by Devon Monk
“Think you can?” I asked Abraham.
Instead of wasting breath, he just put a little more effort into walking. He had longer legs than either Neds or me, but I was wishing he were moving at about twice the speed.
“Do you think Domek will find the hatch?” I asked Neds.
“Yes,” Right Ned said.
“How long?”
“Hopefully not before we’re out of this tunnel,” Left Ned said. “We’re fish in a barrel down here.”
“Where do you think this empties out?”
“No idea,” Right Ned said.
Abraham was doing what he could to stay breathing and moving. Even wounded, fevered, weak, and hurting, he didn’t complain.
“Hold up here,” Gloria said from a little way ahead of us. “I’ll see if we can cross.”
“Just a little more,” I said. We finally caught up to Quinten at a place where the tunnel widened a bit. The walls were a rough mix of dirt and bricks, the ceiling supported by wooden beams. Gloria’s light bobbed ahead, casting yellow over more bricks and more beams; then she took a sharp right and was gone.
“Let’s lean for a second,” I suggested. Neds and I guided Abraham to the wall and leaned against it.
We were all sweating and breathing a little hard. Abraham closed his eyes and worked on getting his breathing under control.
Quinten squinted at the shadows that filled the tunnel where Gloria had been moments before. Then he dug in the duffel over his shoulder and pulled out a soft canteen. “It’s water,” he said offering it to me. “He should drink as much as he can.”
I took the container, a waterproof fabric with a hard nozzle and cap at the top. I unscrewed the lid and held it up for Abraham. “You should drink,” I said. “Doctor’s orders.”
It took him a moment, but he opened his eyes and tipped his head down again. He shifted and pulled his arm off from around my shoulders, then did the same with Neds.
He locked his knees to hold him up against the wall and held out his hand for the water.
I gave the canteen to him, and he tipped it up and drank several long, deep swallows. He pulled it away from his mouth, paused to get his breath again, then drank.
While he repeated this, his breathing getting better and better after each time he drank, I glanced around the tunnel, trying to set its location in my head.
“Do you have any idea where we are?” I asked Quinten.
“Other than under the city? No. She always told me she had a way to get out if she was ever discovered by a House.”
“I think I love her a little for that,” I said.
He smiled, the shadow and light carving his profile as if he were made of wax. “There’s a lot about her to love,” he said quietly.
I walked the short distance to my brother and leaned in close. “I need to talk to you about Abraham.”
“Matilda and I will go partway down the tunnel,” he announced to Neds and Abraham. “See if we can see or hear Gloria.”
Before Neds could argue, Quinten took my wrist. We walked about halfway to the junction Gloria had taken to the right.
“What?” he whispered.
“He feels. Pain,” I said. “I think it’s the thread you used on him. My thread. And the scale jelly. Whatever it is, he can feel now.”
Quinten frowned, glanced back over his shoulder, then back at me. “Are you certain? Did he tell you that?”
“Yes. I don’t know how painful that procedure you just did on him is, but from the sound of it—”
“It would be excruciating for a normal human.” Quinten wiped at his mouth with his nonglowing hand. “He shouldn’t be walking. Matilda, we need to find a safe place to leave him. He won’t be able to keep up, and running, now, will only do more damage to him.”
“I won’t hold you up,” Abraham said. He walked on his own toward us. I had to admit he seemed to be carrying himself better.
Neds followed behind him. I couldn’t see their expression in the darkness.
But Abraham looked calm, confident, and collected.
Yeah, I’d seen him put on that act before. I knew he was weak, wounded, and hurting.
“If you care for your well-being,” Quinten said, “you’ll allow us to find a safe place where you can recover fully.”
“There’s a price on my head,” Abraham said. “There is no safe place for me.”
“Then if you care at all about my sister’s life,” Quinten said, “you will put her safety before yours and leave this group behind.”
“Hey, now,” I said. “Stop it. Both of you. This won’t help anything.”
I may as well have been scolding a wall.
Abraham advanced on Quinten and glowered down at him. “I care very much about your sister. Do you understand me, Quinten Case? I know what you’ve done to make her. I know what you’ve done to keep her hidden. But she is no longer your secret alone.
“The Houses know about her; the world knows about her. And they know about you. If you think you can outrun them, you are a fool with a fool’s pride.”
“She was safe until you put her in danger,” Quinten snapped. “She would have stayed safe if you hadn’t stepped into our lives. I blame you, Abraham Seventh, for all the damage done to her. All the damage done to my family.”
“I will only tell you this once, Mr. Case,” Abraham said in a low growl. “You don’t want me as your enemy.”
“Enough!” I pushed my way between them, grabbed the sleeves of their jackets and physically pulled them apart.
Yes, I’m strong enough to do that. “We are all going to get along. Do you both understand that? I do not care one bit about who thinks they have or haven’t done enough to keep me safe. For one thing, keeping me safe is my job. I will not be argued over like I’m a fragile knickknack someone dropped and chipped.
“Right this second, I could wrestle you both to the ground and make you cry uncle, so do not even think of testing how serious I am about this. We travel together. Period. We keep the hate, blame, and anger where it should be kept: against the Houses who have sent assassins to kill us, and anything and anyone else who gets in our way. Are we gold?”
Neither of them said anything.
“Gold?” I repeated, shoving back my sleeves so I’d have better reach to wrestle them.
“We’re gold,” Abraham said.
“Fine,” Quinten said. “We travel together. If Abraham falls, we all fall. That should be a familiar refrain to you, Abraham Seventh, now that all the galvanized are falling because of your actions.”
Abraham lifted his head and forced himself to take a couple steps away. I noted it put him out of strangling range, which was pretty much what it looked like he wanted to do to my brother.
“We haven’t told you,” Quinten said, “but we are trying to get back to our property.”
“Why?” Abraham asked me.
Quinten answered him. “Because if we don’t, the time anomaly that has given the galvanized such a long life will end, killing all galvanized instantly.”
Abraham was silent for a moment. Just a few hours ago, I’d told him his friend Oscar was dead. Just a few hours ago, he’d found out my brother had killed his friend Robert. And now he was being told his own death was just days away.
“You have a way to stop the anomaly?” he asked with far more calm than I was feeling.
“Yes. It’s a theory, but there is a way.”
“How?”
A blast ricocheted through the tunnel. A bomb? Who was throwing bombs at us?
“Go,” Left Ned said, grabbing Abraham’s arm and helping him past us down the tunnel. “Domek must have blown the hatch. He’ll be on us.”
I jogged after them, caught up, and took Abraham’s other side.
This time, Abraham held more of his own weight, and his
breathing was steady. He’d gotten enough water and rest back there that we could sprint for it.
So we ran.
Down to the end of the tunnel. Hard right following where Gloria had gone.
Could be a dead end.
Could be a trap.
Could be that Gloria had been captured and we were running to our doom.
Could be that none of that mattered because Domek was behind us, and he would kill us deader than dead if he caught us.
A light ahead of us descended from the ceiling. This tunnel ended in a shaft.
“Hurry!” Gloria pulled a cage door to one side and waved us in behind it. “Where’s Quinten?”
I pulled out from under Abraham’s arm, leaving him to lean against the back of the cage—maybe an elevator—and looked out into the darkness and dust behind us for Quinten.
I couldn’t see him, but the light he carried arced and then hit the ground. He’d thrown it away. I didn’t know why.
“Quinten!” I got three steps out of the elevator into the dust when a hand shot out and grabbed my wrist.
“Run, run!” Quinten said.
We hauled it into the elevator and Gloria worked the controls. It was an old freight lift, mechanics and gears, pulleys and chain. It clattered and rumbled, starting up.
“Did you see him?” I asked Quinten.
“Cover your ears,” he said.
Which was a weird answer, but then it all clicked. He had a lot of different medical compounds and chemicals in that bag he’d packed. If he didn’t have something that was already a bomb, he was sure to have packed something that could pretty quickly become a bomb.
I covered my ears.
The blast hit. Sound and impact almost simultaneous. Dust and rock smothered out the air, stung my eyes, and covered me in grit. I prayed the mechanics would withstand it. The elevator shuddered like an animal that just had its jugular cut.
But it kept rising, grinding, cranking up and up.
Quinten was saying something, but I couldn’t hear him after that blast. Gloria shook her head at him, pressing her fingers over her lips. Quinten shut up.
Neds and Abraham were covered in a thick layer of dust. I supposed we all were, but they had seen Gloria’s signal and weren’t talking.
The elevator hopped to a stop. Gloria pulled the cage door open and walked out into a concrete enclosure with a single steel door at the end of it.
She took a second to bat the dust off her shoulders, head, face, and hands.
We all stepped out of the elevator, Abraham under his own power.
“Which wire do I cut?” I asked Quinten.
He glanced at me, then at the elevator gears that were exposed. He pointed. “That should work.”
I nodded, reached over, wrapped my hand around the cable chain, and pulled.
Not as easy as it looked, but I am an uncommonly strong woman. It finally gave under my insistence.
“It won’t stop him,” Left Ned said. “He’ll keep coming until he’s dead.”
“Just trying to buy us some time,” I said as we jogged to where Gloria was picking the lock on the steel door.
“No key?” I asked.
“Never had one,” she said.
“Let me.” Right Ned flicked a ready-all out of his pocket and a slim knife out of the other.
Gloria moved aside and Neds got busy with the lock. Right Ned gave a little “aha” and had it sprung in less than three seconds.
“Three seconds? You’re losing your touch, Harris,” I said.
“Want me to reset it so you can give it a try?”
“There’s no time for this, children,” Quinten said.
Neds stepped back and pulled his jacket hood up so that at a casual glance, you wouldn’t suppose he had two heads.
I adjusted my scarf and took a look at Abraham. He had his hands in his pockets and, with the dust and scruff, even the stitches on his face were difficult to see unless a person got close enough.
Quinten and Gloria left their heads bare, which was a good move. Five people all hooded up might be more than a little coincidental.
She opened the door and we all stepped through.
The light wind and clear, sunny day made me want to gulp down big lungfuls of the cleaness of it. I’m not claustrophobic, but that run through the tunnels had my shoulders creeping up.
The elevator had left us in an alley between two buildings—one must be a restaurant from the smell of hot oil and fish that was coming from it.
Right or left? Left was darker, leading to a narrow cross street and another jag of alleys. Right was light, a busy street, maybe a park beyond it.
Abraham strode off to the right.
“He’ll see us,” Quinten said.
“He’ll expect us to hide,” Abraham answered.
“What about cameras?” Gloria asked.
“I know someone who will help us with that,” he said. “Hurry. He’ll find a way out of that tunnel, even if he has to climb the elevator shaft.”
“Who?” I asked. “Who do you know who can help with the cameras?”
But by then, he was at the end of the alley and striding out into full and open daylight.
