by Bryan Davis
When she saw me, a bright smile lit up her face. “I got a present at my doorstep.”
I leaned out. “Since I’m leaving I had to get rid of it. Didn’t want anyone seeing me carrying it out the door.”
“So is everything set?”
I nodded. “Alex came by. We made the arrangements for Shanghai and me.”
“No cameras?”
“No cameras.”
She grinned. “I would like to have been a fly on the wall to hear how you swung that deal.”
“Trust me. It wasn’t easy.” I climbed out and plunked my feet down on the fire-escape landing. Leaning over the railing, I could almost reach Sing’s swaying shoes. “I’m all packed. When I get there I’ll figure out the best way to sneak you into the camp and then come and get you, probably in the middle of the night.”
Sing closed the box. “When are you going to ask Noah… I mean, Cairo?”
“Now. If he’s up for it, I’ll bring him here.” I pulled out my watch and checked the time—four thirty-two. “What are you going to do until then?”
“Get my apartment ready for Cairo and pack my stuff. I suppose I can’t bring much.”
I shook my head. “Sneaking you in might not be easy, so you’d better travel light.”
As we gazed at each other, she lifted her hand, kissed her palm, and blew over it. A freshening breeze flapped my cloak. Goose bumps ran along my arms. It seemed that her gesture reached across the gap and tickled my skin with a teasing caress.
Keeping my eyes locked on hers, I kissed my own palm, but I didn’t blow the kiss. How could I send her that kind of signal, especially now that my wedding had drawn so much closer?
A tear glimmered in Sing’s eye. “I’ll see you soon, Phoenix.” She tucked the box under her arm and hurried into her apartment.
When the door closed, I climbed onto the railing and looked at the pavement below. For some reason it seemed farther away than ever before. Of course my mind was playing tricks on me. With the dangers that lay ahead, my better judgment was probably trying to warn me to reconsider our insane plan. But I couldn’t. Too many lives depended on the outcome.
I leaped and plunged into the alley, maybe for the last time.
Chapter Twelve
I walked along the street toward Cairo’s house, this time with my hood up. The eyes of several families perched on front steps followed me, nervous, likely wondering who in their neighborhood might be ready to die.
With the cloud-veiled sun sinking toward the horizon, time was running short. I couldn’t stop and explain why I had raised my hood—not because the temperature had dropped; I needed to display a measure of coolness and wear my aloof persona. My own confidence might be contagious enough to help Cairo decide that he could endure a short stint in a dangerous Jungle district.
I climbed the three steps to Cairo’s door and knocked loudly. As before, classical music boomed from speakers inside, Mozart this time, if I remembered my music history correctly. “Requiem Mass” would have been perfect background music, but it sounded like a lively violin concerto. That would have to do.
When the door opened, Georgia appeared. The moment she recognized me, her brow lifted. “Phoenix? Back so soon?”
“Yes. I need a favor.”
“A favor?” She fanned her face. “Heavens’ sakes, Phoenix, you scared me half to death. I thought you had come to reap my soul. I’ve been having chest pains, and I thought they were from indigestion, but when I saw you, I was sure a heart attack was on its way.”
I pushed back my hood. “I apologize. I just want to talk to Cairo. I have something important I’d like him to do.”
“Then I’m not about to die?”
“Not that I know of.” I leaned closer and lowered my voice to a whisper. “But I’ve learned some things that worry me. I’m on a mission to find out more. I’m suspicious about how the Council is using the Gateway. If the worst is true, then Tanya’s eternal existence is at stake.”
She gasped. “Tanya? My baby?”
I slid my hand into hers. “And Cairo can help me.”
Tears in her eyes, she nodded. “Then you name it. He’ll do it.” We walked into the room where we had performed the initiation. Still wearing his cloak, Cairo sat on the sofa plucking his cello, apparently satisfied with playing pizzicato instead of sawing the strings with his ragged bow. With the boom box now turned down, his out-of-tune notes dominated the soundscape.
“What’s up?” Cairo stared at me with vibrant eyes. “Got a soul for me to reap?”
I maintained a stoic expression. “Not yet, but something related to reaping.”
Georgia and I sat next to Cairo, one of us on each side. “Now, listen,” Georgia said, “you pay attention to Phoenix and do what he says. He’s your mentor, so he’ll steer you right.”
“Sure.” Noah slid his cello to the floor and again stared at me. “Let’s hear it.”
His eager eyes told me that I could drop the persona and speak candidly. “Okay,” I said, spreading out my hands. “Here’s the deal. You met Singapore. Well, she has to leave for a while, but she doesn’t want the people in her district to worry about no one being around to reap souls while she’s gone. You see, we have some suspicions about what really happens at the Gateway, and that means we’re not super confident that the souls we’ve reaped, including Tanya’s, are in a safe place, so we’re going to do everything we can to find out.”
“Okay. What do you want me to do?”
I pinched the edge of his cloak. “We need you to live in Sing’s apartment until further notice. I’ll let your mother know where it is in case she receives word of your new assignment. Once in a while you’ll walk around Sing’s district with your hood up and your head down so people will think the district’s covered, and no one will be the wiser that you’re not Sing. It won’t take you long to start picking up death alarms, but keep your ears open for street gossip about someone dying and your eyes open for a death messenger. Someone or something will lead you to whoever the victim is. Then you can reap the soul.”
I paused to take a breath. “I know it sounds dangerous, but—”
“No, no!” He grabbed my wrist. “The more dangerous, the better. I’m in.”
Georgia fanned her face again. “Oh, Phoenix, this makes me so nervous, but if you say he can help Tanya, we’ll both do whatever it takes.”
“Perfect.” I pushed Cairo’s hood back and rubbed his bald head. “We have a lot to do.”
For the next hour Georgia and I worked on transforming Cairo into Sing by teasing Georgia’s wig into Sing-like curls and fastening it onto his head with poster-board adhesive. While Georgia packed Cairo’s essentials in a backpack, I used the last few minutes to help him mimic Sing’s silky voice. He caught on quickly, his ear for music and his youthful vocal cords providing the perfect blend of talents. When we finished, we said good-bye to Georgia. She cried for a moment but quickly calmed herself and sent us away with a blessing.
While I walked with Cairo, I coached him on how to move in Sing’s graceful manner. Again he picked up the new skill without a problem. After I explained how to get information from the gossip network, I glanced at the descending sun. I had to hurry.
We jogged the rest of the way to my apartment, bustled inside, and climbed out the window. As soon as our feet touched down on the fire-escape landing, Sing opened the door and peered at us from her apartment. “I’d better not show myself while you’re out there.” She gestured with her head. “Come over through my building’s front entrance. I’m in two nineteen.”
With his hood raised, Cairo clutched the straps of his backpack and jumped up to the railing. “I’ll just take the shortcut.” He leaped across the gap, landed with one foot on Sing’s railing, and dropped to her fire escape. When he settled, he spun toward me and grinned. “Piece of cake.”
I gave him a thumbs up. “I guess there’s nothing to worry about.”
Sing ushered Cairo inside. After he disa
ppeared within, she cast a worried look at me.
I leaned forward against the railing and tried for a comforting tone. “It’ll be all right. Just be ready to go at a moment’s notice. Someone will be knocking at apartment two nineteen in the middle of the night. I hope it’s me, but it might be someone else.”
She nodded. “The entry code for the main door is six, nine, one, four.”
“Got it.” As soon as she went inside, I climbed back through the window, grabbed my suitcase, and hustled out, locking the door behind me. The camp lay in an abandoned industrial district about three miles away, an easy walk under normal conditions, but lugging a suitcase would make it difficult to get there before sundown.
When I arrived at the street, I broke into a quick march toward a busy thoroughfare at the next block. I could try to hitchhike once I got there, but most people hesitated to give anyone a ride, much less a Reaper. Picking up one of us probably felt like inviting death itself into the car, so standing with my thumb in the air would likely be a waste of time.
As I walked, the rain returned in a spitting drizzle. I raised my hood and accelerated a notch. Maybe I could pass the time by checking on Crandyke and seeing how he could help my cause.
I plugged the clasp into my valve. When the cloak energized, I probed the fibers with my mind. “Crandyke? How’s it going?”
“What do you think? I’m a disembodied slave to a tyrannical master who refuses to complete his sacred duty to set me free.”
I waited for a woman to pass me on the sidewalk before answering. “That’s pretty close to the mark. But maybe if you think of yourself as a genie in a lamp, you’ll deal with it better.”
“And you want three wishes, don’t you?”
“It’s for a good cause. Rescuing an innocent family… and securing your ticket to the Gateway.”
“All right. All right. But if you don’t send me through the Gateway soon, I’ll become your worst nightmare. You won’t be able to plug in your cloak without hearing me screaming bloody murder at the top of my lungs.”
“As if you had lungs.” I stifled a laugh. “Don’t worry. You’ll get through the next time I’m there.”
“I suppose I’ll have to trust you,” he grumbled. “Not that I have a choice.”
“No. You don’t.”
“What’s your first wish?”
I glanced at the river to my left. Every few seconds, a car or truck whizzed by, blocking my view for a moment and raising a racket. Following the grayish-green water upstream would take me straight to the camp. “What do you know about the corrections camp near the river? I’ve passed by it, but I’ve never been inside.”
“Quite a bit. I toured it once with a high-security clearance. While I worked at the enforcement office, I procured equipment and supplies for them, and I hired their security personnel, you know, interviewed candidates, did background checks, that sort of thing.”
“Is there an unguarded door? Any way to enter and exit without being seen?”
His voice took on a sarcastic bite. “Well, being able to leave like that would pretty much ruin the whole prison motif, don’t you think?”
“I don’t mean for a prisoner. I’m going there for a mass reaping, and I assume my temporary quarters will be close by or maybe inside the compound itself.”
“A mass reaping? Imagine that. A Reaper who won’t do his job gets a cushy assignment.”
“Stay on topic, Crandyke. The sooner I get my answers, the sooner you’ll get what you want.”
“Yes, master. I will obey your every whim.” Crandyke’s tone altered to that of a proud know-it-all. “The camp complex is surrounded by a tall fence with razor wire on top. It used to be a manufacturing facility that housed a few employees in an old dorm they called the Hilton, a joke, I assume. It’s pretty rundown. Anyway, the security is high even there—motion-sensitive cameras in nearly every room. But guards in that building are few and far between. If memory serves, there is a rear entrance for residents that allows direct access to the outside without having to pass through a gate, though there is an armed guard posted there. I doubt that he would check a Reaper who is going in, but going out is a different matter, as you might expect.”
“They don’t want a prisoner to leave disguised as a Reaper.”
“Right. Prison guards tend to want to keep prisoners inside. They do their jobs, unlike some people I know.”
“Cut the commentary. It’s getting old.” A truck breezed by, flapping my cloak. After waiting for it to settle, I probed the fibers again. “What else can you tell me?”
“Can’t you get out of this weather? Between the wind and the rain, I’m getting dizzy and itchy.”
“I’m moving as fast as I can. Just answer the question. It’ll get your mind off the weather.”
“Okay, okay.” Crandyke’s voice reverted to his pompous persona. “It’s a work camp. Until recently the prisoners made pine-box coffins, but since most corpses are burned to save resources, they retrofitted the plant. I’m not sure what they make there now. I wasn’t in the loop, and I didn’t really care. But the new production started only a couple of months ago, so they probably haven’t rolled much out yet.”
“Interesting.” I imagined an assembly line at a table surrounded by workers, each one vanishing from his station as the seconds passed—a bizarre scene. Why would they retrofit a plant if they were planning to kill the laborers? “Maybe I’ll get a chance to see the operation and figure it all out.”
“If you have time. My guess is that you’ll be busy collecting souls, and not just because of new executions they’re scheduling. Past executions have a way of haunting the axe men, if you know what I mean.”
“A lot of ghosts around?”
“Rumors. Just rumors. But from what I heard, some aren’t shy about poking their non-physical noses where they don’t belong. Hard to punish a ghost, you know.”
“Right. All we can do is annoy them.” I unplugged my clasp and let it dangle at my chest. Crandyke had already proven his usefulness, but now I had to refocus on my job.
When I finally arrived at the camp, I set my suitcase down and pushed my fingers through the chain links in the entry gate. The attached fence encircled a collection of old factory-like buildings—two-to-three-stories-high structures made of pale bricks and dirty glass.
Five feet above my head, razor wire ran in loops along the top of the fence. Ripped fabric intertwined with the wire here and there, and attached threads stretched out in the breeze.
At the far end of the paved entry driveway, a concrete-and-glass watchtower loomed roughly thirty paces inside the gate. About fifty feet tall, it looked like a miniature air-traffic-control tower with two rifle barrels protruding from partially open windows that wrapped the upper third of the tower.
A searchlight sat on top inside a bowl-shaped structure that looked like a concrete bird’s nest. A ladder on the tower’s exterior wall stretched from the ground up to the bowl—an odd design. Did that mean there was no access to the searchlight from inside the tower? Maybe the searchlight was added after the tower was in use for a while.
Inside the camp, the wet breeze swept through an empty yard, an expanse of sparse grass with a well-beaten path around the perimeter, perhaps an exercise trail, barely discernable in the failing light. Except for the whisper of the wind, all was quiet… eerily quiet. Considering the early evening hour, maybe the inmates were taking a meal in one of the buildings, but no lights or movement indicated which one.
A solitary woman emerged from the base of the watchtower, her back toward me as she locked a metal door. With long lines of leather and flowing blonde hair, she had to be Alex. When she turned, she looked at her wristwatch, then at me, a smile emerging as she set a hand on a hip. “I should have known you’d be right on time.”
“I have principles.” I picked up my suitcase. “And one of them is to keep my friends alive.”
Carrying her satchel, Alex hustled across the hundred-foot space
between us. She whistled and twirled a finger in the air. A man looked out of one of the tower’s windows and nodded. Seconds later, the gate began dragging across the entry road. When the gap grew to about three feet wide, it stopped. Without hesitating, I marched in.
“Shanghai is in the dorm eating her dinner,” Alex said as the gate closed again. “I’ll take you there.”
“I heard they call it the Hilton.”
“They do.” She tucked the satchel under her arm. “How did you know?”
“I did some research.” I inhaled deeply. The odor of dead fish tinged the air—the river’s contribution to the ambiance. “When does the reaping begin?”
“The reaping?” Her brow bent. “Interesting angle, Phoenix, and well played. Feigning enthusiasm for this assignment, however, will not alter my watchfulness over you or Colm’s family.”
“It’s not enthusiasm. It’s information gathering. I told you I was doing research.” I gave her a hard stare, focusing on her eyes. They no longer displayed a metallic glint. “And watch me all you want. You can’t intimidate me.”
“Perhaps not.” She set a hand on my back and guided me toward a building at a far corner, a dormitory-like edifice with red bricks and clean windows—the Hilton. “There are others who might be able to intimidate you, but I will spare you that experience, at least for now.”
A human shape flitted past a second-floor window in one of the factory buildings. When I turned to focus, nothing was there. It appeared to be a little girl, but if everyone was having dinner, why would she be wandering alone in a prison factory?
As we walked, I glanced at Alex’s satchel, now in her hand, swinging with her gait. Might my photos be inside? I had to ask. “Alex, after you left my apartment, I packed all my stuff, but something was missing.”
“A picture frame with three photos,” she said without missing a beat. “I took them. Once you finish the reaping, you will be allowed to see your family again. Since another branch of government scrubs their data, I needed the photos to make sure I could find them.”
