The Gender End by Bella Forrest (the giving tree read aloud TXT) 📕

this chamber. Ms. Dale was already at it, leaping to grab a rung farther up, while the footsteps behind me grew closer. Morgan gave me another look as I passed her, and then she turned and leapt into the air. I didn’t see what happened as I ran, but there was the sound of something hitting something, and I looked back to see one boy on the ground, the other swinging at Morgan as she easily avoided him.

I almost plowed into the ladder, I was moving so fast, but managed to stop myself short by catching the rungs. And then I was climbing. I moved quickly, my hands and feet flying, trying to give Morgan some room, and turned back in time to see her leap from the ground and plant her foot on another boy’s shoulder, kicking off it and twisting in midair. She landed just below me on the ladder, shouting, “Climb!”

I moved, spurred by the angry noises coming from below us. Above me, Ms. Dale was closing the distance to the hatch secured in the ceiling, and I was halfway down when the ladder shook violently in my hands. My heart lurched as I heard a metallic groan, and I felt the ladder move a solid inch to the left. That sensation was like a nightmare.

“GO GO GO!” Morgan yelled, her hand pushing roughly at my backside in an effort to get me to climb faster.

I did, fear of falling lending another boost of adrenaline to my already flying limbs. Ms. Dale was pushing the door open, and the ladder jerked back to the right, the boy below angrily trying to dislodge us. I kept going, my mind on the bars ahead, and suddenly Ms. Dale was helping to pull me through.

I turned around to help her grab Morgan, latching onto one arm. She gave a yelp, and then I felt all of her weight transfer to me, and I realized the ladder had been torn out from beneath her. I grunted, taking a moment to readjust my body weight and brace her better, and then Ms. Dale and I began to pull her up, until she was lying on the floor, panting.

We stayed like that for a heartbeat or two, just trying to catch our breaths.

“You know,” Ms. Dale wheezed, breaking the slow silence that had formed, “I’m pretty sure adrenaline is bad for the bite.”

I shot her a sharp glance and shook my head at her, unable to find the humor in her statement.

“They ripped the ladder right out from under me,” Morgan whispered with a shudder.

“I guess it’s better than thinking to climb up after us,” Ms. Dale muttered dryly.

I sat up and looked around the room. Like the floor below, the airlock doors were open here. Unlike the other floors, the sign on the left door read “Access to Palace” with an arrow on one side. The one on the right said “Access to 1C.” If we wanted to get to Elena, we would go that way, through another section of the artificial Green contained within.

Even if I had actually planned to meet Elena, I wouldn’t set foot in it.

“Do you think Thomas got all the doors open?” Morgan asked, and I felt my heart sink, thinking about what I had seen on the screen earlier. I hadn’t had the heart to bring it up with them yet.

Now, it seemed, was the time, but the words were hard to form.

“Thomas… I-I think we’ve lost him,” I said softly. “I’m not sure how, but he was bleeding from a stomach wound, and from the video Elena showed me… it really didn’t look good.”

At the time, I’d forced myself to be optimistic, trying to believe Viggo and Owen would fix him somehow. But now that I replayed the dire scene in my mind, I found it all but impossible to see how Thomas would get out of this wild place alive. He’d been bleeding so much.

As I spoke the words to Ms. Dale and Morgan, a wave of pain crashed into me hard, making me want to cry. Thomas had been my friend. Weird, yes. Eccentric, yes. But in spite of the cold, analytical façade he wore as an outer shell, Thomas was a deeply caring individual. I couldn’t even comprehend the idea of losing him. It was just… too much.

Ms. Dale closed her eyes, her face sorrowful, and then, even as I watched, she pushed it aside. Morgan, on the other hand, removed the mask and scrubbed at her cheeks as tears fell from her eyes. She let the tears fall, and then donned her mask again, her eyes red.

“We need to move,” she muttered. “Elena will be waiting for us.”

I nodded and picked myself off the floor. There would be time to grieve after. If we survived. I knew what we had to do, and it was time to get started.

“If we follow this tunnel to the palace, can you figure out where the entrance would be for 1C?” I directed the question to Ms. Dale, and she nodded.

“I can.”

“Then let’s go.”

I shouldered my bag and began heading toward the airlock door, toward the cave. Together we moved, keeping a sharp eye out for anything behind us. After we were some distance away, I took the mask off, took a deep breath, and waited for a wave of dizziness to hit me.

It didn’t, and I gave Ms. Dale and Morgan a thumbs up, indicating they could take off their masks. Behind us, I began to hear sounds—chittering… buzzing… hissing… and wondered if the creatures inside were tracking us somehow. We still had our suits, which meant we could, if we wanted to, go invisible and avoid them. Maybe. Without knowing all the creatures that could be behind us, we had no way to tell whether they had other ways to track us besides sight.

I wondered if they could even survive in the oxygen-rich environment, then decided I didn’t care. If they got out