Traces of Sulfur

by Madeline Freeman

  “No, no, no,” I hissed, feeling around the enclosed space for a hint of the cleat.

  “What?” Derek asked, the word coming out like a breath of air.

  Ignoring him, I pressed my eye to the small hole where the door met the wall. My stomach sank when my gaze fell on the cleat bunched into a sticky wad in the center of the walkway. It must have come off when I tripped.

  “I need to get it,” I whispered.

  Derek grabbed my upper arm, tugging me back. “No way. The next patrol will be here any second.

  I shook off Derek’s hand and crouched to gaze through the hole once again. The guard entered my field of vision, the red curls of his hair highlighted by the haze of city lights. I held my breath, hoping he would continue walking. Perhaps like the last guy who came by, something over the ledge would pique his interest and he would step out of the center of the walkway altogether.

  But my hopes crashed like waves against a rocky shore when the man stopped right in front of the cleat and crouched down.

  “Why is he stopping?” Liza asked through the comm. “Eden, is that… Oh, Eden.”

  The disappointment lacing her tone cut me like a knife. But I deserved nothing better. I was sloppy, and it may have cost us the mission. If the guard realized what he found, he would alert other units and they would begin a search and it was only a matter of time before they would find us…

  A squeal cut through the air, followed by a sharp voice. “Keats, report.”

  The guard stood, picking up the cleat and studying it as his free hand squeezed the button on the walkie-talkie on his shoulder. “No visible threats. But I found something.”

  My heart plummeted. This was it. We were done for.

  Derek edged me out of the way to take my spot at the peephole. I didn’t want to give up the space, but if the guard was destined to catch us anyway, it gave me a tiny ounce of satisfaction that he would capture Derek first.

  “What is it?” came the muffled voice from the walkie.

  “Not sure,” Keats said. “Looks like something off a shoe, maybe? Probably Monroe and his non-standard-issue footwear.” He chuckled like the words were part of some inside joke.

  “Any movement?” asked the disembodied voice.

  “Nah. Everything’s quiet. It’s like I said—we don’t need this many patrols. I mean, I get why we’re being so cautious, what with the Aether Blade and all. But it isn’t like someone could get very far with it.”

  Curiosity bubbled up through my panic. The Aether Blade? I spun through what I knew about important angelic relics, but it wasn’t a deep well.

  “My shift’s over in ten,” Keats continued. “Think I can cut out early?”

  The fear that had gripped me since realizing I lost my cleat shifted gears until giddy elation filled me, chasing away thoughts of the Aether Blade. I pressed my hands to my mouth to ensure a giggle didn’t bubble out. Keats had no idea what he’d stumbled on, and instead of investigating further, he was trying to get out of work early.

  I expected the disembodied voice to tell Keats to get real and finish out his shift, but he said, “Sure. But don’t let Lopez see you leave. You know what a stickler she can be.”

  I couldn’t believe our luck. Keats didn’t suspect a thing, and in a few moments, there would be one less guard on patrol. Things were looking up.

  But before I could revel in the small victory, Derek shifted his weight. At first I wondered if his foot was falling asleep, but in the next second, he pushed open the door.

  I barely glimpsed the surprise painted on Keats’s face as he turned to investigate the movement before Derek aimed his tranq gun and shot a dart straight at the guard’s heart.

  Keats dropped like a sack of potatoes. No sooner had he hit the ground than Derek leapt toward him, grabbing at the man’s outstretched arm.

  All I could do was stare. Now that I wasn’t peering through a peephole, I could see that Keats wasn’t very old—maybe twenty, like Derek. His jaw still retained the gentle curve of youth.

  “Are you waiting for an invitation?” Derek snapped. “Help me move him!”

  Derek’s words did nothing to pull me from my stupor. My legs felt rooted in place, even as I watched Derek struggle with the guard’s dead weight.

  “Thirty seconds before the next patrol.”

  Liza’s voice shook me to action. Less than a minute ago, Keats was ready to leave the roof without investigating the origin of my cleat. We were free and clear. But now we had Keats’s body to deal with before another guard came along and spotted something much more incriminating than a sticky shoe cover.

  I wanted to curse Derek for his impulsiveness, but I bit back my words. Instead, I darted toward the unconscious man and got the best grip on his legs I could manage. Slowly, Derek and I shuffled Keats to the storage closet where we had been hiding.

  “Ten seconds,” Liza noted. “Once this patrol passes, you’ll have two minutes for your next phase.”

  I glared at Derek. “And what are we supposed to do until then?”

  He cupped my shoulder and pushed me inside by way of answering. I wanted to resist, but I had nowhere else to go. Steeling myself, I stepped around Keats’s body as best I could. Derek followed me in and pulled the door closed behind him.

  If I thought the space was cramped before, it was nothing to how full the area was now with Keats’s body bunched on the floor. The only thing that kept me from shouting at Derek was the knowledge that the next patrol was likely within earshot by now.

  I held my breath until Liza gave the all clear. Derek opened the door and stepped out first. By the time I made my way out and closed up the door behind me, Derek was already halfway to the roof access hatch that would be our entryway. He pulled open the cover and slipped in without waiting for me. I cursed him silently, but what choice did I have but to follow?

  I could only hope I wasn’t following him to certain doom.

  Chapter Six

  “Why’d you do it?”

  I kept my voice low so it wouldn’t echo in the cramped air duct. For the last five minutes, I replayed the events on the roof over and over, trying to identify the detail I’d missed in the moment. But no matter how many times I spun it over in my mind, I couldn’t come up with a reasonable answer.

  Derek stopped his forward creep through the endless metal tunnel. “You’re kidding, right?”

  I shook my head. “No, not really. That guard—Keats? He didn’t raise any alarm about the cleat. He was about to leave.”

  “And what would’ve happened if he handed it off to his supervisor? Who’s to say he wouldn’t have figured out what he had and called for a search of the building?”

  “You overreacted,” I insisted.

  “I neutralized a threat.” Derek held my gaze for a long moment before twisting to face forward again. “When safety’s on the line, you can’t hesitate.”

  For a moment I didn’t follow. I couldn’t. In the two years I’d known him, I’d never heard Derek speak like that. Was this what he was always like when on mission? Or were tonight’s heightened stakes putting him on edge?

  It wasn’t until we’d taken a few turns through the ducts that my mind caught up with where we were going. “Weren’t we supposed to take a right back there?”

  “I know where I’m going,” Derek insisted.

  My stomach twisted, but I tried to ignore the sensation. Maybe it was my own head that was mixed up. My mind was still back in the storage closet. How long until the tranq dart wore off? How would Keats react to waking up in a cramped, nearly black space?

  “Status?”

  Liza’s voice in my ear made my heart skip a beat. It was easy to forget I was wearing an earpiece when countless minutes elapsed between points of contact.

  Derek stopped crawling, and I paused as well, being sure to leave as much space between us as possible. The vent was already claustrophobic enough without adding unnecessary physical contact. I longed to sit and stretch out my legs, bu
t the duct was barely large enough to crawl through. It felt like we were moving at a snail’s pace through the intestinal tract of some immense beast. The only light came from the thumb-sized clips Derek and I wore pinned to the collars of our shirts.

  Derek pressed his comm to activate the microphone. “Making progress.” Although I was sitting mere inches from him, he was so quiet I had to strain to hear his words. “Should be above the room in the next five minutes.”

  “Good,” Liza said. “I’ll check in again then.”

  Instead of continuing on our shuffling crawl, Derek spared a glance in my direction. “How you doing back there?”

  Cramped? Sore? Decidedly not enjoying the view? “Fine,” I whispered back.

  Derek didn’t press further. When he started crawling again, I kept pace. Sweat beaded at my hairline. I hoped his time assessment was right. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could handle being in these ducts. I didn’t exactly have a problem with enclosed spaces, but after our time in the closet and now this, I was at my limit. Although I knew we’d have to wind our way back through the ducts on our way out, I hoped the brief reprieve when we snuck out to steal the medicine would be enough to get me through the rest of the time I would spend in this elongated metal coffin.

  Derek stopped so suddenly, I bent my fingers against the soles of his boots when I foolishly attempted to continue on my forward progress. “What are you doing?”

  Derek merely pointed to the grate to his right. I leaned as far forward as possible and peeked through the slatted metal into the room beyond. From my vantage point near the ceiling, I couldn’t get a clear sense of what I was looking at. The room was dark, the only light coming from the narrow window at the far end of the room. The hulking shapes within were draped with cloth, but for what purpose I wasn’t sure.

  “Why would they keep the medicine in here?” I asked.

  Derek’s brow furrowed, but he quickly smoothed his expression. “I don’t know. Maybe they wanted it somewhere out of the way.”

  His argument wasn’t particularly convincing, but I didn’t bother voicing my concern, despite the fact that it was growing by the second. What if I was right and Derek took a wrong turn early on? We could be on the entirely wrong side of the building…

  Oblivious to my mounting worries, Derek pulled one of Marco’s signature tools from his cargo pocket and began unscrewing the grate.

  “I thought Chamberlain said they were keeping it in city manager’s office.”

  “He did,” Derek whispered. But he didn’t stop working.

  When Derek removed the third screw—the one on the top right—the grate swung downward, scraping the ductwork until the remaining screw on the top left caught it. It swung drunkenly a few times, scratching quietly against the metal each time, before Derek stuck his hand out of the hole and held the grate aside. “Ladies first.”

  A shiver coursed through me. What if they rigged the room with a security system? As soon as my feet hit the floor, an alarm could sound, alerting the guardsmen crawling the building to my presence.

  I blew out a breath. Chamberlain didn’t say anything about motion sensors in the office. I couldn’t work myself up over something that might not happen. Stuffing down my fears, I scooted into position, mentally rehearsing how best to slither through the opening and slide out without making noise.

  Derek rested his hand on my shoulder. “You got this. Come on—we’re almost done.”

  “Do you have eyes on the target?” Liza asked through the comm.

  “No,” I answered. “I’m not even sure where it might be. All I can see is a bunch of shapes covered with tarps.” I squinted at the various shadows and assigned guesses to each. “A couple file cabinets. A desk and chair, maybe. No sign where they stashed the medicine.”

  Liza cursed over the line. “Negative. You’re in the wrong location. The city manager’s office isn’t covered in tarps. What are you thinking? You must be in the east wing. That part of the building has been shut down for the last year.”

  Derek squeezed his eyes closed. “Are you sure? I thought I…”

  Liza sighed heavily. “Standby.”

  My throat tightened as I looked to Derek. “We were supposed to take a right, weren’t we?”

  A muscle in his jaw jumped, but he didn’t speak.

  Liza’s voice returned to my earpiece. “I’m moving the drone back into position. I need to see where you are.”

  Sweat trickled down my spine as we waited in silence. This mission was supposed to be straightforward, but at every turn we’d screwed up. My cleat, Derek tranquing that guard, and now this. Eventually our mistakes would to catch up with us.

  A few more minutes passed before Liza’s voice came on through the comms. “Drone’s in range. When I say, I want you both to spread your arms as far out to the sides as possible. It’ll make it easier to spot you.”

  With my legs hanging out of the duct, I didn’t have much wiggle room, so Derek inched his way further down the duct to give us both a little space.

  “Hoo. Gates prevail, that’s a swarm of angels.” Liza chucked. “Okay, spread ’em.”

  I held out my arms, and so did Derek—although he had to press his forehead into the wall of the duct to keep himself semi-upright without the help of his hands.

  “Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news,” Liza said after a few moments.

  Derek dropped his arms. “What’s the bad news?”

  “I was right; you’re in the wrong spot.”

  My stomach sank. “What’s the good news?”

  “It’s not far to the right room,” Liza said.

  Derek nudged my shoulder. “See? We’ve got this. We always find a way.”

  I wanted to take solace in his words, but the situation had me wound too tight to relax.

  “Getting there through the ducts from your current location will take too long,” Liza said. “You’ll have to go almost all the way back and then go the right way.”

  “I thought you said we were close?” Derek protested.

  “You are,” Liza said, her voice lilting at the end of the sentence. “But to get there, you’ll need to go through the hall.”

  “Are you nuts?” Derek asked. “Someone will see us.”

  “Calm down,” Liza said evenly. “I’ve got the drone in the air. I can time your movements.”

  A shiver coursed through me at the thought of moving through the halls, but I knew Liza was right. I trusted her to get us where we needed to be. I locked eyes with Derek, who gave a resolute nod. “Let’s go.”

  I sucked in a deep breath and dropped out of the ductwork, landing in a crouch on the empty floor below. A cloud of dust kicked up at my feet and I covered the cough that forced its way out of my mouth. I staggered out of the way just in time to miss being landed on by Derek.

  “Okay, where to?” Derek asked, heading toward the door.

  “Hold tight,” Liza said. “There are two guards at the end of the hall, but it looks like they’re moving out.”

  I snuck through the room toward the door. Although the top portion was mainly glass, it was frosted and translucent enough that anyone nearby shouldn’t be able to detect my movements in the darkness. Even from my vantage point, the best I could hope for was a shadow to alert me to someone in the hall.

  “The guards are heading into the stairwell. You should be all clear to move in twenty seconds. Get into position.”

  Derek curled his fingers around the knob.

  “Five seconds,” Liza warned.

  I worked to steady my breathing. If Liza said we were safe, I believed her.

  “Okay, go!”

  Derek twisted the doorknob and led the way into the hall. I closed the door behind us as silently as possible.

  “Now,” Liza continued, “go right and move down to the end of the hall and make a left.”

  Even though I knew Liza could track our movements now with the heat-viewing camera on her drone, I couldn’t resist the
urge to glance over my shoulder at the empty hallway. At the very least, the hall ended at a window. Unless someone came out of one of the rooms, no one would approach us from behind. Still, being out in the fluorescent lights of the hallway made me feel exposed. I didn’t want to be out here any longer than necessary and—surprisingly—part of me longed for the safety of the ducts.

  Derek kept a steady pace as he made his way up the hall. When he made it to the corner, he peered around it before stepping out and hanging a left.

  “Last door on your right,” Liza murmured.

  My heart pounded in my chest, the sensation growing painful. We were so very close. Despite our mistakes, we were going to make it.

  “Get inside as quickly as you can,” Liza said. “I’ve got a couple guards heading in your direction, but they’re still about forty seconds out.”

  My throat went dry as Derek reached for the handle of the last door on the right. He twisted it, but the door didn’t open.

  “Give me your lock pick,” Derek said, holding his hand out to me.

  His words took me by surprise. “My what?”

  He turned, his eyes wide. “You didn’t bring your lock pick?”

  “You mean the one you borrowed after losing yours?” I shot back. “You haven’t returned it. I figured you brought it.”

  He winced. “I thought I gave it back to you.”

  I gaped. “You didn’t. What are we going to do?”

  “Is there a problem?” Liza asked. “Company in thirty seconds.”

  “We could break the window and open the door from inside,” Derek suggested.

  “Are you insane? The guards will notice that.”

  “You know what else they’ll notice? Us standing in the middle of the hall. Have you got a better idea?”

  “Visual contact in twenty seconds,” Liza noted.

  I couldn’t believe it. We were mere feet from our goal, and—once again—the mission’s objective was just out of reach. Frustration bubbled in the pit of my stomach. We needed to find somewhere to hide—to lie low and figure out our next steps.