Chapitre 85: BATTLEFIELD [7]
'Where am I?'
'In prison,' Sam said, and with that, it all came flooding back.
Logan rubbed a hand over his face and groaned. 'Figures. My mom always said I'd end up in jail. How's XianMei?'
'Worse than you,' said Sam, 'but she'll be OK.'
'What'd they do to her?'
'They tore a lot of the skin off her arm. Purna bandaged her up pretty good. Here.'
Sam offered Logan a bottle of water. He took it gratefully, chugging it down. The water helped revive him, and he looked around. They were in a corridor. It was featureless, kind of depressing, but quiet. Blessedly quiet.
Everyone was sitting around, taking a breather, getting over what had happened. They looked like the remains of an army after a very tough battle – exhausted, blood-stained, shell-shocked. Xian Mei, her left arm heavily bandaged from fingertips to shoulder like the Bride of Frankenstein, had dark rings around her eyes and an expression so pasty her lips looked bloodless.
'Hey,' Logan said to her, and she rewarded him with a weary smile.
The only person not sitting down was Purna. She glanced at Logan and then at Xian Mei.
'Are you two OK to carry on?'
In any other situation, Logan would have laughed and told her to take a hike, but now he simply nodded and with Sam's help rose to his feet.
'It's OK,' Sam mumbled. 'There ain't no more zombies.'
'Good,' said Logan, 'because I think I lost my gun. I hope Purna doesn't make me pay for it.'
Led by Kevin, the seven of them made their way slowly along the long corridor to a door at the far end. This one was open like the others (Thank you, Ryder White, Logan thought) and led through several empty administrative offices and linking corridors to a central lobby area where several corridors converged. There was no sign of the infected in this part of the building, and indeed no sign they had ever been here. The left-hand wall was dominated by a lift with metal doors.
'This is it,' said Kevin. 'Sector Seven awaits.'
He pressed the button, and the downward-facing arrow lit up. For a few seconds, they waited, not speaking, like strangers in a hotel lobby. There was a ping, and the lift doors slowly opened. They shuffled inside, and Kevin pressed a button marked 7. As soon as the lift doors closed, Logan heard a hissing sound, which at first he thought was something to do with the lift mechanism. Then Purna said, 'What's that?'
'That's the gas,' said Kevin, his voice oddly muffled.
Logan turned, bemused, and saw that Kevin had released a small catch next to the lift buttons, which had caused a flap to drop down. Behind the flap was a compartment, like a tiny locker, from which Kevin, shielded by the people standing next to him, had produced a gas mask. He was now wearing the mask, and the hissing was getting louder.
'What—' Purna said, then her legs folded under her and she slid unconscious to the floor. Gas? Logan thought, trying to make sense of what was happening, but all at once his mind felt slow and syrupy, his head heavy as a boulder. The last thing he saw before his body shut down and he blacked out for the second time in an hour was Kevin's masked face goggling down at him.
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone