Diamond City

by Francesca Flores

  Despite that, there remained a simmering tension between them as silence descended in the tunnel. Their shoulders touched, connecting them. He smelled like the forest after a spring rain. Without meaning to, she found herself leaning closer, hoping he wouldn’t move. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and caught him looking at her.

  Her heart pounded, and between the beats, she told herself over and over that Ryuu wasn’t Kohl. Ryuu wasn’t the person who’d given her a way off the streets and a chance to reach for more than what she’d been given.

  She shoved aside the doubts and steadied her breaths to fall asleep. She looked away from Ryuu and closed her eyes, but didn’t move her shoulder away.

  Tomorrow they’d break into the Tower’s prison and free Teo, and then go back to searching for Kouta with the threats of Kohl, Tannis, and the Sentinel’s reward for her capture hanging over them.

  But for a few hours, she could pretend they were the same in their loss and loneliness, and that this warmth between them would persist even after they found his brother. For tonight, at least, that warmth would drive away the darkness surrounding them.

  27

  A loud, intrusive sound woke Aina after only a few hours of sleep. For a moment, she was back in the alley, Kohl’s fist slamming into her skull with a jolting thud.

  But the noise was just a drill being used in the subway tunnels parallel to this corridor. Raurie had already stood and put away their candles as Ryuu rose. He withdrew from his pack a paper bag carefully taped closed. With a small knife, he cut the tape and unrolled the paper to reveal a handful of black sticks tied together. A long black string hung out from the end of them and unfurled as he held up the dynamite.

  “We need to tie this to the grate,” he said, tilting his head back to look at the wide grate blocking off the vent. “There’s a thin rope in Raurie’s pack we can use for that. When I light the string with a match, it’ll burn up, giving us enough time to get away before it blows. The construction should cover the noise.”

  “I’ll do it,” Aina said in as brave a voice as she could manage, but the drills and the shouting from the subway tunnel nearly drowned out her voice. Squaring her shoulders, she approached the handholds in the wall and stared up into the ventilation shaft.

  She hated the darkness. People could sneak up on you in the dark and snuff out your life with the press of a trigger. She preferred to navigate Kosín by the grit of its streets and the height of its roofs than the depths of its shadows. Now she had to crawl into the darkness above, deep into the ventilation shaft and into the prison cells that she’d tried to avoid since she was a child.

  Noticing she’d frozen in place, Ryuu tapped her shoulder. “Are you okay? I can do it instead.”

  “I’m fine,” she said in a slightly high-pitched voice.

  In her memories, she heard her father’s gruff voice as he told her to be strong, that the lightning flashing across a gray sky was hope in darkness, that there was no need to hide from a coming storm because the harder it raged, the closer it was to moving away.

  She’d faced plenty of dark places before, and she would face all of them at once if it meant saving Teo.

  Ryuu handed her the dynamite and Raurie gave her a short length of rope. She gritted her teeth and climbed up, using the handholds and footholds cut into the wall.

  With one hand, she slipped the rope through the openings in the metal grate, then fastened the ends of the rope tightly around the pack of the explosives.

  Once she reached the ground again, she and Raurie stepped back while Ryuu struck a match. The flame glowed bright orange in the dimly lit tunnel. He placed the flame to the end of the string. It sizzled and crackled, traveling fast up the string toward the dynamite. They ran back down the hall and around a corner.

  As soon as they took cover, the dynamite exploded. The sound crashed through the corridor like thunder. She winced and clenched her hand around the edge of the wall, expecting someone to come running at any moment. But the sound of the explosion blended so well with the ever-present thrum of drills in the tunnels beyond that no one else listening would be able to differentiate them.

  When silence fell once more, they walked back to the site of the explosion, ears ringing, and stared up into the ventilation shaft. The metal grate had been obliterated, bits and pieces of its shattered frame strewn across the floor. Some of its foundation was still lodged into the wall, but they’d be able to move around it.

  “You know,” she said to Ryuu with a small smile, “when you said you would open doors for me, this wasn’t what I had in mind.”

  He smiled back at her. “Ready?”

  She nodded and climbed first, with Ryuu and Raurie following at a steady pace. She brushed away a few cobwebs that got in the way, hoping no spiders would appear, or else she’d probably panic and fall right off the ladder. Thankfully, none did, and she reached the top of the ventilation shaft in one piece.

  Once all three of them climbed over and into a new corridor, they proceeded with the light of one flickering white bulb halfway down. Fifty feet away, more light poured through a small window set near the top of a door. Aina placed a finger to her lips, then gestured for them to follow her to the door.

  She’d heard how the Tower’s prison held ten stories of cells in the central pod, with only two of the floors above ground. It was rumored to be dark enough that after one day, you craved the sun, and after a week, you forgot what the sun felt like. It made her wonder once more how Kohl had managed to get out after his boss’s betrayal had landed him in prison. After all, no prisoner was allowed outside for even a minute unless General Bautix himself allowed it. Families scrounged together whatever kors they could, or took out loans from gangs, to try to bribe Bautix into releasing their loved one. Once a year, he freed a prisoner, just often enough to keep families’ hopes high and their wallets open.

  They reached the door. Standing on her toes to peer through it, Aina looked out into the prison for the first time and couldn’t help the shudder that stole through her.

  They were on the fourth level. Six stories extended above, but their heights disappeared from the view out of the small window. The three floors below were visible but mostly hidden in shadows with dim orange lights hung at intervals between cells. This center of the prison was set in a square fashion, with four walls of cells facing each other. A narrow walkway lined the walls.

  From her position, she saw the edge of the walkway beyond her door, then twenty feet of empty space separating them from the opposite wall. Staircases were set in two of the corners, and doors were at the others.

  No guards were visible, but footsteps sounded nearby beyond her line of sight. Though there was minimal lighting on each floor, a pair of floodlights shone down from above, highlighting parts of the prison structure. She watched for a few minutes, noticing the lights moved in a random pattern, but that they changed roughly every three to five seconds.

  “Nothing but to go for it,” she whispered to the other two as the footsteps faded away. Fear flashed through Ryuu’s eyes for the briefest second, but he smothered it and tightened his grip around the handle of Teo’s gun. Raurie’s expression was unreadable, but judging by the sharp dagger she’d withdrawn from her pack, she was ready to fight.

  Without wasting another word, Aina pulled open the door and stepped onto the walkway.

  A sharp intake of breath to her left. She spun, but Ryuu had already grabbed the Diamond Guard who stood next to the door. He slammed the guard into the wall of the corridor they’d just left and placed Teo’s gun to the back of the man’s head.

  “Someone gag him,” he hissed while fighting to keep the guard in place.

  Raurie worked quickly, as if this weren’t the first time she’d ever made a gag in her life. She tightened the cloth in the guard’s mouth and around his head. Aina peered around the door again, checking the ends of the walkway where it turned the corner and curved along the other three walls of the prison struct
ure. In seconds, Raurie had finished tying ropes tightly around the guard’s hands and feet.

  “There are a few guards posted along the walkway between cell doors,” Aina whispered to the others. “If we’re quiet, we should be able to sneak along without being seen. But if those floodlights land on us, we’re as good as dead.”

  “Sounds just as risky as any other day with you,” Ryuu said.

  She glanced at him sharply, about to retort, but then noticed the slight upturn of his lips.

  Leading the way, Aina measured her breath in time with her steps to stay calm. As soon as the two bright floodlights whipped their beams in a different direction, she moved, in that split second between each change. With a steady rhythm, they made their way across the narrow balcony, past darkened cell doors, and reached the shadowed corner.

  Peering over the balcony as they went, Aina noticed something shining far below, a crystalline surface in the prison’s courtyard with several guards walking across it. It offered a shred of light in the prison’s overwhelming darkness.

  Noticing her gaze, Ryuu whispered, “Do you see the courtyard floor? It’s made out of rough diamonds confiscated from magic users during the war. There’s thousands of diamonds under that glass floor. The Tower has a lot of floors like this, but General Bautix insisted on keeping one here too, to remind inmates why so many of them are here.”

  Aina’s first thought was how much money she could get for selling all those diamonds, but then the floodlight positions switched, and a bright circle illuminated the cell door inches from where she crouched. Jerking away, she nearly bumped into Ryuu, who grabbed her shoulder to pull her back from the light.

  The lights switched again. They continued along the next wall, Aina trying to calm her nerves. Though this was the only way to proceed, she still hated being in the dark. Her throat began to close, and her breaths turned shallow like she was inhaling glue again, but she kept going.

  Halfway down the balcony, she paused, then beckoned Ryuu and Raurie closer.

  “Two guards are there. See them together near the door at the corner?” When they nodded, she took a dagger from inside her jacket. “I’ll be right back.”

  28

  Before they could try to stop her, she continued down the walkway, keeping her footsteps quiet. The guards faced away from her, chatting casually, but as she approached, one of them stopped talking. He turned and raised his gun when she stepped out into the center of the balcony.

  “Stop where you are!” he said, then blew on his whistle sharply.

  Leaping out of the way, she threw a knife into the man’s throat at the same time that he fired the gun. She slammed into the railing of the walkway, inches from sliding off to fall two stories down. Her heart pounded in her chest. The bullet had banged into the bars of a cell.

  The inmate inside yelled out, and other prisoners rushed to the doors of their cells to see what was happening, all of them shouting out taunts to the guards. The floodlight shifted and landed near her. She scrambled away from it and clung to the edge of the balcony.

  The other guard lifted his gun. The light moved again. In the chaos of the shouting prisoners, footsteps rushing nearby and whistles blaring above, Raurie had sneaked up behind the second guard and stopped him in place with her dagger at his throat.

  In seconds, Aina retrieved her knife from the other guard’s body and took Raurie’s position, allowing Raurie to bind his hands.

  “Thanks,” she said as Raurie finished and stood back with Ryuu.

  “I grew up in the Stacks,” Raurie said, her hands trembling a little, but her voice steady. “Cowering and letting other people do the hard work are not among the skills you learn there.”

  Aina pressed the tip of her dagger into the guard’s flesh, making him gulp. “Lead me to Teo Matgan’s cell,” she whispered. “He was brought in last night to be interrogated. Utter a sound or take us to the wrong place, and I will rip your throat apart. Move.”

  He nodded at a door near the corner. Ryuu opened it, peered inside to make sure no guards were waiting there, and waved for the others to follow. As they slipped inside, guards ran down the staircases lining the center of the prison, missing them by moments as the door swung shut behind them. They ran down two flights of stairs to the second lowest level of the prison.

  The guard nodded at the door on the second-floor landing. Aina gestured at Ryuu to check outside it. Holding his gun ahead of him like a shield, he peered through the door, then gestured for them to follow.

  They exited the stairwell two levels above the diamond floor of the courtyard. Shouts from guards running to the sounds of the gunshot returned in full force, but most were from above, where they’d left the body of the other guard. This floor was now empty except for the cells.

  “Go,” she hissed as the guard hesitated, making a small nick on his jaw with her knife. He winced, then moved.

  Ryuu and Raurie walked slightly behind them to watch for any guards who might come their way. With Aina forcing the guard forward every few feet, they soon reached the cell.

  Her chest tightened as Aina took in Teo through the bars, his wrists shackled to the prison wall behind him. His hair had fallen in front of his eyes and the top half of his face. Cuts and bruises lined his jaw and shoulders.

  She elbowed the guard hard in the back. He glanced down to his belt, where a set of keys was attached. She unclipped the keys and rifled through them until he nodded at the correct one. The cell door creaked open inward after she inserted and turned the key.

  Her grip tightened around the handle of her knife. Every instinct in her body told her to slice through this guard’s neck so he would never speak.

  She’d made too many mistakes, hesitating before kills, letting people like Kouta and Tannis get away. Kohl’s voice shouted in her head, telling her to never waste a single moment. An unsteady breath left her, and she watched the hair rise on the back of the guard’s neck as he trembled in her grip. He knew what was coming next.

  But she also heard Kohl telling her to be judicial in her kills. Only the target mattered.

  Assassins were a means to an end, a way to avoid massacres in a city where blood was so valued. Fury could never get the best of her. Neither could revenge or fear.

  Frustration prickled through her at the thought. She could kill this man, or not. Either way, Kohl’s voice was the one telling her what to do. No matter what she did, her actions followed Kohl’s will somehow. She bit her lip so hard, she tasted blood.

  Without another thought, she knocked out the guard with a slam of the hilt of her knife to his temple. He dropped to the ground, and she stepped into the cell.

  The guards had only had Teo for half a day, but blood matted his hair and face, with dark bruises underneath. Gulping, she began unlocking him from his chains.

  “Why are you here?” he asked in a harsh rumble of a voice.

  “We came to join you. Prison’s more fun with friends, don’t you think?”

  When the chains came loose, he pushed away from her, back into the wall.

  “Teo, it’s me!” she hissed, holding up her hands.

  “Get away from me,” he said in a ragged voice.

  She stepped back immediately, her heart clenching in her chest. After a few seconds, Teo pushed the hair from his face. His hand came away bloody.

  She squeezed her eyes shut for a brief second, trying to calm the anger that swept through her. If Teo had been a Steel, they would never do this to him. If he’d had Ryuu’s privilege, he could get away with so much more than simply helping a fugitive escape.

  “We’re getting you out of here.”

  “I said, ‘get away,’” he hissed, and for a second, she thought he was going to lunge at her. But while he looked too weak to even swing a fist, his eyes were fierce and full of hatred—a venomous look directed at her.

  The sight of it made her nauseous, made her wish she was anywhere other than here. But she deserved his anger. She was the reason his mot
her was dead.

  When she next spoke, the words tasted like bitter poison in her mouth. “When we get out of here, you can hate me as much as you want. But if you don’t get up now, I’ll drag you out.”

  “What is the point?” he asked, turning his head so she could hardly see his face.

  “Please,” she said, reaching out to help him stand, but he lifted his arm to block her from coming any closer.

  “I can walk,” he spat out as he used his other hand to help push himself up the wall, knees shaking.

  Fighting the urge to raise an eyebrow, she gave him distance, but stayed close enough to help if he needed it. They left the cell to rejoin Ryuu and Raurie on the walkway. Both of them instantly moved toward Teo, but he shook them off.

  “I’m fine,” he insisted. “If you help me too much, we won’t get out of here at all. What’s the plan?”

  “No idea,” Aina said. “Ryuu, could any of these other corridors lead to the subway tunnels again?”

  He gave a half shrug, half nod. “They might, but if we have to blow up another vent, the sound of the explosion could draw the guards toward us. They’re on the lookout for intruders now.”

  “Then how about we use an explosion to draw them away?” Aina whispered, her gaze moving up the walls of the prison that twisted narrower and narrower like a bottleneck the farther up they went.

  Whistles still blared, but the most activity was on the floor they’d come from. Both floodlights were trained on that floor, so everywhere else was left in darkness. Prisoners were still shouting, taunting the guards and each other, their voices echoing and causing even more confusion. The prisoners on this floor had gathered at the doors of their cells, shouting for her to free them too, but their voices soon blended in with the din.