Chapter 6: The Escape
The gym was a slaughterhouse. The Iron Dogs were fighting back, but they were outmatched. Kaelen was screaming orders, barricaded behind an overturned desk, firing blindly into the smoke.
Max knew he had to move. The Cleaners were sweeping the room, executing the wounded.
He saw a grate in the floor near the showers—the drainage system. It was small, tight, but Max was skinny. He crawled on his stomach, the air above him filled with lead. He reached the grate, his fingers fumbling with the rusted screws.
"Hey! Rat!"
Max looked up. A Cleaner stood over him, the gas mask making him look like an insect. The barrel of a silhouetted rifle pointed at Max's face.
Bang.
The Cleaner's head snapped back, and he crumpled to the floor.
Silas stood behind the fallen man, a smoking revolver in his hand. He was bleeding from a gut wound, holding his side.
"Go, kid," Silas wheezed. "Get the car. The back alley."
"Silas—"
"Move!" Silas roared, firing at another shadow in the smoke.
Max kicked the grate open, but instead of going down, he scrambled for the back exit. He burst out into the alleyway, gasping for clean air. The rain soaked him instantly.
Kaelen's black Lincoln was there. Max fumbled for the keys he had swiped from the office earlier. He dove in, started the engine, and screeched around the corner just as the back wall of the gym blew out from an explosion.
He drove. He didn't know where. He just drove until the burning in his lungs subsided and the shaking in his hands forced him to pull over under a bridge in District 8.
He was alive. But the Iron Dogs were dead. And he was driving the boss's car, likely the only survivor of a massacre.