Path of the Tiger, стр. 448
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With his pulse racing and fear prickling its tingling discomfort across every square inch of his skin, William crept through the pulsating red and black, feeling as if he were moving through the innards of some gargantuan dragon too boundless, powerful and terrible for a single human mind to contemplate. Glints of red light, like blood droplets, shimmered on the tip and edge of his AK-47 bayonet; the blade itself seemed to be drawing him onward. It was as if some invisible thread was attached to the weapon; a long bubblegum-like wisp of steel, stretching from the point of the bayonet to the centre of a distant forge, white-hot and somehow magnetic. With every step forward William took he felt as if he was edging further from the reality of the present and sinking deeper into some surreal realm located in the liminal twilight between nightmares and unconsciousness. Beads of sweat nipped like jungle insects as they inched a tortuous passage down his temples and the back of his neck. His breathing was consciously controlled, repeated in deep and evenly spaced intervals, but the rhythm of it brought neither calm nor focus into his troubled and anxiety-riddled mind.
He paused to visually sweep a staircase below. Assured that it was clear, he checked the time and then pictured the layout of the building in his mind. Something had gone terribly wrong, he understood that much now. They had long since passed the time limit for the mission’s completion, and the rest of the Rebels should have fled the building a good while ago; Huntsmen reinforcements would be arriving any second, and their response to what had happened here would be measured on a scale of unimaginable violence.
Escape was the only rational option. Going through the corridors and down the stairs would not only be too risky, though, it would take too long. However, there was another way down, a faster way, with the added bonus of near total secrecy: the elevator shaft.
William hurried over to the elevator doors and used his bayonet to pry them open just enough to get some fingers in. From there he was able to squeeze the doors open wide enough to slip in sideways. A gulf of dense blackness greeted him, and even with his tiger-enhanced vision he was unable to see more than a few feet into the depths of the shaft. His tiger senses were, however, able to pick up something else there: a human presence.
Adrenalin shot through his veins like a streak of lightning flickering its violet-blue power across the dome of the sky. His first thought was that it was a Huntsmen assassin, waiting under the cover of darkness to attack any beastwalker who set foot inside this place, so he shouldered his rifle and eased a finger onto the trigger, moving with stealthy speed, sensing that his adversary was not yet aware of his presence. He stood on the edge of the precipice for a while like this, focusing his tiger senses so that they could paint a clear mental picture of where his enemy was, and what they were doing.
It seemed, however, that he was either losing his mind or that his senses were deceiving him; the human was breathing in short, shallow breaths, and their heart was hammering out a frenetic blast-beat. Their fear was palpable, as unmistakable as the scent of jasmine in full bloom. And there, yes, right there, was the unmistakable sound of quiet sobbing.
What was this? Whoever was in here was plainly terrified, and was certainly neither a soldier nor an assassin. William could almost feel their shivers of fright and anxiety vibrating the molecules of stale air in the shaft. There was only one thing he felt he could do now. He pressed his AK-47 to his shoulder, peered down the sights until the barrel was aimed in the direction of the breathing he could so clearly hear with his tiger ears, and prepared to fire.
A few floors down from him, Adriana was too absorbed in her own emotional turmoil to notice the figure slipping through the elevator doors a few floors above. Her heart felt as if it was on the verge of bursting through her ribcage, and she had long since lost sensation in her extremities, which tingled dully with a pins-and-needles sensation. A sharp ache throbbed in her handcuffed wrists, and her legs had begun to tremble with an alarming violence; she wasn’t sure how much longer she could remain perched on this ledge before toppling off of it and plunging to her death in the seemingly bottomless pit below.
She had heard a sustained barrage of gunfire earlier, terrifying in its intensity and how ferociously it had shaken the very walls, but now it had stopped, but nobody had come for her, as they had said they would. This, however, had not surprised her; she had long since understood that she could trust absolutely nobody.
She considered, for a brief instant, leaping into the black abyss below, for it seemed, at this juncture, to be a perfectly rational choice. After all, if her so-called rescuers – these people she had risked life and limb to let into this place, and who had then treated her like a common criminal and left her handcuffed mere inches from certain death – did not come back for her, she would eventually be discovered by Sigurd and his thugs, and God only knew what horrors they would visit on her for her part in this rebellion.
A curious, heady warmth spread through every cubic inch of her body as she focused all of her thoughts on what was clearly becoming the only option