“But—sir! We should alert the security station in town, have them put these perpetrators under arrest. They were conspiring against the empress! They assaulted me!”
“Assaulted you?” The guard’s lips widened into a smirk. “In that case, I suggest you hang up your blaster and return home to lick your wounds, you pathetic excuse for an enforcement officer. You couldn’t even detain two unarmed Earthans on your own. Look at them.” He squished his fingers into my cheeks. “They’re harmless.”
The commander’s android partner pushed Wren toward the mansion doors. Her shoulder clipped the doorframe, and she hissed in pain. The commander wheeled me around, prodding his blaster into the center of my back. “Inside. Move. I’m not a slow walker.”
I couldn’t help but smile.
“Wait! Sir!” The android tried one final time. “You’re locking them in the labyrinth? If Verena finds out we’re letting them stay here—”
The pressure of the blaster left my back as the commander fired it into the air. The burst of light disappeared almost immediately into the smog above the compound, but it had the right effect. The crowd below hung on his every word. And behind us, just inside the doors, more guards—android and human alike—had come to investigate the source of the commotion.
“Verena won’t find out,” the commander snarled. “Imagine how she would feel knowing that her celebration has been tainted by criminal filth. Imagine what she would do to the guard who brought such ignominious news to her attention.”
“I—I’m not sure what that word means…”
“Invest in a dictionary. And if you value your life, don’t breathe a word of this scuffle to Verena.” The guard poked me in the back. “I didn’t tell you to stop walking!”
Blaster still at my back, I crossed the threshold of Empress Verena’s mansion and entered a grand foyer trimmed with red curtains and black-and-white tiles. The room was full of guests milling around hors d’oeuvre stations and champagne fountains, and they all turned to stare while Wren and I were led through the center of the throng. Their finery—velvet coats and jewel-encrusted gowns—made my silk dress, which had suffered a long rip from my ankles to my knees after the tussle outside, feel like a flimsy nightgown. I held my head high anyway, ignoring the buzz of the guard’s blaster that cut through the silence like a swarm of angry insects.
The commander and his android sidekick led us underneath a row of chandeliers dripping strings of pearls and between two elegant moonstone ramps to a side door built into a wooden panel on the wall. The staff hallway we entered, with its concrete floors and dirt-streaked walls, was freezing cold.
“Here. Take this.” The commander immediately shrugged out of his jacket and draped it across my shoulders. His skin started to bubble, like it was boiling right off his bones. Then his face and body morphed back into the familiar form of Anders. He reached for me, nimble fingers grazing my cheeks. “Stars, I got you good, didn’t I? I’m sorry, Cora.”
“Don’t worry about it. I knew it was coming.” I dabbed at my skin, wiping away a smudge of blood.
Wren watched us with a scowl. “I’m cold too. Don’t I get a coat?”
“Ask Elio. Although his might be rather small.” Anders nodded at the android, whose appearance was flickering and shifting into the round body of a generic servant bot while Elio adjusted the VED stuck to his chest.
Rolling her eyes, Wren tossed us each new bundles of clothes that she had hidden under her skirt. We changed our outfits and then our appearances in silence, listening for the patter of footsteps from approaching mansion staff. Outside the doors, it sounded like the party had returned to normal. Hopefully the real mansion guards thought that their “commander” had neutralized the only threat they would see all evening.
But if the crowd had been listening before Wren and I were detained, then at least a few of them would heed our advice and try to swipe a few of Verena’s valuables for themselves. The perfect diversion. Verena’s guards would ideally be so occupied with preventing those robberies that the path beneath the compound would be left completely clear.
I pulled out my comm from a pocket in my new lace jumpsuit. Not only would the labyrinth be clear for us, but after all the guards ran to the front doors to see what all the fuss had been about, it would be left unobstructed for my family too. And according to Blair’s latest message, they were down there right now, waiting.
“Does everyone have their flash bombs?” Wren asked. Her white hair from her VED illusion matched the white skirt hanging low on her hips.
Anders tugged on a suit coat, pulled a flask from his pocket, and used the liquid inside to slick back his hair. When I gave him a weird stare, he just shrugged, looking at me from behind a fresh Earthan face. “Of course. They’re ready to detonate at the first sign of trouble. Here’s to hoping we won’t need them.”
Beep! said Elio. He scurried forward and handed me a blaster, my phaser, and two fresh flash bombs.
I thanked him, offered Wren the phaser—my family was bringing my spare with them—and shoved the rest in my pockets. My comm was buzzing out of control. Multiple messages from Blair asking where I was, one from my uncle Alfie telling me to hurry up, and one from Nana Rae wondering if the food in the mansion was as good as rumor claimed. None from Cruz. Especially none from Evelina.
“We should split up,” I told the others. “You two take the eastern passages in the labyrinth. Elio and I will handle the western. We can meet back up in an hour.” The lie tasted sharp on my tongue. If things went according to plan—the real plan, not the one I’d fed them aboard our stolen Andilly ship—then this could very well be the last time I ever saw them.
I forced down the sudden wave of emotion that prickled at the back of my eyes. Crying now would be too suspicious.
Maybe … just maybe I could persuade Evelina to help hide Wren and Anders from the warden too, once we handed over the keys. But I knew she would never. She didn’t aid anyone outside our family. If it weren’t for the money, she wouldn’t have even come here today to help me and Elio.
“I don’t know if we should split up,” Wren said, looking nervously at Anders. “We ran into trouble last time.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” I countered. “We are strong, independent, terrifying outlaws, and the universe apparently thinks we’re worth something, so let’s act like it and make the warden wish he’d picked some other group of misfits to mess with. Deal?”
Elio punched his fists in the air and beeped.
Wren started to laugh. “Did you make that speech up yourself?”
“No, I clipped it off one of your cereal boxes.” I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I made it up myself.”
Her smile grew, but she still didn’t look totally convinced. Deep in my pocket, my comm continued buzzing. Okay, I get it. You’re all here. This was the most my family cared to talk to me in, well, ever.
Anders seemed to weigh the pros and cons. “We can do this, Wren. We’re better prepared this time. Comm each other if we run into trouble and we’ll activate the explosives. That goes for finding the key as well. Alert the others and get out as quickly as possible. We’ll all meet back at the tube station.”
I nodded. “Perfect.”
Elio beeped in agreement.
“And if the key isn’t here?” Wren asked. “If we’re wrong?”
“We’re not,” I insisted. “It’s here. Somewhere. But if we can’t find it, well, at least there’s a lot of good food in this house.”
She nodded adamantly, steeling herself. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. Sorry. Just got a little nervous there.” For the second time that night, she reached for my hand. “I trust you, Cora.”
Don’t.
Instead of answering, I pulled up the blueprint of the compound on my comm and studied the network of tunnels running beneath the building. Evelina said all of Verena’s most valuable artifacts were housed down there. The entrance to the western side of the labyrinth, where
I’d agreed to meet my family, could be accessed from a door at the end of this hallway. The eastern tunnels were on the other side of the mansion, beneath the kitchens.
Hands on their blasters, Wren and Anders headed off in the opposite direction. But before they had taken more than a few steps, Anders hurried back.
“Cora, um … you … I…” Finally, he gave up and rested his palm against my cheek.
I wanted to pull away.
I wanted to pull him closer.
After everything we’ve been through, this could be the final time.
I settled for placing my palm on top of his. Stupid. So stupid of me to care this much. But he was more than a big red Andilly jerk. More than a murderer. More than a boy trapped in a prison cell. He was my teammate. And he was my friend. He didn’t deserve this.
Neither of them did.
I let my hand fall. “Stay safe, Andy.”
His fingers brushed the corner of my mouth as he backed away. “Stay safe, Cora.”
24
I found my family crowded around a sewage grate in the tunnels. The location was strangely befitting.
“Took you long enough,” Blair said, frowning at me and Elio after we removed the illusions from our VEDs.
I brushed right past him, my gaze focused on Evelina and the way she was almost grinning, as if admitting she didn’t hate me anymore for botching the treasury job on Vaotis two weeks ago. As I neared, she and Cruz glanced at each other, then pulled me in for a hug so painful I felt like I was being smothered with a blanket. I guess they were a little out of practice in that department.
Once they released me, Evelina motioned for me and Elio to take the lead into the depths of the labyrinth. Relinquishing control of a job wasn’t Evelina’s style, but she did so without complaint and, stars, I would be lying if I said it didn’t feel good.
Almost good enough to make me forget how horrible I was being to two people who considered me their friend.
I nearly stumbled as we rounded a bend in the tunnel. Nope. I couldn’t let my mind go there. The rest of my family couldn’t read auras as well as me, but they would still notice if my emotions didn’t quite make sense. We were steps away from endless riches, steps away from getting Elio a body that wouldn’t deteriorate. I had no reason to be anything other than thrilled.
But just as Evelina looked down at me and winked, Elio gripped my hand and squeezed. He nodded at me, then gazed sadly over his shoulder, back the way we came. Back to Anders and Wren.
“They’ll be okay,” I told him. “It’s for the best.”
“What’s for the best?” Evelina asked. She was checking her comm for hidden rooms located in the tunnels, but at the moment all we could see was flickering halogen lights and an unbroken stretch of brick walls, curving around us like we were creeping through the throat of a gigantic beast.
“I was saying it’s best if we get in and out quickly. We drew the guards to the front of the compound, but there’s no telling how long they’ll stay away.”
“They don’t traditionally patrol down here,” Cruz said. “Or at least they didn’t before…” He looked at his wife. Before Evelina tried raiding the labyrinth. But reminding her of a failure was likely to get him slapped.
Evelina chuckled. “Happy to be home, Cora dearest?”
I forced my emotions to remain calm. “Always.”
We walked on, encountering nothing but a few rats. I studied my comm. I knew there was more down here, vaults and hidden passageways. But the longer I looked at the blueprint on my screen, the more the tunnels seemed to twist and blur together. Surely that was what Verena wanted. To confuse us.
After nearly twenty minutes, my comm vibrated and the screen brought up a magnified view of the bend ahead. I couldn’t tell exactly what I was looking at, but my device’s heat and motion sensors were flying off the charts.
“There’s something up there,” I said. “In an annex on the right side of the tunnel.”
We passed beneath an archway covered in cobwebs that led into a circular room. Once again, Evelina suggested Elio and I head in first to investigate. Blair was then pushed in behind us against his will.
I spun around in the empty space. The walls and floor were made of rock, sprinkled with a thin layer of sand. Where had the heat signature come from? The ceiling was high, almost fifty feet above our heads. I couldn’t see anything up there; I couldn’t hear anything either.
“Let’s keep moving,” I said.
Evelina shook her head from beneath the arch. “No. That wasn’t a false reading. If it’s a possibility that the key is hidden—”
She never had a chance to finish her thought. With a screech of grinding metal, a door slid down from above the arch. It hit the floor with a clang, leaving my family trapped in the tunnels.
And me, Elio, and Blair isolated inside the annex.
“Mom! Dad!” Blair rushed the steel door, pounding with his fists. It had no lock, no internal interface that my comm could hack into to raise it. In a strange way, it seemed like our presence alone had triggered the door to fall.
“You brought my phaser with you, didn’t you?” I asked Blair. I examined the door, searching for openings while Elio walked the perimeter of the room.
Blair scowled. “I didn’t. Your mother probably has it.”
Well, if she did, why wasn’t she using it? I shouldn’t have given my spare to Wren. I’d done it as a parting gift, a final show of solidarity, but now my kindness was stabbing me in the back.
“Was the battery dead?” I rammed my shoulder into the door, sending a shooting pain down my arm. Blair joined me, pushing and kicking at the metal.
“How should I know, Cora? I didn’t build the cursed thing. Daddy! Mommy!”
“Mommy?” I snorted, sweat covering my brow. “At least try to act like you’re part of an infamous crime family.”
“Shut up. Just because you’ve seen the inside of a prison cell doesn’t mean you’re suddenly tough.” He pulled at the collar of his T-shirt. “Why is it so hot in here?”
“No air circulation. We probably shouldn’t exert ourselves so—”
Beep! Beep! Beep!
“I think your robot is broken,” Blair said, watching Elio jump and spin in the center of the floor. Elio’s eyes flashed with panic as he pointed high above us to the ceiling. There was a gap between the rocks up there, extending around the circumference of the room. Something inside it was shimmering, glowing red.
The heat signature I’d picked up on.
“Is the roof dripping…” Blair squinted. “Lava?”
Oh stars.
I pounded harder on the door. “Evelina! Cruz! Let us out!”
I swore I felt a thump come from the other side. Like they were shooting with their blasters, trying to break down the door.
“Hurry!” I shouted, backing away to get out of their line of fire. Cracks had formed on the walls and the ceiling, orange bubbles of lava squeezing through, dripping down toward us. We crowded into the center of the room to avoid them as they hissed and peppered the rocks around us. The temperature spiked, the heat dizzying. Elio clutched my leg, beeping.
Blair pushed his sweat-drenched hair out of his eyes. “This doesn’t make sense. Verena booby-trapped an empty room?” A glob of lava fell inches from his shoes, and he jumped back, screaming.
“You’re right. As much as I hate to admit that. There has to be something here…” Something worth protecting. Something worth killing us over. As more lava dripped down the walls, the floor shook. Fissures formed in the rocks. The ground tilted, the room splitting into two halves, forcing us apart. The rocks in the center shot up at a sharp angle, while the ones on the outside of the room lowered, forming a steep ramp declining toward the lava-covered walls.
“Cora! I swear I’m not going to die like this!” Blair hooked his arms over the top of the rocks on his side, while Elio and I did the same on ours. Our legs dangled down toward the lava, scrambling for purchase as the r
ocks shifted and shook as if alive. What was Verena protecting down here? It had to be the key.
I peered over the top of the rocks. A great chasm stretched out below us. A steaming rush of more lava ran like a river into a dark passageway. No way out. No way to safety. But then—the molten rocks bubbled, exposing for barely a second … a treasure chest.
“There!” I pointed as the lava rushed over the chest and the rocks continued to shake. “It’s down there!”
“I don’t see anything!” Blair called back.
The rocks shifted, pushing me and Elio even higher. They jerked to a halt. Fell again.
The sudden change in momentum forced Elio to lose his grip on the stones he was clutching. His tiny body flew into the air. Over the top of the rocks, above the chasm.
With nothing but the lava below to break his fall.
“NO! Elio!” I lunged over the edge to grab him, my fingers just barely hooking around his.
Beeeeeep!
“Hang on! I got you!”
But he was too heavy. I was halfway over the rocks as it was; if I moved so much as an inch to pull him up, I was going to lose my balance, and we would both fall. The weight of his body pulled my shoulders from their sockets.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
I couldn’t lose him. Not like this. Not when we were so close.
Lava dripped from the ceiling, great globs of it landing with a hiss right next to me. The rocks rumbled on Blair’s side, almost forcing him to fall. Then they shook on my side again, directly beneath me, pitching me up with the force of a rocket launch.
I lost my grip on Elio’s hands.
A primal scream ripped out of me as I watched him tumble head over heels toward the river. He reached up just once, fingers splayed in a silent plea to help him. I couldn’t watch. I couldn’t look away. Despite the heat surrounding me, my body had turned completely numb.
He hit the river and—
And passed right through.
“What the—?” The lava was dense enough to support his weight. And yet, Elio had merely vanished.
As if the lava hadn’t been there at all.
The Good for Nothings Page 27
