Read Online After Dawn (Book 3 of the Into the Shadows Trilogy) by Karly Kirkpatrick - Free Book Online

here."
    "Sounds good to me." Dennis moved toward the door. "I told you he'd slow us down."
    "Shut up, Dennis," Lola spat from beside him.
    "Look, Paivi, we can't stay here forever." Xavier placed a warm hand on her shoulder. "If he doesn't want to go, leave him."
    Paivi looked to Peter, who nodded.
    "We'll leave the door open." Peter pointed to the closed door. "If you turn right out of the corridor, you'll find the entrance open as well. If you change your mind, wait for us by the truck. We'll be out soon."
    "You'll never get out of here alive. He'll kill you all." The man whimpered and lay back down in the drawer.
    "Not if we kill him first," Paivi said. The energy under her skin tingled, excited at the prospect of putting an end to one person who really deserved it. She wasn't sure Master Song would understand, but this man was a monster. If any death in the world was warranted, it was this one. She would live with his blood on her hands forever and she was okay with that.
    "Let's go, guys," Xavier said and gestured for the group to move toward him.
    Peter skirted the group and placed a hand on the box next to the door. It obeyed him immediately and slid open. He peered around the corner into the hallway. "It's clear for now. Let's move."
    The group followed Peter into the corridor and Paivi gave one last backward glance to the man from the drawer. He lay in a fetal position and rocked back and forth. As they exited, she noticed that the clipboard had a number on it that matched the one tattooed on the man’s neck. MD180583.
    "Hey guys, if the clipboard has an EOS number on the top of it, there is most likely a prisoner inside that we can help." Paivi shouted to the group as she brought up the rear. She grabbed the next clipboard. SK875043.
    "There is someone in here, what do we do?" Paivi stopped walking, her mind racing at the prospect of having to save all of these people. She hoped they wanted to be saved more than MD180583 did.
    "I'll just open the doors while we pass," Peter said, pressing his hand against the door nearest him after scanning the clipboard. "If there is someone in there that wants out, so be it. But we can't deal with them all at the moment. We're offering freedom. It's their choice to take it or not."
    Paivi glanced inside after each was opened as others in the group shouted to the patients.
    "You're free! Run now while you have the chance," Lola yelled into one room.
    A skeleton in a gown stared back at Paivi. Her dead eyes floated in her face. She didn't seem to comprehend the words Lola was saying. Her head rolled from side to side as she struggled to hold it up.
    What had they done to these people? They were nothing more than barely living dead.
    "Paivi, what is your dad's EOS number?" Xavier shouted over his shoulder. "It might speed things up a little."
    "JA110838. But his name is John Anderson. He's a name, not just a number." Paivi muttered the last part under her breath.
    "You said his name is John?" Lola asked, glancing into the next room Peter had opened.
    Paivi nodded.
    "John?" she called into the room. No answer.
    They continued down the hallway. Peter had opened ten rooms with clipboards on them. Not one patient had emerged.
    "Dude, I'm a little weirded out that we haven't seen any guards in here," Xavier said as they neared a corridor that crossed the one they had entered.
    "We did knock out all the ones at the camp, as far as we could tell," said Dennis. "Maybe they didn't keep guards up here. I mean, look at these people, if you can even still call them that. They can't even get up and leave."
    "Here, Paivi, here." Peter shouted. His voice echoed down the corridor. "I found it."
    The walls pressed in around her, stealing the breath from her lungs. Her hands shook and she lost all the confidence she had ever gained from Master Song and Master Gendun. She was a little girl, searching for her daddy, hoping that finding him would make everything okay.
    Paivi joined Peter in front of the