Farther down the line, a fat worker yelled. “Just look at the hands, and then push the body forward!”
“No shit, Sherlock,” his skinny friend scoffed, and rolled his eyes. “You call the Feds yet? Reckon the chancellor’ll wanna hear ’bout this.”
How could I have been so stupid? I’d given away the whole plan. The Feds were on their way, and Phoenix and Mila were nowhere to be found. I was a dead man.
The fat man jammed a finger in his nose as he searched the corpses for gold or valuables. “Can’t believe they quarantined the club over something like this. Does it even matter if we find him? He’s headed for the incinerator either way.”
The skinny one slapped the fat one.
“What was the hell was that for?”
The feeling was returning to my fingertips and toes. I tried to scoot myself farther back on the conveyer belt, away from the two men, but I still couldn’t move.
“’Cause you’re stupid! You really think the chancellor wants the kid to burn?”
The fat man belched loudly. “Uh—yup.”
“Cheese and crackers… You’re dumber than a frickin’ squirrel chasin’ a dishwasher. It’s like my Grams used to say: Easier to kill a fish in one hand than shoot two birds in a barrel.”
“What the hell are you even saying? Hey—where’s Stevens? And everybody else?”
I was getting very close to the two men now. Any minute they’d check my hands, and I’d be caught. But just as my body slid past them on the conveyor belt, the lights flickered. The fat one grabbed my foot. I tried to kick him, but my toes barely wiggled.
Then the lights went out, and he let go. The sound of splattering liquid echoed, and the sharp stench of gasoline rose from the floor.
The skinny one sucked in a breath. “What in the name of turkey tots is goin’ on ’round here?”
Someone struck a match. A single flame hovered in front of the two men, lighting the face of the man behind it—Phoenix. “Don’t move,” he said. He dropped the match. The floor around the men burst into flames, trapping them in a ring of fire. Mila stood nearby, a canister of something—gasoline, I guessed—held in her hands.
“HELP US!” screamed the two men. “ANYONE, PLEASE! THESE SHIRTS ARE HIGHLY FLAMMABLE!”
Mila turned to the conveyer belt. “You in there, Kai?”
I tried to move my tongue, but it caught in my throat.
“No use asking,” said Phoenix. “He’s still paralyzed.”
“We’re just letting him burn in the incinerator then?” Mila shrugged. “Fine by me.”
Phoenix pulled a gun on the two screaming men. “How do we turn it off?”
Their faces went cold.
“We’ll never tell you,” said the fat one.
Mila shook the gas canister in her hand. “Really? ’Cause I think that’d be in your best interest.”
The skinny one laughed. “Go ahead. We’re already dead as a doorbell after this screw-up. Besides,” he shook his head and narrowed his beady eyes, “the longer you stand here, the closer the Feds get to the club.”
Mila snarled and dropped the canister, then began yanking corpses off the belt. I was already fifteen feet away—there were at least forty corpses between us—and getting farther from Mila every second. I’d never be pulled off in time. Ahead, a mechanical arm sliced Daisies from the necks of corpses, and beyond that roared the incinerator.
Phoenix glanced at his wristwatch. “It’s 12:20.”
Mila nodded and kept pulling corpses. Phoenix fired his gun at the fat man’s foot. He fell, screaming. The skinny one cackled.
“You’re next.” Phoenix winked. “And I’m aiming for your groin.”
The skinny man fell silent, and the fat one moaned.
“Three seconds,” said Phoenix, aiming his gun.
The mechanical arm sliced the side of my neck. My Daisy dropped to the floor with a clunk.
The skinny man crossed his legs to shield his groin. “Back wall to the right,” he blurted. “Code is 5257.”
The incinerator’s heat burned my toes. I had only enough feeling in my legs to twist my ankles away, shielding them behind a corpse.
Phoenix kept his gun trained on the skinny man as Mila tried the code. The conveyer belt screeched to a halt. It felt like the bottoms of my feet were burning. Mila yanked body after body to the floor. The men in the circle of fire sobbed.
I flapped a wrist hard against the conveyer belt. Mila ran to where I lay.
“You all right there?” she asked. I nodded yes. “Can you use your voice yet?”
I let out a low groan.
She tossed me over her shoulder. “Right, then.” Either she was strong or I was really light. Probably a combination of the two.
Phoenix lowered his gun. “Let’s go.”
There was a bang against the room’s steel doors, and the men in the ring of fire burst into laughter. The Feds were here. We were surrounded.
Phoenix tossed a couple of small packages at the foot of the doors as the sounds of marching feet echoed from beyond them, and then his eyes darted to the ceiling. It was twelve feet high and unfinished. Metal air ducts hung above wooden planks.
Phoenix yanked several belts from the waists of corpses and tied them together. The marching beyond the doors grew louder. He tossed his makeshift rope toward the ceiling and over a wooden beam, then secured it with a knot.
He motioned for Mila to climb. “I’ll take the kid.”
Mila pulled herself up the rope and swung her feet over the beam, then motioned for Phoenix to do the same. He threw me over his shoulder like a rag doll and shimmied up the rope with surprising ease. When he joined Mila on the beam, he pulled up the rope behind him and patted my back. “You all right?”
I nodded and curled my toes and fingers. “GUH!”
The room’s doors burst open, and immediately the sounds of marching echoed throughout the space. I tried to plug my ears with my fingers, but my elbows were still numb, and my hands just shook a little at the wrists.
Phoenix pressed a button in his pocket, and bombs exploded at the doors.
“Gerr pacca-juhs!” I shouted. “Guh berhms ger da pacca-juhs!” The packages. The bombs were the packages.
Chaos broke out below us. The fat and skinny men in the ring of fire of fire screamed and babbled something about corpses’ belts leading toward the ceiling.
Phoenix tossed me over his shoulder again, then leaped through the rafters, jumping from beam to beam as Mila followed.
We stopped at some metal vents just above the incinerator. The vents’ metal tubing curved around, carrying on past the incinerator toward other rooms.
Phoenix pulled a pen from his pocket and pushed a button on its side. A red beam shot from its end and he sliced a square out of the vent’s metal sheath. It hadn’t been a pen at all, but the laser I’d seen in Bertha’s lab. At least some of Bertha’s inventions worked the way they were supposed to.
Mila crawled into the vents first, and Phoenix pushed my body in behind her, then joined us in the vents’ metal tubing.
Thin wisps of smoke rose from behind us. These vents weren’t used for air conditioning—they were used as a chimney, to carry smoke away from the incinerator and out of the nightclub.
Phoenix held a hand to his ear and nodded. “Sparky just radioed me the Indigo’s coordinates. It’s farther back in the club. We can get there through the vents.”
We crawled on our hands and knees, making our way through the vents as Phoenix barked directions. I was slowly regaining use of my arms and legs, but still, Phoenix had to push me along, and for the most part I just slid along like a limp rag.
Suddenly, there was a whoosh, and a wave of smoke and wall of heat lunged at us from behind. The incinerator had been turned back on, and its fires filled the vents with smog and heat.