Ren jumped in his chair when someone cleared their throat behind him. He had been so busy with the muslin that he hadn’t heard anyone walk in.
“Didn’t you get my note?” said Fräulein Plank, tapping the toe of her velvet shoe against the floor. “I left it at your workstation this afternoon.”
Irritation sliced through Ren and he set down his pins. “No, I didn’t get your note.”
“I asked you to meet me in my office half an hour ago. There’s a lot we have to talk about.” She peered at his dress form and frowned. “This isn’t a dress uniform. I know you can’t be finished with the cadets.”
Ren’s annoyance doubled while he shoved the dress form into a rarely used closet. His day had dragged on far too long, and he didn’t have a scrap of patience left. “You wanted to talk? Let’s talk.”
Plank regarded him coolly, and Ren realized that this was the first time they were speaking to each other not as employer and employee, but as collaborators within the Resistance. But after Jay’s death, Fräulein Plank was all he had within the Fortress.
“Did you watch the broadcast?” Plank said finally.
“Of course. It was mandatory.” Ren tasted bitterness on his tongue. He would never forget Jay’s last moments. “Do you know how Jay got arrested in the first place?”
Before Plank replied, she walked over to a nearby dress rack to examine a uniform hanging there, inspecting the collar of the shirt and putting on a show for the security guards who might have been watching. “From what I heard, the soldiers raided his poker game last night. They probably ransacked the place and did a search on everyone. That must have been how they found his tattoo.”
A tattoo with my words, Ren thought bleakly. If he had never written that essay, then Jay could still be here. If he had never become the Viper, then both Jay and Daisy Montgomery might be alive.
No, Ren told himself swiftly. Don’t go down that path. But it was too late for that. The guilt he felt made it hard to breathe.
“What will happen to Jay’s family?” Ren asked.
“I’m sure your cousin will help them with food and rent.”
“Money won’t be enough.” He knew what Jay’s mother and sisters would face. The shock. The grief. The rage that they would have to swallow because there would never be any justice for Jay as long as the Empire ruled. It was the same thing he had gone through after his mom was executed, and he wished he could tell them that eventually everything would be all right if they simply hung on. But he couldn’t tell them that — because it would be a lie. He knew firsthand that nothing would feel normal again.
Plank pinched the button on a dress jacket between her fingers, tugging to ensure it had been fastened properly. “We’ll mourn him when the mission is done. Do I have to remind you that the ball is less than forty-eight hours away?”
Ren wrestled the jacket from her grip before she popped off the button that he would need to mend. “Do you even care that he’s dead?”
Her eyes went frigidly cold. “You think that I don’t?”
“Could’ve fooled me,” countered Ren.
She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, her movements sharp and rigid. “Jay and I had been working together for months before you came on board.” Her voice had lowered into a growl. “But I can’t let what happened to him stop me from completing this mission. Go ahead and sulk if you want.”
“Do you see me quitting?” Ren’s fury doubled inside him, and his tone turned mocking. “I’m sorry for worrying about Jay’s family. I’m sorry that I can’t stop thinking about how he died.”
“Don’t lecture me,” Plank warned. “I’ve lost far more than you can ever imagine.”
That set Ren off. “You’re a Nazi citizen. Have you ever gone to bed hungry? Has your house ever been ransacked because the soldiers got bored? What have you lost aside from your best friend?” Ren knew that he should cool off, but his rage was boiling over and he was too raw to stop it. So he let it ignite; he let it burst. And he let Plank bear the brunt of it all. “I watched my own mother get executed in front of me, and I live in constant fear that the Empire will do the same thing to my dad because he was married to a so-called traitor. So forgive me if I don’t believe you, Fräulein.”
Plank’s chest heaved at his tirade, but she didn’t meet his fire with her own. With her hands clenched, she said, “You don’t want to play this game with me. I’ve lost every single person I love. Every single one. But getting angry and yelling about it won’t get me anywhere — it’ll get me arrested.” There was a threat in her voice, but it was calculated and restrained. “You know, I told Marty that I don’t think you’re cut out for this job, and you’re proving me right.”
Ren exploded. Years of tamped-down fury demanded an outlet. With his cheeks burning, he grabbed his chair and threw it against the wall. But it didn’t make him feel any better. All his life he had struggled for breath in the Empire’s noose — bowing to the soldiers and swallowing his humiliation and saying nothing at all when his mother was ripped out of his life. Or when his dad let their home be ransacked again and again. All the while the royal family lived in luxury, throwing their parties while millions suffered beyond their gilded windows. He turned his attention to the crown princess’s dress forms. If only he could destroy them the way that they had destroyed his family.
But as he neared the crown princess’s banquet gown, Plank yanked his wrist with surprising strength, forcing Ren to turn around and face her. She clamped down tighter and stepped dangerously close to him. “Pack your bags,” she said, looking him dead in the eye. “Go home. Obviously that’s where you’d rather be.”
“Don’t tell me what I want,” Ren seethed. “You can’t pull off this mission without me.”
Plank glared at him again. “You’re not worth the risk. You almost tore the crown princess’s wardrobe to pieces just because you couldn’t control your temper.”
Ren’s rage deflated at the steel in her voice. She was right. He had been seconds away from destroying it — but what would that have accomplished? Shame painted Ren’s cheeks red. If Plank hadn’t stopped him, he would have gotten himself fired and jeopardized the mission. Maybe annihilated it entirely.
Grudglingly, Ren stepped back.
No amount of screaming would bring Jay back to life. The only thing left for Ren to do was to finish what Jay had helped start — and he needed a level head to accomplish that.
“Sorry,” Ren said to Plank through clenched teeth. “I … I messed up.”
Her mouth puckered at his apology, as if she had tasted something sour. But she nodded once and adjusted her glasses. “You can’t let that happen again.”
“I won’t,” Ren said, picking up his chair. It was a miracle no one had run into the sewing room to find out what was going on.
“You’d better not,” Plank said doubtfully. “We have to focus on the ball, and we need a new escape route.”
Ren leaned against the door, exhaustion seeping into his bones. His anger had quieted and lurked away to its corner, but he could still feel it there. He didn’t know if he would ever get rid of it. He could only lock it away or channel it into his essays, which he couldn’t do inside the Fortress. Ren sighed.
“I don’t know if we can find a new route,” he said wearily. “I found a possible lead last night but —”
“I know. Jay filled me in, and I think I may have a lead, too.”
Ren stared at her. “You do?”
“I was going to tell you before you started throwing things,” she sniffed. “I’ve never heard about a Stairwell Fifteen, but I have seen a Stairwell Eleven.”
The muscles in Ren’s jaw slowly eased. He’d always thought he had decent control over his emotions, but it appeared that Plank could teach him a thing or two. “Where is this Stairwell Eleven?”
“I’ll show you.”
“Now?”
She tapped her finger on her watch. “When else? Come on, you should see this.”<
br />
Ren followed Plank’s lead. She strode out of the workers’ wing, across the lobby, and toward the cluster of classrooms where the cadets learned arithmetic, studied the sciences, and spouted rhetoric that pledged their loyalty to the Chrysanthemum Throne. Plank stepped inside what looked like a chemistry laboratory and zigzagged through the tables toward the storage closet in the back.
With a flip of the light, Plank revealed a cramped room crammed with metal bookshelves, each shelf piled high with beakers, goggles, papers, and aprons. A white wall peeked through the open shelves, and Plank pointed to some faded lettering there.
“See?” She nudged aside a pile of worksheets and trailed a finger along the words. Stairwell 11. “It’s in English. It must date back to when the hotel was first built.”
Ren scanned the rest of the wall and saw the faint outline of a doorway next to the letters. “I think there’s an old door here.”
Together, they shimmied the heavy bookshelf forward, just far enough for Plank to stick her head in the gap. “I see it. There’s a handle, but it’s locked.” She popped her head back out and pointed to the closet corner. “Hand me that fire extinguisher. I’ll try to break the lock.”
Ren handed her the extinguisher, and Plank got to work, giving the lock a few strong smacks until he heard it give way. Once they moved the shelf even farther, they squeezed into the gap and Plank switched on the small flashlight on her key ring.
Yanking the door open, she said, “I see a staircase. Watch your step.”
Plank led the way down a creaky set of metal stairs, some of which had gone missing, and that made Ren clutch the rusted railing. They plunged into a thick darkness and an eerie silence, punctuated only by their footsteps and the soft drip of water pinging somewhere down below. Step by step, they trudged down a flight of stairs until their soles hit solid ground again. Plank swept the flashlight around them, but the dark swallowed most of the feeble light.
“I should’ve brought three of these lights,” she muttered.
They found themselves standing in an open space, about the size of the classroom they had left behind, with two tunnels to their left and right, both of them wide enough and tall enough for Ren to walk through.
“Wonder what these tunnels were built for,” he said.
Plank’s flashlight hovered over an ancient-looking sign that had been nailed to the tunnel’s wall. A green sludge dripped from its corners, but Ren could make out the worn characters.
“I think it says, ‘Attention, students.’ ” He continued reading, translating from the Japanese. “ ‘Your radios will not work underground. If you get lost, stay where you are and an instructor will locate you after the training run.’ ” He glanced over to Plank. “Maybe the cadets did drills down here, but for some reason they stopped.”
“Tunnel collapse?” Plank said bluntly.
“Don’t joke about that.”
“I was being serious. We’d better be careful.”
With that thought haunting him, Ren gingerly moved into a tunnel. It stank of ripening rot, and Ren’s shoes became coated with a slick slime. The farther they ventured, the more his hope dimmed. The laundry chute escape route had been much simpler — grab Aiko, rappel down the chute, crawl through a vent system that led outside, and hop away in the getaway car that Plank would be driving. Even if he could find an exit point somewhere in this sublevel, Ren would have a tough time bringing Aiko down here and through the tunnels, all without getting caught. But he would have to figure something out.
“There’s a light up there,” said Ren, squinting. Not far ahead, he saw a shaft of moonlight, so faint that he’d nearly missed it.
“I see it, too,” said Plank.
Ren upped his pace, then slowed again when he neared the circle of light. He craned his head back to find its source and found himself staring up a narrow shaft that climbed up toward a street grate.
“That,” said Ren, pointing skyward, “could be promising. If we can get up there.”
Fräulein Plank craned her head back, too. “We have to find out where that grate leads. Do you see those rungs on the inside of the shaft? I might be able to grab the lowest one, but I’ll need a boost.”
True enough, Ren spotted a column of iron bars that were bolted to the side of the shaft — a makeshift ladder that looked dangerous on a good day and deadly on every other. Yet the shaft had to be explored. “I can climb it.”
“This isn’t the time to be chivalrous,” retorted Plank. “I’ll go up. I don’t have the strength to hoist you that far anyway.” She didn’t wait for him to agree; she just placed her hands on his shoulders. “Boost me.”
Ren decided not to fight her on this. Stooping down, he laced his fingers together for Plank’s foot and slowly straightened his knees to his full height. After a few tries, she grasped the lowest iron bar and made a grab for the next rung. With a few winces and grunts, Ren lifted her up higher until she found her footing and climbed into the shadows.
“See anything?” Ren said, the sound echoing up the shaft.
“Let me come down and we’ll talk.” Plank made her way back down, and Ren guided her to the floor. “There’s a rain grate that goes over this shaft. It looks like we’re right next to one of the new barracks under construction, which is good news because the video cameras haven’t been installed there yet.”
Ren realized that he had been holding his breath. “Do you think this could be our new escape route?”
“We can make it work. I can take Kato’s car around to meet you here on the night of the ball. We’ll use the same plan as before. Once Aiko gets sick, I’ll let you into the apartment and we’ll move her into the laundry cart. From there, we’ll split up. I’ll go get Kato’s car while you get her through the tunnels.”
“I’ll have to carry her here and get her up the shaft,” Ren said, mostly to himself. That would have been much more doable with Jay’s help, but obviously, Jay wouldn’t be around to lend a hand.
“You can hoist her over your shoulders to carry her. Take a couple of breaks if you need to.” She sounded more confident in Ren’s abilities than he was. It wasn’t like he carried royal princesses from point A to point B on a regular basis, but he was taller than Aiko by at least a foot, so he did have a height advantage. “But getting her up the shaft will be tricky. I could throw down a couple of ropes to you after I pry open the grate. You can wrap one around Aiko’s waist, and I’ll pull you up first. Then we’ll both get Aiko up and out.”
“What if she falls?”
Plank glared at him. “She won’t because we won’t drop her.”
“Just trying to cover our bases. I mean —”
Suddenly, Plank clamped a hand over Ren’s mouth and clicked off her flashlight. Ren choked down the rest of his sentence, and his head whipped around in the darkness. Had someone followed them?
Plank switched the flashlight on again. “I heard something!” she whispered.
Ren caught her by the elbow. “We should head back. We found what we came for.”
“It sounded like someone was crying for help — in English.” She tugged her elbow from his grasp and disappeared down the tunnel, taking their lone light source with her.
“Plank!” Ren hissed, but she didn’t turn around and he didn’t want to get trapped in the darkness. Groaning, he began running, too.
They veered left, then right, then right again, but Plank wouldn’t stop. Ren was about to tell her that this was useless, but then he heard something, too.
“Please.” The voice was faint and hazy. And female.
Plank beckoned to Ren. “Cabot! Come see this.”
Ren stumbled in the dark, groping the slick walls for support. The tunnel narrowed and forced him into a crawl, but soon the tunnel’s surface changed — from old rusted metal to dry concrete. The concrete scratched Ren’s palms, and he realized the Fortress’s sublevel was much bigger than he had ever imagined. Up ahead, Plank had climbed inside an even smaller tunnel, b
arely big enough to fit Ren’s body if he slithered on his stomach.
Plank whispered, “Look.”
“We shouldn’t be here,” Ren whispered back.
“There’s someone down there.” She stared down an air vent and into a darkened room. “It looks like a prison cell.”
That definitely got Ren’s attention. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled as he inched forward. He heard the voice again.
“Is anyone there? You have to help me —” The girl fell silent as footsteps approached her cell.
A door swung open and lights illuminated the cell, giving Ren a good look around. It was a metal box, not much wider than the span of his arms. The filthy floors looked like they hadn’t been mopped in a decade, a striking contrast to the shiny metal rails of the hospital bed that occupied the majority of the cell. A prisoner lay upon that bed. She wore gray coveralls, like the ones that Daisy and Jay had been wearing when they were executed. One of her sleeves had been rolled up to accommodate an IV needle in the crook of her arm.
Ren tried to get a closer look at the prisoner. She was a slip of a thing, all bones and sickly pale skin. Her dark hair covered her face as she whispered again, “Send … help.”
A doctor in a white coat approached the bed and changed out the IV bag before he checked the girl’s vitals, ignoring her pleas while he listened to her heartbeat and flashed a light down her throat.
Live in Infamy Page 13
