Tabula Rasa Kristen Lippert Martin Read Online Free PDF

room. Why? This is stupid. How can
I save someone in a coma?
It’s hard to climb over the fallen debris, but I make it
 to his door and see a huge beam lying across the kid’s bed,
 across his chest.
I spin and run, searching from room to room as the
 snow blows into the hallway, melting instantly as it falls.
Finally, at the end of the hallway, I find the guy I just saw
 on the monitor. He looks to be in his late teens. A bunch
 of tubes are connecting him to an IV and a catheter. His
 thickly muscled arms, chest, and neck are covered with tat-
 toos, some of which have been “scrubbed” off with a laser.
That’s another thing they do here.
I count half a dozen incision scars on his head, and
 there’s one that’s freshly stitched. He also has what might
 be a bullet wound scar just below his collarbone. I lift his
 arm and try to tug him off the mattress. He’s rock-solid
 dead weight, and I know there’s no way I can carry him.
I put my hand over the kid’s heart, feel his chest rise and
 fall. Something about him is familiar to me. Like I don’t
 know him specifically, but I know people like him. I pull
 his IV out, make the sign of the cross on his forehead, lips,
 and chest. It’s all I can do for him, and I’m well aware of
 how pathetically little it is.
I run out the door, slip on the wet floor, and land on
 my tailbone. That’s when I hear them. There are people in
 the building. People who shouldn’t be here. I know this
 because they’re making a lot of noise, stomping up the stairs
 rather than running for cover. I look down at myself—the
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boots, the clothing, the passcard. Someone’s trying to help
 me. Why? Maybe because someone else is planning to hurt
 me. Maybe Jori was right after all.
Jori.
I run past the nurses’ station toward her wing, my boots
 crunching against the gritty layer of concrete that’s popped
 off the walls. Each wing has a set of security doors, and
 when I reach the ones leading to Jori’s side of the floor,
I have to let the handle go because it’s so hot. Dropping
 to my knees, I try to look underneath the door. I smell
 smoke . . . and something else.
Tear gas.
Up until this moment I had no clue what tear gas
 smelled like, but I don’t really need that much training. It
 feels like someone just jammed a blowtorch into both my
 eyes and down my throat.
I pull the neck of the hoodie up over my mouth and
 nose. I’ll have to get to Jori a different way.
I listen at the stairwell door. The people who were just
 coming up the steps have opened the door to the floor
 below. I wait a second until they’re gone and then go down
 two floors, thinking I might be able to loop back around
 and use the stairs on the opposite end of the floor to go
 back up, but when I pull the door open at the second floor,
I instantly regret it. Two men in black and gray military
 camos turn and fire at me. I let go of the handle and drop
 onto the floor as bullets rip into the metal fire door.  
Sliding down the handrail, I practically fall the rest of
 the way to the first floor, bursting out of the stairwell into
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    smoke and mayhem in the main lobby. An injured nurse,
 dragging one leg, is moving toward the front door, trying
 to stay behind  the huge potted palm trees next to the ceil-
 ing-high windows. I dive behind the security guard’s desk
 and find I’m not the only one taking cover there. There are
 two others.
Make that one other. One of the physical therapists is
 there. Dead. That leaves a nurse I’ve never seen before.
She’s completely rigid and her eyes are unblinking. If she
 weren’t breathing so rapidly, I’d think she was dead, too.
I feel the prickly sensation of adrenaline in the tips of my
fingers. My mouth fills with metallic-tasting saliva. Some-
 one speaks. It could be a man or a woman. Whoever it is
 sounds like one of those