"If this doesn't work, I'll skin you alive, I swear," muttered Mia as they all kept running down the stairs, a threat that Maddy didn't like at all.

After jumping over the last two steps of the stairway, Maddy found herself against a French glazed door. She pushed it open and took her first step outside, the cold morning air hitting her instantly to freeze her bones to the core.

It was still dark outside, the weather adamant to remain moody and overcast, the sky cloudy and grey. The wind blew cold, whipping her dark brown hair and icing her skin, only to be met with the resistance of her hot blood flowing underneath, mixed with a fair amount of adrenaline.

The others were right behind her, but she was too busy scanning the area around the terrace for bloodthirsty armed men to look behind her shoulder at them. There were two grey SUV vans parked in front of the house at a fair distance from the terrace, four men in black uniforms carrying guns guarding them, or rather waiting casually in the fresh air for their fellow companions to get the job done. They still hadn't noticed them, too focused on the entrance of the house to look at the terrace on the left.

Other than that, Maddy couldn't see anyone else waiting outside to blow the brains out of their heads. The men who were shooting at them from the windows must have been positioned at the other side of the house, blocking the back door, and the intruders who had broken the front door were surely somewhere behind the five of them, probably having crashed the bedroom door as well.

They had to hurry. Maddy turned to face the others. "Okay. Now wh-"

Before she could finish her sentence, Carter had pushed her to the wall with his uninjured hand, leaving a red tattoo of his bloody fingertips on her exposed shoulder, which had slipped out of her -his- hoodie, revealing her sharp collarbones.

Her back slammed against the outer wall of the house on the terrace, and she winced, muffling a cry of shock at the sudden attack.

"Keep your voice low, princess, or I'll have to make you," he breathed, his lips leveling with her eyes as he crouched above her.

Then he lined up against the wall next to her, just like the others. That way they were hidden out of sight from the four men flexing their weapons in front of the entrance of the house, next to the SUVs.

What were they waiting for? Their pursuers from earlier would be there soon, and it would all be over unless they did something instead of just standing there, glued to the wall.

"The garage," gasped Sia as if she had read the confusion on Maddy's face. She was out of breath and shaking like a leaf. "It's right below us," she explained.

"There's no way they haven't blocked it. There might be a dozen men standing right under our feet as we speak," pointed Mia, panting.

Oh.

OH.

"There's no way they've broken in. The garage door is sectional," said Logan, who had knelt down, fingering the teak wood of the decking with his palms.

Maddy wasn't sure what that meant or what he was doing, but she didn't dare speak again with Carter standing only inches next to her.

"If there's more of them, they're outside the garage," continued Logan, still feeling the floorboards of the decking, his hands touching the wood as if searching for something.

What is he doing?

Maddy frowned. Where had she gotten herself into? These people were lunatics.

"Damn it Logan, find it already!" whisper-shouted Mia, looking nervous.

Find what?

"Why don't you find it, huh? I could use some help over here, you know," retaliated Logan, his eyes always glued on the wood beneath their feet.

Mia snorted, but then she fell on her knees next to him, examining the decking with her hands like he did. Sia knelt as well, doing the same, although her hands were shaking as if she was suffering from Parkinson's disease.

Maddy was as confused as a homeless man on house arrest.

What the heck were they doing? Was this a freaking joke to them? Some sort of game? She looked at the extremely focused faces of her four idiot companions. Her moving gaze stayed on Carter, who was still pressing a death-red palm against his left upper arm to slow the blood stream.

"Did you get shot?" she asked again, her whispering voice thick.

"It's just a scratch," he answered coldly.

Logan ran his hands through his ruffled hair in despair, looking like a madman. "I can't find it, man. It was here somewhere, I swear."

"Find what?" asked Maddy, losing her patience with those four bloody psychopaths she had gotten herself mixed with.

Then someone kicked the French door open, and a man dressed in black SWAT-like uniform stepped outside, gun in his hands, trained straight on them.

Maddy froze, heart rising up in her throat and choking her.

"Hands up where I can see'em!" yelled the man, his voice a smoker's voice, hoarse and rusty from the blackness of his lungs.

Another man appeared, and then another. Maddy raised her hands up, palms out facing the armed men in front of her, dread glistening in her eyes.

The others stood up and did the same, looking desperate. Maddy caught Carter wincing when he lifted his arms up, the wound on his left biceps probably pulling at his flesh. They all exchanged communicative looks, the hesitancy clear in their rebellious eyes.

"Give it up, kids," said the first man as if knowing what they were thinking about, as if telling them to quit thinking of ways to escape, because there simply weren't any. He made a gesture with his weapon for them to surrender. There were now four men in front of them, all holding guns.

Come on, Maddy. Think of something.

But she couldn't think of anything. They were doomed.

Stupid.

Her shoulders dropped helplessly. After everything she had been through, she just got... caught?

Hell, she had jumped off a window, nearly got her skull crushed by the school gates, defied her mother, got chased down by the police, threw a considerably heavy wrench at a cop car and broke its windscreen, drank water from a field of freaking sprinklers, had her injured feet treated by a doctor's sister and ended up at a filthy rich stranger's cottage in Lancashire, all in two single days.

And now she had a gun pointed her way, as if she was some sort of high-level criminal instead of a 16-year-old teenage girl.

She had gone through so much to avoid this, and yet everything turned out to be in vain. It was inevitable, just like Clarke had said. It was a dead end from the beginning, and she knew it.

What would her mother say if she saw her like this? Maddy looked around her at the pale faces resembling hers, one by one. Her mother would most probably ask her what in the ever-loving hell she was thinking when she got herself involved with those four bad, extremely bad influences. And she wouldn't know what to answer, because, if she was being a hundred per cent honest with herself, she had no idea what she was thinking.

But, somehow, looking at those four crackheads right now, with a gun trained on her, she didn't really regret it. Two days ago, they were just four strangers to her. And truth be told, they still were. But they were the type of strangers she would like to get to know until they were not strangers anymore.

Well, except for a particular ebony-headed idiot bleeding on her right. She wouldn't mind never seeing him again.

And Mia might be a bitch, but Maddy had to admit, she kind of liked it. The bitchy attitude and all.

Amongst all her mixed feelings, Maddy could feel a tinge of sadness shrinking her heart. She would most probably never see them again. Hell, her only chance at seeing them again would be in a cell behind steel bars, if they were lucky enough to end up in the same prison, or juvie or whatever.

This is goodbye, she realised. Her life was over. She'd get vaccinated, and if she didn't die like that other girl from yesterday, she would have FROST running tests on her like a laboratory animal, and then she'd have to walk inside the court and face charges. Her mother would be crying, because she would end up locked up in a reformatory.

"Give it up, kids," repeated the armed man in front of her. "It's over."

She nodded to herself, her head drained and empty of thoughts.

It's really over.

Maddy took a step forward, ready to feel the cold metal of cuffs around her wrists.

That was when the decking crumbled beneath her feet, taking her gut with it.