by Tanya Lisle
“She hasn’t been wrong yet.”
Ed shook her head and got to her feet. “Fine. Looks like I have to head down there anyway. Apparently someone busted up the doors and they need them rewired. Liah’s already watching Snow, so it shouldn’t be hard to ask.”
“And you start getting everything else in order,” Mac told Kitty. “As soon as I get out of here-”
“That might be another day,” Kitty told him. “Apparently they found out how well Ed handled it and want to keep the rest of you for observation a little longer.”
Ed took that as her cue to leave, closing the door behind her before she could hear whatever was coming next. Kitty could deal with him fine on her own and Ed still wasn’t sure what to make of it. Now that she realized she was starting to believe that Snow was capable of more than anyone should be capable of, she found herself struggling to accept it.
Mac was right, though. It was the most plausible explanation. That or her mind refused to come up with something legitimately plausible after seeing her disappear like that.
And now she’d done it twice.
“Of course it was your fucking fault!”
Ed snapped around to see an open door and Miranda standing there, jaw set and eyes filled with furious tears as Clyde yelled at her from inside the room. She couldn’t remember a time she’d ever heard Clyde raise his voice out of anger before. She also couldn’t remember seeing a dark mark on his face before.
“How could you say that?” she roared back. “I am a good mother! I give up everything for him!”
“He’s a teenager. And a genius. And you keep shoving him back in with the kindergarteners!”
“Because he is still a child!”
“Hey!” Ed called as she rushed over to them. She grabbed Mirada by the arm to pull her back, ready to shut the door to separate the pair of them. “That’s enough!”
Clyde wasn’t done, taking another step closer. He didn’t even look at Ed, his wild eyes still set on Miranda. “Oh, is that how you think you’re supposed to treat chi-”
Clyde’s words caught in his throat and he was very still for a moment before he started to convulse. Panic flooded his eyes as he dropped to the ground, clutching at his throat and struggling for breath. His face contorted in pain and his body curled in on itself, continuing to shake.
Miranda backed away, looking down at him like he deserved this. She tried to turn and walk away when Ed grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back.
“Miranda, do your damn job!” Ed snapped at her.
“Did you see how he was treating me?”
“You have a job,” Ed said. “If you can’t handle that, get out and I’ll find someone who can.”
Miranda pulled her arm away and reluctantly went to check on Clyde. Ed stayed until Kelan joined her to help get Clyde back up onto the bed, not sure what to make of any of that.
It also wasn’t her problem right now, Ed reminded herself. She had a repair to make and a potentially inhuman woman Downstairs to watch bleed out of her eyes when she asked for the date of an attack that Ed hoped would never come. The rest of her day was packed.
Chapter 16
Ed stood in the back corner of the elevator, checking her phone and trying not to make eye contact with any of the people around her. It was rare that the elevator was this full, but they needed the captives off their hands and Liah was ready for the extra help Downstairs, which meant that Ed was travelling with six other people in a small, unsteady box.
With every small jerk of the elevator as it eased its way down the shaft, Ed glanced up to see how nervous everyone else was. She should really take a week and get a few people to do a full inspection of all the transport between the floors, but they didn’t have time with Security now on high alert.
Ed watched Roland in particular whenever she looked up from her phone. While the rest of the captives looked like they had never even seen an elevator before, he looked calm and resigned to whatever waited for him at the bottom. He hadn’t even mentioned wanting to go after Snow since she got to him.
She also took note of the marks on him. Most of them looked faded, but the one on his neck where Snow had touched him was a dark black and with no spot adorning one of the corners. She looked to the other men and found a faded mark remaining on one of them, but nothing as dark as the one on Roland’s neck.
Or the one on her eye.
Despite Ed’s misgivings and with Snow also staying Downstairs, Liah still thought it would be fine if he came down. Ed didn’t bother questioning it, but she hoped Liah knew what she was doing. She did seem very excited when Ed told her Roland thought he came from Argentina.
When the doors finally opened, the relief was palpable. The rest of them piled out, Ed lingering back and holding the door open for herself as she watched them assemble a short way in front of the elevator. Liah waited for them and nodded to Ed, nudging another man towards her while she addressed the captives.
“No chains this time?” Liah asked, looking pleased. “You’re learning. For you new folks, my name is Liah. You’ll be doing what I tell you until further notice. First things first, we need to get you set up in the system. Once you are, we’re putting you to work. Questions?”
The man walked around the group to Ed and pulled her aside. “Ed,” he said. “This way.”
Ed followed him out a side door and into the fields. She stretched, putting her phone back in her pocket and taking in a deep breath. Something about the air down here was just better than Upstairs and after everything happening Upstairs, she almost felt like this was time off.
“So what happened?” Ed asked. “Liah said something about a door. You guys should know how to fix that on your own without me.”
“It’s an exterior door,” he said. “We can fix it fine, but we don’t have the authorization to re-enable it. It needs you and Liah to turn it back on, eh?”
“How did you break an exterior door?”
“I didn’t do it.” He laughed as he said it, steering them toward the greenhouses. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
Ed looked him carefully over, trying to match his face to someone she once knew. He was too pale to have ever lived Upstairs, so he would have been someone she met while she stayed down here when she was younger. The name itched at the back of her mind as she started to remember the young man with scientific aspirations while he got stuck working in the orchard.
“Shavir?” she asked.
“Got it in one!” He smiled and turned another corner. “So how’s everything going Upstairs? You’re in charge now, right?”
“I’m not sure how that happened,” Ed said. “The place mostly runs itself, honestly. I just manage Iris and we really don’t need her most of the time.”
“It must be exciting, though. It’s been a long time since we got new people down here. First that Snow woman, then these people. And, well, that other visitor.”
“Visitor?”
“Liah’ll tell you all about it,” Shavir said, clapping her on the back and stopping at the exterior doors. “He did a bit of a number on these doors, though. You have fun with that. And think about staying for dinner tonight. I’m sure a bunch of people are going to want to catch up once they hear you’re back.”
Ed nodded and let him leave, putting her attention on the first of the exterior doors. She didn’t expect it to swing open so easily, nor did she expect to see it dismantled from the outside. Someone knew what they were doing in cutting these wires, though they made sloppy work of it. They knew to cut the one leading to Iris’ sensors in particular, which was alarming.
She rewired and set the panel back in place. It worked, but the scanner was much less sensitive than she liked. She’d have to wait until Liah got there to reactivate it properly, but there was something else that needed her attention first.
Behind her, the second door was open a crack. When she checked, it looked like someone took a screwdriver to it in the dark until it finally opened. This one should have let Liah
know something got in. The connections were all intact, though she was going to need to completely replace the lock. It was mangled and it would be more trouble to try and fix it than to go Upstairs for one of the spares.
“How’s it going?”
Ed looked up from her patch job and shook her head. “Someone broke in?” she demanded. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Not something you need to worry about,” Liah said. “One of the kids from Upstairs decided they wanted to come down. Couldn’t find an apprenticeship and wanted to get away for a little while. Maybe start over. I figured you’d understand. Besides, I figured with everything else happening Upstairs-”
“I still need to know, Liah,” Ed told her. “If any of the headcounts end up being short-
“Then you would’ve come here first anyway,” Liah finished for her. “Come on, Ed. Remember? You wanted to disappear Downstairs too. I figured you’d be fine if I held off for a few days until everything calmed down up there. And I’m telling you now, which is much less than 48 hours after it happened, so it’s still in the acceptable timeframe. No problem, right?”
Ed shook her head, something sounding a little off. None of the headcounts were off. She only knew of one person that was unaccounted for.
“This kid you got wanting to come down here,” she said. “Is it a boy? About six?”
“Late teens,” Liah said. “He said he couldn’t get any of the apprenticeships he wanted up there, but as you can see, he was very determined. I figured I could give him a shot.”
“I’m still going to need to know who he is,” Ed said, leading the way back to the now working door.
“If he tells you. Otherwise, you should know enough now to figure it out.”
Ed said nothing, shaking her head and putting her thumb on the sensor. “Iris, enable.”
Liah followed in suit. “Iris, enable.”
A pleasant tone sounded and the door whirred as the lock fell in place. Ed took out her phone and scanned it, the door unclicking and letting them out, closing with a heavy thud and locking behind them.
“You’re mad,” Liah said. “And this time around, I don’t care. He’s got just as good a reason as you did.”
Ed wanted to argue, but she still remembered crawling through the collapsed tunnels to get Downstairs. She was barely small enough to fit and she ran out of light only a couple hours into her attempt. She gave up and broke into the elevator soon after. She couldn’t imagine anyone else wanting to do that unless they were desperate.
“I’m guessing you’re also down here to see Snow,” Liah said as they walked. “You know, she’s awfully confused for someone who can see the future. And she spontaneously bleeds a lot for someone who you seem to think is dangerous.”
“She barely touched Mac and he went down. She didn’t even touch Clyde and I just saw him have a seizure after he woke up.”
A look crossed Liah’s face and she took out her phone, her finger moving across the screen. “She told me about that,” Liah said. “We’ve been working with her on that and she’s got it worked out now. She doesn’t even bleed when she’s marking people anymore.”
Ed slowed to a halt. “Marking people?” she asked. “What do you mean marking people?”
“That’s how it goes, right?” Liah asked, turning back to her and smiling. “They pass out and wherever she touches them there’s a mark. We figured out that she needed to just give the mark with a specific future-related task and they don’t pass out. You don’t fall unconscious if there’s something you need to do, but it’s better for you the more specific you get. Don’t worry, we tried it out down here first before she tried doing it with your people Upstairs.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re buying into all this too.”
“It’s hard not to when you’re watching it work,” Liah said with a shrug, turning away. “Plus we got someone who can keep track of the marks so-”
Ed grabbed the back of her shirt and stopped her from walking away. Beneath her collar was a dark black mark. “You let her do that to you?”
“You can see them too?”
“You can’t?”
Liah shook her head and Ed looked away. Sure, Ed was never sure if those marks were even there a lot of the time, but she assumed that everyone Snow had done that to would be able to see them. Mac showed no signs of being able to see them either, but Ed hoped that was just because he didn’t think they were really there.
“Hey, no harm came from it,” Liah said. She smiled and pulled away, paying no attention to Ed’s distress as she put her arm around Ed’s shoulders and pulled her toward the big house. “I needed to see. She’s not a bad person, you know. And she’s not actually that dangerous. She’s just scared and she doesn’t know what she’s capable of.”
“She also thinks the Fates are coming after her and they’re sending more people to kill her.”
“If she’s actually the tapestry she thinks she is, that might be true. And you would normally be way more onboard with this idea.”
“It’s too much this time, Liah. People have already died over it.”
“All the more reason to believe it. To keep more people from dying over it. Besides, down here we’ve actually been doing research.”
“Fine,” Ed said. She really didn’t like the explanation, but if even Liah insisted that Snow could really see the future, she didn’t have a foothold left. Plus, if she just accepted it, then everything from her clothing randomly appearing when they first met to her disappearance when she last saw Snow could finally fall into some sort of context. Her strangeness could be explained as other worldly and the problem then became how to deal with it.
Liah let the subject drop along with her arm, leading the pair of them to the big house. They didn’t make it far before Liah’s wrist vibrated. She looked down at it, then stopped and turned around to a man coming up behind them.
“I already told you, Henry, I can’t approve it,” Liah said as he came closer. “Tammy’s already short staffed. You’re going to have to wait.”
“But how much longer?” Henry asked. Ed recognized the large man with the quiet voice from her days down here. He was just as large back then and had just as much trouble getting his voice above a conversational volume. On the back of his hand, there was a shadow mark. “We’ve already been waiting for so-”
“Ask Cassie when she’s coming back. She’ll be first. For now though, I have other matters to tend to.” Liah tilted her head to where Ed stood.
“Ed?” Henry asked, looking her over with a smile cracking across his face. “The hell are you doing back down here?”
“Just business,” Ed said, forcing her eyes back to his face. “I won’t be long.”
“At least hang around until dinner,” he said. “It’s been ages. Hey, did you know-”
“Back to work, Henry,” Liah told him, putting her arm around Ed’s shoulders and steering her back toward the big house. “We still got business to discuss.”
Henry smiled and went back into the fields. Ed watched him go, looking more carefully at the other people moving between the rows of plants. So many of them were marked with a dark shadow somewhere, sticking out from sleeves or sitting plainly somewhere on their exposed skin, and they seemed none the worse for wear yet. She couldn’t keep her eyes to herself, scanning around and trying to count them all, though losing count around fifteen with so many people moving around.
“How much testing did you do?” Ed asked as they walked into the big house in the middle of the fields.
“Enough.” Liah opened the door to let Ed in before her.
The big house wasn’t so much of a house as it was a large concrete block of a building in the middle of the plants. Each level was designated for a different purpose, from food to housing to management matters of varying sorts, and largely empty during their daylight hours. There were a few kids running around and people preparing dinner, but Ed and Liah walked through it with little interruption.
<
br /> Ed followed Liah as she led her through the building. It was so much like she remembered it that she wondered what that kid who’d run down here was running from.
“Huh,” Liah said as she opened the door, blocking Ed from entering. “I wasn’t expecting you to still be here.”
“It’s fine,” the voice inside the room said. It certainly wasn’t the sound of Snow or a kid in his late teens, but Ed already knew who she’d find on the other side of the door. “I have to talk to her eventually, right?”
“If you say so,” Liah said, moving out of the way so Ed could get in. “I’ve still got a lot to take care of. You call if there’s any trouble, though. And you behave,” Liah added to Ed. “I’ll see you at dinner.”
“Sure,” Ed said, watching her go. Ed let herself in.
Sitting in one of two plush chairs in the corner was Brady, his legs dangling off the edge. One foot was propped up on a stool, white bandages sticking out from the bottom of his pant leg, and he looked at Ed with a hesitant smile. There was a dark mark on his cheek. “Hi Ms. Ed,” he said. “Please don’t tell my mom I came down here.”
It took a few moments before Ed realized she was staring and she quickly let herself in the room, closing the door behind her. “Liah didn’t say you were here,” Ed said trying to wrap her head around it. “What are you doing down here?”
“Helping Snow,” Brady said, gesturing to the vacant window. “At least, until I’m not limping anymore. After that, Liah said she’d help me find something I can do. I won’t even have to keep going to school anymore.”
At least Ed knew Liah wasn’t lying to her. Brady was, in fact, a kid in his late teens, even if she sometimes forgot that herself. “Your mom’s worried. She’s been looking for you.”
“I know,” Brady said, not meeting Ed’s eyes. “Sit down. It’s going to be weird if you keep standing like that. I’ll pour you a glass.”
Ed looked down at the coffee table where two glasses rested next to a half empty bottle. Shaking her head, she took a reluctant seat, looking back up to Brady. He poured her a glass with a small amount of the dark red liquid. From here, she could tell how red he was and smell the aroma of the drink on him.
