Betrayed by Melinda Metz - Fingerprints - 5 Page A

so many combos.
    As fast as she could, Rae punched in the numbers in a different order. No luck.
    Will it only give me a certain number of tries before an alarm goes off? she wondered, her heart snaking its way up into her throat. Got to risk it, Rae decided, stabbing at the keypad. She swallowed hard, trying to get her heart back down where it was supposed to be, since it felt like it had almost blocked out her airflow. It didn't budge. She typed in another combo. The last one. And the door didn't open.
    If she thought it would help, Rae would rip her throat open with her fingernails to get some air in. How was she supposed to think when she couldn't breathe?
    You can breathe, she told herself. She sucked in a mouthful of air just to prove it. Then, using just one finger, she lightly touched each button again. Yeah, it was only three, four, seven, and nine with the static. But the static she picked up on number four was just the tiniest bit louder. So maybe it was a five-number combo, not a four number.
    Which meant more variations. A bunch more. Would she have time?
    Rae punched in a five-number sequence with two fours in it, then cursed. She'd hit the two instead of the three. So of course the door stayed locked. Concentrate, she ordered herself. She entered a combo. Thedoor stayed locked.
    Another. Still locked. Another.
    And then she heard a click. A beautiful, beautiful sound. Gently, reverently, Rae turned the doorknob and pulled.
    The door swung open. She looked over her shoulder at the monitors. Her heart began to thud against the walls of her throat. Jesse and the rent-a-cop were in a hallway. Were they heading back toward her?
    She couldn't leave now. She was too close. Rae scurried through the door. The room she found herself in wasn't any bigger than a closet. There was one table, one chair, one monitor.
    Clenching her hands into fists at her sides, Rae forced herself to look right into the picture on the monitor. And her whole body stiffened. It looked exactly like a hospital unit. Four beds, and in the beds patients hooked up to IV drips and heart monitors and Rae wasn't sure what else. A woman with a clipboard moved from bed to bed, making notations.
    "Experiments," Rae whispered. "They're still doing experiments in this place." What else could be happening in that room? It's not like the Wilton Center had a six-week course where you knitted a sweater and a six-week course where you became a doctor. Was my mom ever in one of those beds? she wondered. Was Mandy's mom? Hot bile splashed into Rae's throat, and she swallowed hard, trying toforce it back down. It didn't work. She could still feel the sting of the acid. What exactly were they doing to those people?
    Think about it later. It's time to get out of here, Rae told herself. She slipped back into the main security room, careful to shut the door behind her, then darted into the hall. A second later Jesse and the rent-a-cop rounded the corner, heading back for the security room. The rent-a-cop looked… not so happy.
    I'm going in, Rae thought, hoping the rent-a-cop hadn't registered the fact that he and Jesse had passed by her on their way out. "There you are," she cried, rushing toward them. "I've been looking all over the place. Mom's already in the parking lot."
    "I think you should ask your mother to come inside," the rent-a-cop told Rae.
    "Why? What happened? Is something wrong?" Rae asked.
    Jesse shot her a calm-down-already look, but Rae thought slightly hysterical was the way to go.
    "What happened is that your brother here told me when he was in the bathroom, he saw a gun in another kid's backpack," the rent-a-cop answered. "But not only did we not find the kid, it took your brother quite a while to find the bathroom hesupposedly had been in right before he came to get me. He said it was because he was nervous, but-" He stopped, shaking his head.
    Obviously our plan had a hole, Rae thought. Should have found a bathroom first. Okay, time to see if we