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She had to help them.
“This is it.” Ramon stared down the hall, then shook his head. “Looks like a cellblock.”
“No, it doesn’t.” She knew what this was. “It looks like patient rooms at a facility.” She went to the first door and peered into the tiny window with wire crisscrossed in the glass. An older man lay on a bed inside the room. His clothing was the same color as the sheets and walls.
“This guy has a thing about white.” Ramon checked a window. “No one here.”
She looked in another few rooms but didn’t see the kids. Each one had a single patient, and all of them seemed to be asleep. At the end of the hall, she spotted a familiar face. “Nicola.”
Kenna tried the handle.
“Here.” Ramon handed over a keycard.
“Where’d you get that?”
“Off the guy I downed. Figured it might be handy.”
“I guess we’ll find out.” She swiped the card into a card reader beside the door. It clicked, and the light turned green. “Hold the door.”
If they both went in and the door shut, they’d be trapped inside.
Talk about the stuff of nightmares.
“Got it.” Ramon stayed on lookout, standing where he could hold the door open.
Kenna shifted the rifle across her body to behind her back and went to Nicola. She shook the doctor’s shoulder. “Nicola, can you hear me?” She shook her shoulder harder. “Doctor Santorini!”
The doctor blinked but said nothing. She stared at the wall beyond Kenna’s shoulder with a vacant expression. Drool slid from the corner of her mouth.
Kenna gasped. “Nicola, what did they do to you?”
“Someone is coming.” Ramon stepped into the room and let the door click shut.
Kenna rushed to the other side of the door and put her back to the wall to stay out of sight.
Out in the hall, someone walked by the room. “I saw them come this way.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Whoever was outside passed the door and continued on down the hall. Kenna’s phone buzzed. She put it on speaker, then tucked the phone in the front pocket of her vest. “What’s up, Maze?”
“Hang on.” A second later, the teen said, “Yeah, Bruce. Click that.”
Nicola seemed like she’d had some kind of procedure or been given a drug that made her compliant. Someone’s sick idea of compliance from the people who were being held here. Likely, all so they could be experimented on.
“Okay, I’m back.” Maizie’s voice rang through much clearer now. “I’m opening all the doors. There are sixteen patients, or whatever there are, on that floor, and they’re going to go free.”
Kenna looked at Ramon.
“It’s the right thing to do,” the teen said.
“No one is going to argue with you,” Kenna said. With Maizie living for years as a captive, it probably meant a lot to her to be able to give others the same chance at freedom she’d had.
Nicola continued to lay on the bed, staring at the far wall. The room was little bigger than a prison cell, but with a small dresser beside the bed. No artwork. Nothing personal. Not even a book.
“They all should be free,” Kenna said. “But they also need care and probably medical help. We can’t just let them be out into the world without having doctors look them over.”
The doors buzzed and clanged and swung open all down the hall.