The Bratva’s Locked Up Love by Jagger Cole
16
Quinn
Alarms blare loudly,like sonic knives assaulting my ears. Red-lights flash, which just makes the whole reality even more apocalyptic. I follow the guard with the gun closely, my pulse racing. We barrel down hallways, up one of the escalators, and then down another hall.
“What the hell happened?!” I scream.
The guy glance back at me with a grim look.
“Dunno, doc. Total system failure. But I do something like seventy percent of the containment units are wide fuckin’ open, so we need to get the fuck out of here.”
Fear grips me. Yeah, that’s not good, at all. Maksim might be the gentle giant, to me at least. But the rest of Yellow Creek really is full of the most vicious, cruel, and dangerous prisoners on the planet. They’re hardened, angry, and free.
We need to get the fuck out of here is right.
“Hey!” I yell at his back suddenly. The man halts, glancing back at me.
“What?”
“What about the hole?”
He frowns. “What about it?”
“Is it secure?”
He wrinkles his brow. “Yeah, he ain’t goin nowhere.”
“No,” I shake my head. “I mean is he safe.”
The guard looks at me like I have three heads. “Who the fuck cares?”
“I do,” I snap. “He’s my patient, and he’s at-risk. He’s got a lot of enemies in—”
“Yeah, right now, doc?” The guy snaps. “I’m more worried about us. That motherfucker may have some unsettled shit with whoever in here. But you and me? And anyone else with a goddamn badge in here? All of ‘em are our enemies right now? You get me?”
I nod, paling. “Yeah.”
“So let’s move, now.”
He grabs my arm, hauling me after him as he goes dashing down the hall. We pop up another floor to where the main underground offices are. I start to bolt towards where the elevator banks are, but he grabs me and tugs me down another side hallway.
“Wait, we need to—”
“Uh-uh, this way.”
His face is grim as he pulls me down a dark hallway, the overhead lights flickering like a horror movie.
“Corporal, where the hell are we—”
I gasp as he suddenly whips me around and shoves me into an empty office room. I whirl in confusion, but I instantly cry out as the back of his hand slaps across my face.
“What the fuck—!”
I cry out as he shoves me back again, this time toppling me over onto my ass. The door behind him opens, and suddenly another leering face joins him in grinning down at me. This man I also recognize—the same corporal who told me Maksim was “an animal” that I should let bleed out that first time I went to patch him up.
But Maksim isn’t the animal here. The two men with cruel grins and leering eyes are.
“Been waitin’ a long time for this, sweetheart,” the guy who dragged me in here chuckles with a salacious lick of his lips.
“Fuck that, I’m first,” the second guy grunts. He shoves past the first guy. He loosens his belt, and my heart drops.
“You don’t want to do this,” I choke, my face white as I shove back across the floor away from them in horror.
“No, I think I really do, actually,” he growls. “Been takin’ shit from a chick down here for way too fuckin’ long. And right now, I don’t give a shit who your daddy is, bitch.”
The other one starts to pull his belt off as well. “We’re gonna enjoy this, doc. And I can’t wait to get a piece of that stuck-up ass—”
His eyes bulge as his head suddenly twists to the side. I gag at the sound of his neck audibly snapping as his eyes roll back. He drops to the ground, pants half-off. And suddenly, looming behind him in the doorway, is a huge, hulking shape that I recognize.
The other guard whirls, gun in hand as his pants drop to his knees. But before he can scream, Maksim closes the distance between them like lightening. His huge, tattooed hand wraps tight around the man’s throat.
It’s not dramatic, or slow. He just snarls and wrenches the man’s neck sideways. A second awful snapping sound fills the office before he tosses the man to the side like trash.
“Quinn…”
He rushes to me, lifting me from the ground with one hand like I’m utterly weightless. My pulse is racing like crazy, and I can barely breathe as the adrenaline and fear course through my body.
“You’re safe,” he growls quietly, stooping down until he’s eye-level with me. His dark, piercing eyes spear into me. But even as intense as they are, they bring me nothing but calm. I let myself fall into those dark pools as my heart rate slows.
“They... they…” my breath hitches.
“They won’t,” he growls. “No one is going to hurt you.”
“We need to get out of here,” I gasp. “The other prisoners…”
“Come with me,” he grunts, taking my hand. He whirls, pulling me after him through the doorway back into the flickering hallway. We bolt down it and round the corner before we both come to a sudden halt.
“Tom!” I scream.
But he doesn’t hear me. He’s too busy shoving a roaring man with what looks like a fire emergency ax off of him. The man scrambles to his feet to charge. But instantly, Tom’s hand comes up gripping his sidearm. The gun recoils, and the screaming psycho drops to the ground.
Tom whirls, and I gasp. He’s hurt, badly. Blood is soaking his sleeve and dripping from a hole in his side. But his eyes narrow as he see’s Maksim gripping my hand tightly. He bares his teeth as he quickly swings the gun around to point right at the big Russian’s chest.
“On your knees, motherfucker!”
“Wait! Tom!”
His eyes dart to me, and I can see the protective love in them. But he’s got this all wrong. He thinks I’m being taken, or hurt. When in reality, I’m being saved.
“Let her go!” He roars at Maksim.
“Tom!” I scream. “He’s helping! He not—”
Tom’s eyes are on me. When I feel Maksim’s hand drop mine as he bolts into action, horror floods through me.
“No, wait!!”
The rifle on his back is suddenly in his arms, raised to his shoulder. He rushes at Tom as I scream. But before the Sergeant can even react, the bullet explodes from the barrel as I scream.
Behind Tom, the snarling man with the swastika tattoos and shotgun in his hands drops to the floor, dead.
Tom stares at Maksim. But the Russian suddenly roars again.
“Down!”
Tom reacts on impulse, dropping to his knee. Maksim fires past him, taking out yet another escaped inmate with a weapon in his hand and murder in his eyes.
Maksim lowers his weapon as I rush over to Tom.
“Quinn,” he groans. Despite his tough façade, Tom’s face is a mask of pain. He wheezes as more blood flows from his wounds.
“What the hell is he—”
“Helping me,” I blurt, trying to assess his injuries. They’re bad, though, and I don’t even have my bag. We need to get him top-side to medical aid, now.
“No, Quinn,” he groans, looking weak. But his eyes are narrowed with fear and apprehension as he stares past me at Maksim.
“No, he’s a monster—”
“You need medical attention,” Maksim growls as he storms over, lowering his rifle. Tom stares at him in surprise.
“You speak English?”
“Yes.”
Maksim stoops down and reaches over to the dead inmate. He rips the sleeve of the man’s jumpsuit off like it’s tissue paper and suddenly wraps it around Tom’s arm. The older man hisses in pain as the Russian ties it tight. Maksim slips an arm around Tom’s back. He lifts him, supporting his weight and ignoring the Sergeant’s confused look.
“The elevators are down this way,” I blurt quickly. “Let’s go.”
Maksim keeps the rifle in one hand as he helps Tom limp down the hallways. The alarms keep wailing, the lights flashing. One other inmate darts out of a side hallway. But when he spots Maksim and the gun, he turns and bolts away.
Around the corner, I pound the button for the elevator. The adrenaline is roaring in my ears. The nightmare sirens pierce my ears as tap my fingers against the button over and over.
The doors finally open. Maksim grunts, pulling Tom into the elevator along with me. We lower the older Sergeant down, propping him up against the wall.
I scream as the wall next to us suddenly explodes with peppered gunshots. Maksim whirls, snarling as he brings the gun up like a practiced soldier. He fires back at the three guys shooting at us, advancing out of the elevator as he drops two of them.
And then suddenly, he roars as a mist of blood sprays from his arm.
“No!!” I scream as he falls to his knees. I bolt out of the elevator, heedless of Tom yelling my name and heedless of the last attacker firing at us. I reach Maksim, grabbing him in my arms and helping him to the ground behind an upturned office desk.
Behind me the doors to the elevator suddenly close. My head whips around in horror—just in time to watch as a bullet hits the elevator button, destroying it.
Oh shit.
Maksim grunts and bring the gun up as he lurches up from the desk. He fires, dropping the last attacker before he turns. His eyes narrow on the destroyed elevator button, the closed doors, and the indicator above them showing the elevator containing Tom rising up to the surface.
Slowly, he turns to let his eyes burn into me.
“Quinn…”
“There’s offices around the corner with emergency security doors,” I blurt.
He nods. “Let’s get to them.”
I wrap my arm around him. He does the same to me. Then we’re bolting around the corner as I try not to let the utterly crippling fear inside of me freeze me up.
Maksim drops two more inmates as we barge inside the offices. I slam the door shut behind us and rush to the keypad on the wall. I pound in the emergency code. Suddenly, a metal shield slides across the inside of the door and locks with a loud hydraulic hiss.
It’s suddenly quiet—the alarms outside barely audible inside here though the blast doors. I turn, my heart racing as I look at Maksim—the huge, savage-looking Russian that I’ve just locked myself behind blast doors with.
And I’m suddenly very much hoping I haven’t just jumped out of the frying pan and right into the fire.
His eyes hold mine, and I blush as I drop mine to his arm. “We should look at…”
The room swims. Pain suddenly lances through my shoulder. I turn my head I confusion. But then my face falls as I stare at the jagged piece of glass imbedded like a knife in the back of my shoulder.
“What… how…”
My vision fades as I start to fall.
