Undaunted

by Kat Falls

  Before the country took a giant step backward, thanks to his mother.

  “But what if a lock breaks?” The last thing I wanted was a showdown with a slavering feral in a dark maze.

  “Won’t happen. But if it does, steel barriers will shoot up from the floor and seal off the corridor. Then the guard up in the skybox will fill the hot zone with sleeping gas.”

  “Lull?” I asked, spotting the blue levers mounted to the right of every door.

  “Exactly,” Everson said. “We put the subjects to sleep when we need to enter their cells.”

  Okay. All that sounded good. But just the same, I snatched the bite-proof flak jacket out of my backpack and put it on. Only then did I slink past the first door. Movement within caught my eye. I paused to peer past my reflection into the shadowy cell beyond, only to jolt back with a shriek when a man launched into the glass. A jagged row of thorny growths bisected his scalp like a scaly Mohawk.

  I pressed against the opposite wall, staring at him, trying to make myself believe that he couldn’t get to me as he slammed himself into the glass again and again. With every hit, writing exploded across the door’s surface: numbers and dates.

  “Stay in the middle of the path.” Everson strode toward me, stopping just before the first cell, though I didn’t know why he bothered. How much more stirred up could a feral get?

  I eyed the creature and repressed a shudder. “I thought you said the cure is working.”

  “It is. He’s not infectious.”

  “He’s not sane!” I slid farther down the passage, my back to the wall.

  “We can’t fix brain damage that’s already happened. The serum only deals with the virus.”

  I had to get the cure to Rafe before the virus made its way into his brain. Before he went feral.

  “Lane …” Everson warned just as I sensed a presence.

  I whirled and came face-to-face with a grinning madman, saliva dripping, baring unnaturally large and crooked teeth. My body forgot there was unbreakable glass between us, and my brain didn’t believe it anyhow. When he leaned in and dragged his tongue up the glass as if licking my face, I’d had enough. I bolted, racing through the corridors while following the light trail around curves and corners. I made myself glance into the dark cells as I tore past.

  Most of them had to be in stage three of the disease — the last stage: psychosis. They flung themselves at the walls and ripped apart bedding, their mouths open and foamy — all without a sound. Only my pounding feet broke the silence. But those occupants weren’t the ones who rekindled my anger at Everson. It was the ones who were clearly sane. Some rapped at the glass, trying to get my attention as I jogged by. Others gestured frantically while silently pleading for help. And then there were those cloaked in a sadness so profound they did nothing more than follow me with their eyes as I passed. I couldn’t help them — at least, not now.

  I skidded to a stop where the glowing path ended. Light spilled through the glass door into the corridor. I tried to slow my breathing as I faced the cell and its occupant. The three interior walls were made of metal, which put Mahari and the few pieces of furniture on stark display. I saw why the guard in the skybox thought she was feral. She stalked past the glass like the caged lion that she was — agitated, ferocious. Bones littered the floor, picked clean. I really hoped they were chicken bones.

  I spotted several switches to the left of the door and, with my heart beating like a hummingbird’s, flipped the switch labeled “Mic.” Before I could even choke out a word, Mahari noticed me, her eyes glowing like jewels in the dim light. She peeled back her black lips and lunged, ivory fangs jutting. I jerked back with a cry as she slammed into the glass so hard it vibrated. Writing scrolled across the surface: “Viral Load — 0%.”

  Mahari’s claws raked the transparent barrier but didn’t leave a scratch. Spitting and snarling, which unfortunately I could now hear, she tried to claw her way out. Maybe she had gone feral.

  “Mahari.” It came out choked, so I cleared my throat and tried again. “Mahari, I’m Lane. Do you remember me?”

  She froze, hands still raised, claws extended as if she might pounce again, but now her gaze bore into me.

  When she said nothing, I went on. “I was in Chicago.” I moved closer to the door, into the light. “I opened your cage.”

  She cocked her head, spilling her dark tangled hair over her shoulder. “The little rabbit.”

  “Yes. Listen …” I pressed both palms to the glass. “They think you’re feral. Are you?”

  Her golden eyes glowed in the dim light, which sent a shiver down my spine. Her gaze, unblinking and intense, was too much like Chorda’s. “Angry isn’t feral,” she said in a low rasp.

  “It looks the same to them.”

  She dragged her fingers through her wild dark hair, pushing it off her face, and shook out her shoulders. “You want calm?” She stretched her arms wide, claws retracted into the nail beds. “I’m a kitten. Dangle a string and watch me play.”

  “Now you’re overdoing it.”

  Her black lips parted as she chuffed out air. “What do you want, Lane? My sisters?” She flicked a hand toward the camera bots with barely contained rage. “You think I’d tell you anything with the humans listening?” Her eyes narrowed. “Guard,” she hissed.

  “What? No. I’m not —”

  Then I heard it too and recognized the long-legged stride, the echo of his heavy combat boots. Everson rounded the corner and paused, just out of Mahari’s sight line. Didn’t matter, she’d heard his approach. She slammed her fists against the glass, her irises gone black with fury. “I hear your weasel’s heart scampering. You’re right to fear me, guard!”

  I glared at Everson. He’d just ruined any chance I’d had at getting information out of her without trickery or force.

  “Hyrax called in the interrogation team.” He came up beside me, expression grim. “They’ll be here in ten minutes.”

  Maybe if he’d said ten hours, I would’ve had a chance of getting Mahari to talk. But upon seeing him, she was even wilder than before. With a roar, she body-slammed the door, trying to get at Everson.

  “It’s you who’s making her crazy. What did you do to her?” I demanded as suspicions sprouted in my mind.

  “Nothing,” he said firmly.

  Mahari shrieked with rage, her tendons knotting as she scrabbled at the glass. I snapped off the mic before she blew out my eardrums. “What did you do?” I repeated.

  “It’s the uniform. We all look the same to her,” he said above her muffled pounding.

  Mahari’s fury seemed more personal than that. I tightened my lips and waited for a better explanation.

  “Oh, for — I take her blood,” he snapped. “She hates being gassed.”

  Yesterday I would have believed anything he told me, but not now. Not when he’d played so fast and loose with the definition of human that he’d ended up treating people worse than animals. Not after knowing that he could lie so well and so easily.

  Mahari leaned against the glass, panting, as her eyes darted between us.

  “You see why we can’t let her go?” Everson demanded. “She’ll kill the first human she sees.”

  “She’s angry because you locked her up. She spent years in a cage and now you’ve put her back in one.”

  “The why doesn’t matter. We can’t set that” — he gestured sharply at Mahari — “free.” At that moment, he saw my dial, glowing faintly, recording. He growled low in his throat. “Are you trying to get yourself executed?”

  Mahari straightened and pointed at the mic by the door. I adjusted the dial to get the best shot and flipped the switch.

  “I won’t hurt him,” Mahari rasped. “Let me out.”

  “Nice pivot. I think we can trust her,” he said sarcastically, and then glanced at me.

  “I don’t trust anyone anymore.” I gave him a pointed look, and he had the grace to wince.

  She wasn’t going to talk unless I let
her out, and even then, she might not tell me anything. I could explain that her alternative was torture, but no. I wasn’t going to do that. I’d made a deal with the lionesses. Maybe I wouldn’t have unlocked their cage in Chicago if I’d had another option. But this cage? This one, I would unlock.

  I couldn’t trust Everson to choose me or Rafe over advancing the greater good. But maybe I could trust him to do the right thing right now.

  I faced Mahari. “Promise you won’t attack him if I free you.”

  “That better be a joke,” Everson told me while letting his fingertips brush the ever-present tranq gun holstered on his thigh.

  Mahari’s eyes gleamed in the shadows. “You have my word, little sister. I won’t spill his blood in here … In this place.”

  That was the best assurance I was going to get out of her and probably the most honest. I nodded.

  Everson planted himself in front of the door. “Don’t even think about it.”

  I darted right. Chairman Prejean had called me reckless. Fine. Sure. But it was a calculated kind of reckless. I yanked the blue lever mounted by the door.

  Everson cursed as coils of blue fog filled the cell.

  “How long till she’s out?” I demanded, holding down the lever. I didn’t want to give her too much and kill her. The twilight-colored fog blanketed the cell.

  “It’ll shut off automatically,” Everson growled.

  Mahari pounded on the glass, wild to escape, but the Lull slipped around her, catching her in a soft embrace. Her chest stopped heaving and her expression softened as the gas worked its magic on her system. With one clawed hand still pressed to the door, she slipped down the glass until she puddled on the ground — all soft curves and silken limbs. Her face was so peaceful, she looked almost human. And then with a jerk of surprise, I realized she couldn’t be more than a year or two older than me.

  “Will she be okay?” I asked.

  “She’s fine,” Everson said coldly as the scene inside the cell seemed to play in reverse. The fog bank separated into blue streams and slithered back into the ceiling holes. “So what did that get you? She’ll be out for the next thirty minutes at least.”

  “Good. I’m keeping my deal with the lionesses. I’m trading Mahari for Rafe’s location.”

  “Trading her,” he echoed, brow furrowed.

  “I’ll take her out through the tunnel — the way she came in.”

  “Yeah? How much are you bench-pressing lately? ’Cause with the muscle she’s packing, she’s up in my weight class.”

  “Oh, you’re right. Guess I’ll have to leave her here for a bunch of guards to work over. What do you think they’ll do first — pull out her fingernails?”

  His jaw clenched so hard, his scars paled. “She doesn’t have fingernails,” he ground out. “She has claws.”

  I ducked around him. One hard twist of the disc and the strip of gears embedded in the glass began to whir and spin. A second later, the door slid open soundlessly. The second after that, a shrieking alarm blew out my eardrums. “What the —”

  “This is a high-security facility,” he shouted to be heard over the alarm. “Think you can just open a cell without punching in a clearance code?”

  “How was I to know?” I said defensively.

  “You could’ve asked me!”

  I hurried into the cell. The pulsing alarm wasn’t nearly as loud in here, and yet I hesitated, worried that Mahari would spring up and attack. She didn’t move. In fact, only the rise and fall of her chest proved she was even alive.

  “Put in the code,” Everson shouted into the mic on his shoulder, his eyes on the skybox.

  The guard stepped onto the catwalk to peer down at us. “Why’d you open her cell?” The guy’s irritation came through Everson’s radio loud and clear.

  “She’s gassed. It’s fine,” Everson snapped. “Enter the code.”

  “Not until you shut the cell with 2666 in it. I don’t care which side of the door you’re on.”

  Everson yanked his fingers from his mic. “Move! Quarantine protocol’s about to kick in.” He hunkered by Mahari. “They’ll seal off the maze and send in a team to secure this level.”

  He hefted Mahari over his shoulder and rose with a grunt. He might’ve lied to me, but I was right when I’d guessed that he wouldn’t be okay with torture. Another calculated risk.

  As I followed him out of the cell, the alarm faded into silence. “Is that good?”

  “No. Countdown’s on. Keep up!” He veered left — not the way we’d come — and broke into a sprint.

  As we ran down the corridor, crashing booms sounded in quick succession from all around us.

  “Metal shutters,” Everson shouted over his shoulder. “They’re sealing off the cells.”

  I followed him into an open circular area — a hub for eight corridors. The floor was tiled with glassy squares in every color imaginable. “Is this the middle of the maze?” I asked.

  Everson grunted what I took to be a yes as bigger booms echoed down the corridors. Eight in total — one after the other — resounding like cannon blasts.

  “Those were the bulkheads closing off the corridors. The tunnel’s the only way out now.” Everson halted at the room’s center, where a brass disc the size of a kiddie pool had been embedded into the floor. Four letters were carved into the disc’s outer edge: E, W, N, and S.

  “Don’t step off the circle,” Everson ordered as he hefted the deadweight that was Mahari higher on his shoulder. “See the knob there?” He lifted his chin at a raised bump in the center of the circle. “Yank it up and let it drop like you would to spin a top.”

  I did as he directed, and suddenly our island of brass began to slowly rotate while the floor around us spun in the opposite direction, picking up speed until the colored tiles blurred into an image — a panoramic vision of a circus. I let out a faint “Ooh” of appreciation.

  Everson shot me a droll look.

  “It’s cool,” I said defensively. Because, well, it was. Not that it made up for testing an experimental drug on unwilling humans.

  “The compass moves every half hour,” Everson explained as the brass disc slowed to a stop. “The knob resets it to point north.”

  As soon as the tiled floor stopped spinning as well, Everson stood on the S, facing one of the corridors. “S for start,” he explained.

  “Not south?”

  “That too.” He banded an arm across Mahari’s thighs and took off for the S corridor with me right on his heels. We stopped again when the hall divided into two. “Round and round the labyrinth goes the grizzly bear …” Everson muttered in the tempo of a children’s rhyme. “Two right, two left, tickle him under there.”

  He ignored my raised brows. “This way,” he said, taking the corridor on the right. He jogged right at the next intersection as well and then took two lefts. Metal shutters covered the cell doors, for which I was grateful. I’d seen enough ferals for one day.

  I followed the back of Mahari’s head, watching her dark hair swing with every turn and curve. When Everson stopped short, I peered around him. The corridor dead-ended at a darkened glass door — a cell door — the only one left unshuttered.

  He took another step, and a light inside the cell snapped on to reveal a man hunkered over of a slab of raw meat. The dark fur covering his body bristled at the sudden glare, and he careened around. Everything about his face seemed bloody, from his bloodshot eyes to the reddish foam dripping from his lips and inhuman teeth. With a silent roar, he barreled for us, slamming into the glass so hard the door vibrated.

  “He’s the grizzly!” I gasped. “In the rhyme.”

  “If he was real, yeah. But it’s a projection.” Everson backed against the corridor wall, giving me a better view. “Run your fingers across the door, three inches from the bottom. You’ll find a button. Press it.”

  “A projection?” That was hard to believe with the door vibrating from another grizzly body slam.

  “To scare off anyo
ne without clearance. Lane,” Everson added with obvious irritation as his right arm twitched under Mahari’s weight.

  “On it.” I wiggled past him and dropped to my knees, tracing my fingers along the glass until I did indeed find a button. One push and the feral disappeared. In his place was a glass door with more embedded gears than any I’d seen so far. I scrambled up as the door slid open — not onto a rampaging feral, thank goodness, but another corridor. A short hall this time, without a single cell or metal shutter.

  I headed for the double glass doors at the end marked “Restricted” and tried pushing them open. No-go. Not a surprise, really. If you were going to kidnap people to use in evil science experiments, of course you’d keep your creepy underground lab locked up.

  Everson adjusted his hold on Mahari and touched a control panel on the wall. The doors opened with a pop and hiss, as if they’d been vacuum packed, and we entered a room filled with massive gears grinding away, bathed in crimson light.

  “The patrol added the doors a couple of months ago. They’re built to withstand a flood if the door to the drainage tunnel ever fails.” Everson lifted his chin toward a steel door at the other end of the chamber.

  “Drainage tunnel?” I asked.

  “The tunnel under the lock that the water drains into.” Still carrying Mahari over his shoulder, Everson made his way around the huge gear works. “When they were building Gateway Station, they needed to bring the construction equipment in on barges, so Titan reactivated the river’s lock and dam system.”

  He approached a row of glowing meters that looked a lot like the gas meters in the basement of my apartment building back in Davenport. He tapped the largest one. “The tunnel is filled with water right now. When it’s empty again, we can unseal the door. We’ll have ten minutes to get to the other end before it starts filling again.”

  I sucked in a breath through my teeth, not liking the sound of that at all.

  Everson laid Mahari on the floor and pressed two fingers to her throat. She never even cracked an eyelid. After nodding to himself, he glanced over. “Rafe used to sneak onto base using this tunnel.”