“Will!”
He turned the handle on the door. “It’s not even locked,” he muttered with what sounded like disgust. With no knob to open the door from the inside, there was no need to lock it from the outside. But now that it was ajar, I wasted no time joining him.
The hallway was dingy and grimy. No sign of life. The walls were covered in chipped white paint and orange rust. We passed open doors and empty cells. If the prison had held other captives, they were long gone. We moved stealthily toward a pair of double doors at the end of the short hallway. Will put a finger to his lips, although that was unnecessary. My feet glided over the floor without weight or friction. It felt as if my body had escaped gravity, floating just a few centimeters above the surface. Despite the pain in my shoulder and our desperate situation, we had escaped.
Now we were on a steel island, policed by a private army.
We moved like ghosts. Nearby there was water: moisture in the air, on the crease of my neck, in the folds of my elbows and knees. The crinkly, crunchy dryness that was usually my skin felt elastic here, plumped with a thousand invisible molecules. I plucked at the back of my hand, just to make certain, and it sprang back into place without a wrinkle.
When we reached the double doors, they were unlocked. We pushed through into a hallway as clean and white as a medical ward. Even the air had a different smelclass="underline" freshly filtered and oxidized. Electronic sensors dotted the walls, and there were tiny cameras positioned in the corners. I pointed to one, and Will nodded—he had already seen them. If there were cameras, there were screens somewhere with people watching. But no alarms rang, and no one rushed from the shadows to stop us.
Will hugged the wall, and I followed. The creaking sound was more evident here, and the floors were definitely swaying—it wasn’t just my imagination. There was another sound too, like a wireless broadcast. Voices rising and falling, but without the soothing music found in the water conservation programs in the mornings. We moved toward the sound along the wall as it curved, then widened into a common area. The voices became more pronounced: stern, scolding, lecturing, like teachers at school—except no one seemed in charge. They spoke over each other, interrupting and arguing, and no voice took the lead for more than a few moments. I had the feeling it would not end well for the losing side. Will held up one hand, and I stopped, trying not to breathe. My heart thumped as loud as a drum in my chest. From the other side of the hallway, two men emerged into the common area. They wore a dark blue—nearly black—uniform, and their muscles rippled through their shirts. Both had communicators in their ears, security shields dangling from their necks, and heavy firearms on their belts. I squeezed against the wall, trying to press myself into two dimensions. The men were nearly upon us, and I was certain we would be caught and returned to our cells—or worse.
Then there was an electronic squawk, and one of the guards began talking into the air. He signaled to the other guard, and they reversed direction, walking in a heavy-booted fashion back the way they had come. In a moment all was clear.
I relaxed and slid down the wall. Will made certain the guards had withdrawn, and then we eased forward carefully until we reached the common area. There were several couches gathered around a blue glass table and two wireless screens on the wall broadcasting a news feed. The doors were now directly in front of us, and a second set of doors to our right—that’s where the voices were. I stayed close to Will, my hand on his elbow. He pushed gently at the release latch, but the doors were locked. There was a small window above eye level, about as high as Will could reach on his tiptoes. He leaned against me for support and stretched.
His slow intake of breath was like the sound as all the air exits a balloon.
“What is it?” I whispered.
But he just shook his head and slowly sank back down on his heels. “You look,” he said. He laced his fingers together, and I hesitated, then tentatively placed one foot in his hands. I braced myself with my good arm against the wall, and pushed myself as high as I could climb. Will lifted me until my eyes just cleared the window, and I could make out the mahogany-paneled room with its vases of real fresh flowers and two small trees.
I was not good with politics or government. I wasn’t interested in deal-making or brinksmanship, and I couldn’t distinguish an undersecretary from an overseer. But there was no mistaking the perfectly coiffed hair of the Canadian prime minister or the sun-baked face of the president of Minnesota. There were also several WABs I recognized from the wireless, and the chief administrator of Arch. His beard was neatly trimmed, and the skin on his face was unnaturally tight, as if it had been screwed onto his skull. At the front of the table was Torq, his smooth head like an egg, hands steepled beneath his hairless chin.
What were they doing here, together in the same room? Sworn enemies, gathered around the table, not fighting but debating, arguing like old friends?
“Hey, you!” a guard’s voice bellowed. “Halt!”
CHAPTER 16
We dashed back down the hallway, veering away from the prison wing and heading for a single blue door at the far end that promised Emergency Exit. The guard’s communicator squawked loudly, and his boots thumped as he ran after us. Will was limping, and my shoulder ached, and there was no way we could outrun a muscular man even if we weren’t both injured.
Will flung the door open. Steel stairs stretched up and down, with no platform in sight. Whichever way we went was a gamble, playing cards we hadn’t been dealt. Will went down. I followed. The door clanged shut behind us. We took two steps at a time, our feet skidding on metal. I kept one hand on the railing and the other reaching for Will. My balance precarious, my grip slipping, I fought hard to stay upright.
Despite the sign and the emergency, there appeared to be no exit. The stairs corkscrewed down as far as I could see. Overhead, men shouted, and we heard the heavy clanking of their heels on the stairs. I focused on Will’s back, locked on the one thing I could trust. The world compressed into a single point of his spine.
“Here, Vera, quick!” Will commanded.
He stopped so suddenly that we nearly collided. He was kneeling before an open hatch. It was about thirty centimeters in diameter—no bigger than a mine shaft and just wide enough for a skinny teen.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Water gutter,” said Will.
“We don’t know where it goes!”
“It goes down!” said Will. That was enough for him. “Come on!”
The men were getting closer. Their squawkings were unmistakable. It was capture or the unknown. I dove. Will followed. Down we plunged. It felt like a nightmare—one of those dreams where you are falling and yet never seem to reach the ground. Arms and legs beyond your control. Eyes unable to focus. I tumbled and banged against the slippery sides, yet nothing slowed my fall.
Then I was suddenly plunged into something cold and liquid, brackish and wet. Water! We were in the ocean! But I had no time to be amazed. I was still falling, and now there was water over my head. I knew I shouldn’t breathe, but the urge to take a breath was powerful. I had no idea how to swim, although I knew that’s what people used to do. Once there were even giant pools of fresh water for no purpose other than swimming—not even drinking—and athletes played games to see who could swim fastest.
But now I was drowning. Strange: at the time I didn’t even know the word. My lungs ached, and my brain felt as if it were burning. I flailed wildly in the water, kicking hard. Seawater went up my nose and stung my eyes. My mouth filled.
I might have died. I should have died. But my flailing propelled me back to the surface, where my head broke through at the last possible moment before I lost consciousness. I gulped in great breaths, bobbing on the surface. The water’s abnormal salt content kept me afloat, even though I had no idea how to swim or tread water. I was also sheltered by giant steel piers. From below the enormous structure looked like a hovering spacecraft in bad need of a paint job. The gutter through which we had plunged was just one of an intricate series of pipes, conduits, cylinders, and ducts that sucked in seawater, processed and transformed it, then dispatched it to giant holding tanks while dumping the poisonous residue back into the ocean.