by Lola StVil
Her panic seems to be growing rather than shrinking, and I step towards her and put my hands on her shoulders.
“Look at me,” I say.
I wait until she is looking at me and her breathing has slowed down a little.
“You will be fine. I won’t let you drown.”
“But…” she starts.
“No buts. It’s the only way. Langston, you’ve faced hell creatures, demons, the Keysu, even Atlas.” I give her a little smile. “And creatures I can’t even begin to list. You’re brave, and you’re strong, and you can do this.”
She gives a half nod, and I step towards the hole. I sit down and turn back to her.
“As soon as I disappear, you come down, okay?”
“What if I can’t do it?” she says miserably.
“Then I’ll drown, and that’ll be on you because I’m not leaving the bottom of the tunnel until you’re with me.”
I push off with my hands before she can react. I hope her conscience is strong enough to override her fear because if not, then I’m dead because I meant it when I said I’m not leaving without her.
I drag in a big breath as my feet touch the water and within half a second I’m surrounded by the icy cold water. The momentum keeps me going lower through the water, which I’m relieved about because I don’t think Langston would be able to force herself to swim down.
I see the bottom of the tunnel, and I pull myself out and hang onto it to wait for Langston. Five seconds pass. Then ten. Now fifteen. She should be here by now. Surely she won’t let me die waiting for her.
Twenty. Twenty-five. Thirty. My lungs are starting to burn ever so slightly, and I have no idea how deep we are. I can see the light above me, but it looks so far away.
Forty-five seconds and I’m really feeling the burn now, but I told her I’d be here, and I will be. Fifty seconds.
A wave of relief floods through my body as Langston’s feet come into sight. I wrap my hands around her ankles and gently pull her free of the tunnel. I can see the panic on her face. Her wide-open eyes roll wildly. Her cheeks are puffed out, filled with air, and small bubbles keep escaping from her lips.
She claws out for me and grips my arms. In her panic, she pushes me down further. My lungs are on fire now and I know I have about ten seconds to get to the surface before we’re both in big trouble.
I could punch her, knock her out, and drag her up that way, but it seems wrong, even if I am doing it for the right reasons. Instead, I begin to kick upwards, fighting against her. At the same time, I wrap an arm firmly around her waist, hoping that my touch will make her calmer, that she will realize she’s okay.
It seems to work. I can still see the panic etched into her face, and her hands still grip me hard enough to hurt, but she is no longer pushing me down.
I kick and kick, pulling us towards the surface. I can’t hold my breath any longer, and it begins to bubble out of me. I can feel my consciousness starting to slip away from me, and I fight with everything I have to hang on to it.
I have never been more relieved to feel the air on my face than I am when my head breaks the surface and I gasp in a big breath. It makes me cough, and Langston, who is now under control, pats me gently on the back.
“Thank you,” she whispers in my ear. “I can’t believe I did that.”
“You cut it pretty close.” I grin.
“Where the hell have you two been? We were ready to send out a search party,” Saudia says as the team gathers around us.
Langston won’t meet her eye, and I know we’ve been gone far too long for the team not to question us.
“I’m not a fan of deep water. Langston was just talking me into even getting into the tunnel and then she dragged me up to the surface,” I say.
Langston throws me a grateful look.
“The great Kane brought to his knees by water,” Perry mocks.
“The annoying Perry, drowned by Kane, and forgotten by all,” I reply.
Tracey bobs on the surface a couple of feet away from the rest of us.
“We need to swim back to shore. It’s only about a mile or so but there are sharks, so we best get moving quickly,” she says.
I glance at Saudia, who gives the tiniest of nods.
“We have a boat around here,” I say.
I turn and swim towards the boat, not waiting for Tracey’s reply. She can come—she’s earned a ride back to shore for getting us off the isle and saving Saudia—but if she chooses not to, I don’t really care.
“I’m going to go on ahead and bring the boat around,” I say, conscious of Tracey saying there are sharks.
I up my pace and leave the team behind. It doesn’t take me long to reach the shore. I hurry up the sand and untie the boat. I climb aboard and head back for the team. They are about halfway around the isle when I reach them.
I lean over the side of the boat and stick my hand down. Regal pushes Saudia higher, and I grab her and pull her aboard. We both reach down together and pull Langston up, then Perry, then Regal.
I am so tempted to leave Tracey, but I remind myself she saved Saudia, and almost against my will, I reach down to her outstretched hand. As my fingers brush hers, she is gone, pulled underneath the water.
“What the fuck?” I say.
“I guess a shark got her,” Regal says casually, making no move to help her or even check if he is right.
Saudia jumps from the boat and into the water. She swims beneath the surface, and I see an explosion of blood and guts as she squeezes the life out of the shark, making it implode on itself. Saudia breaks the surface, holding Tracey’s body against her own. She pushes Tracey up, and I grab one hand and Regal grabs the other.
We pull her aboard and let her fall to the ground. The bottom of her left leg is mangled, but she’ll live. She sits in the bottom of the boat whimpering and attempting to stop the bleeding. Regal and I reach back down and pull Saudia up.
“Regal, heal her leg, please,” Saudia says.
Regal frowns at her.
“Please,” she says again.
With a sigh, Regal kneels down beside Tracey and heals her leg. I concentrate on steering the boat, and I look out to the sea. I can’t believe Saudia has gone back to Tracey after she sold Atlas out.
We are almost at the shore now.
“You saved me,” Tracey says to Saudia.
“Yeah,” is all Saudia says back.
I am so angry at her for getting sucked back into Tracey’s web of lies, but a part of me gets it. Is there anything Atlas could do that I couldn’t forgive? I really don’t think there is.
I steer the boat back to the dock, and we all get off it, leaving it tied where the owner requested it be left.
We begin walking along the pontoon, and I speed up, walking ahead of the group. Langston catches up to me.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
I nod.
“Fine,” I snap.
She looks a little hurt that I snapped at her.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s just going to take me a while to get on board with Saudia forgiving Tracey.”
“Yeah, me too,” she says.
We reach the end of the dock and turn left, heading for the deserted storage area so I can teleport us away from here. We all link hands, and Tracey reaches out for Saudia’s hand. Saudia pulls her hand away.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she snaps.
Tracey recoils in shock.
“I thought…”
“What? You thought everything would be okay now? Well, it’s not. I saved your life because you saved mine, and I didn’t want to owe you anything. Now we’re even.”
“But you asked Regal to heal me.”
“Because it was the decent thing to do,” Saudia says.
I can see the tears shining in her eyes, and I think it was more than that. Saudia still loves Tracey; it’s not something you can just switch off, and she wasn’t going to leave her in pain. But she is far from forgivin
g her. Judging by the coldness behind the tears, she never will.
“You are dead to me now,” Saudia finishes. She turns to me. “Can we just go?”
I don’t need to be told twice. Tracey touches my shoulder, and within the blink of an eye, we’re back in the loft.
Sadie and Pest jump to their feet as we appear in front of them. Sadie throws her arms around me, and I let her hug me for a second and then I step back. Pest is asking a million questions of the others, and they’re all talking at once.
“Did you get it?” Sadie asks.
I nod and pull the hairs from my pocket.
“There’s a couple there. Keep the others; you never know when they might come in useful for something.”
I slowly become aware of the smell of food and my stomach growls. My mouth floods with saliva. Pest has opened the kitchen door and is beckoning us in.
“It’s not exactly a grilled cheese, but it might do,” Sadie says to Perry.
Perry laughs.
“I really was joking you know,” he says.
“I know. But I hope that doesn’t mean you’re not going to eat it,” she says.
He shakes his head and starts for the kitchen.
“Umm, guys, don’t we have something more important to do first?” I snap.
Perry groans but he stops and nods.
“It’ll take a while for the magic from the unicorn hair to infuse into the mixture,” Sadie says. “Either way you’re stuck waiting. You might as well eat.”
The team heads for the kitchen.
“But…” I start.
Sadie stops me with a shake of her head.
“Kane, I’m not just saying it. These things take time. You know that. I’ll be in Quinn’s old lab, and I’ll come and tell you the second I have Atlas’s location. Pest said get back so the hair was potent. The more potent, the stronger the mixture but until it fuses we wait. Please trust me? You all need to keep your strength up. Now go.”
The growling sound from my stomach gives me away, and with a sigh, I head for the kitchen. Sadie and Pest have gone to town on the food. There isn’t a grilled cheese in sight, but there’s a ton of fried chicken, fries, wedges, and corn on the cob. There are steaks, mushrooms, bacon, jacket potatoes, and mounds of sour cream, and there’s even a giant chocolate fountain for dessert.
“You know Sadie. She can’t just hang around waiting without doing something.” Pest grins when he sees my face.
I sit down and load up my plate. We all dig into the food and fill Pest in on everything that happened on the isle. Tracey’s appearance gets a raised eyebrow, and he is very interested in the powder. We can’t really tell him anything about it, and he looks crestfallen when we tell him we were more interested in getting off the isle alive than collecting a sample of either the powder or the Banacore acid.
Pest raises an eyebrow in my direction when Perry tells him I’m afraid of deep water. He knows it’s crap, but I shake my head, and he lets it go.
Sadie comes in when we’ve almost finished the story. Her face is stony white, and she looks like she’s about to keel over. I get to my feet and cross the room, taking her elbow and guiding her into a chair.
“What is it?” I ask.
“It’s worse than we could have ever imagined,” Sadie says.
“Where is she?” I demand.
“Kane, Atlas is at the Meat Market.”
The bottom drops out of my world as Sadie’s words penetrate the fog that hangs over my brain. Her words seem to come from far away and at the same time, it’s as though she is screaming them into my ears.
Atlas is at the Meat Market. No. She can’t be. It’s just not possible. Even Talon wouldn’t stoop that low, would he? But I already know the answer to that. By his own admission, he went out of his way to do the darkest thing possible to pull me back to the dark side, and I think he’s just succeeded, because if he were in front of me now, I wouldn’t just kill him, I’d kill him slowly and I would enjoy every minute of it.
“No,” I say, shaking my head from side to side violently. “No, Mom. She can’t be there. There has to be some mistake.”
“I’m so sorry, Kane. There’s no mistake,” she replies.
She doesn’t comment on my slipup where I accidentally called her mom without a hint of sarcasm.
“Kane?” Langston says quietly from behind me. “What’s the Meat Market?”
How do I even begin to explain it to her?
“I… It’s hell on Earth, Langston. It’s one of the biggest pedophile and sex trafficking rings in the world. I spent some time there as a child, and let’s just say, it changes you. That’s where I met Talon, and he’s taken her there to send me a message. He wants to pull me back to the dark side. I should have killed him when I had the chance.”
“But why hasn’t Atlas blasted her way out of there?” Regal says.
“The Yorkshire mixture may not have worn off yet. Her powers will be gone or weak at best,” Pest says. “Remember she’s only been gone a couple of days.”
A couple of days of having men maul her, grope her, and do lord knows what else to her. It’s not a long time, but in that place, it will feel like an eternity. She’ll be broken, empty, a vessel for the dirty old men’s pleasure by now.
“Why don’t you wait here, Kane? That place is going to hold too many memories for you. We can go and get Atlas out of there. I don’t think a bunch of humans will cause us too many problems,” Saudia says.
A crashing sound behind me distracts me, and I turn to see Sadie lying on the ground. She has gone into the coma. Pest kneels beside her. He looks up at us.
“You guys only have an hour. Please hurry.”
I nod to Pest and then turn back to the team.
“I appreciate that, but I’m coming with you,” I say to Saudia. “The place is a maze of corridors, and it’ll be quicker to have me with you. I know my way around.”
I can see in her eyes that she wants to argue with me. That she thinks I’ll fall apart there. I want to tell her it won’t happen, but I’m afraid she might be right.
“Let’s go then,” Perry says.
“Kane?” Pest says. “Please hurry. I can’t lose Sadie.”
I bite my tongue to resist the urge to tell him he never had her.
We enter the Meat Market through the delivery entrance, which is always kept unlocked. The place has changed. It used to be swarming with guards, the doors locked shut with heavy silver padlocks, most of them covered in rust.
Now it is quiet and deserted, the corridors filled with motion sensors and CCTV cameras. The guards will no doubt be watching the camera feeds somewhere, but Saudia was right. A few humans won’t slow us down any. Their guns are no match for our powers.
The locks have been replaced with keypads that require a code to enter the rooms. I won’t let that stop me from getting to Atlas.
Dingy and dirty, the corridors are the same as I remember. The smell of urine and a more sinister musky smell hang in the air. I have barely stepped inside, and already I feel like I am eight years old and defenseless.
My body shakes as I lead the team through the rabbit hole of corridors. Atlas is too old to be kept here for long. She’ll be at the back of the place with the other older girls they have, waiting to be shipped out to those perverts who are rich enough to pay for her eternal company.
That doesn’t mean she won’t have suffered. The men here like them male and they like them young, but that won’t stop them from having their way with Atlas. Their depravity runs deep enough that they will take out their sick fantasies on anyone who is available.
We walk along the corridor where my room used to be. The padlock is gone, replaced with a keypad that looks out of place in the grubby, medieval looking setting. I remember sitting in there for hours on end, rocking back and forth, trying to imagine myself somewhere else.
I remember the fear I felt when I heard the padlock rattling and the key being inserted. I remember the terror I felt a
s they dragged me out of my cell and took me to the highest bidder. I remember the self-loathing I felt as they touched me and the disgust I felt when they whispered in my ears, telling me I was their “special boy.”
A violent shudder runs through me, and it’s not until I feel Langston’s hand on my arm that I realize I have stopped walking.
“I…I’m sorry. That was my cell,” I say, nodding to the door.
I hardly dare to look at the team, afraid I’ll see pity in their eyes. I force myself to look, and I don’t see pity. I see empathy, but more importantly, I see burning anger. They are as disgusted as I am by this place.
I force myself to start walking again. I hear running footsteps up ahead of me, and two men appear, guns raised. I don’t even look at them, I just fire at them, and they both drop to the ground.
“We have to hurry,” I say in a robotic voice. “They’ll call in the full team now. This might seem like a grubby, two-bit operation, and in most respects it is, but don’t let the dirt in this place and your disgust fool you. This is a billion-dollar enterprise, and they don’t skimp on security. We can take them, but it’ll slow us down, and we don’t have a lot of time.”
I push on, forcing myself to walk faster as I head deeper into the place. I want to turn and run screaming in the opposite direction, but I can’t do that. I know I can’t.
We pass the cell where they hold the new kids before they are tagged and taken to a permanent cell. I remember being in there, so afraid, with no idea what was to come. Who could have imagined it would be so bad?
That room was the place where Talon and I became more like brothers than friends. Where we agreed that no matter what, we’d have each other’s backs. It was the place where two monsters were born. The place of our nightmares, both real and literal.
And he brought her here. He brought her here knowing what they’d do to her, knowing the horrors she would have to endure.
“I swear when we get out of this place, I’m going to find Talon and I’m going to rip him apart,” I vow through gritted teeth.
No one tells me I shouldn’t do that. I think if he were here now, I wouldn’t be the only one who would want to kill him.
