Cris is the one to initiate the next phase of the escape attempt. He is the tallest, and it takes little effort for him to reach the vent using one of the chairs from around the table.

  He fumbles with the screwdriver, his fine motor skills failing him as more deafening pops sound from the barricaded doorway. Tony fights off three of the other kids as they try to tear Cris down from the chair, while Eren hands him the steak knife he only recently procured.

  “Pry it open!” Eren screams, though he can’t hear his own voice over the ringing in his ears or the screaming from the other prisoners.

  “Quickly, please!” Tony grinds out, brings his arms to block the press of bodies surging their way. He is a force to be reckoned with, but even Tony can’t stop that many people.

  Tony reels backwards, blood pouring from his nose as an elbow crashes against it. He spits a tooth out, braces against the wall and drives himself forward, tearing away the hands that grab for Cris’s legs. Tony grabs one by his shoulders and throws him into the crowd, sending more people tumbling backwards before bouncing back upright from the press.

  Two boys force their way to the front, one who is all cordy muscle, the other built like a stone slab, and Tony nearly lays them out flat until they shift to help him, bringing their backs to the wall and arms out to keep the press of people away from Cris as he struggles to open the air vent.

  “Stay back!” The stone carved one shouts, punching someone away who tries to claw at Cris.

  “Hurry!” Eren calls out, his eyes flicking back and forth to the vent as it is ripped nearly all the way off the wall.

  Other kids are doing the same on the opposite wall, everyone avoiding the middle of the room as more shots ring out.

  Teenagers lie dead on the ground, their blood saturating the floor. More kids scream, some can’t even manage that as the bodies press them into the walls, crushing those on the very ends until they can’t draw breath, dying as they stand under the weight of the people around them trying to survive.

  Luckily, Tony made a circle just wide enough to not die in as Cris finishes tearing the vent the rest of the way off the wall.

  People shout, cry, beg to be let in first. Tony might be a monster against people trying to kill him, but as the rage and panic turns to terror and fear he begins to break. Cris grabs at Tony’s arms, pulling him up to the chair to get him in the vent and away from the mob as fists turn to outstretched hands begging to be let in.

  “One at a time or we are fucked! Calm down!” Cris shouts. Some people listen, but not all.

  That’s fine, so long as most listened, they could maybe survive this.

  Eren and Cris force Tony in first, peeling him away from the very people he was fighting off moments ago as he tries to help everyone in.

  Hayden is hauled up next, ensuring that he can make it to safety. Hayden reaches down and grabs hold of Cris who turns to pull Eren up last.

  Eren screams as his broken arm is used as a rope for the next person to climb, but the pain ends soon, replaced with suffocating claustrophobia.

  The line continues several bodies after Eren, first a girl, then the cordy boy, and then the stone carved one. A hang-up occurs after him, as a girl scrambles to get away and runs into the stone carved boy.

  “Get your hand back down there and help!” He screams in her face, but she doesn’t listen, instead she tries to force her way past him, crying, sobbing, desperate to escape.

  With a crunch the boys foot connects to the crying girls chest, and she is sent screaming and tumbling from the vent, and instead he reaches his hand down to grab someone else, the largest boy Eren has ever seen, so large he takes up the entire vent, blocking his view to see if anyone else came behind him.

  They travel further and further down the line. Eren flinches as he hears the gunshots get louder, the screams erupted from the break room behind him as the guards no doubt managed to get inside.

  “The path splits!” Tony shouts backwards.

  “One second!” Eren closes his eyes and rests his shoulder against the vent wall. He can’t use both arms, and his right is already on the verge of giving out. He needs a moment to rest, and to think.

  Given their path of travel, they would be running away from the breakroom, going out at a 90 degree angle, headed west. That would put them on a collision course with what he presumed to be the entrance to the facility.

  “What directions does the path split!” Eren shouts back.

  “Left and right, 90 degrees. No path forward.”

  Eren bites his lip. That would mean that their options were north or south. Up towards the top of the cell’s horseshoe shape and where the other guards came from. Or south, past where the break room would be.

  “Hurry! They are coming!” A voice sobs from the very back of the line, causing a ripple of panic to spread through the line of them.

  “One second!” Eren demands, struggling to think of any information he could use to determine a path out of this mess.

  The breakroom and the building's entrance are located in the south face of the facility, the entrance being on the south west corner, the break room being on the south east corner. If the guards were inside the break room then they knew they had taken the air vents. Heading south would be the logical course of action for anyone looking to escape. That meant that's where the guards would stage first. That being the case, they needed to go north, deeper into the facility. It wasn’t an escape solution, but it would buy them more time, and that was exactly what they needed right now.

  “South, we need to go south!” Someone shouts from the middle of the pack. Other voices echo this. They seem to have come to the same conclusion he did for escape, but didn’t consider that the guards knew that too.

  “North!” Eren replies.

  “Are you sure!?” Cris asks, clearly having come to some similar conclusion as the others.

  “I'm sure, trust me, north!” Eren repeats.

  “Alright! You heard him, north!” Cris calls out, and Tony presses onward, taking the north vent passage.

  Hayden and Cris follow suit, along with Eren and several others behind him.

  “You guys are crazy!” The kid who had originally shouted the South path option calls out, separating from the group to take the opposite path.

  “They will expect you there!” Eren tries to reason, but they are already gone. Several more split off, some going north, some going south, others stopping at the junction to ask which way to go, getting an echoing response from both sides, making it all the more confusing.

  POP POP POP POP POP - Rinnnnggggggggg

  The sound of gunfire fills the air vents, deafening Eren once again.

  Screams echo, and die into gurgles as the guards open fire into the air vents.

  Anyone who was stuck behind the indecisive were sitting ducks. Nowhere from them to go...

  Eren sucks in desperate breaths of air, struggling to maintain his composure as they march onward.

  More distant pops, from the south tunnel, and his stomach turns, his heart aches, how many people had to die because they were scared? How many bodies fill the vents because they chose wrong?

  “Good call!” Cris exhales with wild relief as people other than their group are mowed down.

  “We aren’t out of the woods yet!” Eren calls, forcing the vomit back down. He doesn’t know when he will be able to eat next, he needs to keep everything in, no matter how badly it wants to come out.

  The air in the vents already reeks with the copper tang of fresh blood, though luckily the AC forces the smell away from their path of travel. Still, it lingers, the stench seems to stain Eren’s sinuses, unable to be flushed out no matter how many deep breaths he takes.

  “Do you know where you are going?” A small voice sounds behind him.

  Eren spares a glance backward, meeting the eyes of a younger girl. Her cheeks are streaked with fresh tears though her eyes have him second guessing that. She looks serious, determined, and unphased all things considered. It’s a convincing lie, though the faint shaking her body does with each labored movement betrays it slightly.

  “No... I don’t, the best I can do is guess right now.” Eren explains, suddenly very aware of his own nakedness in the air vent, though much to his relief she doesn’t seem to mind. There are a million other things on everyone's mind right now and more than half the people in the vent are in various states of undress.

  “Your guesses have been good so far.” She offers an attempt at a smile.

  “In my defense they are at least educated guesses, but yea, I’m trying.” Eren lets his body lean more against the vent, using one arm and one leg is getting close to impossible. He needs to rest, badly, but first they need out of this vent.

  The line stops moving, and Eren is about to shout ahead to ask why, but a low hush ripples through the gathered escapees, quelling any potential conversation.

  Tony must have seen something up ahead, people more than likely. Eren is glad that everyone listens to him. They could not afford a breakdown, not right now, not after all they have been through to get this far.

  Eren’s heart beats heavy in his chest. It beats so hard he is worried it will echo all the way down the line and alert whoever Tony see’s up ahead. He needs to calm down….

  Why can’t he remember what his therapist had told him? Why can’t he remember how to calm himself? The moment of pause is good for his body, but it also gives his mind time to catch up. Moving forward and thinking ahead is a good distraction, but now in the absence of progress, his brain wanders and it is going to eat him alive.

  His ears still ring, still filled with the gasping, screaming, gurgling breaths of dying teenagers. His nose still fills with the coppery smell of blood. His hands are covered in it, his feet, his naked body, everywhere, splattered in the stuff.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  The walls are too tight, the ceiling too low, the air too stale, thick with death. His breathing becomes labored, eyes narrow, vision dimming.

  He needs to relax, he needs to focus, this is his plan dammit he can’t be the one freaking out now, he can’t afford to break down this far in. every muscle, every nerve, every fiber of his being screams, shouts, demands he run. He needs to get out of here, he needs to escape, he needs to force his way through the bodies to the nearest exit, he needs to breath, he needs—

  “Eren, was it?” the girl behind him asks softly, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Eren nods, he doesn’t know why he nods, maybe because it felt like the right thing to do?

  “Deep breaths, in through your nose, ten seconds, out through your mouth, ten seconds” She guides, a single hand rests on his ankle, her touch the single most reassuring thing in the world in that moment.

  “I can’t.”

  “You can, slowly, easily, you’re having a panic attack, deep breaths. Steady.” she continues, her voice unwavering, her presence unmoving.

  He knows he is having a panic attack, but knowing what it is doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. He can’t breathe, he can’t find the strength, there isn't enough air here, he is going to suffocate, he’s going to pass out.

  Her shallow breaths fill his ears, ten seconds in through the nose, ten seconds out through the mouth. Its steady, rhythmic flow is almost entrancing.

  Soon, Eren finds himself following suit. The process is entirely unconscious, his breathing matching hers as a pure survival mechanism.

  Several breaths in, he is aware of his calming body enough to continue the process. In and out, slow deep breaths. In and out, his body steadies itself. Her hand never leaves his ankle, her breathing never deviating from his own as he finds his pace. In and out, and the shaking stops, his heart slows, his mind relaxes as much as he can manage, which is enough.

  “Thank you.” Eren breaths, sparing another look back at the girl behind him.

  She smiles and nods, her voice still impossibly low. It doesn’t seem as though anyone else heard, or noticed the attack. He’s thankful, it would have undermined him substantially had they seen him freak out like that.

  “Where did they go?” Eren asks, looking back ahead and realizing then that Cris, Hayden, and Tony are all gone, leaving him at the front of the pack now.

  “Rounded the corner, told you to wait, you didn’t hear them,” She explains.

  Eren can feel a weight build in his stomach, worrying about where they had gone, what they were doing, but as soon as that sensation appears it vanishes.

  He trusts them, Tony is a strong fighter, Cris is smart, Hayden... is in no short terms, a liability, but he is confident the others can make up for that.

  After a few moments in silence, The sound of Cris’s voice echoes through the vent in a whisper. “Good to move, there is a vent down, 10 feet ahead, take it.”

  “Copy that.” Eren confirms the instruction and follows the path.

  The air vent continues straight ahead, but it also has a section that descends downward about 5 feet before leveling out again. It takes a good deal of effort to lower himself, though the girl behind him helps by grabbing hold of his good arm to prevent him from putting too much pressure on his bad leg.

  Light streams into this lower section of duct from an open wall vent that leads into a well lit room. Cris’s beaming face is backlit, ushering Eren forward, and helping him down onto the ground by way of standing on a table near the wall.

  Eren has to squint against the blinding light, but his eyes adjust quickly, revealing the space they enter

  It looked to be a medical facility. Twelve hospital beds line the tall walls, each adorned with different charts and diagrams. Island tables sit in neat rows in the room's center, each displaying trays of tools, with glass cabinetry affixed to the bottom of each, revealing a plethora of pills and other supplies within.

  “Good job.” a boy's voice calls out as he drops onto the table, his attention turned to the adults in the room, each of which is bound, gagged, and pressed into a corner being guarded by Tony.

  “How did you...?” Eren asks, shocked not just at the bound and gag medical staff, but the fact that he didn’t hear a peep from them through the air vents as all of this happened.

  “Tony is scary, I'm strong, and Hayden is shockingly fast when he isn’t curled up into a ball.” Cris explains, guiding the last boy down from the vent and into the room.

  Hayden offers Eren an unconvincing half smile, along with an armful of nurses scrubs.

  “You are a lifesaver.” Eren can’t help but let out a sigh of relief as he slips his way into the clothing.

  “Y-yea, of course.”

  Hayden offers the other gathering survivors various articles from the pile, while the still clothed escapees start rummaging through cabinetry for anything useful.

  13 others managed to follow them this far. The girl who was directly behind Eren in the line grabs medical supplies from anywhere and everywhere. A cruel looking blond kid Eren thinks he recognizes picks through potential weapons.

  A large Haitian boy shifts several of the hospital beds to barricade the door with Tony, while Cris helps guide an acne scarred boy with a twisted ankle to a bed nearby.

  “I knew something like this would happen…” The acne scarred boy snorts, looking over the room.

  “What's your name?” an even larger boy with a shockingly deep voice says as he drops into the room, his size putting even the Haitian's to shame.

  “Peter.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Peter.”

  Peter looks down, and the new large arrival takes Tony’s place in building the barricade, making them all look weak by comparison.

  A quiet girl with dark hair and an expression of perfect apathy, is guided down by the cordy boy, who she ignores in favor of passively observing the stream of new arrivals into the room.

  The others have mostly small scrapes and cuts and are similarly sitting down on anything comfortable. The Haitian boy cleans his bloody hands in the sink while a lifeguard looking blond boy sets the dislocated shoulder of a squirrel faced girl nearby.

  After getting her shoulder set, the squirrel young girl moves to comfort another girl with platinum blond hair and a gymnasts build, who presses a hand to a long cut down her arm, both women catching the odd look from the boy who looks as though he is carved from stone.

  Eren drags himself over to one of the beds to rest, the girl who was behind him follows with an armful of supplies, dropping them on the bed next to him.

  “You know how to use that?” Eren asks, assessing the collection she is starting to sort through.

  “My older sister was a nurse,” she explains with a shrug, trying her best to ignore the many eyes of the bound and gagged adults in the corner.

  “I hope that means you picked up on some techniques?”

  “A few, yea.”

  Eren lets out a snort. It doesn’t feel particularly appropriate, but still, he couldn’t help it.

  “Beggars can’t be choosers I guess.”

  “They can be, but no one will listen.” The girl winks, and readies a splint with one hand while guiding Eren’s broken arm with the other.

  “I didn’t catch your name.” Eren winces

  “Jessica.” She smiles, snipping some scissors to add to the drama.

  “And you are sure you know how to do this?” Eren asks cautiously.

  “Nope, but I think I can figure it out,” Jessica winks.

  “Mmmmphh!” one of the captured adults tries to speak through the gauze packed into their mouth.

  “Let’s just kill them.” The cruel looking blond offers casually, spinning a scalpel around in one hand as he lowers himself into a crouch directly in front of one of the adult nurses.

  Eren doesn’t like the look of these adults, but his skin tingles at the sight of the boy who approaches them. His pinched face is cut through with a hatchet wound-like smile split at the corners of his lips. Small beady dark eyes set in hollow features that appear to take a great deal of pleasure in pressing that small blade into the tear soaked cheek of the woman in front of him

  The nurse who tried to speak shakes her head violently, eyes wide, wincing at the small drop of blood that forms from the boy's scalpel glancing her skin.

  “They aren’t hurting anyone,” Tony barks, moving to meet the distance to hatchet mouth

  “No, but they are here aren’t they?” Hatchet reasons with a shrug, not bothering to pull the blade away, but he does spare Tony a passing glance. “They work for the people who did this to us. Fuck em’.”

  He drags the scalpel down her cheek, small beads of red building in its wake, until he lets it rest at her throat, that hatchet wound smile of his dropping to an assessing pout as Tony stops inches next to him.

  “Mmhphhph!” the woman tries again, her eyes moving between Eren, a cabinet, and Tony in sequence.

  "They’re liabilities. You think they wouldn’t sell us out in a heartbeat?" The stoney boy grunts, crossing his arms as he moves to stand by Hatchet.

  "Maybe. But does that mean we kill them outright? There’s a line, man." The cordy one rises, though it gets him a sharp look from his stoney friend and he backs off just as quickly.

  "If we’re debating murder, does that make us the bad guys? Asking for a friend." Peter chimes in.

  “Shut the fuck up Peter,” the Stoney one snaps

  “Sorry…”

  The large Haitian boy makes a faint whining noise in the corner, pressing himself as far away from everything as possible.

  “What if what she has to say is important?” Tony continues, lowering his tone. It was obvious he was trying to de-escalate the situation, but Hatchet either doesn’t catch on or doesn’t care, his eyes fixed centimeters away from the woman, grip tightening around the scalpel.

  “What if she screams?” Hatchet mouth counters casually, attention finally shifting to Tony beside him.

  Eren finally realizes where he recognizes Hatchet from. He is one of the boys who kicked Cris when he tried to get them to stop the door barricade for Tony and Hayden.

  He doesn’t like this kid, not one bit...

  “She won’t scream.” Tony assures him. It’s his turn to look the nurse in the eye.

  The nurse nods feverishly, muffled voice squeaking out some acknowledgement.

  “Don’t doctors and nurses have an oath to save lives?” Jessica asks, looking over the faces of the prisoners intently.

  “These ones don’t. You think none of them knew the guards would be killing children? Working in a place like this? They know what they are doing. They are a liability. If we leave them alive they will escape and make a call and we are all fucked.”

  “That’s a whole lot of ifs.” Tony places himself part way between Hatchet and the nurse, arms uncrossing, one reaching down to find a place firmly on Hatchet's shoulder.

  “Get your hand off me.” Hatchet still refuses to give Tony his full attention, though the venom in his voice promises a kind of violence that puts Eren on edge.

  “Hey… lets just calm down—” Cris starts, bringing his hands up to try and physically suppress the growing tension between the two boys.

  “I won’t ask again, get your hand off of me.” Hatchet demands, scalpel twisting in his fingers.

  Tony brings a second hand down on Hatchet's shoulder, and in a flash of silver, Tony staggers backwards, air whistling in his lungs as he sucks in a sharp breath.

  “Fuck!” Cris is there in an instant, catching a staggering Tony before he crashes into the floor.

  A red stain grows around Tony's inner thigh, his skin going flush, legs shaking.

  The lifeguard looking boy throws himself at Hatchet’s side, tackling him to the ground with a heavy thud, while the thick set Haitian screams, and stomps a bare foot onto his hand, sending the scalpel scattering across the floor.

  “Shit!” Jessica launches herself from the bed and grabs a bundle of gauze from a table, the acne scarred boy screams, pressing himself into the back wall as Tony collapses to the ground, his hands interlaced around his leg, causing the pumping blood to shower the ground in pulsing spurts.

  “MMMPPPHHH!” The nurse tries to scream from beyond her gag, eyes wide as she nods her head towards a drawer.

  “What are you going to do now huh?” Hatchet grunts under the lifeguard and Haitian's weight, while the nurse's eyes go wild—desperately looking at Jessica and Tony as she presses the gauze into his leg.

  “She is trying to help us, ungag her!” Eren cries out, adrenaline dumping as Tony shivers, the pool of blood growing steadily around him.

  “Fuck fuck fuck fuck!” Cris tears the gag from the woman's mouth, and as soon as he does her voice rises above the sound of the panicked shouts.

  “Stims in the middle shelf, pop the cap, press the button, do it now!”

  “The hell is a stim?” Cris turns to look at the shelf, stunned at the word, not sure what to even be looking for.

  “Keep pressure on it!” Eren cries out to Jessica before throwing himself from the bed.

  His leg buckles under the weight and effort, sending him to the ground halfway to the shelf.

  He doesn’t know what a stim is either, but he can make a solid deduction. Sitting on the middle shelf is a heavy box, surrounding it are vials of medicine, boxes of hypodermic needles and alcohol wipes. The stims had to be the only thing he didn’t recognize, that being the box.

  Eren grunts as he struggles to his feet, but the pain tears him apart, sending him back to the ground. His arms go out for support, but only one catches and it too is on its last ounces of strength.

  “Hayden! Middle box! Hard case!” Eren shouts as he struggles to turn his head to Tony.

  He is pale now, the blood soaking into his clothes, into the gauze, into Jessica as she tried her best to stem the bleeding.

  Hayden is fast, so fast he can barely keep up with the small boy's movements. He tears open the glass door and grabs the box, opening it up as he slams it down on the ground next to Jessica.

  “You! Do it!” Jessica demands, looking at Cris as she struggles to keep all of Tony’s blood inside of him.

  Cris clears his head with a shake, and pulls free one of the devices from its foam protection within the hard casing.

  With a flick of his thumb, the cap flies off, revealing a button underneath. He slams the opposite end into Tony’s thigh and presses the button.

  The device makes a faint hissing noise and sticks inside of Tony for a second, before a needle retracts, causing the whole thing to clatter to the ground.

  Tony’s sucking breaths are the only thing that fill the room. No one dares make a sound as they watch, watch as the bleeding begins to stop.

  Jessica’s shaking hands pull away from the gauze, letting the thoroughly soaked bandages fall away, revealing a massive line in Tony’s thigh beginning to close itself.

  It scabs over at first, starting from the edges and working its way to meet in the middle, then the scabs fall away to reveal fresh pinkish flesh. The color shifts, from pink to red to scar tissue white in the matter of a minute, sealing off the wound entirely.

  Color returns to Tony’s face, his breathing picks up, and with a gasp he shifts himself to his hands and knees, eyes wide at the pool of his own blood

  Stunned silence grips the room, even Hatchet mouth is unable to muster a word as everyone watches what could only be described as magic unfold before them.

  The amount of blood Tony had just lost was enough to make anyone pass out, the fact that he was moving at all should be impossible.

  “What the fuck was that?” Cris asks, scanning the room.

  “Exactly what we needed…” Jess mouths, eyes fixed to the four other stims still in the case