mind whispered.  The fear is taking control of him.

If Coden lost himself to his fear, we’d all be doomed.  Doomed.

My thoughts were pushed to the side as from the corner of my eye, I caught sight of movement.  My eyes shot to the side, toward the room that caught my attention, but whatever had moved before was nowhere in sight.  Good.  If it was a teenager, I prayed to God that they hid themselves in time.  I wouldn’t put it past Samantha to stop chasing us just to corner someone who couldn’t run away.

The thought of her quitting her chase should have brought me relief, but if it meant her going after someone else I couldn’t bring myself to feel the liberation.

We were closing in on the stairs now.  I bit my lip, praying to God that we didn’t trip on them in our hurry or that Samantha didn’t use her acquired knowledge of our headed direction to her advantage.  To me, it didn’t matter that she wouldn’t have been surprised either way we went.  The fact that she definitely knew now threatened to send me into a panic.  We’d lost our nonexistent element of surprise.

I glanced at Coden from the corner of my eye.  He didn’t seem to be losing control.  So why did he randomly slip up like that?  Was I freaking out over nothing?

“Get ready,” Coden whispered.

My eyes widened.  What—?

Right before we reached the top of the stairs Coden pushed me to the side, shoving me down the hall.  I let out a shriek as I lost my footing and collapsed into a heap on the floor.  Coden shouted my name.  As though from a distance I could feel his hands on my arms, pulling me up and pushing me forward again.  I could hear screams and shouts, but there were so many that I couldn’t tell whose scream was whose.  Was I screaming?  Was Coden?  Samantha?  Someone else?

Breathing hard, I glanced over my shoulder.  What I saw forced my feet top stop and my body to spin me back around.

Coden’s sudden change in direction caught Samantha off guard.  In the second she took to pause, Annabeth had sneaked behind her and shoved her toward the stairs.  Samantha didn’t even have time to scream before she tumbled downward, rolling and spinning down the stairs.  Or maybe she did and her cries were one of the many that had echoed in my head.

I crept forward and stared down at where Samantha fell.  She remained motionless on the landing. 

“And that,” Annabeth drawled, “is how you sweep a girl off her feet.”

○

None of us wanted to stick around for when Samantha regained consciousness, so we all rushed away from the stairwell as fast as we could.  At first I thought we were going to part ways, but it seemed now that Annabeth had effectively saved our lives, Coden and I were with her and her small group—even if only momentarily.  If Annabeth objected to the idea at all, she didn’t say anything.  In fact, she was the one who ushered us away from Samantha in the first place.

“We should stop for a minute,” Coden murmured after a while, catching the worn out expression on my face.  “We’re far enough away.”

Annabeth gave Coden a look that said we were never far enough away before cocking an eyebrow.  “What, is your girlfriend tired?”

A smidgen of me was surprised that Coden didn’t jump to deny our relationship, but most of me acknowledged that this was not the time or place to be caring about whether someone thought we were dating or not. 

“We’re all tired,” Coden said stiffly.

“That’s true,” Annabeth agreed.  “All right, Cody, I’ll bite.  Let’s find a room to hole up in for a little while.”

Coden glanced at me, and for the first time since we got here, I wanted to laugh.  Whether Annabeth called Coden by the wrong name on purpose or not I wasn’t sure, but I did now that she succeeded in irritating him.  “Good,” Coden said, not bothering to correct Annabeth’s mistake.

Annabeth’s eyes scanned us all, her expression impassive.  I tried to meet her gaze when hers scraped over mine, but my eyes drifted away before I could stop them.  That uncomfortable feeling I initially got from her was still there, deep in the pit of my stomach.  I didn’t know what it was about her that made me uncomfortable, but she did—whether she saved my life or not.

“Let’s go,” she said, casting an alert glance down the hall before speed-walking into the nearest room to our left.  Coden and I shared a short glance before following Annabeth, Cole, and Tyler into the room Annabeth had selected.

My breath caught in my throat when I realized the room we’d stepped into.  It was the room that Valarie, Rosalie, Coden and I went to in order to clean up Valarie.  I swallowed down bile as I eyed our surroundings.  How had I not realized we were in this area sooner?  I all but had this room etched into my brain, so why did I not recognize our surroundings?

My thoughts were cut off as Coden grabbed onto my wrist and tugged me toward the closet.  I wanted to ask why we weren’t finding a more complicated hiding spot—like what he and Rosalie did with the bed—but I didn’t.  I had made the mistake of not trusting Coden’s judgment already, and I wasn’t about to do it again. 

I felt my stomach tighten with guilt.  Instead of trusting that Coden knew what he was doing, I’d assumed his fear had taken ahold of him.  I of all people should have understood that Coden wouldn’t let his fear control him.  But in that moment, I had doubted him.

Coden and I settled behind a rack of clothes.  We were cloaked by almost complete darkness, which was both comforting and disturbing at the same time.  Samantha or Dan could come in here, and we’d barely be able to see them.  The thought made my stomach clench and my hands threaten to shake, but when I curled them into tight fists, the feeling went away.

“You thought I slipped up,” Coden murmured after a minute or two of silence.  “Didn’t you?”

I bit my lip, my eyes sliding in Coden’s direction.  What I would give to be able to see his expression right now.  “Yes,” I admitted.

“You thought I was so scared that I’d fallen victim to the fear.”

“Yes.”

At first I thought that Coden was angry.  We were supposed to be working together, trusting each other.  We were supposed to be a team in this house of madness.  But a second later I heard what might have been a soft laugh, and I realized that he wasn’t angry with me at all.  “Shows you, doesn’t it?” he asked.

My lips tilted upward ever so slightly.  “I guess so.”

Coden sighed.  “We really need to get back to finding the girls.”

I nodded in agreement.  “Yeah,” I said.  “Annabeth won’t care about looking for them, though.  So should we just part ways?”

Coden didn’t even have to pause for thought before answering.  “Yes,” he said.  “I think that would be for the best.  We’ll thank her for saving our lives and then head out.”

We fell silent until we mutually agreed that it was time to go.  Coden stood up and held his hands out, which he used to help pull me from the floor.  I thanked him softly as we exited the closet.  He nodded in response.

Annabeth and the others weren’t that difficult to find after we left the closet.  They were all huddled in the bathroom—Tyler and Cole sat in the bathtub, while Annabeth stood in front of the sink, growling with irritation as she tried to get the faucet to work.  It was as though she thought that the more she twisted it, the more likely it would be to turn on.

“Damn them,” she hissed as we approached.  “First they kidnap us, then they send us into this sick game, and now they’ve cut off the water.”  She twisted around and shot Coden and I a glare.  “Why?  Why?”

Coden and I didn’t have an answer for her question, so we didn’t say anything.  After a short moment of staring at us, Annabeth turned back to the sink.

My eyes shot to the floor, and I swallowed down bile.  The small blotches of blood from when I’d cleaned Valarie were still there.  I hadn’t expected them to go anywhere, but seeing them again made me feel sick to my stomach.  And when I thought about how Valarie got covered in blood in the first place, I had to close my eyes to keep myself from vomiting.

Annabeth cursed under her breath before letting her hands fall from the faucet.  Coden and I watched as she tore her gaze away from the sink and looked over at Tyler and Cole.  After a moment of staring at them, she looked down at the floor.  Her mouth twisted into a furious grimace when she saw Emily’s blood on the floor.

“We shouldn’t have to take this shit,” she said, her eyes locking on Coden and I now.  She glared at us accusingly, as though we were the ones going around shooting and stabbing people to death.  “We shouldn’t have to let them chase us around like this.”

She went silent for a moment before her expression brightened.  Instead of feeling comfort in the fact that she seemed to be having a “Eureka!” moment, I felt nothing but dread.

“You know,” Annabeth said, a determined expression encompassing her face as she crossed her arms over her chest, “this could all be over if we all got together and just killed the two that are left.”

Coden and I stared at her.  Her words, as true as they were, horrified me.  I could feel the terror spread through me, so strong that my entire body shook.  My legs threatened to give out, but I refused to fall. 

“We may have the numbers,” Coden said, “but they have the more powerful weapons, and more than what we initially see.”

Annabeth glowered.  “What does that mean?”

“It means that Dan has more than one gun, and Samantha probably has more than one knife,” Coden explained.  “It also means that even though we have more than two teenagers on our side, we’re still technically outnumbered.  Dan could shoot more than one person at once if he wanted to.  Samantha could throw knives around.  And we don’t even know how many people are still alive.  We don’t know enough to throw ourselves into something that will more than likely get us killed.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Annabeth argued.  “We should still try.  It’s better than walking around and cowering in our hiding spots.  I think it’s pretty damn safe to say that no one will be finding the door anytime soon—if there even is one at this point.  So what else is there left for us to do?”

“Try to find the door,” I said.  Annabeth’s angry eyes reached for me, and I fought the urge to shy away.  “Trying to find a way out is a lot better than throwing ourselves at the people with a stockpile of weapons.  Everyone around here either has crappy weapons or no weapon at all.  Yes, you can get lucky and find a pair of scissors or something, but that’s not going to be enough to stop a bullet aimed at your face.”

“Someone killed that fatso already,” Annabeth pointed out.  “It’s not like it’s impossible to do.”

I suddenly felt cold, and I crossed my arms over my chest to keep myself from shivering too noticeably. 

Annabeth looked between Coden and I for a short moment before raising her eyebrows.  “You’re the ones who killed him—aren’t you?”

Neither Coden nor I answered, but we didn’t have to.  Annabeth could see the answer on our faces.  “So you are.  If you had the ability to kill one of them already, why are you so adamant that killing the other two is such a sucky idea?”

“This was before we knew that they have more weapons than we were aware of,” Coden said.  “And out of all of them, Al is the stupidest.  I think it’s pretty clear to everyone that Dan and Samantha are smarter than he was.”

Annabeth continued to glower at Coden as though he didn’t have a point, but it was obvious that she knew he did.  I knew that Annabeth was right in some ways, but so were Coden and I.  How could she expect us to round up everyone when we had no idea who was left, barely anyone had sufficient weapons, and we were no match for what she wanted us to go up against?

I bit my lip and cast my gaze to the wall as I continued to think Annabeth’s plan through.  On top of everything else, there was also the fact that everyone was scared out of their minds.  How did we know that there were enough kids even willing to fight against Samantha and Dan?  What if a good number of the people left—which could easily be less than half of the twenty that arrived—were like Rosalie and Valarie? 

And what about our humanity?

I knew that humanity probably didn’t matter to a good number of abductees, but it mattered to me.  I’d aided in taking a human life tonight, and I knew that once we got out of here that fact was going to torture me for a long time.  The thought of doing it again…

If we lost ourselves in here, what did that make us?

“You can fight them if you want,” Coden muttered.  “But I’m not going to join you, not when it means walking into something I know will get me killed.”

Annabeth’s jaw worked.  I could see that she wanted to scream at us until we saw her way.  She wanted so badly for us to agree and to help her with what she had planned.  But we couldn’t.  I could understand why Annabeth felt differently, but I just didn’t agree with her. 

“Thank you for saving us earlier,” I said softly.  “And I’m sorry.”

Annabeth didn’t even look at me.  She just kept glaring at Coden.

“We can never repay you for that,” Coden added.  “But now it’s time for us to go.”

Annabeth pursed her lips, and I wondered how many cusses she was throwing our way inside of her mind.  “Yeah, whatever,” she snapped.  “I’ll see if anyone else would be willing to do what needs to be done.”

Coden looked as though he had many things he wanted to say to that, but all he did was nod and say, “Okay.”  Then he glanced at me.  “Serenity?”

I nodded and followed Coden out of the room.  I could feel Annabeth’s eyes on as we left and started down the hall, but I ignored it.  Instead, I put my attention on what we had to do now.  We had to find Rosalie and Valarie, get out of here, go get help from the police, and not die in the process.  And as impossible as that all seemed right now, I needed to believe that we could do it.  Because once we lost hope we had nothing left.

“If you want to help her, you can stay with her,” Coden said softly.  “You know that, don’t you?”

“I don’t want to help her.”  I glanced over at him.  “I thought I made that clear when I added points to our argument.”

Coden shrugged.  “Yeah, I just wanted you to know that you don’t have to stay with me if you don’t want to.”

I didn’t answer for a moment, shocked.  Where was all of this coming from?  “Why wouldn't I stay with you?"  I asked finally.  "Coden, even though I barely know you, I trust you more than I’ve ever really trusted anyone.”

His eyes met mine.  “Really?”

I nodded, refusing to let my gaze fall away from his.  “Yes.  And I’m not going to leave you to join another group, even if I disagree with you—which probably won’t ever happen.  You’re sensible and conscious of the fact that we’re still human.  I trust you.”

Coden bit the side of his lip.  “I don’t want you to trust me too much, Serenity.  Because if we get in trouble, you might put all of your faith in me when it comes to getting us out.  And I might not be able to.”

“I know.  I don’t think you’re superhuman, Coden,” I replied.  “But I know that you try your best.  And that’s more than I could ever ask for.”

Coden nodded, his eyes falling away from mine.  “I trust you, too, just so you know.”  A shadow of a smile found its way to me.  “If I haven’t made that clear.”

I smiled a small smile.  “Thank you for trusting me, Coden.  Sometimes I don’t think I deserve it.”

“You do.  You might be scared, but you don’t let it influence your choices.  You fight it.”

I didn’t have an answer for that.  There didn’t seem to be anything to say.  Whether I believed it or not, I wasn’t sure.  Over half of the time it felt like the fear was consuming me.  But, then again, I’d pushed back the fear when fighting off Al.  I had no other choice.  “I’m sorry for earlier,” I said instead.  “When we were running from Samantha.”

Coden gave me another small smile.  “I don’t blame you,” he said, shaking his head.  “Really, I don’t.  If I were in your place I probably would have thought that way, too.”

“Yeah, but I should have known that you had something planned.”  I sighed.  Then my eyes shot over to him.  “Is that why you’re suddenly making sure that I actually want to stay with you?”

“No.”  When I continued to stare at him, Coden sighed.  “No.  I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t speaking for you and then making you feel like you couldn’t have your own opinion.”

“I can always have my own opinion.”  I shrugged.  “And, in my opinion, my moment of panic made me think something that was completely ludicrous.  Also, in my opinion, Annabeth had her fair points but the risk is too great.  I just want to find Rosalie and Valarie, find the door, and get out of here.”

Coden nodded.  “Yeah.”

“Okay.  So which way should we go to find them?” I asked.

Coden pursed his lips in thought.  “We should probably go back where we were headed before.  Samantha would probably expect us to run in the opposite direction, not back toward her.”

I nodded.  “Okay.  And if she expects us to go in the direction we’re going in?”

“There’s no way of really knowing is there?”  Coden grimaced.  “We just have to choose a direction and hope for the best.”

I nodded again.  Though going back in the direction where Samantha could be didn’t sound all that pleasant, when I thought about it, it made sense.  Rosalie and Valarie were last seen heading in that direction.  At least going that way, we knew they’d been there.  If we took any aimless direction now, we’d be back where we started before Annabeth had given us a general direction.

“All right,” I said.  “Let’s go then.”