Unequal

by B. E. Sanderson

  “Couldn’t.”

  By pressing her face against his chest as he proceeded down the stairs, she managed an almost normal breath. The stifled sneeze continued to assault her sinuses, adding to her headache and tickling the back of her throat. Except in addition to her worries about alerting the building to their location, she had to worry about throwing off his balance and sending them both tumbling.

  As if sensing her predicament, he stopped at the next landing and set her down. With her face pressed against his chest, she let herself inhale. He smelled of clean sweat and wood smoke. She almost allowed a sneeze to break loose, but once one escaped, she wouldn’t be able to stop the others. After a few minutes free of dust, she could almost breathe normally again.

  “I’m okay.” But the words came out on a rasp of breath.

  “You’re not, but it’s the best we can hope for right now.” Shaking his head, he lifted her into his arms again. “Hold steady and hold tight. We’ll be out of here soon.”

  Keeping her head tucked into his neck meant Rue couldn’t see where they were going. But self-preservation was more important than curiosity. Whatever was inside the DOE wouldn’t make a difference in her life one way or the other. Their escape route would be an unnecessary memory. She didn’t plan on being inside ever again. She’d make them kill her first.

  At some point, their downward progress changed and he began moving them in a straight line. After they’d gone maybe a hundred paces, he set her down. “We should be clear enough here. No one cleans this place either, but it doesn’t look as dusty.”

  She pulled her face away from his shirt and took an unsteady breath. The air was dank, but breathable. From the looks of it, they were somewhere deep beneath the building. Ducts ran overhead alongside bare pipes. The space reminded her of her impromptu hospital home. In an instant, she grew calmer, more settled.

  Finally. As her tension dissipated, a rapid series of sneezes followed. She didn’t bother to stifle any of them. The fact that Crispin didn’t stop her meant they were far enough away to muffle the sound. Instead, he waited. As her body was wracked with uncontrollable sneezes, her mind wandered. The last time she encountered anyone with such an abundance of patience, she’d been with Uncle Howard.

  “Finished?” He held a handkerchief out to her. Unable to speak, Rue accepted his offer and nodded. “Then I suggest we get moving. No one is supposed to be down here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they heard your sneezes all the way upstairs.”

  A shiver went down Rue’s spine until she realized he was making a joke. Not a great one, but the attempt was appreciated. Taking his hand, she let him lead her down the dimly lit walkway. It wasn’t long before they reached the convergence of several other hallways and numerous ducts. It had to be the central hub for the guts of every DOE building.

  “One well placed explosive device would take care of the whole agency.” Once she grasped what she’d said, she wanted to suck all the words back into herself, but the damage was done. Crispin raised his hand toward her, palm open. Rue cringed.

  But instead of the slap she expected, warmth cradled her cheek.

  “Don’t think I haven’t wished for it. Hell, I’ve thought the same thing myself.” She looked into his dark eyes, made darker by the gloom. “But it wouldn’t work.”

  “Not enough explosives or too much to destroy?”

  He laughed. “Pretty much my question after a very wise friend of mine told me it wouldn’t work.”

  “What was his answer?”

  “You can destroy all the physical structures but unless you defeat the ideas they represent, someone will rebuild it all.” He caressed her cheek and she quelled the urge to rub her face against his hand. Her uncle had once touched her as gently. Except his man wasn’t Howard and the feelings he stirred weren’t in any way familial.

  Focusing back on his words, she wanted to rail against them, but she couldn’t deny their truth. Years before, she tried to convince a friend of how wrong the Equality Laws were. She had used every argument her untrained mind could find. She debated and cajoled. She threatened and argued. In the end, she didn’t change anything. The most she managed was a promise to never report her to the DOE. They weren’t friends afterwards, but at least the girl had shown enough empathy to hold her secret.

  Beneath the tangle of wires and pipes, Rue gazed longingly at the support structures. “It seems like such a waste.” She thought about the trio who’d offered her a chance at her dream. Part of her wondered what the life they offered would entail, but she couldn’t have accepted their prize. Not and live with herself afterward. The end result was too costly.

  “Such a waste,” she said again, this time to herself.

  “Their time will come, Logan.”

  Hope rose like a soap bubble in her dirty bucket. “When?”

  EIGHT

  Crispin led Rue down an offshoot from the central hub to a little room with a lockable door. Once he secured them inside, she wandered around the small space. A few cots occupied most of the space, along with an electric heater and what appeared to be a makeshift kitchen. A set of shelves on one side was stocked with dusty, canned goods. Another had games and books. She picked up a well-worn copy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Arching an eyebrow, she held it out for him.

  “Have you read it?” he asked, as he adjusted the lamps to provide a comforting glow. She nodded. “Appropriate, don’t you think?”

  “I can think of a few others you should have down here if you’re going for appropriate.” She tapped the spine of a different volume, “I mean, if this is what I’m guessing it is.”

  “The book?”

  She dropped her hands. “No. This excursion… escape route… whatever.”

  “What’s your verdict?”

  “The first stop on the de-programming tour?”

  He shook his head. “It would be more appropriate to call it the first stop on our Underground Railroad.”

  Rue searched her memory. While her education was beyond what her peers received, she remained at a loss. With access to books at a premium, she had what her mother had squirreled away or what Howard had managed to steal, barter or borrow.

  He shrugged. “I guess you weren’t able to teach yourself as much about history as you did about medicine. Back in the early days of a country called America, people owned other people.”

  “Slaves. I read about them somewhere.”

  “Exactly. Sometimes a slave would escape and free people would help by hiding him. Once they were able, they passed him from one safe place to the next until he reached the northern lands.” She tilted her head. “Up north, everyone was free.”

  “Which was why they needed to get there.”

  “And why they needed an Underground Railroad. Except it wasn’t always underground, and it was rarely a railroad. You’ve heard of those I suppose?”

  “Similar to transports, but they ran on steel bars. Out near the edge of town, there’s a place where two lines of steel bars run under the weeds.” She’d had few occasions in her youth where she would escape her home and wander the fields. The day she found the rails was highlighted in her mind. She spent hours digging until several meters of metal gleamed in the sun. The one thing able to draw her away from her task was her father shouting. Weeks passed before she was allowed outside long enough to visit them again.

  She had been certain those steel bars could transport her away, if she dug enough of them out.

  “Well, this is an underground railroad of sorts.” He sat down on one of the cots. “Justin can explain it all better, but that’s the general idea.”

  She took the cot opposite him. “Who’s Justin?”

  “Get some sleep.” He stretched his arms out over his head. “Unless you’re hungry, then feel free to eat something.”

  Rue was neither hungry nor sleepy. Instead, she lay back on her bed and stared at the ceiling. Within minutes, Crispin’s breathing became slow and constant. Once she was sure he slept, s
he rose and flipped through the reading material. The choices were sparse, and her mind wasn’t settled enough to choose one story over another. The information she craved couldn’t be found in a novel written hundreds of years before she was born.

  But it could be found in the man sleeping a meter away. If he could be persuaded to talk. After years of believing she fought the system alone, she could wait another few hours, but she was too impatient to wait for whoever this Justin person was.

  She closed her eyes for one, measly moment. Then someone shook her awake, and she realized her one moment had lasted hours. Suddenly, she feared someone had invaded her basement home while she slept. Fists clenched and ready to fight off her attackers, she gazed instead into familiar, soft, brown eyes and allowed her stored tension to dissipate.

  Crispin smiled. “Not a morning person?”

  Morning? Could it still be morning? Maybe she hadn’t been out as long as she’d assumed. “I don’t sleep often enough to be any kind of person.” To her own ears, she sounded surly. “How long have you been awake?”

  “Long enough to fix breakfast. Hungry?”

  Her grumbling stomach could mean hunger, or it could be churning from their flight out of the hands of the DOE. Either way, her brain probably wouldn’t allow her to keep the food down. Eating anything while trapped in the belly of the beast seemed too much to bear. “When can we leave?”

  His eyebrows narrowed. “Whenever you’re ready,” he said. “But I fix a mean bowl of cereal.”

  “I’d rather get away from this place, if you don’t mind.”

  He stooped into a low bow. “Your wish is my command.”

  “From Arabian Nights, right?”

  “Or a reasonable facsimile.”

  After packing a few edibles into a small bag, he turned out all the lamps. Using nothing better than a small portable light, he unlocked the door. In a place so dank and dingy, she half-expected the hinges to groan in protest, but they were as soundless as they had been on their arrival. Crispin held her back long enough to scan the hallway.

  “Everything looks okay.”

  With his blessing, she stepped from the room. Once he secured the door behind them, he led her away. The farther they went, the fewer overhead lights they had to see by. At first Rue assumed whoever built the place had spaced them farther apart, but she soon realized the spacing wasn’t different. The bulbs were burnt out.

  “No one else uses these tunnels anymore,” he said, as if anticipating her thoughts. “Which is why they’re so perfect for our purposes.”

  “And who exactly are you? You never did explain, you know.”

  “I told you,” he said over his shoulder. “I’m Crispin.”

  “Not your name. Not even you personally—unless you’re a one man rescue team, defeating the DOE a single Unequal at a time.”

  Rue hadn’t meant to be humorous, but his soft laugh showed her how silly her words were. She allowed herself a small smile. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d felt comfortable enough to joke with another human being. Maybe not since Uncle Howard disappeared.

  “Do you rescue all the Unequals?”

  “As many as we can.”

  They continued in silence until she felt certain he wouldn’t speak until they were out of the tunnels. Finally, his voice echoed through the concrete tubes. “It’s never enough.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to tell me if a certain person—”

  He stopped so quickly, she almost ran into the back of him. “I can’t say anything about any particular individual, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “But—”

  “Seriously. Not a thing about anyone.” The words fell like lead, but she suspected he was dodging the truth.

  “Could Justin tell me?” Maybe trying a different tack would yield better results.

  He didn’t bother replying. He turned and marched off into the darkness, leaving her to jog along toward his pinpoint light. Once she caught up, she grabbed his sleeve. “I’m not going to give up.”

  “The tale isn’t for me to tell. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “You can’t put a cork back in the genie lamp,” she said. “You have to tell me. Either tell me or point the way out.”

  “So you can what? Go back to the hospital?”

  “I’ll find my own way from here on out.” He scoffed at her. “I did it for ten years. I can blend in somewhere else. Maybe I can find my way to another hospital and start over.”

  “You really don’t have a clue what’s been going on outside your little world, do you?” he said, grasping her arm. “You can’t go anywhere without the right authorization, which I’m betting you’ll never get because you gave up your identity a decade ago. You step a few meters into the wrong area and you’ll be picked up. It’s an ugly world up there, Rue, and it’s gotten much uglier while you were hiding in your cave.”

  “I wasn’t hiding. I was helping.”

  “I don’t blame you,” he said, ignoring her protest. “You had a sweet deal. It lasted a whole lot longer than anyone would’ve laid odds on. You’ve been a mouse running around in the walls of your hospital. You were safe and secure, but your safety left you with no concept of what’s been happening in the world.”

  “I watch the videos if I can.”

  “The videos don’t show anything the government doesn’t want the general public to see.”

  “Then tell me what I’ve missed.” He shook his head. “At least tell me who you are and what you’re dragging me into. Explain why it’s so much better than taking my chances without you. Tell me about Justin—”

  His grip tightened until she gasped. After he let go, she could see regret in his eyes but not remorse. “I can’t. Why can’t you be satisfied that you’ll learn everything once we get where we’re going?”

  “Would you be satisfied if a stranger showed up and dragged you into the ground like a worm?”

  “If he saved my life, I would.”

  She placed her hands on her hips and stared Crispin down. “If you’re half the man I think you are, you’d do no such thing. You’d question everything and sort out the answers out later. You wouldn’t stand for half the secrecy I’ve put up with.”

  He opened and closed his mouth several times. Her resolve softened at his obvious distress. “Fine,” she said. “If you can’t give me answers, at least explain why you can’t tell me anything.”

  His features relaxed a fraction. “An easy enough request. It’s in case we get caught between here and there. If you don’t know anything, you can’t tell anyone anything.”

  “What about you?”

  He lifted one eyebrow and shrugged. “I’ll die before I’ll talk. Justin understands that about me. We don’t know anything about you.”

  Fair enough, she thought as the idea burned at her. She didn’t assent aloud, but she snatched his light away and resumed moving forward. Soon she heard his footsteps behind her, keeping pace. He was probably thinking, which was fine with Rue. She had some thinking to do herself.

  Not asking was killing her. All her life, she was tormented by the unasked question. Throughout the years with her father, she’d kept her burning curiosity to herself. Throughout her years under the DOE, she’d held her tongue. She would’ve given anything to never go back to those times, but this wasn’t her choice. Crispin was right to keep her in the dark. But she hated the darkness of ignorance.

  “Why does the sun rise in the east, Mother?” she’d ask. “Why is the sky blue, Uncle Howard?”

  Endless questions had flown out of her young mouth. “What are those birds doing? How many stars are in the sky? Why don’t the other children learn the way I do?” Every time the word why came out of her mouth, her father answered with his open hand. That night was worse because she had mentioned the unmentionable.

  “Why do we have the DOE?” she asked one night, and he slapped her so hard he split her lip. It was the last question she ever asked her f
ather. It was one of the last questions she asked anyone. Instead, she spent the better part of her life tucking her inquiries away inside her gut.

  As much as it niggled at her, if Crispin needed her to remain ignorant for a little while, she would have to allow it. Once they reached where they were going, though, all bets were off. This Justin, whoever he was, had better start answering. And answering fast.

  NINE

  “We’re here,” Crispin said.

  As far as Rue could tell, here wasn’t really anywhere. The exact spot could’ve been any other spot in the maze of tunnels they’d been traversing all day. Several days could’ve passed. They few supplies they brought were long gone. Her legs ached like she’d done forty-eight straight hours of half-janitor, half-doctor. Her eyes were beginning to squint from watching a single beam of light.

  “And where exactly is here?” she asked.

  He pointed his flashlight upwards. A few meters above them was a disk of metal, perhaps wide enough for a large man.

  “We’re supposed to go through there? To where?”

  “That would be telling.” A smirk played along his lips.

  After trudging through tunnels behind him, Rue no longer felt the slightest attraction toward him. He was too positive. He was overly smiley. He never stopped walking. Of course, she never asked to stop, but it was beside the point. Any man with such a singular focus shouldn’t be attractive.

  Unless she admitted she was the same way. The soreness wasn’t letting her admit to any such thing. As far as she was concerned, Crispin was an ass whose sole job was to drag her into misery.

  “And how are we supposed to get up there?”

  He pointed the flashlight again and she felt stupid. Cut into the wall were notches. A ladder of sorts, she supposed. Her mouth closed with a snap. As her teeth clacked together, she hoped her humiliation wasn’t as audible.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I wasn’t too sure where we were going the first time someone led me through here. If I hadn’t pointed the rungs out, you would’ve had a hard time finding them on your own.”