Catalyst (Book 1): Decay Chains Read Free

breath and held on to it. Grab the gun, you idiot. She reached for the weapon, but her fingers refused to cooperate. Three tries later, the gun belonged to her.
    Reamer’s east wing remained as dead as it had been minutes ago when she had been casually commenting on grey architecture from a former era. The cafeteria and gift shop up the hall were closed. No one would stumble this way until Outpatient Services opened over an hour from now. All the souls in this end of the tower were on the upper floors, but none of that made her feel more at ease.
    The glass doors refused to part for Stormy. The rolling chair bounced off them and back into her and the bullet only created a colorless mosaic. The glass spider web continued to crack and inch across the doors, even after she gave up on that method of escape.
    The unwelcome pinging noise the elevator made as it landed earned it another bullet-shaped dent. Her grip on the gun remained firm amidst her quaking upper body. She ducked behind the desk, ready to blow the head off whoever stepped off the elevator. She aged a decade as she waited for it to open. Her forehead throbbed, her hands sweat, and every muscle in her body clenched. The doors slid apart, but let out only air.
    She inhaled. The deep breath was long overdue. It made no sense, but at the same time, made perfect sense to climb in the elevator. She would have leapt aboard the boat of Charon and chatted up Hades’s ferryman the whole way to the Underworld, if it meant getting the hell out of that damn lobby.             
    Before the elevator doors clicked shut, she scanned the panel above them. The backlit arrows relayed that the other elevators were on two different floors. The first hovered on the fifth floor and the second remained at the top of the tower. She figured that elevator stood by as their copper getaway vehicle. Fucking traitor elevator.
    Once inside, she pressed the fifth floor button. They could shoot at her all they wanted, she would still find her way to Matt. She gripped the gun tighter and cursed the passing seconds. 
    After the third failed call, she thrust her cell phone deep into her back pocket. She tried in vain to channel Matt through an improvised version of telepathy she didn’t believe in before entering the elevator. Her fingers closed over her nose and mouth, yanking her skin down and exposing the soft flesh her eyelids normally concealed. She continued to press until the pain of her bones jutting into her own skin stopped her fingers’ wear.  He was floors below her now, but Martin’s death gaze wouldn’t leave her alone.
    Her eyes fixed on the gun at her side. If Matt had been holding it, those murderers would be lying alongside Martin with neat little holes in the centers of their foreheads.
    Her mind rehashed the words over and over again. She’ll be dead in minutes. She’ll be dead in minutes. Well, I’m not dead yet, bitch. Then, the first of a building symphony of god-awful noises rocked the elevator.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER TWO
    DAYS UNTIL THE SUPERVIRUS GOES GLOBAL: 31:00:59
     
    Metal collided with more metal and created an unbearable sound in the process. The noise harmonized with the screams of coils rapping against each other in a wicked way. The vibrations of an unseen peril melded with a lurching motion that quickly faltered, but not before sending the elevator shooting up violently. Sans warning, the elevator changed course and dove down faster than the arrow above the doors could report. Stormy managed a butchered version of the first line of the Lord’s Prayer before the elevator jerked to a stop.
    The copper arrow above the door finally caught up and reported her arrival in-between the first and second floors. She pounded on the doors and then pressed every button on the console. She knew it was no use. The person who answered emergency calls lay in a pool of his own blood half a floor below her.
    The emergency instructions proved