inDIVISIBLE by Ryan Hunter Page A

a slight pat on the floor.
    His hand reappeared, motioning me to follow. I took one more look around, placed my hand on the sill and lifted. Pain surged through my right hand, and I fell back to the ground. I’d forgotten how painful it would be to put pressure on that hand. I searched the parking lot for something to use as a step, a pallet near a garbage bin was my only option. I grabbed the pallet, and scurried back to the window. I propped it up like a ladder and climbed. I slipped my feet inside the window and heard nothing. I rolled onto my stomach as I’d seen T do and braced my left hand against the sill as I lowered myself to the floor.
    My heart pounded so hard I didn’t hear my feet hit the floor , and I took several deep breaths to calm the thundering, fully encased now in darkness. I stood still, afraid I’d bump something and draw attention from the guard. T’s feet slid like whispers across the floor, and I waited, hoping for some sort of light source. Seconds turned to minutes, my heartbeat the only sound above T’s occasional brush of clothing or shoes as he searched for a way out.
    I breathed in through my nose, held it three counts before exhaling to keep from hyperventilati ng. Forty breaths in—a sliver of dim light appeared along one wall. T had found and opened the door. I shuffled toward the light, bumping into him as I neared. He placed a steady hand on my arm and pressed his eye up to the crack, searching the hallway before we left this room, whatever it was. He opened the door further, and I looked around to see shelves with stacks of PCAs. A few more inches and the broken screens of several machines became evident.
                  A table along one wall held tools, and a large recycling bin brimmed with broken PCAs. My father had probably recorded the data from some of these. I moved closer when one of the PCAs toppled from a shelf, crashing to the ground in a deafening explosion against the concrete floor.
    Cold tremors cascaded from my fingertips to my toes before T grabbed my hand and bolted from the room. We sprinted down a long, white corridor before we found a second hallway toward the center of the building. Rounding the corner, we found doors on either side of the hallway, windows in all the doors displaying computers and servers. I slowed and tried one of the doorknobs, unsurprised to find it locked.
    “Do you think they’re coming for us?” I whispered.
    T ran back to the corner and peered down the long hallway. He made it back to me in under a second, his hand already ripping into his backpack for a rock he’d gathered in the alley. “They’re coming—three of them.”
    He drew back his hand before smashing the rock through the glass. An alarm peeled, echoing down the vacant hallways, the hard tile and plain walls leaving nothing to absorb the sound. He turned to the door opposite and smashed out another window and another.
                  If we get into trouble we create a distraction , he’d said.
    Some distraction . I wondered now how we’d ever get out of it.
    A camera in the hallway recorded us so the guards could track us. T hurled the rock at it, breaking the black dome into little pieces.
    T reached in to a few of the rooms and opened the doors as footsteps grew louder down the corridor we’d just navigated. I opened doors opposite, before I fell into step beside him, rounding the corner just before the first guard saw our mess and began screaming into his security radio. We had little time but with the guards searching each of the rooms behind us, we gained a little space.
    Another hallway jutted toward the fr ont of the building and we slid as we rounded the corner, sprinting forward until T grabbed my arm. We slid to a stop in front of a steel door with a tiny window in one corner. He jerked open the door to the stairs and we took them two at a time to the second floor. At the top we stopped, peaked out the window. Nothing moved in the