“Come on. Time to visit the doc.”

I sighed. I was really getting tired of this.

If we got out of here in one piece, I knew I was going to be dreaming about needles and blood for quite a while. I had something to focus on this time.

I’d been paying close attention every time they took me to the doctor, and I’d noticed something. While we’d originally had two guards in front of our room, they’d gotten complacent quite quickly, and now we only had one. The guard who was on duty took me out of the room, as Pele was doing now, and locked the door with a deadbolt from the outside.

Cheap and effective, and it negated the necessity of adding everyone’s retinal scans or fingerprints, which the newer locks required. They weren’t worried about us picking the lock from the inside, not with a guard directly in front of the door.

Not that I had anything to pick the lock with anyway, or the skills to do so. As kids, my friend Tommy had always been the one with the magic touch for locks, which meant I didn’t have a whole lot of experience with them.

However, a lock meant a key. I’d been keeping my eyes peeled for some ever since. I thought I’d found them last time I’d been taken to the lab, though I hadn’t had a chance to grab them.

Kal was usually the guard that came with us to the lab as back up when Pele took me there. Last time, I’d seen the edge of a key ring poking out of his pocket, or what I hoped was a key ring.

He’d brushed up against the wall and I’d heard the faint clinking of metal against metal, but I hadn’t been able very well. Still, I needed to take the chance. If I could grab the keys and get them to Siro, she could perhaps use them to get out of the briefly unguarded room the next time they took me to get my blood drawn.

This was all assuming there were actually keys in his pocket and that one of them was for the lock on our door. It wasn’t a perfect plan, or even close to it, but it was all I had.

I glanced over at the sitting area where a few of the other guards tended to congregate when they rotated keeping the watch on the warehouse. There were three seated there right now, which was usually the case.

The only door I’d seen anyone leaving through was the same one they opened for us to drive through. But in that door was the outline of a smaller door, one meant to walk through I was assuming.

The door looked like it only had a simple bolt on the inside, one that could be easily opened up, though I didn’t know how quiet it would be. It looked rusted and old from my vantage point, but it would probably be easier to open and more discrete than rolling aside the entire large vehicle door.

Okay. If Kal just met us at the doctor’s as he usually did…

I stifled my disappointment when I didn’t see him waiting at the door of the place like he usually was. But when Pele opened the door, I heard his deep voice inside.

“...if you’d like.”

“Hmm.”

Dr. Fearson responded to whatever he’d just said absently, like she wasn’t really paying much attention while she looked through the microscope at something.

I had no idea what she was looking at or what kind of weird experiments she was running. Yesterday, I’d heard some odd squeaks coming from behind the curtain that cordoned off the part of the room I hadn’t seen. I tried not to think too hard about what could be back there.

I scanned Kal’s pants and saw the slight bulge on the same side I thought I saw the key ring earlier.

All right. Now I just needed to wait for him to get close to me.

The doctor looked up as we came in, her face lighting up. Creepy as always.

“Oh, good. I’m running low on my supply!” she said in that oddly chipper manner.

“Happy to oblige,” I muttered under my breath.

I sat down in the familiar chair and held my arm out as she got down to business almost immediately.

Pele and Kal lingered to the side, talking about some show they were both watching. Wonderful. While I was getting the life drained out of me constantly, they were watching re-runs of a gentle ensemble comedy. I contemplated ways of destroying the television as I sat there, getting weaker with each drop of blood lost.

“All done!” Fearson exclaimed, patching me up and rolling away with her new batch of tubes like a child with a new toy.

I stood up, gearing myself up. Now. I needed to do it now.

I deliberately stumbled forward, feigning wooziness, though it wasn’t really a lie. That woman took as much as possible before I would actually pass out.

Kal immediately brought his hands up to catch me.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, straightening.

He let out a disgusted breath and pushed me over to Pele. “Take her back,” he said.

Pele grunted, grabbing my arm in a firm grip.

The jagged metal bit into my palm as I held on tightly, not daring to loosen my grip in case it made a sound.

Despite the order, Kal helped escort me back to the room. I kept my hand down by my side, my palm sweating.

Come on.

If either of them looked down, there was no way to hide what I was holding.

“I’ll bring more food,” Pele told me, opening the door and ushering me inside. “Sit down.”

Didn’t need to tell me twice. I wove my way over to the bed, exaggerating how bad I felt.

Though, again, not really by much.

The door closed behind me just as I sat down.

“Are you okay?” Siro asked, immediately sitting down next to me.

“I’m okay,” I reassured her, then waited for the food to come in.

They left the food with me for quite a while before checking in again. I didn’t want to tell Siro until then, for fear she’d give it away with her expression. As soon as Pele brought the food in and left once again, I showed her the key ring. It had a lot of the small metal keys on it, maybe twenty in total, probably one for every room they’d built in here.

Siro’s eyes widened and her eyes went immediately to the door. “Where did you get them?” she murmured, keeping her voice hushed.

“From Kal’s pocket,” I explained with a wry smile as I took a sip of sugary juice. “I’m not sure any of them will fit,” I warned.

She reached out to take the ring, but I closed my hand around it.

“Not yet,” I said, carefully placing it down on the comforter and turning a corner over it to hide it. “Pele will hear if we try to insert a bunch of keys in the lock while he’s out there.”

She nodded. “Okay. Then what are we supposed to do?” she asked, matching my low tone.

I took a deep breath and let it out. I’d given this a lot of thought. There was really only one course of action that had a reasonable shot of working, and by reasonable, I meant maybe a thirty percent chance or less. This was assuming Kal didn’t plan on going anywhere he needed a key to get to before my next doctor’s visit.

“When they take me to get my blood drawn next time, there won’t be a guard on the door. You need to take that time to test the keys,” I said. “Keep hold of the keys you aren’t trying so they don’t jostle too much. The sound is pretty distinctive, if someone happens to walk by.”

Siro frowned, nodding. “Okay. Then what?”

“On my way back, I’m going to create a distraction. A loud one. Have the door unlocked and be ready to bolt when you hear it. Leave the key ring in the room—it’ll make too much noise if you run with it.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“They should all be focused on me.” Hopefully. “Slip out of the room and stay against the wall when you can. There’s a smaller door cut into the big door we came in from—it looks like it has just a bolt on the inside. Open it as quietly as you can and close it behind you so they don’t notice it’s been opened. Then run. Run as fast as you can to the right and then left into the first alleyway. Then right on the next street and then left again. That road should take you to the business section. You can lose yourself in the crowd.”

“What about you?” she interrupted, her eyes worried. “I can’t just leave you here!”

“You’re going to have to,” I said firmly. “At least for now. This is the best plan I could come up with.” Such as it was. “I have no idea how to get you out of the dome after that. It’s also the best bet for getting me out of here too.”

Assuming they didn’t just kill me when they realized what had happened. Yes, I was the last known descendant of the Original Bloodline, but I didn’t count that as much protection. People did stupid things all the time. But she didn’t need to know that.

“Once you’re in the business section, look for a cafe. Ask someone there if you can use their phone or watch to send a message to your family. Contact Sven and tell him what happened and where you are.” I rattled off his contact. “He’ll get you out.”

I was fully confident on that front.

Siro still looked uneasy, but she nodded her agreement. “Okay,” she muttered.

“When you get out of here, you can’t hesitate,” I warned. “Someone might come after you. And this area isn’t great, so the sooner you get out of it the better.”

“Got it,” she said resolutely.

Plan laid out, I settled into the quiet. I tried not to think of everything that could go wrong here. Kal could find his keys missing early. The key to our lock might not be on the ring. My distraction might not work. Siro might not be able to get the door open. They could catch her before she got too far.

But it didn’t really matter, did it? We needed to take the chance.

I didn’t know how much longer they’d keep Siro around for me. She wasn’t really an absolute necessity at this point.

Somehow, I doubted they’d just return her to her parents.

So I pushed aside my worry. It had to be done and we’d do it.

By the time Pele showed up again hours later to take me back to the lab, Siro and I were both ready to jump out of our skins.

“Let’s go,” Pele said in a bored tone.

I squeezed Siro’s hand as I got up. She was sitting on the keys.

She squeezed my hand back.

That was all I could allow myself or it would arouse suspicion. I gave her one more bolstering look as I left the room and went out into the hall. It was in her hands now.

Pele closed the door and took me to the doctor’s space.

We went through the whole song and dance again, with Kal there chatting with Pele once again. He still hadn’t noticed the lack of keys.

Good.

My heart was pounding as Fearson took the blood.

“Going faster than usual,” she said with a frown, giving me a look.

I didn’t comment.

She shrugged and went on with it, not too concerned.

I stood after she taped my elbow and tried to keep up a calm appearance. Kal and Pele led me out of the lab.

This was it. I didn’t know if Siro had gotten the door open, but I needed to proceed like she did. I didn’t have a whole lot of options in terms of a distraction, so I settled on a medical one. I’d seen someone have a seizure before. It should draw a good amount of attention.

I thought it was my best bet.

There was one guard up on the catwalk at the moment, but if Siro hugged the wall, she should be able to stay underneath and out of sight. I waited until I was in the center of the room, in full view of the usual three guards in the sitting area. I took a deep breath.

Here we go.

I cried out loudly and fell to the floor.

“What the fuck!” Pele gasped.

“Shit!”

“What’s happening?”

“Get the doctor!”

I locked my jaw and jerked my limbs, arching my neck back and keeping an eye on the door out. Come on, Siro.

A slender shape darted out in the corner of my vision.

Siro glanced over at me with a stunned expression, but she didn’t waste time getting to the door.

I groaned, deep and guttural, as I saw her reach for the sliding bolt, hoping to cover any sound it made. I thought I heard a slight rasp, but it was lost in the shouts and my sounds.

The door opened smooth as butter. Siro slipped out with one last glance at me. It shut with a subtle clank.

I held my breath.

Nobody seemed to notice as the doctor rushed out of the lab to my side.

Run, Siro. Run.