As soon as Iris was on her feet, the group booked it for their getaway car. Cas gritted his teeth as the rapid pace made his left leg and lungs ache, but he didn’t allow his injuries to slow him down. The Aspirian law enforcement responded to calls within minutes after they were made. If his guess had been right and that nurse had realized that he and his friends weren’t actually doctors, they didn’t have much time to flee from the hospital. By his estimate, the police would probably arrive in about two minutes.

“Hurry!” Jay barked, swinging open the driver’s side door and practically leaping inside while Miles opened the back and helped Iris in. Unable to do anything to assist them, Cas took the front passenger seat and threw on his seatbelt. Winded from the short run, he ripped the surgical mask from his face and panted, pressing a hand to his chest where his fractured ribs had started to burn with each deep inhale. Luckily, the Accuparacin treatments seemed to be working there too, because the pain was already beginning to dissipate as the seconds passed. It was the gunshot wound in his leg that was going to hurt for a while.

Jay turned the ignition just as Miles closed the backseat door, having climbed inside after Iris, and quickly backed out of the parking spot. In the distance, they could already hear sirens, and he threw the car into drive, pressing the pedal to the floor and peeling out of the lot. “I’m gonna make a few detours,” he said, glancing at Caspian. “Just in case they catch us on any of the cameras. We don’t want them to know where we’re going.”

The prince nodded absently, craning his neck to peer out the back window as flashing blue and red lights appeared in the distance. For a few seconds he watched with bated breath, praying that the police didn’t notice them and take chase. However, it seemed like they had gotten far enough away not to be seen, because in the next moment, the cop cars disappeared from view as they turned into the hospital parking lot. They had gotten away.

“Oh my god, this is fucking insane,” Miles laughed nervously, pressing a hand to his forehead as he sank down in his seat. “I can’t believe we just broke into a [i]hospital[/i].”

“I can’t believe we got away with it,” Jay grinned, looking at the two in the backseat through his rearview mirror. Noticing that Cas was still quiet, he glanced at him again. “You okay?”

[color=#b97703]“Yeah,”[/color] the prince answered breathily. [color=#b97703]“Just recovering. I’m fine.”[/color] Like his friends, he was also shocked by what they had just accomplished. Even if the police tried to pursue them, they were too far away to catch up without calling for a helicopter to locate them. Because Iris had been a ward of the penitentiary, he doubted they could get approval for something like that before they called the warden to inform him that the prisoner was gone. Knowing the rocky relationship between the military and the police force in the capital, he predicted that the two groups would end up squabbling over the logistics and lock each other down rather than agree on a course of action. They were in the clear until the soldiers launched an investigation into the escape. At that point, he could only hope that they had done a good enough job covering their trail that they wouldn’t be found out.

[color=#b97703][i]Hopefully they assume she was taken by other members of the rebellion rather than anyone inside the capital,[/i][/color] he thought, letting out a slow exhale as he caught his breath. Relaxing a little more now that he felt more certain that they were safe, he turned in his seat to check on Iris in the back. [color=#b97703]“How are you holding up?”[/color] he asked, his eyes sweeping over her concernedly. He’d been too caught up in the escape to realize that she was dressed in nothing but hospital linens until now. Running on asphalt with bare feet had probably been painful. [color=#b97703]“Are your feet okay?”[/color]