by Jada Fisher
At least I got to keep my socks and shoes. I wasn’t going to give them up for anything. I had splurged with my tax refund and gotten comfort supports in my sneakers, and I was pretty sure this world wouldn’t have anything remotely like that.
Lastly was the headscarf, which I tied as tightly around my hair as I could. Once I looked appropriately bedraggled, I stepped out.
“Not bad,” Mal said, nodding. “You almost look like you could possibly belong.”
“Almost?”
“You need a couple more weeks of running for your life to get the appropriate weariness needed by my world.”
“Noted.”
Mallory stepped out too and cleared her throat. “It’s alright, Bronny-boy. Your modesty is safe.”
“Thank you.”
He picked up his own set and ducked into one of the closets, but I noticed he didn’t start changing until all three of us turned around. How funny.
As our backs were turned, I took the opportunity to observe everything I could around me, from the ceiling down to the shoddy floor.
I really needed to stop thinking that way. Something told me that everything we would be dealing with for the next few days was going to be rundown and falling apart, a product of the destruction in the great war.
But as my eyes swept over the bits and bobs, a now-familiar feeling washed over me, and I saw a tiny, wavering holo-scene play over the wall.
There was a boy, waifish and missing teeth, running over debris and down streets. He made no moves to hide himself, and my stomach flipped at the idea of what could happen to him.
He ran straight toward a lighted area, where I saw several men in uniform. For a moment, I thought I was about to watch a horrible murder, but instead the boy went right up to them and tugged on their arm.
One of the guards bent down to him, and the little boy whispered in their ear. When they stood, they handed the little boy something then marched into a bigger building just beyond the light.
A terrible wave of dread washed over me, and I stared in horror as the hologram-like vision faded from existence. I had no idea how long I stood like that, but the moment I had control of myself again, I whipped to Mal.
“I think we’ve been snitched on.”
“What?” She looked at me like I had gone crazy, and maybe I had. But all I knew was that we weren’t safe anymore. “Why would you say that?”
“I’d say that because a little boy just ran up to what I am pretty sure was some dragons, then they paid him.”
“What? How could you possibly know that?”
“A girl literally told you to find us in your dreams and you’re going to question this?”
“Fair point.” She looked like she was going to say something else, but then there was a thunderous sound that knocked all of us to the ground. “Crap!” she cried, struggling to her feet. “I guess that’s our cue to run!”
5
Hunter Hunted
“What is going on?” Bron cried, stumbling out of his changing area only half-dressed.
“Dragon attack!” Mal answered, grabbing my hand and yanking me to my feet. “Someone must have narc-ed on us! Let’s go.”
Mallory stumbled to her feet as well, her fingers wrapping through mine on my free hand, and then we were running.
The whole house around us was shaking like someone had set the world to vibrate. Everywhere, people were running. The strangest thing was, as alarming as the situation was, no one was screaming. In fact, I didn’t hear a single word from anyone.
“Hopefully those are just their exploratory probes and they don’t know exactly where we are,” Mal said as we raced through the debris.
“And if they do?”
“Then you can say good-bye to the last gathering place of the free humans.”
Grim, but realistic. My heart was in my throat as we dashed along, darting over collapsing furniture and whole chunks of the floor that just disappeared, revealing dirt and rebar below.
We erupted out of the front of the building and onto the worn, cracked floor of the subway chamber. The entire room was filled with panting breaths and pounding feet, everyone going every which way.
I didn’t understand why we weren’t going back the way we came, but I didn’t ask. There wasn’t a chance to. Everything was just running, running, running. We picked our way through the rush before jumping down onto the tracks—or what would have once been the tracks—and then we were sprinting down the pathway.
For being such a huge crowd above, there were only five or so of them still with us. I guess it made sense for everyone to go in different directions. It made more of a chance for people to escape if they all weren’t funneling out the same way.
There was another explosion that sent us all flying forward, and my shoulder slammed into the ground, causing me to bite my tongue. I skidded a few feet, coming to a stop only to have someone roughly grab the back of my tunic and haul me up to run some more.
It was Bron, and I didn’t even have time to thank him before he was pulling me forward. A quick glance over my shoulder told me that Mal and Mallory were right behind us, sprinting forward with blood on their faces.
We ran for what felt like ages, my breath harsh in my throat and my heart pounding a mile a minute. We could no longer hear whatever was going on in the subway chamber we’d left, or much of anything else beyond our own fleeing.
Finally, we reached a slightly widened area, and I realized it was a small subway stop. The few people that were with us split off in separate directions, leaving us alone as we continued down the subway track.
“We…we don’t have to run for now,” Mal said, doubled over as she wheezed. “If the dragons are in the chamber, they’ll have to fully search that, and if they’re just randomly probing, it doesn’t matter if we run or not. It’s all down to chance. Then, if we suddenly do end up being found, I’d like to have some energy left to make a final run for it.”
“Good point.”
“Thank you. You don’t get to be the best skirmisher in the business by not budgeting your energy properly.”
I tried to laugh at that, but at most I managed a half-hearted chuckle. That seemed to be just fine though, because nobody really seemed to be in the mood to talk.
Silence reigned once again as we strolled along. Or at least it did for a few minutes. After a handful or so, Mal cleared her throat.
“So, uh, you wanna explain how you knew that?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes I see things.”
“You see things?”
“Yeah. I see things. Things that have happened, might happen, will happen, or are happening right now. Obviously, the whole kid thing was slightly in the past considering how fast the dragons were on top of us.”
“Yeah, I could’ve used more than a minute warning.” Mal shook her head like she had just heard what she said. “Wait, do you mean to tell me that—in addition to hopping around realities like a bouncy ball—you can also see the future?”
“And the past. And probable futures. I think. I’m kinda new to this and it’s all very confusing.”
“If it’s confusing for you, imagine what’s it like for me.”
I managed another chuckle, but it felt just as flat as my previous one. As we walked along, I noticed a particular sound that I had hoped I’d never hear again.
“Wargs.”
“Hounds.”
Both Bron and Mal spoke at the same time, but the words were clear.
“Which direction are they coming from?” I asked, adrenaline starting to shoot through me once again. You’d think my body would have developed a resistance to it, considering all the hijinks I had gotten up to in the past weeks.
“Both,” Bron said, tilting his head to the side.
“Both!” I cried. “Um, what do we do when it’s both?”
Mal looked around, her face paler than I had ever seen it. “Then we go up.” I followed her gaze up and spotted a half-ladder hanging from some bars and o
ther structural stuff in the top of the tunnel. “There should be a fire hatch every hundred feet or so. I can’t say if any of them survived all the trauma, but if we’re lucky, maybe one will lead high enough up so that the hounds back off us.”
“I say we fight,” Bron said, his shoulders tensing. “You all go above, and I’ll roast them. According to the legends, they’re not fireproof.”
“And draw the attention of all the dragons in a ten-mile radius? No thank you. This is my world, so we do this my way, you hear?”
I saw Bron’s nostrils flare like he wanted to object, but in the end, he just nodded and bent down to boost the girl up. Then Mallory. Then me.
Each of us waited for the other to reach the scaffolding at the top before we attempted our own climb. I guess the thought was that if the ladder broke, it was better if it only took out one of us instead of all of us, but eventually we all made it to the top of the tunnels.
“If your subways were modernized like ours,” Mallory commented, “then this would never work.”
“Be grateful for the little things, I guess. Now be quiet and follow my lead.”
Despite the tense situation, I found myself rolling my eyes a bit. I got why Mal had to be prickly, but did she really need to tell us to shut up so often? At some point, it just became old hat.
We clambered along silently, until Mal reached what looked like a red handle. She pulled it, only for the entire front to fall to the ground and a literal waterfall of debris to pour below.
“Well, that one won’t work,” she said. “Let’s keep going.”
“Oh, I dunno, I thought we’d sit here and smell the roses,” Mallory shot back.
“There are no roses underground.”
“I… I know that. It’s a joke.”
“Huh. Didn’t seem like a joke. Aren’t they supposed to be funny?”
“That was hilarious. Trust me.”
“Uh-h—”
“Shh!” That was Bron, and the two women fell silent. Just in time for the pitter patter of feet running toward us.
“Crap,” Mal hissed. “You distracted me. Let’s keep going.”
“Whatever you say.”
We kept going, climbing as fast as we could climb, which wasn’t exactly speedy in my case. By the time we reached the next one, the hounds were visible, and soon they would reach each other—but I didn’t quite know what that meant for us.
Mal pulled at it and this time, the hatch didn’t clatter to the floor below. Instead, it hung from a hinge, while a small bit of dirt and grit poured out.
“Let me see how it is on the inside…” Mal leaned in, poking her head up through the event horizon, before coming back to us. “The tunnel looks intact from what I can see. Let’s go.”
“And if it’s not?” I asked.
“Then we’ll deal with that when we get to it. Would you rather stay down here and risk our hound friends sniffing us out?”
“No, not really.”
“Exactly.”
She reached for something inside of the thing that I couldn’t see, then swung forward, her legs dangling for a terrifying second. For a moment, I was sure that she was going to fall, and I reached for her, but then she was disappearing up inside of it.
“After you,” Mallory said once Mal was high enough for someone else to follow.
I reached forward and ducked under the lip of the hatch where I saw a ladder bolted into the side of it as well as Mal climbing up ahead. Making sure I had a solid grip, I swung myself up and inside.
The hatch was pitch-black, and only grew darker as I climbed upwards. I heard Bron and Mallory join us, and then the dragon reached down to close the hatch. I didn’t know how he managed to do that, but I wasn’t going to look down to find out. I had never been a fan of heights as it was, and I didn’t feel like pushing my limits in a literally life and death situation.
My shoulders and hamstrings began to ache, and the palms of my hands were burning, but we just kept going and going and going. Our whole day seemed to be like that. Always rushing toward or away from some danger far longer than seemed possible.
Eventually, we reached another hatch and Mal was shoving it open. The light that poured in was blinding, and for the tiniest of breaths I was elated, until I remembered that it was nighttime, so there shouldn’t be any light at all.
Right as I realized that, hands reached in and yanked Mal out. She kicked and flailed, and I tried to pull her back down, but then hands were reaching for me and yanking me up too.
I tried to hold on, and both Bron and Mallory tried to hold onto me, but for all of our trying, we all ended up hauled over the edge and onto the street.
“Let go of me!” I cried, kicking out with both feet. But then something hard and thin slammed right along my spine, knocking me prone to the ground.
“Let go of me you low-tier, four-legged abominations!” Mal screamed. I tried to turn my head to look for her, but claws clamped around my head and pressed my cheek into the dirt.
“Now, now,” a low voice murmured from where I couldn’t see. But as they spoke, Mal fell silent. “After all the trouble I went through trying to find you, are you really going to act like that?”
“Fjorin,” I heard Mal breathe. “You’re not part of the patrol corps. What are you doing here?”
“Are you kidding? When I heard my favorite little canary had been spotted around these parts about a month ago, how could I not go to the most extreme lengths to find her again? Did you know, it only takes three weeks to train the palace hounds to be able to track your scent across this entire city?”
I heard the distinct sound of a loogy being spat, then a hard slap, and then I was being pulled to my feet. I was barely straightened before a dark bag was placed over my head and ice filled my veins.
Despite everything we had done, we were still captured, but from the sounds of it, they didn’t know who we were.
I guess I just had to pray that I could work that to my advantage.
6
Cages Come in All Sorts of Shapes
I sat in chains, feeling cold and cramped on the stony ground that we were sitting on. None of us said anything, no doubt afraid of betraying something we shouldn’t let them know, and Mal had a gag or something stuffed into her mouth to stop her constant screams and swearing.
It figured that, out of all the people my sister could have found, she chose the one person who already had dragons hunting her down. Did we just have terminally bad luck or was it just a seer thing to be prompted into making choices that inevitably made things worse than before?
I didn’t know, and I doubted I would get the answers, blindfolded as I was. I guessed I was just going to have to sit back, wait, and try to see how I could spin this situation to my advantage.
At least they didn’t seem to know who I was. This whole situation was about Mal, not me. They had no idea they had a dimension-hopping seer in their midst, and I planned to keep it that way. Although I wasn’t sure if they would be able to smell Bron instantly and have the entire jig be up.
My thighs were starting to cramp up from the cold ground when finally, I heard footsteps coming in. Judging from the echoing as well as the dampness in the air, and the foul smells assaulting my nose, we were in some sort of mini prison. There was no way it was some whole palace dungeon—it’d have to be way bigger—but it was definitely a holding area.
“Mal, Mal, Mal, my sweet little canary,” I heard that same low voice again and it made my stomach churn. Our hoods were yanked from our heads and for a moment, I was blinded by the dim, fluorescent lighting of the room we were in. When my vision finally cleared, I realized that we weren’t in a holding room at all.
The four of us were against one stone wall, chains about our wrist and ankles. The hard, cold floor extended away from us, before there was a deep staircase leading down to a lower part of the room, like the opposite of a stage. And that lower part of the room was strange, the floor was flat and bare, leading up to the far
wall, which was covered in black soot. In fact, the only thing I could make out at all on the lower floor was copious amounts of ash.
…oh.
I was right. This wasn’t a holding area, and it never had been.
It was an execution room.
Footsteps approached us, and I finally got to see the man behind the voice. He was tall, almost as tall as Bron, with slicked back blond hair and a poisonous smile. Just like Mal, he was missing an eye, although his skin had much more scarring around the missing ocular. Had…had she done that to him in revenge for hers? Or were these things all unrelated? I didn’t know, but I found myself putting together the story anyway.
He bent down, crouching in front of this dimension’s Mallory like they were good friends. But from the way she tried to lunge forward, teeth gnashing, it was easy to see that they were not. “Tell me, Mal, did you miss me at least? Or miss having food on a regular basis?”
She didn’t say anything, just snarled and lashed out at the man. He smirked, then turned his head to us. “Did you know our little Mal here is an amazing singer?” he asked jovially, as if this were just a normal conversation. “She has about the sweetest little voice that you wouldn’t expect out of someone so…well…like Mal.”
“She makes it sound so bad, I’m sure, but I was a kind and generous master. She had her own space, she was fed regularly, she had toys and clothes of all kinds. I made sure no one dared lay a finger on her. Really, the ingratitude is astounding.”
“You dressed me up like I was some doll,” Mal spat. “I was a slave and nothing more. You took my eye!”
“Well, yes, but you were oh so stubborn during training.” He flashed us another grin, as if this whole thing was hilarious. “But she got me back, didn’t she?” He pointed to his missing eye cheekily. “But I dunno, I think it suits me. It’s a more dangerous look. Some would say dashing, even.”
