The walls of the well as you're falling down into whatever lies below
Blur from your sight out into the night
And the moon in the hole in the sky seems so far away, far away
With your bag full of dreams wild-eyed and hailed on, down on your knees again
With a handful of sleep and a wandering eye you do what you can,
But you find you're digging for icicles and only finding rain

THIRTEEN

"Fang," I gasped, crawling forward on my hands and knees. My side rippled with aftereffects of the Taser and the cold cement floor bit at my knees through my sweatpants. Fang was face down, still attached to the wall several feet away from me. "Fang," I repeated. He didn't stir.

They had taken the Gasman. As anxious as it made me to not have him in my sight, I knew it was for the better—they'd take him to the medical wing and figure out what was wrong, give him antibiotics. Something.

Max, he'd wailed. It hurts. The memory clenched at my heart like a vice; he hadn't been that vulnerable in years.

I reached Fang and immediately pressed a hand to his chest, relieved when I felt the rise and fall indicative of breathing. I felt completely unhinged, my own breaths ragged and shallow in my chest.

"Breathe," I said out loud, focusing on the way my own voice bounced back at me off the walls. "And think."

We needed a plan. Fang was unconscious, Gazzy was in the medical wing, and I was here. And we needed a plan.

I puffed out a breath of air and leant against the wall of the room, gathering Fang's head into my lap so I could idly run my hands through his hair. His loose curls were slightly damp from sweat, but I could still smell him just the same, cedar and cotton and home.

Without warning, the sliding door clanged open, Mallory's sturdy form advancing through it before closing it behind him. I eased Fang off my lap and leapt to a crouch in front of him, my arms wide at my sides.

Mallory snorted. "Very intimidating. Truly."

A low growl rumbled from somewhere deep inside me. Mallory ignored it.

"In addition to an infection, he had a blockage," Mallory explained. I wondered why he was telling me. "They put in a nasogastric tube to help clear it. Because of your quick healing, medical is confident that the blockage will resolve spontaneously. The tube is out. They were certain he could fight off the infection without the help of antibiotics, but they've started him on wide-spectrum anyway."

I felt myself decompress a fraction. Behind me, Fang emitted a deep, baritone groan and began to stir.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked in a dangerous whisper. Aside from some of the medical staff, nobody here had ever treated me decently, least of all Mallory.

A smirk quirked at the corners of his lips, and he advanced a couple of steps to stand near me. I backed up a step, my heel brushing against Fang's shin, and he stirred again.

The look on Mallory's face nearly paralyzed me. My side was still twitching from the Taser that had been jammed into it minutes ago, and my spine ached from where it had collided with the wall shortly after. Mallory advanced another step, a cold, pallid hand brushing against my cheekbone ever so softly.

A breath hissed out of me and I snapped my head away from him. I recognized that hunger on his face—knew where this was going—I scurried backwards even further, tripping over Fang in a mess of limbs and chaos—Fang's eyes blinked open and went from disoriented to pissed off in milliseconds, navy eyes blazing with fury as he struggled to his feet, gaze jumping from Mallory back to me.

But Mallory was already at the door, sliding it open and backing out, that sick look plastered on his face. "I figured it was only polite," he said, some bullshit, make-believe chivalry dripping from his words. "We've got some experimenting to do in a little bit."

A loaded silence was left in his wake. Fang balled his hand into a fist, staring absently at the wall. We were out of words to describe the shittiness of our situation. I turned and knelt on the floor next to him, wrapping a cold hand around the fist. The last thing we needed was for him to shatter all of the bones in his hand from punching the wall.

"If I just go back there with him—"

"Nope," Fang said, shaking his head hard.

"Just listen to me. If I—"

"It's not an option."

"It can give me a chance to maybe get away from him—it'll just be him and me, maybe I can—"

"Max!" Fang's voice cut through the silence like a machete. Anger exploded across his dark features, painting them with a lethality that I wouldn't test even on my feistiest of days. He composed himself and squeezed his free hand around mine.

He met my eyes and held my gaze as if I were the only thing that had ever mattered, like I held everything precious and dear behind my eyelids. "It's not an option."

It hit me like a piledriver when the footsteps started again ten minutes later.

"I know what we need to do."

Fang looked as flustered as was possible for him, wringing his hands together and twitching his eyes from the door and then back to me. "Any moment now would be great."

"You're going to hate it."

"Humor me."

"Last time when I escaped, I was in the medical wing. Their security is the weakest there—most of the medical staff—"

"Get to the point—"

"You need to punch me in the face."

Fang said nothing, but didn't need to: his eyebrows were so high on his forehead that I thought they might get stuck there forever, and every single pore on his face said Christ alive, have you finally gone batshit insane on me?

"If you hit me hard enough, they'll take me to the medical wing—I can try to get out from there, or at least put together a plan—"

"No."

"Fang, this is our only—"

"You hit me, then."

"No—you're disposable to them—they'll just let you sit here. Plus, I don't think I could—"

Fang snorted bitterly. "Now is the time you're going to start saying you're weaker than me?"

The conversation in the hall was coming to a close—any minute now and they'd be throwing the door wide open, preparing to cart us off to some sort of hellish experiment—

"So, what, you're just going to give up?" I screeched, trying to make my voice as shrill and ear-splitting as possible. I raised both hands and shoved Fang hard on the chest. He took a step back, truly looking like he thought I'd lost my marbles.

I jerked my head wildly toward the door and gave him a look: just go with it.

"I was trapped here for years, and you're just going to lay down and let them do this to us?"

My shrieks echoed on the concrete. I raised my hands to fists and threw a hard right hook at the side of Fang's head. We had sparred so many times in our lives that it was typically impossible to catch him off-guard, but he hadn't expected me to actually throw a punch; my knuckles connected with the hard joint of his jaw. I heard a snap.

Fang stumbled to the side, a hand coming up to reach his jaw. He opened his mouth a bit. The confusion was gone from his face, as was the stubborn refusal—it was now replaced with something gentle and more delicate.

"I don't want to hurt you," he said, softer than snowflakes, and the purity of his words washed over me like a wave.

I knew what he was implying; I could read between his lines better than anybody else's. He was the sole person I trusted and one of the only people who hadn't broken me when given the chance. Doing this—physically harming me on purpose—he thought would change that.

The hallway was busy again. We didn't have time—I didn't have time to explain to him that nothing would change that. Fang needed to be pissed off enough to forget his bullshit chivalry.

"Fang," I said hurriedly, heart hammering in my chest, "it's either this or he takes me back there and he—and he—"

I was unable to finish the sentence, but I didn't have to. I saw his eyes change, radiating that no-nonsense Fang Fury I'd seen a million times before in my life. That emotion coming to the surface seemed to force him to realize how dire the situation was, because his face contorted into a mix of apology and determination.

"I'm sorry," he said sincerely. And then I was on the ground and covered in blood.

My head smacked the concrete with a thwack. I felt the vibrations down the back of my neck and deep into my spine. A groan came out of me that I had no hope in stopping. I cracked open an eye. Fang was hovering over me, looking absolutely tortured by what could only be guilt and self-loathing.

"Broke your nose," he mumbled, reaching a hand up to my face. I predicted that, in that moment, he probably wanted to die.

I swatted his hand away. "Didn't like it anyway."

I could barely choke out the words from behind my hand. My nose refused to stop bleeding, my head was spinning, the lights were flashing—Fang had full-on concussed me with a single punch to the face.

Beyond the ringing in my ears, I heard the clanging of somebody fumbling with the door—"Piss off Mallory—get him to hurt you—they'll take you to the—"

I flung myself dramatically to the ground, collapsing on top of my own messy limbs. I hoped that I looked like I'd been knocked unconscious.

Mallory's unmistakable, clumsy footfalls thundered into the room. His breaths were coming in huffs and there was a moment of silence during which he must've taken in my crumped form, the blood, and Fang standing with a coiled fist.

"What the hell happened in here?" Mallory roared. I felt his hand on the back of my neck—my stomach rolled—and then it was gone, his footsteps trailing toward Fang.

"Wouldn't shut her mouth," Fang said in an agitated voice. I was impressed with the authenticity laced in his voice.

"Wouldn't shut her—she never shuts her mouth!"

"Not our first argument," Fang muttered impatiently.

"Are you crazy? Do you have any idea how valuable she is to this institution?"

"Do you have any idea how much I don't care?" Fang replied, louder this time. "She's a human fucking being, you know, not a toy or whatever you people—"

There was a loud crack followed by an impressive grunt of pain that I recognized as Fang's. I twitched an eye open in a panic—Fang had been knocked back on his back and was holding a hand to a shoulder—his arm twisted out at an unnatural angle, it was definitely dislocated at the very least—

"You," Mallory seethed, his bulky form hovering over where Fang lay, "are disposable. Don't forget it." A gun was holstered on his belt and I knew the Taser was somewhere equally as accessible.

"I am going to kill you." Fang's voice was a rumble in his chest, absolutely laced with hatred. "Do you hear me?" he said through clenched teeth up at Mallory. "If it's the last thing I do on this earth. You are going to die."

I had seen Fang pissed off, I had seen Fang full of loathing; I had seen Fang revengeful, beating the stuffing out of Ari. But I had never seen Fang murderous until now.

His next action sealed his fate with a hard kick to the side of the head: he spit in Mallory's face.

I bit my lip, hard, to stop myself from crying out as Fang's body went completely slack against the floor. Mallory made a sort of grunt of surprise and nudged a toe against Fang's throat, evidently satisfied with his work.

I let my eyes shut as Mallory scooped me into his arms. He opened the door and called into the hallway. "Acton!"

There were footsteps. "Sir," came Acton's baritone.

"Bring him to the medical wing."

"What happened?"

"He's incapacitated."

Acton snorted. "Obviously."

More footsteps, and a third voice. "Sir?"

"Charlie," said Mallory. He adjusted me a bit in his arms. "Take her to the medical wing. I need to have a talk with the boss."

"Is she okay?"

"Fang hit her."

"Fang—?"

"—just concussed, I think," he finished. I was passed into Charlie's waiting arms. "I'll be in there in a few minutes."

It took every bit of restraint in me to not tuck and roll out of Charlie's arms and sprint as fast as I could through the hallways. But I knew this place inside and out—knew that Mallory wouldn't hesitate to pull the pistol and the Taser, and that even if I were to clear the building, there was a long run before I was even remotely close to freedom.

There was also, of course, Fang to worry about. I was desperate to be out of here, but I wouldn't leave him behind.

Charlie started marching down the hallway. I tried to be as dead weight as possible, focusing on keeping my breathing deep and regular.

"Your family is here."

My eyes flew open at Charlie's words, conversational albeit low under his breath. My eyes met his, deep pools of brown lined with worry. They narrowed. "Close your eyes," he hissed.

I obeyed wordlessly.

"My family…?"

"They triggered the inner ring of security alarms," he continued lowly. "We have four separate perimeters—how they even got that close is a mystery to me."

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from grinning like an idiot. I pictured Nudge's deft fingers, Iggy's calculating mind, Angel's mind games. My family.

"They're lucky Mallory trusts me. He asked me to check it out, I convinced him it must've been an animal. I've been stalling him to buy you time."

My mind was spinning. Charlie had gone out of his way to protect us, but why? Wouldn't that only put his daughter in danger?

More importantly: if he wanted to help us, why couldn't he just let Fang and I out of here?

"I can't just open the door and watch you go," he said, maybe reading my face, maybe inferencing what I must be ruminating. "There's too much at stake. But if a map of the facility happened to end up somewhere nearby the closest access point…" His shoulders rose and fell. "There's no telling who put it there."

I couldn't breathe. "Gazzy—?" I choked out.

"Is here," he said. The air changed and the smell of antiseptic bit at my nose, and I knew we were in the medical wing. "Still running a bit of a fever, but they say he should be good as new in a couple of days."

Charlie put me down gently on a stretcher and the medics quickly began their process; a blood pressure cuff was wrapped around my arm, machines started beeping, a flashlight was singing my retinas. I moaned lowly and stirred, hoping to look like I was coming out of a state of unconsciousness.

A woman's face, friendly and tired, greeted me. She smiled sadly and held out a finger, drawing lines in the air to different points of my periphery. The overhead lights hurt and I could feel my head beginning to swell. I lazily followed her fingertip with my eyes.

"Gazzy," I called as loudly as I could, ignoring the fireworks behind my eyes. I couldn't see him but Charlie had said he was here—he had to be here. "Gazzy, we're okay." I had no idea if it was true.

There was a grunting noise and I turned my head to see Acton struggling with Fang, who was conscious again and thrashing wildly. I was secured to the table by the leather restraint and I watched as Acton did the same to Fang, unforgivingly slamming him against the exam table. His shoulder was still dislocated and his lower lip was split and bleeding.

He slowed his thrashing and turned to face me. "Are you okay?" I asked, my voice sounding miles away in my head. His features blurred.

"Peachy," he spat.

"Lover's quarrel?" Acton laughed and crossed the room to me. One of his hands found my cheek and stroked it once. Behind him, Fang growled and battled his bindings. "Oh, please," Acton muttered.

"Enough, Acton," Charlie barked from the middle of the room. He'd opened a computer screen and logged in, typing noisily on the keyboard.

"You going soft, Chuck?" Acton laughed, dropping his hand from my face and crossing to the center of the room. "Don't tell me you're letting these freaks get to your—"

BOOM!

The sound was distinctive; I had heard it countless times in my life, from the E house, to the streets, to the woods, to everywhere in between. There was something unmistakable about the sound of a pressure cooker bomb detonating, and Iggy had perfected them somewhere between the ages of ten and twelve.

A distant scream, a plume of smoke from the hallway, the smell of fire—

A deranged sort of laugh came out of Fang in the millisecond of peace after the explosion. Life moved in slow motion; I counted the dust particles dancing in front of my line of sight, studied the laugh lines on the nurse's face as she turned to face an equally stunned Charlie and Mallory.

"Oh, man," Fang lamented. "Your life just got a whole hell of a lot worse."

And then: utter chaos.

"Digging for Icicles" by Bob Schneider.

Did not proofread. Apologies!