by Jenna Black
“Well, we know now,” Kurt said soothingly. “So let’s all be real careful and keep moving. We do not want to be in these tunnels when the trains start running.”
And so they walked on, now in single file, as far away from the third rail as they could get. Nate was sure he wasn’t the only one placing his feet with exaggerated care, trying to avoid all chances of tripping.
It didn’t take long before they started seeing signs that these tunnels were still in use—mostly in the form of litter scattered along the tracks, no doubt dragged there from the platforms by the trains. There might have been ancient litter in the disused tunnels, but if so, it had decomposed into unrecognizable gunk.
Luckily, it turned out they didn’t have that far to travel before they literally saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Light that was no doubt coming from a station—which would have access to the surface, where they ought to be able to get a phone signal.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The station was dimly lit, many banks of fluorescent bulbs turned off for the night. There were multiple platforms, and in the dim light Nadia could see ad posters plastered to the wall as well as darkened video screens. There was a little litter around the tracks, but the platform was spotless and the air about a hundred times fresher than in the tunnels.
“Everyone wait here,” Dante said, when they all went to rush the platforms. “We don’t want to go parading in front of security cameras and announcing to the world that we’re here.”
“Security cameras,” Shrimp said, then cursed.
“Don’t worry,” Dante said, pulling out his gun. “There are always blind spots. And I have a good feel for where the cameras might be. I’ll take care of them.”
“Not with that you won’t,” Shrimp said, nodding at the gun. “Firing a nine mil in an enclosed space ain’t exactly sneaky.” He gestured at his men, who huddled together and then produced a small silver gun and a silencer, which they handed over. Shrimp screwed the silencer onto the end of the gun and presented it to Dante.
Dante looked at the gun—and at Shrimp—with genuine respect. “Nice,” he said. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised you came prepared. It’ll be a lot quieter than the nine, but still … Maybe this isn’t the best idea after all. I wasn’t thinking about the noise.”
Shrimp shrugged. “We either walk in front of the cameras or we shoot ’em out. Which one draws less attention?”
“They’re both risky,” Dante admitted. “But I think we’re better off not having our faces caught on camera.”
Shrimp agreed, and Dante boosted himself up onto the platform. “Be ready to react if security comes running. And don’t shoot unless you have to. Anyone patrolling the station is just doing his job. Okay?”
Shrimp nodded, but Nadia didn’t think any security officer who stumbled upon them would stand much of a chance. She remembered the fanatical gleam that had come into Shrimp’s eyes earlier and knew he was poised for violence.
A few seconds later, Nadia jumped at a loud bang, about like the sound a hardback book would make if you dropped it on the platform. She held her breath and crossed her fingers, noticing that Shrimp and all of his men now had guns in their hands. They couldn’t afford to get into a shootout, and she prayed that no one was patrolling the station.
There were no shouts, and no sound of pounding footsteps, but no one relaxed as Dante took out the rest of the security cameras one by one before coming back and giving them the all clear. Getting Agnes up onto the platform was a delicate affair, but they managed it.
The phone signal was present but iffy on the platform, and so with Shrimp’s gunmen leading the way, they headed for a set of stairs at the far end. Nadia wondered if they could just keep climbing until they reached the surface, fantasizing about what it would be like to walk through the streets of the respectable Employee section of the city above them. Would it look different to her now that she’d spent several weeks living in the squalor of the Basement?
Sounds of a sudden scuffle and a cry of alarm from above broke Nadia out of her brief moment of reverie. Everyone except Shrimp, who was still carrying Agnes, though his arms must have been about to fall off from fatigue, hurried to climb to the landing above.
Nadia skidded to a halt when she saw one of Shrimp’s men riding a uniformed security officer to the floor, his forearm lodged firmly against the officer’s throat, cutting off all sound. The officer struggled, trying to get to his sidearm, but the enforcer probably outweighed him by a good fifty pounds. Nadia put both hands over her mouth to stifle a scream when one of Shrimp’s other men knelt on the floor beside the struggling pair and drove a long, sharp knife into the officer’s ribs.
The man’s eyes went wide, and his mouth gaped open in a silent scream, still pinned under the enforcer’s weight. His struggles weakened as blood poured from the wound.
Nadia’s eyes burned, and she found she wasn’t as numb as she’d thought. The security officer had done nothing to deserve this, had just been doing his usually dull-as-dirt job of patrolling the closed station. And he was dying, even as Nadia looked on—and made no protest, despite her tumultuous feelings.
Dorothy had turned this into a war the moment she’d let loose that first bomb, and innocent Basement-dwellers, including children, had already died by the thousands. Nadia and her companions were trying to prevent many more thousands of deaths, and if one unlucky security officer had to die to protect their mission, then that was just the way of the world. It didn’t mean she had to like it, though.
The security officer’s eyes slowly glazed over, his struggles slowing even more and then stopping completely. The enforcer kept up his stranglehold a little longer, just to be safe, while his partner in crime wiped the blade of his knife on the officer’s shirt and then hit a button that retracted the blade with a metallic snick. He locked gazes with Nadia, silently challenging her to condemn him for committing cold-blooded murder in front of her. Seeing as he was an adult male member of the Red Death, this probably wasn’t the first murder he’d committed, and it was certainly for the most noble cause. That didn’t make it sit easy on Nadia’s conscience, and she was the first to look away.
Dante had come up beside her, and he gripped her hand. His jaw stood out in stark relief against his cheeks as he clenched his teeth, and his hand was squeezing tight enough to be uncomfortable. Nadia leaned her head against his shoulder, not because she was in need of comfort but because she suspected he was. As sad a commentary as it might be for a girl who was raised as a top Executive, she was becoming eerily familiar with murder and death, and though it upset her, it was hardly the kind of shock that would unravel her. She glanced over at Nate, who was holding hands with Bishop and had a look on his face that she suspected was very like the one on her own.
With the brief struggle obviously over, Shrimp climbed the final few steps, angling his body so that Agnes couldn’t see the dead officer.
“Hide the body,” he ordered his men. “Don’t leave any traces. We don’t know if he’s the only one.”
There was a line of vending machines against one of the walls, and Shrimp carried Agnes to the far side of those machines, gently putting her down with her back against the wall—where the machines would block her view of the enforcers picking up the body and cleaning up the blood.
“Are you getting a signal yet?” Nadia asked Nate, who was holding one of the phones in his hand. There was one more flight of stairs between them and what Nadia presumed was the street level, but it would be better if they could make the call where there was no chance of someone on the street hearing voices in a closed subway station.
“Yeah,” Nate said, then blew out a bracing breath. “I guess it’s time.” He crouched in front of Agnes, who was nestled against Shrimp’s side, her eyes half-closed. “Agnes?” he asked in an overly gentle tone.
“Lionheart,” Shrimp corrected, and that made Agnes smile and open her eyes.
Agnes’s eyes looked disturbingly glassy, and t
here was a sheen of sweat on her skin although it wasn’t hot in the station. Nadia crouched on Agnes’s other side and touched the girl’s forehead, not surprised to find that she was burning with fever.
Agnes licked her lips and tried to sit up straighter, lifting her hand and gesturing feebly. “Phone,” she said, and Nate handed over the one that had the most charge.
Shrimp frowned at the phone and called out to one of his men. “Bring us the guard’s phone,” he commanded, and Nadia wanted to smack herself on the forehead for not thinking of it first. She doubted any of the dying phones in their collection would last more than a couple of minutes, and it was going to take more than that to convey their message to Chairman Belinski.
Agnes took a shuddering breath, then laid the back of her head against the tile wall. “We’ll have to use video to prove it’s me,” she said, reaching out to pat Shrimp’s leg. “You shouldn’t be in the picture.”
Agnes closed her eyes, so she didn’t see the way Shrimp recoiled at her words. Nadia suspected he’d allowed himself to forget that she was an Executive, and though Chairman Belinski would no doubt be grateful to Shrimp for taking such good care of his daughter, he would probably have a stroke at the thought that she was cozying up to a Basement-dweller.
“If you think that’s best,” Shrimp said stiffly, but though he was obviously hurt, Nadia noticed how gently he extracted his arm from behind Agnes and moved away, careful not to jar her head or let her slump over. In some ways, he was more of a gentleman than many of the Executive men Nadia had met, and he was certainly a better person at heart. However, even though she had never met Chairman Belinski, Nadia doubted he’d be able to see beyond Shrimp’s status and upbringing, doubted he would even think to try.
When Agnes had the dead security officer’s phone in her hands, Nate and Nadia sat on each side of her, huddling close both so that they could all be in the picture and also so that they could keep her upright.
Moving slowly and with exaggerated care because of her dizziness, Agnes pecked out a number on the phone.
“Calling Dad’s bodyguard,” she said. “Less likely Thea will be paying attention to his phone.”
Nadia met Nate’s eyes, and they shook their heads simultaneously. Agnes was sick and suffering from a head wound, and she still had the presence of mind to realize her call with her father might be intercepted. Neither of them had even considered the possibility, too focused on the seemingly impossible task of making the phone call in the first place. They were all lucky Agnes was with them, though Nadia doubted Agnes felt quite so lucky herself.
Agnes held the phone away from herself so that they could all see its screen—and so that they could all appear in its picture. At Shrimp’s command, the Red Death shone their flashlights on them to make an impromptu spotlight. The brightness made Agnes wince in pain, but she didn’t protest.
A man answered the phone after three rings, not bothering with video though the phone would have indicated video was being used.
“Who is this?” the man barked in a sleep-roughened voice. Nadia had almost forgotten what time it was and that most of respectable society would be asleep at this hour.
“Marco,” Agnes said, her voice sounding worse than the bodyguard’s. “It’s me, Agnes. I need to talk to Daddy right now. Hurry!”
“Agnes?” Marco said, suddenly sounding much more awake—and very suspicious. He turned on the video feed and Nadia saw a square-jawed bruiser with a military buzz cut and sharply intelligent eyes. Eyes that widened almost comically when he took in the image his phone was presenting.
Nadia hated to think about what the three of them looked like, dressed in ill-fitting castoffs with dirt ground into their skin and hair and clothes. Nate’s face was getting bristly with stubble, his filthy hair hanging in his eyes. Nadia’s face bore a bloody scratch from the debris that had struck her last night, and her blond hair formed greasy, dirt-grayed locks around her face. And poor Agnes, missing a big swath of hair where someone had inexpertly stitched her skin closed with black thread. The flashlights illuminated the wound in their relentless glare, and Nadia saw how its edges were puffy and red.
“Please, Marco,” Agnes said. “Get Daddy.”
“Where are you?” Marco demanded, but Nadia could tell by the unsteadiness of the picture and the way his attention was divided that he was on the move.
Agnes’s eyes glazed over then closed, her body listing sideways as her head landed on Nate’s shoulder. Nadia grabbed the phone from her limp hand before it clattered to the floor.
“Agnes!” Marco cried in alarm, the picture on his end stabilizing as he came to a stop.
“Keep moving and get her father!” Nate snapped at the man. “She goes in and out. We’ll wake her when she needs to talk.”
Despite current circumstances, Nate had lived most of his life as the Chairman Heir and was used to being obeyed. The command in his voice was enough to get Marco moving again, and moments later, he was pounding on a door and yelling “Mr. Chairman!” over and over again.
Nadia had never personally met Chairman Belinski, but as a dutiful Executive, she knew the names and faces of all the top Executives throughout the Corporate States, so she recognized him when he took the phone from Marco’s hand. He had obviously been roused from sleep, his gray hair disheveled, his face peppered with stubble, but there was no hint of sleep in his furious gaze or his sharp voice.
“What have you done to my daughter?” he demanded, dismissing Nadia with one quick glance and then glaring at Nate, the man who had supposedly kidnapped Agnes.
“She was injured when Dorothy bombed the Basement last night,” Nate replied, his voice calm and steady. “I swear to you I did not kidnap her. There’s a lot going on you don’t know about, but Agnes needs medical attention immediately. I think her wound’s infected.”
In the background, Nadia could hear yelling and slamming doors. Marco was obviously rousing the household.
“Please be careful, Mr. Chairman,” she warned. “Dorothy has eyes and ears everywhere, and none of us will survive for long if she finds out where we are.”
Chairman Belinski frowned at her. “And who are you?”
No doubt he would recognize her if she were dressed in her Executive best and cleaned up. “I’m Nadia Lake. Dorothy wants all three of us dead because we know too much. It’s absolutely critical that she not know we’ve gotten out of the Basement.”
“Where are you?”
Agnes roused at that moment, and Nadia wondered how long she’d been conscious. “Don’t answer yet,” she murmured, and her father looked horrified.
“Agnes?”
She raised her head, the movement painfully slow. “Should be the last thing we say, when you’re ready to come get us. In case she’s listening. Tell your men to stay off the phones.”
Belinski looked doubtful, but he shouted a few orders over his shoulder anyway. The sounds of activity were louder now as the Belinski household prepared for what was at this moment at least a very nebulous rescue mission.
Agnes let out a soft sigh. “Too tired to explain,” she said, and sagged again.
Belinski’s face was etched in grim, worried lines. “Agnes? Sweetheart?”
Agnes was out, and neither Nate nor Nadia had the heart to try to revive her.
“Let her rest,” Nate said. “We can answer whatever questions you have, and she can confirm what we’re saying later. But seriously, she needs a doctor as fast as possible. And we need to get out of here without Dorothy knowing about it.”
Which could pose something of a problem if Chairman Belinski sent his security team in force to come pick them up. It was probably quiet on the streets above at this time of night, but probably wasn’t good enough. If anyone saw them and took enough notice to remark on it, there was a chance Dorothy would hear about it.
Belinski thought about it a moment. “If I send a car, can you get to it without being seen?”
“It depends on whether there
are people out on the street or not,” Nate replied. It was not the hour of night when you’d expect to find a lot of people on the street, but they were in Manhattan, and it was unlikely the streets would be completely deserted. “And we’d probably be caught on a surveillance camera somewhere.”
“As would the car you sent for us,” Nadia said. “I suspect it would stand out in this neighborhood—and that Dorothy has you under surveillance in case Agnes reached out to you.”
Belinski waved off her concern. “I’m well aware that I’m being watched. My security team can get around the surveillance if necessary. The car will be inconspicuous, and my men will disable any cameras in the area.”
Nadia had been so fixated on the phone that she hadn’t noticed Shrimp standing nearby, leaning on one of the vending machines and listening to the conversation. Until he spoke.
“That’ll be suspicious all by itself,” he said. “We already knocked out a bunch of cameras in here. Eventually, someone’s gonna notice and wonder what’s up.”
“Who’s with you?” Belinski asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion.
“Some friends of ours from the Basement,” Nate answered. “We wouldn’t have made it this far without them.”
“We hafta give security a good explanation for what happened to the cameras,” Shrimp continued. “And it can’t be something that makes ’em suspect our Execs are involved. It’s gotta look like a bunch of angry Basement-dwellers making trouble instead of an escape.”
“What did you have in mind?” Nate asked.
“Me and my boys go out ahead of you. Shoot out the cameras, break glass, make a lotta noise. Any innocent bystanders will run away, and no one’ll pay attention to the rest of you calmly and quietly sneaking away. We’ll make sure to keep all eyes on us.”
Nadia swallowed hard. “They’ll arrest you—if you’re lucky.”
He nodded. “Our life expectancy ain’t so hot anyway, not if you don’t stop Dorothy.”
