Chapter 5 - The Desperate Escape
Professor Vance screamed in agony as blood soaked his crisp white shirt.
I grabbed the collar of his jacket and dragged him forcefully behind a heavy steel laboratory desk.
Another bullet ripped through the dark room, destroying the computer monitor above our heads.
"Keep your head down!" I yelled over the deafening sound of shattering glass.
I pressed my hands against his bleeding shoulder to slow the heavy blood loss.
"Take the drive and run, Julian," the professor gasped, his face turning completely pale.
"I am not leaving you here to die," I refused stubbornly.
I looked around the dark laboratory and spotted the emergency fire alarm on the wall.
I grabbed a heavy textbook and threw it directly at the glass alarm box.
The glass broke, and a deafening siren immediately began blaring throughout the entire building.
The sudden noise and flashing strobe lights ruined the sniper's clear line of sight.
I hoisted the injured professor onto his feet and wrapped his good arm around my neck.
We stumbled out of the laboratory and into the empty, flashing university hallway.
We pushed through the emergency exit doors and slipped into the rainy night.
I dragged him toward my beat-up car parked in the student lot.
I shoved him into the passenger seat and sped away just as a black SUV pulled up to the building.
"Where is the safe house?" I asked the professor as I navigated the slick city streets.
Vance gave me a weak, trembling set of directions to an abandoned warehouse near the docks.
We arrived at the rusted metal building just as the professor lost consciousness.
I kicked the heavy metal door open and carried him inside.
The warehouse was completely dark and smelled strongly of saltwater and rust.
"Hector!" I shouted into the terrifying emptiness.
A single overhead light flickered on at the center of the massive room.
Hector was sitting on a wooden crate, his hands free from the handcuffs.
He rushed over immediately and helped me lay the bleeding professor on a workbench.
"Julian, you should not be here," Hector said, pressing a clean rag to the gunshot wound.
"I am not running away while my real father tries to kill my family," I stated firmly.
Hector looked at me with deep pride and sorrow in his tired eyes.
"We have to expose Richard's hospital project tonight, or thousands of children will die," Hector said.
I pulled the silver flash drive from my pocket and held it up.
May you like
"I have the data right here," I told him confidently.
Before I could plug it into Hector's laptop, the heavy warehouse doors were blown completely off their hinges.
