by Jim Heskett
The sudden sense of newness struck him. His whole life—at least as far back as he could remember—had been spent in a handful of spaces inside these plantación walls. The classrooms, the cafeteria, the dorms, the battlegrounds, the theater. Yesterday, when he and Rosia had been dragged inside the mansion for interrogation, that was the first time he’d ever been inside it. But now, he had ventured into a place he didn’t even know existed a few minutes ago.
“You know the way to go?” he whispered, his jaw tight.
She took his hand and pointed it along the hall. Darkness ahead. “This way. There is a four-way intersection a few hundred meters down.”
Yorick stuck the flashlight between his teeth and opened the notebook to a fresh page. As he shined a light on the blank page, he drew two long lines to represent this tunnel. Then, he drew an intersection at the end of those lines. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Just like in the foxholes, Rosia led, and Yorick trailed behind her with a hand on her shoulder. She kept her flashlight pointed low, at the space before their feet. He could see the intersection coming up, within five meters.
But Rosia stopped dead in her tracks and stood up straight. “What? This doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
She shined her light ahead. Instead of a four-way intersection, the hallway came to an abrupt end at a wall, with hallways branching left and right from there.
“What happened to forward?” Rosia said. “This can’t be right.”
Yorick looked behind them, flashing his light. They hadn’t taken any turns accidentally. “This is the same hallway?” he said, but he already knew the answer. It had to be the same hallway. It’s not as if they’d picked the wrong secret cellar door marked with the carved circles.
“Yes, it’s the same. But the hallway is different. I don’t understand.”
Yorick felt the prickle of anxiety lick the back of his neck. “It doesn’t matter. We either turn back now, or we have to keep moving.”
He couldn’t see her face, but her hesitation to move said everything he needed to know. Rosia wanted to understand what was happening and make sense of this puzzle. Yorick didn’t care. He was more concerned with getting caught and taking a bullet in the stomach. “Please, Rosia. We have to choose.”
Her feet tramped to the right, and Yorick followed.
They continued straight along this hall for two hundred meters. Doors spaced out along the hall, and Yorick noted the numbers on the doors along the way. No sense to the numbering, but he recorded them anyway, in sequence, as they passed each one. Rosia paused at every single door, checking it. Most of them had panels next to them, which must have been accessed via special cards. Some doors in the guard-only areas used the same system of entry. A few doors here had the old style doorknobs standard on most of the plantación doors, and Rosia tried every one. None of them would turn.
Another two or three hundred meters passed under their feet. Rosia had noted she’d almost encountered guards yesterday, but no one interrupted their journey underground now. With these long halls and noisy grate underfoot, they would have heard feet clanking from hundreds of meters away. Voices would carry in a place like this.
He noted every step, diagramming this long hall and the doors they encountered. After five or ten minutes of shuffling through the dark, they came to a turn. Left or right. Rosia leaned to the right, and she gasped. She killed her flashlight.
Yorick did the same and leaned around the corner to see what had surprised her. A shaft of light cutting through the darkness, from high on one wall of the tunnel, pointing down to the opposite floor. This was so different from everything else so far, he blinked a couple times and took another look. Yep, still there. After such oppressive darkness for so long, he needed a few more moments to understand what he was seeing. He could finally see Rosia’s face. His mouth opened to say something, but she wrapped a hand over it. She pointed up at the light source. A grate. Then, she pointed at her ear.
Yorick focused. Voices came from inside that grate, filtering down along with the light. The clinking of glass, the soft warble of music. Then, he understood. They were underneath the mansion itself now. The grate led into a dining room, or maybe a kitchen, or a sitting room.
“Care for more?” said a voice, which Yorick instantly knew was Lord Wybert’s.
“I would love to, but I think I might burst,” said another voice. Younger, not as deep. Not as distinctive as Wybert’s booming tone. But, Yorick knew right away the identity of the person refusing more food from Lord Wybert. And, he could see on Rosia’s face that she knew exactly who it was, too.
Diego.
Chapter Nineteen
The notion of Diego being inside Lord Wybert’s mansion, even sitting at his dinner table, fried Yorick’s brain. Diego didn’t sound like he was under any duress or pressure. They were eating, and Wybert had offered him more food.
Never in his life had Yorick seen a serf invited to dine with a lord. Never were serfs cordially invited inside the mansion for any reason at all. Such things didn’t happen.
Serfs who went inside the mansion were escorted in restraints, and they almost never came out again. Is this why Wybert liked Diego’s initiative? Because the Red leader had some special arrangement with the lord? Providing him information in exchange for certain perks?
So much made sense now. How Diego could cheat and get away with other terrible things without fear of punishment. Why he sometimes disappeared for a day or two at a time, and no one asked questions.
But why Wybert would have such an arrangement with this bully made no sense.
But, as Yorick opened his mouth to discuss the insanity of the situation with Rosia, something stopped him short.
Footsteps, coming down the darkened hall.
He snatched her by the arm. She nodded at him, and they took off back toward the straight tunnel which would leave them to the warehouse, but Yorick stopped her. With the footsteps echoing, it was hard to tell where they were coming from. Could be anywhere.
He listened. Focused. The footsteps seemed to be ahead of them, directly in their path.
Their route back to the door out was blocked. With this long, straight hallway, no way could they get around it.
“We have to keep going this way,” he whispered.
Her breath caught, and she opened her mouth to protest, but her ears turned toward the sounds. After a moment, she said, “Right. Let’s go.”
They turned toward the light shining in through the grate and ducked underneath it. Diego and Wybert were still speaking, but their words vanished in the warble of other sounds in the hallway. They continued forward, with Yorick now leading and Rosia trailing behind him. Once they were a couple of meters down the black corridor, he flicked on his flashlight since they wouldn’t be able to use the ambient light from the grate any longer. He kept it low, ready to conceal the beam against the leg of his pants at a moment’s notice.
Behind them, the footsteps kept coming. No voices accompanied the motion, and Yorick didn’t know if that was better, or worse. Rosia’s arm on his shoulder turned from trailing into a push as the footsteps grew louder and more insistent. As if someone were looking for them. They weren’t running, not even fast-walking, but using the slow and steady uniform pace of a march down the hall. Where were the lights? How could these invisible people see?
And were they in pursuit or only marching to some other destination?
Yorick concluded the guards had found the open door back into the warehouse and were hunting for invaders. But, if that were the case, why hadn’t they turned on lights down here? Why weren’t they shouting for any invaders to stop?
Yorick and Rosia came to an intersection, and he darted right. He jabbed the flashlight into his mouth and made a mark on the paper. No sense in noting the door numbers any longer. After writing dozens of random numbers, he had lost all faith in finding a pattern or sequence. But getting lost here? That option could lead to capture an
d death.
The footsteps came even closer. Still no lights, no sounds, no terrifying click of a rifle magazine sliding into place. But whoever was back there had to be within a couple hundred meters, maybe even closer.
Yorick quickened his pace, and he could hear his own footfalls clinking on the grate. That worried him. But, it didn’t matter what their pursuers heard or didn’t hear anymore. If caught, they were dead. Likely tortured first, and then executed. Yorick gritted his teeth to ward off panic, but he was losing his nerve. This current hallway was exactly like the one before it. They had no plan and no idea where to go next. Maybe there was another route back to the warehouse, and maybe not.
Then, Yorick’s flashlight landed on something different. A marking, near the bottom of a door. Rosia stopped and pointed. She’d seen it too.
“There,” she said, and knelt. Yorick shined his flashlight on it. The same concentric circle mark they’d spotted on the door into the tunnels, and also on the garage near the mansion. A love letter someone had left for them.
A way out.
He tried the doorknob and found it locked. But, the knob did have a slot for a key. “You don’t know how to pick a lock, do you?”
“No,” Rosia said. “I have no idea.”
The footsteps down the hallway grew louder. More insistent. Not only getting close but increasing in speed. Someone was onto them. Seemed like the only option was to press on, keeping moving, and hope they didn’t stumble into a guard on the other end of this hall.
But press on to where? How long could they wander in this labyrinth in the dark?
As the footsteps kept coming, a flash of possibility formed. A memory from one of the contraband spy novels they had read together, late at night in their dorm room.
“I have an idea,” Yorick said.
“What?”
He turned the small flashlight over and unscrewed the cap. He slipped it into his pocket, along with the battery inside. Then, he jabbed a finger down into the small cylinder, until his nail touched the coil of wire at the bottom. The piece of metal to connect the battery to the light.
The footsteps grew louder.
“Hurry,” Rosia hissed. “Whatever you’re doing, do it quicker.”
He latched his fingernail over the wire and pulled. It snapped free of the inside of the flashlight. He pocketed the flashlight and went to work.
“Light, please.”
She shined her flashlight on his hands, and he pulled the coiled wire straight and then bent it in half. He jabbed both of the pointed ends into the lock and fished around. Rosia held the light on the lock as his fingers wiggled and pulled, searching the inside of the lock mechanism.
The footsteps grew louder as did Rosia’s rapid breaths. Out of the corner of his eye, Yorick noticed the hint of a flashlight beam pointed in their direction. He had no idea if this would work. Just because it had been in a book didn’t mean it would work in real life. Maybe this was as fake as the plays they watched in the summer evenings.
A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. Rosia’s flashlight beam jiggled as she shuddered.
The lock clicked. Rosia snatched at the doorknob and jerked it open, barely giving Yorick time to lean out of the way. She shoved him inside and jumped in after, then shut the door behind them.
She pressed an ear against the door, her eyes darting back and forth. Two seconds passed in silence. Breathing. Then ten more. The door didn’t open. No one came for them.
After ten more seconds, he started to think they might survive the day. His heart was beating so fast, he couldn’t think or see as adrenaline flooded his senses. But he could hear Rosia’s labored breaths. He reached out in the dark for her and put his hands on her shoulders.
“Safe,” he said.
“Not yet.” She shined her flashlight around and Yorick followed the beam. They were in a room no larger than a closet, with shelves on either side. Cans of “motor oil” and piles of filthy rags to complement tools and gears and gaskets.
“What is this place?” he said.
“No idea,” Rosia said as she shined her light on a ladder against the wall. The ladder led up to a trap door in the ceiling. “There.”
If this ladder would take them somewhere outside the mansion, they were abandoning any hope of locating Hamon. Not that Yorick had believed they would find him by rummaging around in the basement tunnels in the mansion, but he had to tell himself there was still a chance. He wanted to believe there was still a chance.
But no. It wasn’t possible. Hamon was dead, and they needed to escape now, or they would be dead too.
Yorick reached out and climbed the ladder. When he reached the top, he whispered down to her, “Kill the light.”
She did, and he pressed on the trap door. It rose into a room much larger than the tiny one they’d come from. Maybe twenty meters by twenty. Much warmer. And, as his eyes adjusted to the moonlight coming in from nearby windows, he noted at eye level were several car tires. A pile of them. But no sounds and no motion. He waited another few seconds, his breaths wheezing in and out. The room was still and quiet.
Yorick pushed the trap door all the way up and climbed out. “The garage,” he said as he took in the surrounding space. Three cars, all belonging to Lord Wybert. They were positioned in front of three bay doors, with workbenches and shelves filling the rest of the space.
He moved out of the way so Rosia could climb up after him. She let out a rough sigh, and sat down hard on the concrete floor. Shoulders slumped, head lolling around on her neck.
The cars fascinated him. The appearance of one almost always accompanied the opening or closing of the gates. Trucks, mostly, sending out fruit or arriving with fresh child serfs and supplies. The ones that came in, no one knew where they went to get those items. Where the little ones came from. Wybert and his guards weren’t telling, and neither did the new arrivals. The little ones spent their first few days crying, and then they quickly learned how to keep their eyes forward and not speak unless spoken to. Their pasts evaporated, and soon they would know only the plantación.
But the supplies like weapons and ammunition and clothing—the things not produced on the plantación—they had to originate from somewhere, didn’t they? But, it’s not as if Wybert would ever talk about that. He never spoke at all about life outside these walls.
Yorick picked up a screwdriver and twisted it in his hands. “This place is weird. So much about it is like a puzzle with missing pieces.”
“No time to explore,” Rosia said. She probably assumed he was talking about the garage. “If we’re caught in here, we’re just as dead as if they’d caught us downstairs.”
“Good point,” Yorick said as he sneaked over to the window. He gazed outside, at the mansion lit up by floodlights. Only a stretch of manicured lawn and shaped shrubs separating the garage from the large rectangular building. He squinted and let his eyes dance all over the exterior for a full minute. A single guard was walking a lazy circle around the exterior of the mansion. In the prison cages, three prisoners slept in darkness, ratty blankets covering their bodies.
“Get ready,” he said. “We have a clear path when that guard rounds the corner.”
Rosia stood near the door to the outside. She tested the knob. It was unlocked. She nodded at Yorick.
He waited another moment for the guard to turn away from them, then he snapped his fingers at Rosia. She opened the door and slipped out, and Yorick followed her. He caught the door on its way closed and gently shut it. The mansion sat quietly. To the south, no workers in the fields chanted. No sounds of guerreros running outdoor drills came down from the hills to the north.
They skirted away from the garage as quickly as possible. Then, they joined the path back to the dorm. Running, but trying their best to look like they weren’t running.
Chapter Twenty
Diego waited by the stairs for the guard to open the front door for him. He didn’t mind being patient. Wybert’s mansion was a thing
of beauty in so many ways. The sparkling chandeliers in this foyer, the marble banisters, the floors so clean you could see your reflection. All the pre-war art hanging on the walls. So much to appreciate.
Someday, Diego would have a palace much grander than this. A place where a dedicated staff brought him food three meals a day. Even brought it to him in bed, if he felt like it.
If he played his situation right, he could have all those things.
The guard opened the front door and gave Diego a sneer. That was fine. They didn’t need to accept or even understand why this lowly serf was invited into the mansion to dine with Wybert when the lord's own elite guards had to eat in a room behind the kitchen. Maybe they hated him, but they certainly wouldn’t cross him. They knew better than to harm someone Wybert valued.
Diego strode out into the night. Maybe he should have been worried about what the other serfs would think if they saw him leaving the mansion, but no one would be out at this hour. If they weren’t at their silly summer plays, they would be wasting away in their dorm rooms, staring out the windows at the forbidden world outside these walls.
Or maybe, they would be in their rooms, huddled over the secret books they read and passed around to each other like golden treasures. Oh, yes, Diego knew about that. His own Red teammates tried to hide it from him and never included him in the rotation when a book finished with a reader. And that was fine. The books used to be part of Wybert’s education curriculum, long ago, and were now passed around as a titillating secret. It was fine for the serfs to have their little fun.
He shuffled down the steps of the mansion and turned left, to head toward the path back to the dorms. And then, he saw the most interesting thing. Wybert’s standalone garage door shutting in a hurry, and two kids rushing out into the night.
And not just any two kids. These two were the ultra-annoying Rosia and Yorick, the bratty teenaged Blue guerreros who thought they knew everything. Rosia had assumed control of the Blues this morning and had bested his team on the battlefield. Just like Hamon, she’d probably found a way to cheat. Diego had taken care of Hamon, and he would eventually do the same to Rosia.
