A Drop of Night

by Stefan Bachmann

  I stare down the length of the panic room with half-lidded eyes. Hayden’s not asleep, either. He’s sitting on the cot, staring at the hatch. His knees are drawn up to his chest, oddly vulnerable.

  I sit up and scoot toward him. He doesn’t say anything when I settle next to him.

  “When you were out there,” I say, staring at the hatch, too, trying to see what Hayden’s seeing, “did you find anything about a butterfly man?”

  “Is that your boogeyman?” Hayden asks. “Is that who you’re blaming all this on? Because you should stop. It’s people doing this. People like you and me.”

  “They’re not like us. We’re not that insane.”

  “Aren’t we?”

  I smell that overpowering stench again, sickening sweet and rotten. And I stare at my brogues, gleaming black against the wrinkled landscape of the sheets.

  “Hayden, did you cut the camera feed?” I ask suddenly.

  “What?” Hayden glances at me. “No. Why?”

  “I dunno, I just—I was hoping you had.”

  We’re silent for a second. A wave of sleepiness washes over me. We’ve been down here at least forty-eight hours now. No sunlight, no way to tell whether it’s night or day. My internal clock is seriously messed up. I think my brain has started filtering out that buzzing, like it does with birdcalls and passing cars.

  “Four hours till we head for the exit,” Hayden says. I look into his eyes. They’re so weird, flat and coin dull at first glance, but deep, deep down, something is moving, struggling—

  “We don’t really know where the exit is,” I say.

  “We’ll find it.”

  I don’t like how he’s looking at me. I can’t handle the smell. I nod and crawl back to the others. Curl up next to Jules. When I think it’s safe, I crack open one eye.

  Hayden’s watching us. He’s so still on the cot, like he’s in a frozen movie frame. He has that same slightly wondering, longing look Perdu had. It’s like he’s thinking: Friends. You guys are friends now. Must be nice.

  I blink. His face is blank again. Cold. I close my eyes and hope he didn’t notice me in the dimness.

  36

  Someone’s outside the hatch.

  I sit bolt upright. The strip of light is still on, dull and buzzing. Lilly, Jules, and Will have piled into a crinkly silver heap behind me. Hayden is asleep on the cot, his face to the wall.

  I hear it again: the gentle snick-snick of wires and metal prongs shifting. Someone’s outside the hatch, trying to get in.

  “Hayden?” I crawl quickly down the capsule and grab his shoulder. “Hayden!”

  He jerks awake. I nod toward the door. He scrambles off the cot. “How long?” he whispers.

  “Don’t know. Just heard it.”

  Outside, the clicking stops.

  We stare at each other. A million horrible possibilities jumble together in my mind. Helmeted figures. Miss Sei on hands and knees, a gun clenched in those thin white fingers. A huge spiny butterfly, dragging itself through the shadows, its wings rustling behind it.

  I shudder and crawl as fast as I can back to the others. “Get up,” I say, quiet and urgent. “Get up, now!”

  “What?” Lilly rolls onto her back, rubbing her eyes. Jules is trying to swat me away. I grab his hand and slap him with it.

  “Get up!” I whisper.

  The snick-snick has started again. Not faster. Not slower. Patient, like a dentist.

  Lilly sits straight up and stares. “What was that?”

  Again the sound pauses. Again it starts up.

  Lilly and Jules crawl toward Hayden. Will follows. His wounded hand is still clutched to his chest, but his face looks better, the glazed look gone from his eyes. I watch them, disconnected for a second. My head feels fuzzy, numb. We must not have been asleep for more than an hour or two.

  “They can’t get in, can they?” Lilly whispers. “Not from outside—?”

  Hayden slips a hand under his cot, pulls out a serrated hunting knife. He leans against the tiny hatch, knife in one hand, gripping the bolt in the other. “There’s no way. It’s made for this.”

  The bolt rattles. He drops the knife and dives for it. Jules makes a tiny noise in his throat.

  “Don’t let them in, Hayden, please—”

  “How can they open it from outside, it’s a freaking panic room—”

  “I don’t know, but they are!”

  Hayden wraps both hands around the bolt. His face goes red, a ligament popping in his neck. He’s straining, holding the bolt back with all his strength. The handle rips from his grasp. The bolt slides an inch.

  Hayden pulls away, swearing, his fingers warped white from the pressure. “They slipped the lock.” He’s turning, grabbing knives, flashlights, throwing them to us. “They’re coming in!”

  Will scrambles for his sword. Hayden is snapping open a black box, pulling something out, a handgun.

  And now the hatch is opening and we’re all yelling, pressing forward like moles, lights strobing into the darkness beyond.

  “Who’s there? Who’s there?”

  37

  “Aurélie,” a voice whispers in the darkness. It’s Perdu. He’s backed away from the hatch, crawling through the ruins of the room, eyes white and fishy in the flashlight beams. It looks like someone ransacked the place. Drapes hang in slashed tatters over the faux windows. Chunks of crystal glitter across the floor. Perdu doesn’t blink, doesn’t stop.

  Hayden bursts from the hatch. Reaches Perdu in three strides and kicks him savagely backward. Perdu goes flying into a chair, crashes to the floor.

  “There you are!” Hayden yells. He’s got the gun in one hand, steel knife in the other. The knife comes up in an arc.

  I shove myself to my feet. “Hayden, wait!”

  He kicks the chair aside. It goes spinning away, even though it’s massive.

  I catch Hayden’s knife hand. He pivots.

  “Stop,” I hiss. Hayden’s eyes are wild. Sweat glimmers on his upper lip. His arm is still straining downward, like he doesn’t realize the knife is pointed at me now. “Hayden, it’s him, it’s the guy from the library. We think he knows the way out of here—”

  Hayden wrenches away from me. Perdu screeches, cowering inside a shattered nest of furniture legs and broken wood. The velvet bandages I tied around his arm are gone. It’s hard to tell in the wobbling light, but I can’t see the wound anymore, either. I get between Hayden and Perdu.

  Hayden shoves me out of the way so hard my head snaps sideways.

  Will launches himself past me. He catches Hayden’s arm, and even left-handed he’s strong. His fingers dig in, and Hayden’s hand opens like a claw. The knife clatters to the floor.

  Will stoops slowly. Picks it up. Offers it to Hayden, hilt first, not once moving his gaze from Hayden’s face. “She said wait,” Will says.

  Hayden grabs the knife. “You don’t know anything about him,” he spits at me. “If he killed those trackers, he could kill every one of us here.”

  “Five minutes,” I say. “Give me five minutes to talk to him.”

  I kneel next to Perdu. His head starts bobbing. He’s bowing, being grateful. “Aurélie,” he whispers again, and I pull the letter opener from my pocket and place it against his throat.

  Something flickers across Perdu’s gaze. Shock. Terror. He stares at me, his neck pulsing against the blade.

  “Listen to me,” I say in French. “You’re going to tell us how we get out of this palace. I want to know exactly how we’ll find the exit, and if you lie to us again I’m not going to stop anyone from hurting you.”

  “Aurélie?” Perdu whispers. “You are angry with me. Because of the library. I had no choice; he came for me! I led him away from you. I am on your side. I was only ever on your side.” He’s crying, eyes dripping. “Let me in with you.” He gestures toward the hatch. “Please, I will tell you everything. Do not leave me out here alone.” He throws a furtive look at Hayden and the others, then into the dar
kness over his shoulder. The room beyond the glare of the flashlight is a pitch black so thick it’s solid.

  My heart blunders wildly in my ears. I think of the trackers, liquid black, dripped like ink on the floor outside the library. The hatch’s bolt being ripped from Hayden’s grip. He could kill every one of us here. “I can’t do that, Perdu; just answer the question!”

  Will starts translating softly for the others.

  “Please!” Perdu wails. “Please, it is not safe! I can feel him. He is near. He hates me.”

  “Perdu, stop!” I jab the tip of the letter opener into his neck. It’s an accident. A reflex. Perdu gurgles, but there’s no blood. Just a dry cleft in his skin, like birch bark, splitting. “Stop lying,” I say through my teeth. “Arrêtez de mentir! How do we get out of here? Who is the butterfly man?”

  Perdu freezes mid-sob. His head is turned away from me. Slowly his eyes swivel and he’s looking at me, sidelong. He’s not crying anymore. His face is full of hate, sharp as a spade.

  “He is poison,” Perdu says, and his lips twitch into a smile. “He is death.”

  He inches toward me. I try to keep the blade in place, but my hand is shaking. His eyes are piercing, infinite layers of gray and blue and darkness.

  “He is an angel,” he whispers. “Fallen from the skies. Cast down from the stars.”

  I pinch my eyes shut. “Perdu, we need to know what we’re up against, tell us—”

  “I AM TELLING YOU!” He rises, unfolding to a full six feet of bony limbs and pale skin, and for an instant I catch a flicker of something beyond that ravaged body. A proud man, strong and handsome. Hayden’s knife is raised, poised to cut Perdu down, but Perdu doesn’t seem to notice. He keeps talking, muttering away like he’s in a trance.

  “They formed him from skin and blood and wisdom,” Perdu says, and his voice is a deep, ragged growl. “Without fault and with knowledge beyond any man, and they sought his favor. L’homme papillon, they called him, their butterfly man. They built him a house far underground and they told him it was a gift, but they lied. It is a prison. And you are in it. He is moving you across the board like chess pieces, and if they do not catch you, he will, and he will tear you limb from limb—”

  Perdu leaps at me, teeth bared. Hayden knocks him out of the air like a fly, the hilt of his knife connecting with the back of Perdu’s head. Perdu drops to the floor, wailing.

  “You will die!” he shrieks. “Vous allez mourir, you wretched children of darkness!”

  Lilly, Will, Jules, Hayden, me: we all stand stock-still, gaping at each other.

  “What did he say?” Jules asks.

  “He wants to come into the panic room,” I say. “He says it’s not safe out here, but he’s not making any sense, he’s—”

  “He said the butterfly man hates him,” Will says quietly, turning to me. “And he’s moving us around like chess pieces. Perdu might be working for the butterfly man, but I don’t think it’s voluntary. He wants to get out of here.”

  “We’re not taking him in with us,” Jules interrupts. “Not in a million years. We need to get rid of him and we need to get back inside—”

  “We’re no safer in there,” I say, and Jules snaps right back: “We are. We’re definitely safer than out in the open.”

  “We can’t let him go,” Lilly says. “It doesn’t even matter whose side he’s on. He knows where we are, and he can tell on us.”

  “Lilly, do you want him in there with us?” Jules says, exasperated. “He almost got us killed! We have no idea where he’s been these last twelve hours.”

  Hayden’s chewing the inside of his lip, head down. He looks up sharply. “This is how it’s going to be,” he says. “Anouk, you said he knows where the exit is? So he’ll lead us out of here. If he tries anything he’s dead; until then, we’ve got a guide. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, didn’t Confucius say that?”

  No, Hayden. Sun Tzu said that. In The Art of War. But Hayden’s already dragging Perdu roughly across the floor. “Somebody help me. Rope and two carabiners, I need them now.”

  Lilly runs for the hatch.

  “We’re taking him in with us?” Jules asks, disbelieving. “We’re doing this?”

  Lilly reappears out of the panic room, a heavy coil of fluorescent-orange climbing rope looped over her shoulder. Perdu watches her pass the rope to Hayden, and I see the exact instant the realization hits him.

  A spasm races down his cheek. He shrieks, high and birdlike, tries to wriggle away. Hayden places his foot at the small of Perdu’s back and pins him to the floor. “Aurélie!” Perdu coughs. “Aurélie!”

  “Don’t hurt him,” Lilly says, and I watch as Hayden ties his wrists, his legs. I try to force my thudding heart back into its designated cavity.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Hayden says to Jules, knotting the rope through the carabiners. “It’s either this or we shoot him in the head, and something tells me you wouldn’t approve of that, either.”

  Perdu’s tied up in so much orange rope he looks cocooned. Hayden shoves him through the hatch. Lilly nods at Jules reassuringly, and they crawl in after Hayden.

  It’s just Will and me now, standing in the darkness. He’s right next to me, his wounded hand resting against his stomach, his face slightly illuminated by the light from the hatch.

  “It’ll only be for a few more hours,” he says quietly. “We’ll be okay.”

  “You say that every time we’re in imminent danger of being killed.”

  “I haven’t been wrong yet,” Will says, and somehow he manages a smile. His eyes spark warm and blue as he looks at me.

  “Get in!” Hayden barks, and we both move for the hatch.

  “Three more hours,” Hayden says as we squeeze past him into the panic room. “Three hours and we’re walking straight out of this hellhole.”

  38

  Forty-five minutes to go. Will, Jules, and Lilly are sleeping again. I don’t know how they can. Perdu’s tied up at the end of the panic room like a psychotic freaking Sméagol. His wrists are knotted to two hooks in the wall, his arms stretched wide, hands limp. He doesn’t talk. Doesn’t move. He’s just glaring, his eyes dark and glittering.

  The light strip on the ceiling has started cutting out. Flash-flash-flicker, the panic room going black for seconds at a time. The oppressive heat is gone, replaced by a damp airlessness. A warm sheen has settled clammily against my skin. I’m curled into a ball right next to Will, his body so close I can feel the warmth coming off his back. I hold my face, sweet-talking myself into a calm that won’t come.

  You’re safe, Ooky. They’re all right beside you, Will and Lilly and Jules and Hayden, they’re right here—

  I open my eyes. Perdu is watching me from the far end of the capsule. I can feel the hatred gathered around him like a cloud of insects. Images fly into my mind: The picture of me hanging in Rabbit Gallery, only someone’s scratched out my face; a bunch of veiny purple grapes, tiny black bugs floating inside them like embryos; six gleaming wires carving me up neatly—

  Don’t look at him, Anouk. Don’t think about him.

  But something in those eyes makes me want to hide, to apologize or beg forgiveness. Something in those eyes is accusing me.

  39

  I wake to find Perdu leaning over me, blood and spit glistening down his chin. He exhales—a short, sharp gasp. And slumps forward, right on top of me.

  I scream. Shove him off. Hayden is behind him, holding the serrated hunting knife. The blade glints ruby in the light. His shirt is covered in blood. “Anouk?” he whispers. His eyes are wide.

  I scrabble backward, falling into Lilly’s sleeping form. “What did you do?”

  Hayden drops the knife and it slides across the floor, leaving a red smear. “He got free, I don’t know how, he charged you!” His voice is scared.

  Blood is starting to pool under Perdu—dark, dark red. He’s still breathing, gurgling softly. Lilly’s sitting up, pushing me away.

/>   “What happened?” Jules says. “What’s going on?”

  “I heard him when he started crawling or you would be dead, too,” Hayden says. “We need to go.”

  Lilly sees Perdu and lets out a shriek that quickly devolves into a tired, defeated moan. Hayden squeezes past us, starts grabbing things off the shelves, toppling my five careful piles. Food packets and batteries go spinning, falling to the floor. He’s got the flashlights. The batteries.

  “Everybody up!” he bellows over his shoulder. “We’re getting out of here.”

  “He’s bleeding,” Lilly says. “He’s dying!” She crawls to him, rolls him over. She’s trying to staunch the flow of blood from the wound in his back with her bare hands, but there’s too much of it, and there’s something weird about: it’s thick and gloopy, and something is swimming in it, strands of darkness—

  Hayden shoves her away. “Don’t get close to him,” he growls, but she shoves him back, crying.

  “Hayden, he’s going to die.” She slides around him. Starts looping the leftover gauze from Will’s bandages over Perdu’s wound. It’s soaked through instantly.

  I don’t know what to do. I feel sick. Will is sitting perfectly still, staring at the knife on the floor. The buzz is back, dark and low, pulsating in the air. Everything is pandemonium, everyone crawling over everyone else.

  “We should never have let him in here,” Jules says. “This was your stupid idea, Hayden!”

  Hayden practically throws the three flashlights at us. Now he’s snapping open the black, oblong box again. Inside is the handgun, encased in black foam. He takes it out and shoves it into his waistband.

  “What about Perdu?” Jules asks, and Lilly starts smacking the metal arch of the wall, her eyes squeezed shut.