She’d suffered the longest night of her life after the meeting in Shy’s tent the evening before. After she’d left, she spent hours searching for Jace. She checked their quarters. She checked the meal area. She checked the docks and even the guard sector. The only place she hadn’t checked were the bathrooms.
She frowned. She’d check the bathrooms after this.
A yawn built in her chest and pressed out her mouth in a silent gape. She hadn’t slept long; two hours, maybe less. Shy barged in only a half hour ago and shook Tayel awake.
The early morning — before the sun even rose — was the best time to sneak into the forest, Shy’d explained to Tayel and Fehn on their hike to the docks. It was when the most workers were on scheduled sleep. Not a lot of shuttles came in at this hour, either. Tayel couldn’t see the difference. It sure felt like there were a lot of guards to avoid. They’d almost been spotted three times getting into the restricted area. Shy stopped. Tayel couldn’t do the same in time and stumbled onto her.
“Get a grip,” Shy said.
Tayel regained her balance. “Sorry.”
“I’ve been back here,” Fehn whispered, “and I’ve never found a way out.”
“Then you weren’t looking hard enough.” Shy gestured to the door.
“Yeah. I saw that before, too.” He rapped his finger on the keypad in the wall. “But this, this is the problem.”
Shy rolled her eyes and punched a few numbers into the touchscreen. The door gave a metallic click. She opened it, poked her head inside, and gestured for everyone to go in. Tayel took a chance look to where they’d come from. She was actually going through with this. Mom wouldn’t have thought kindly of stealing. She stepped through the doorway.
The ceiling was low inside. A lone light hung from it, casting dull yellow rays over the dirt floor. A pair of rovers sat parked in the corner. Small things, but they would beat walking.
“Don’t even think about it,” Shy said, shouldering past. “We aren’t taking one of the vehicles. It could give us away.”
“We’re walking?” Tayel asked. Her legs threatened to collapse under her.
“That’s the idea.” Shy led the way into the tunnel entrance past the rovers.
Tayel couldn’t see the end of it. “So where does this lead, exactly?”
“The woods. They draw the fuel lines through here,” Shy said, running her hand along one of the large tubes built into the wall. “The dock workers fill barrels sometimes as well — probably for the smaller sub-transports in each shuttle.”
“Is it possible we’ll run into workers in the woods then? Or this path?” Tayel glanced backward.
“I suppose it’s possible, but I’ve taken this route a few times in the last week to study its reliability. It’s sound enough. Workers seem to use it once every three days for basic maintenance.”
“What happens if we do see someone?” Tayel couldn’t help asking. Jace’s warnings of life imprisonment and death played over and over in her head.
Shy answered with silence, which wasn’t exactly comforting. They walked for a while, until, after a turn, Tayel could see a door at the end of the tunnel. It was an enormous steel thing, out of place in the cave. At least they were almost there. In between thoughts of prison food and morality, a dull rumble filled her head. She frowned.
Shy stopped. “Wait.”
Fehn halted, as did Tayel. Her heart pounded as the rumble grew louder. The ground trembled with the same frequency as the sound. It had to be a rover. People were coming.
“Xite!” Shy spat. “Go! Run!”
Tayel sprinted. She kept her weight on her toes so she wouldn’t make much noise, and pumped her arms until they burned. Her head spun. The sound of the rover followed them up the incline, growing louder with each passing second. Tayel should have listened to Jace. She’d go to prison, just like he’d warned.
She reached the door exhausted, every breath an effort. She pressed her hand to her chest and heaved. The rover roared louder.
Shy smashed a sequence of numbers into the keypad. It blinked red. “Xite!”
“Hurry it up, Shy,” Fehn growled.
Dim white light appeared in the tunnel behind them — headlights.
“Shy.” Tayel’s voice sounded far away, her head suddenly weightless.
Shy punched in another number. The keypad turned green, and the door unlocked. Tayel stumbled out into the open air. Voices carried on a conversation up ahead, next to a pair of giant fuel tanks. The beam of a flashlight appeared, tracing a path toward the door as it closed. Tayel leapt into a bush on the right. Small branches gouged into her exposed skin. As the flashlight glazed over where she hid, she stopped breathing. Shy and Fehn were not with her.
“Vern?” the voice ahead called. “That you?
Her heart would burst from her chest at any moment, she was certain.
“That’s weird.”
The flashlight bobbled as footsteps drew closer. Light penetrated Tayel’s sanctuary, seeping through the leaves and making patchy shadows on her clothes. Every nick and mark itched like crazy. The door to the tunnel slammed open and she bit her inner cheek to stifle a yell. A rover rolled into the grass. The flashlight beam departed the bush as the man who carried it greeted the vehicle.
“Hey, Vern.”
“Don’t ‘hey, Vern” me. You two are hours ahead of schedule. Making me get my ass up early…”
Tayel lost track of whatever else the two men said to one another and just focused on her breathing. She rummaged around inside the bush, slowly moving her limbs through the tiny branches and wincing as they dug into her arms. The brush behind her was too thick to slip into — she wouldn’t fit. The next closest bet was a shrub a few yards away, but it would require a dash too daring to reach. The man with the flashlight hadn’t spotted her, so maybe she’d be okay just staying put. She didn’t know what the guards were doing, but they were taking forever. Her whole body itched with cuts and her muscles seemed permanently flexed.
Finally, the rover roared back to life and drove toward the door. Tayel froze as the headlight beams hit her hiding spot, but the vehicle kept going. It rose and fell over a small rock, and a barrel tipped over the side. It fell to the grass with a thump and then a swish swish sound as fuel splashed around inside.
“Dammit,” one of the guards mumbled.
Tayel swallowed.
Two men stepped out of the rover and stood beside the barrel, their feet inches from her face. She closed her eyes.
They lifted their fuel, loaded it into the back of the rover, and then they were gone, the door slamming shut behind them. Air exploded from her lungs and she burst from the bush, collapsing into the cool grass.
“Red.” Fehn stumbled out from the brush on the other side of the door. “You okay?”
She took a long breath. “Yeah.” The door stood shut, but at any moment the guards could decide they needed another barrel’s worth of fuel. “Let’s just hurry up.”
“Come on, then.” Shy pulled away from the other bush, swiping twigs off her arms and out of her long hair.
“I thought you said you’d studied the routes,” Fehn spat.
“You heard the driver; they’re working ahead of schedule. We all knew this was a risk. Are you two going to mope about it, or should we get going?”