Winter's Legacy: Future Days (Winter's Saga Book 6) by Karen Luellen

had been removed in places.
    Skinned, they skinned this poor little girl!   Meg swallowed the lump of bile rising in her chest.
    She ran to her and worked on her straps.  “Come on, honey .  Let’s get you out of here,” she whispered.  The girl stared at nothing and lay completely still.  Meg knew she wasn’t going to move on her own, as she tested the girl’s emotional psyche carefully. 
    “I’ll just carry you, sweetie,” Meg started to say when the girl opened her mouth and began to scream like a banshee.  She hit with her small fists and scratched at Meg’s face, desperate to be let go.  Meg was sure that her cover was beyond blown when she felt the alarmed emotional signatures of guards who had seriously slacked off on their duties.  She tried not to panic.
    With a broken heart, and the girl’s blood staining her black clothing, Meg carefully put the child down.  Meg was crying when she ran to the next room only to find the boy screaming just as violently. 
    Oh dear God, they’re too far gone.  Meg ignored the tears streaming down her face as room after room confirmed her worst fears.  They were all in the process of being tortured one way or another, but all of them screamed like sirens when she approached to try to rescue them.
    All except the last room.  She found a little boy, whose eyes were closed, his body still, curled in a protective fetal ball in the corner of the room.  He was covered with feces and urine, but Meg didn’t care.  She yanked the soiled sheet off the bed and wrapped the emaciated child and waited for him to wake screaming like the others, but he didn’t.
    “You’re coming with me, little one,” Meg spun and bolted from the room, back down the corridor, across the opulent foyer, down another two corridors until she found the kitchen.  She heard voices barking angrily over the sound of the screams that echoed ear-piercingly through the asylum.
    They would be on her at any moment.
    She ran to the back door and blew it wide open with her mind, easily finding the rage inside to fuel its destruction.  True to his word, Niche was waiting for her with a black sedan idling quietly. 
    The screams and voices licked at her back as she ran down the steps with the little boy jostling in her arms like a floppy doll.
    “What the hell did you do?” Niche yelled, eyes wide with terror at the chaos right behind the frame of the door that no longer existed.
    “Drive!” Meg screamed, sending her will directly into Niche’s terrified mind. 
    He responded immediately, flooring the sedan away from the building, down a back road that led to a service entrance to the compound. 
    “The gate!”  Meg grimaced as they sped directly toward a ten -foot iron fence.
    “I stole the key from Ermos,” Niche snapped.
    But the closer they got, the more sure Meg was that soldiers were there waiting for them.
    Their headlights had been turned off, but Meg reached over Niche and threw them on. 
    She felt herself vibrate with anger at what she saw. 
    The squad of eighteen metamonarchs she’d sensed running the perimeter at 2am were there, waiting for them.  They hadn’t had time to gear up, but it didn’t matter.  
    Meg carefully laid the little boy on the back-seat floorboard.  When she turned around, Niche was holding out a gun to her, butt end first.
    “I also grabbed some weapons from the locked cabinet.  SHIT!   That’s probably what triggered a silent alarm.”
    “Too late for regrets,” Meg said, her fingers deftly handling the weapon, checking the clip and realizing she was only working with six bullets.  She slammed it back into place, safety off and ready to do some damage.
    “I promised I’d get you out of here,” Niche was saying, “And damn it, I will keep that promise!”
    He pulled the car to a stop twenty yards away from the hulking mass of mindless soldiers. 
    “I promised him I would save him, and I’m damn well keeping my promise!” Meg growled,