The cold from earlier is no longer a problem. Crawling around in the air vents really warms a person up. The struggle of trying to crawl around in a slippery tunnel combined with wearing loose medical scrubs, and trying to be quiet so as to not draw the attention of those creatures makes for an exhausting trip.

"How close do you think we are to reaching an exit?" I ask between my heavy breathing. Reaching up a shaky hand, I try to wipe away the sweat from my forehead. It's useless. My hair is matted to my forehead and my hand is already damp from my previous attempts of wiping away the moisture. "We've been crawling around in here forever, and I honestly don't know if I can do this for much longer."

"We're almost there. I think that air vent in front of us will take us into one of the side classrooms, and hopefully it will have one of those fire escapes on it so that we can climb down."

"Aren't those only on the south side of the building?"

"Yeah."

"Are you certain we're going the right way?"

"Yeah." He pauses. "Well, mostly sure."

Great. There is a seventy-five percent chance that we could be going the wrong way and trapping ourselves even more. But, we can't stay in these vents forever. Eventually, we are going to have to face whatever is out there, again. The feeling of dread settles itself in my stomach, and there is nothing I can do to get rid of it.

Just when I feel as if my arms are going to fall off from all the army crawling we've been doing in here, Finn let's out a quiet but very excited, "Aha!"

"Are we-" gasp "-there?"

Finn looks over his shoulder at me with a wide smile on his face. My eyes narrow a little bit when I see that he has barely broken a sweat from the hour or so we have been in these vents. I feel like I am about to die from heat exhaustion and lack of oxygen, and he still looks as good as before.

"Yeah. It looks like the classroom below us is empty, and it's a corner room." Corner rooms are good. That means there is a fifty percent chance of there being a fire escape for us to use to, well, escape.

"Thank god," I whisper to myself, resting my sweaty forehead on the metal below me.

"It wasn't that bad," Finn says.

"Not that bad, says the fitness guy," I mumble, not bothering to look up until I hear Finn remove the grate.

It takes a minute to situate ourselves so that we don't have to go down through the vent face first. Finn is able to pull himself to the other side of the hole before swinging his feet down. The way he is able to seamlessly lower himself down to the ground makes it look way too easy.

Peeking my head over the edge, I see him looking around. Seeing that the door is open, he quickly walks over to it, quietly closing it and flipping the lock. The room is practically silent, no sound coming from the hallway and filtering into the room. That is a slight reassurance.

Finn comes back over to the vent, looking up at me with his hands on his hips. "You can come down now, it's safe."

My face turns into a skeptical grimace while looking down at the ground again. Heights have never been my thing, and having to drop down to the ground from an air vent does not rank on my list of fun things to do. "I don't know. I'll probably manage to kill myself while trying to get out of this thing."

Finn gives me a look that very clearly says 'Are you serious?' His arms move away from his hips to cross over his chest. "It's not that far of a drop, Alden. Come on, we need to hurry up before those things find us in here."

"Aw, Jesus," I say to myself. With arms shaking from exhaustion and a little bit of fright, I drop my legs down into the hole, letting myself slide down until my arms are hooked over the edge. Looking over my shoulder, I see that it is still at least a six foot drop down to the ground from where I am dangling. My head snap backs up so that I am no longer looking down at the seemingly growing distance between myself and the ground. "I-I don't know if I can do this."

"It's okay. Just let go."

"Let go?" I ask, my voice an octave higher than usual. "I'm going to break something if I let go."

"You have to trust me, Alden. Just let go and you'll be fine."

Taking a deep breath, I close my eyes. "You've got this." Without taking another second to think about it, I let my arms slip away from the edge, bracing myself for when I meet the ground.

It's not the ground that meets me, though. Instead, strong arms wrap around me, jolting my eyes open. Finn is looking up at me. The way he caught me has his chest against my stomach and his arms resting just below my ass, making us look like one of those cheesy rom com movies where the couple kisses in the rain.

"Thanks for that." I pat his shoulder. His arms give me a quick squeeze before they loosen enough for me to slide down his body. As soon as my feet touch the ground, we shuffle away from each other.

A loud screeching sounds from down the hallway shakes us from our awkwardness. We look at each other, eyes wide, before moving over to the windows.

"Oh, thank God," Finn says. He gestures me over to the window directly across from the classroom door. He is opening the window by the time it takes me to figure out why he wanted me to come over in the first place. The window I had been looking at is right next to the door, and I am only halfway across the room when the screeching becomes unbearably loud. The thing outside will be passing by the door any second now, and the bad thing about these science lab rooms is that they have a huge freaking window on the doors.

"Alden, hide!" Finn says in a rushed whisper from the fire escape.

I just manage to hide behind a filing cabinet when a shadow is cast across the room. The figure looks somewhat human shaped, but even by looking at its shadow, I can tell that it is too wrong to be a human.

The clicking sounds that the creature is making filter into the room, causing a shiver of fear to run down my spine. The door knob rattles, but it can't get in because miraculously, Finn had locked it when he first jumped down from the vent. Suddenly, the clicking stops, but I don't move from my spot. I don't trust that the creature out there is really gone.

Looking over towards the window, I see Finn quickly peer over the window sill and over to the door. He gestures to me that it is safe, and I breathe a small sigh of relief. Not trusting that the creature is gone entirely, I crouch down so that I can crawl the rest of the way to the window.

Finn watches the door the entire time, his eyes only leaving the it when I climb through the window and duck out of view.

"That was close," Finn says, his back resting against the wall behind him. His brown eyes flick over to me, his brows scrunching together in concern when he takes in my slightly trembling form. "Are you alright?"

The breath I had been holding in my lungs comes rushing out from between my lips. I shake my head slightly, but try to give him some semblance of a smile. "I don't think I'll be alright until we make it out of here."

"Well, we're almost there." He points over to the parking lot across the street. "We just have to make it over there and then we're safe."

"Do you have your keys?" I ask. "I don't want to go all the way over there just to realize we can't get into your car."

Finn shoots me a deadpan look. "Yeah, I managed to grab my keys when I was grabbing stuff from my locker."

"Good, because my car is parked four blocks away from here." When Finn raises a questioning brow, I hurry to explain my reasoning. I shrug my shoulders. "I couldn't find any open spots in the parking lot when I got here earlier."

"My car it is then." He stands up, reaching an arm out for me so he can pull me up. My muscles protest when I am standing upright again, but I don't give in to my exhaustion.

Peeking over the edge, I see that it is eerily still down below us, and the only screams I can hear are coming from the next block over. Nothing seems to be moving in the parking lot below, but it wouldn't surprise me if one of those beasts were lying in wait behind an overturned car.

Finn makes it to the first step before I have time to grab his arm. "Wait." He looks over at me, his brows scrunched together in confusion. "This seems almost too easy."

"What do you mean?"

"There had to be at least twenty or so of those beasts in the building, so why aren't there any in the parking lot. It seems like there would be more out here. It's an open space with a lot more room and opportunity out here."

Finn climbs back up the step and joins me in looking over the edge. The sun is getting lower in the sky, casting long shadows across the parking lot. Just the thought of being out here once the sun goes down causes a shiver of fear to go down my spine.

"Look." Finn points at something down below us. It is hard to make it out in the decreasing light, but it looks like a dead police officer. "They should have a gun and baton on them. We can grab it as soon as we get down there. We need to hurry, though. I don't want to be out here with those monsters after the sun goes down."

Nodding my head, I follow Finn down the stairs as quickly as possible. Luckily, we were only on the fourth floor of the fifteen story building, so it does not take us long to reach the fallen police officer.

"Do you know how to use a gun?" Finn asks me from where he is crouched next to the man in uniform. His hands pat over the body, finding all the weapons that are hidden.

"No, I never really cared for guns." Looking around the parking lot, I see that it is still pretty clear; the screams from down the block becoming farther away.

"Well then, you get the baton." Finn stands up, handing me the black police baton while he takes the holster and gun from the police man and snaps them into place around his waist. It looks odd and out of place over his turquoise scrubs.

A multitude of screeches come from behind us, causing my head to whip around in fright, but I am unable to see anything. They sound far away, but seem to be getting closer. It is difficult to tell if they are chasing after someone else or if they are just on the prowl. Either way, I don't really want to find that out for myself.

Finn looks over at me from the where he was staring, his throat bobbing as he swallows harshly. My own eyes are wide as I meet his, and without wasting another second, we head in the opposite direction of the screams.