by Shay Savage
“Are you at least going to tell me your name now?” I ask softly.
“I suppose so.” She lets out a long sigh. “It’s Aerin.”
“It’s good to meet you, Aerin.”
“Is it?”
“Well, I can’t exactly say I’ve enjoyed our encounters so far”—up until this very moment, anyway—“but it’s good to have a name to put with a face and all that.”
“I enjoyed the first time we met,” Aerin says.
“Oh, I bet you did!”
“The look on your face when I cut the rope…that was fabulous.”
“You couldn’t see my face.” I narrow my eyes at her.
“I could imagine,” she replies with a grin.
“That hurt, you know.”
“Yeah, but I can’t say that I’m sorry. You did hold a knife to my throat.”
“You punched me.”
“You started it.”
“I was only making threats,” I say. “You assaulted me. I should probably have you arrested.”
“I’m sure that arrest report would be entertaining,” she says with a laugh. “‘And where did you meet the accused, sir?’ ‘Well, we were both breaking into the same house…’”
“Fair point.” I shake with quiet laughter. “I suppose I will have to stick with vigilante justice.”
“And just what exactly do you think my punishment should be?” I feel her tilt her head up as if to look at me though there isn’t enough light for the gesture to have any real purpose. “As a matter of fact, what exactly is my crime?”
“Aside from burglary?” I ask.
“I didn’t burglarize anyone,” Aerin says indignantly. “I didn’t leave with a single item. Besides, a career thief can’t exactly accuse me of theft.”
“I can still accuse you.”
“But it’s meaningless.”
“We’re back to assault then.”
“Self-defense. You attacked first. My only crime was being in your territory, but it’s not like you had any signs posted.”
“Okay,” I say, “I’ve changed my mind. You’re obviously from a family of lawyers.”
“Wrong.”
“Maybe we should just call it even, huh? Start over?”
“I suppose we can do that.”
“Might as well,” I say, taking a deep breath. “We could be spending the rest of our lives together.”
“Are you proposing to me?”
I laugh.
“I sure hope not,” she says. “I’m not sure I’m ready for that kind of commitment. We did just meet, after all. Officially, anyway.”
“You’re right. It’s too soon. Maybe I’ll ask again later.”
“So, you admit it, then? It was a proposal?”
“I wouldn’t consider such a thing,” I tell her. “I don’t even have a ring. What would your father think of me?”
“My father would have thought you were a low-life thief and would probably ask where you stole the ring.”
“Good point.” I don’t miss how she speaks of her father in the past tense, but I also don’t ask her about it. Not now.
She goes quiet, and I close my eyes. Her closeness and scent are still distracting, but exhaustion eventually takes over, and I sleep for a time. When I wake, I have no idea how much time has passed. There is still only a tiny sliver of grey light at the bottom of the shaft, and it’s not enough to determine if the sun has risen.
For a moment, I listen to Aerin’s steady breathing, hoping my eyes will pick up enough light to be able to see her sleeping face, but they don’t. My shoulder hurts from being in the same position for so long. I try to stretch it a bit without moving too much, but I manage to wake her anyway.
She startles in my arms but then relaxes again.
“Is it still night?” Aerin asks.
“I have no idea.”
She pulls her arm from around me, and I feel her moving around for a moment before I hear the sound of the hand crank flashlight being charged. She turns on the light and blinks a few times.
I shuffle around until I can reach the lower door again. Aerin shines the light for me, but I still can’t get the door to budge, and moving around has caused another problem. A sudden urge tightens my stomach, and I laugh humorlessly.
“What is it?” she asks.
“I have to pee,” I say with another chuckle. “Inevitable, huh?”
“Are you serious?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Can you hold it?”
“Well, yeah,” I say, “but not forever.”
I clench my muscles and grimace as I lie back down in the center of the shaft.
“There’s really no way to get out through the bottom, is there?” she says.
“Not with what we have on us,” I reply. “At some point, I’m going to end up pissing myself. I’ll go ahead and apologize in advance.”
Though I’m making light of the situation, I know we can’t survive cooped up in here forever. If we can’t manage to unblock the opening, we’re going to die of dehydration within a couple of days. My mind wanders to the two small vials on my belt. There’s enough in there for both of us, but such thoughts are still premature.
“Well, shit.” Aerin sighs and shifts around to her hands and knees. She scoots up to the top of the shaft, taking the light with her.
“Are you going to try to crack the combination?” I ask. I shake my head. Such a task is futile though I don’t know what else we’re going to do. Sometimes, a futile task is better than doing nothing.
“Something like that.”
A moment later, I hear a click. I glance up and watch her unwind the chain from the lever and push the metal door forward.
“What the fuck?”
Chapter 9
Aerin looks back at me sheepishly, shrugs, and discards the chain. She pushes the door until it’s completely open and begins to crawl inside.
“Come on,” she says with a sigh. “It’s a long trek to the other side.”
I’m speechless, mouth hanging open and bursting bladder completely forgotten. Her feet disappear into the dark opening before I can even move.
“You knew the combination the whole time?” I crawl to the top and follow her through the door and into another shaft.
She doesn’t answer as she crawls along the corridor for another hundred feet before reaching a mesh grating with another, unlocked latch. She pushes the latch down, shoves the grate open, and lowers her feet and legs over the edge.
“It’s not a far drop,” Aerin says. “Just be careful.”
A second later, she’s gone. I scramble to catch up and look through the grate to the room below.
The room below.
A room inside of the mountain.
It’s not a large area—maybe twenty-by-twenty feet—and the room is mostly empty save for a few wire shelves and a chair. There are electrical outlets on the wall, but nothing is plugged into them. On the other side of the room is an open door leading into darkness. My head is spinning as I look down and see Aerin shining her light at the concrete floor directly below me.
“You’re going to have to jump,” she says. “There isn’t a ladder or anything.”
“What is this place?” I ask as I swing my legs over the edge and drop down.
Aerin doesn’t answer. I blindly follow her through the door and into a hallway that continues too far for the light to reach the end. Open doors lead to additional, mostly empty rooms on either side of us, but she pays them no mind as we continue through the passageway underneath the mountain.
Her light shines off concrete and metal, casting an eerie glow around the doorways of the empty rooms. The hallway is completely devoid of any obstructions though I see bits of dirt and dust caked in the corners of the tile floor as we go by. The metal doorways have hints of rust around the seams.
I walk behind her and try not to stare at the way her ass moves when she walks. I can only just see the outline of her body with the lig
ht in front of her, but my eyes keep going there anyway. I force myself to look around, but the bare walls and floors aren’t nearly as interesting.
I have to admit that I’m intrigued by this woman. I’m also highly annoyed by her. If she knew about this place all along, why did we spend the night cooped up in that tiny shaft? We would have been a lot more comfortable inside.
Then again, I rather liked being that close to her.
I can still feel where her body was pressed up against mine. I can still hear her slow breathing and feel her warmth. I’m not used to feeling so attracted to a woman, and I can’t determine why I’m feeling this way.
She’s physically attractive, sure, but a lot of women are. Several women in Plastictown are downright beautiful, but they’ve never had this effect on me. Considering our first interaction, I shouldn’t want to have anything to do with Aerin, the thief who punched me and dropped me off a wall. I should be pissed at her. I should hate her.
I don’t.
I want to know where she saw Star Wars. I want to know what other books she’s read and how she knows about this place. I want to know where she’s from and how she knows about me. I want to know what she’s doing here, and I absolutely need to know what her intentions are.
“There’s a bathroom over there,” Aerin says, pointing down a side hall.
I blink and shake my head. Indeed, both a men’s room and a women’s room are at the end of the hall. Stationed between the doors is a water fountain, a first aid cabinet, and a fire extinguisher. Aerin hands me the flashlight, and I stare at her for a second before shaking my head again and heading into the bathroom.
I’m hit with the smell of mildew and stale disinfectant. Urinals line one side of the room and stalls the other. I haven’t seen an actual public restroom since I was imprisoned. In Hilltop, the Thaves’ homes use portable toilets which have to be emptied manually. Naughts use privies dug in the woods. I usually use a tree.
I finish my business and automatically go to the sink. It sputters for a few seconds before ash-filled water runs out. Despite the grey color of the water, ash is actually pretty clean; it just looks nasty. I wash my hands and face before returning to Aerin in the corridor.
“Better?” she asks.
“I will be when you tell me what the hell this is.” I hand her the flashlight.
“We’ll have plenty of time for that,” she says. “We need to get to the other side, and that’s going to take a while.”
“Any reason you can’t start now?” I follow her as she starts back down the hall.
“Other than not really knowing where to start, no. That’s my main issue at the moment.”
“How about starting with what this place is.”
“Up ahead are living quarters for the residents,” she tells me. “Let’s get there first. We need supplies and probably some rest. I’ll try to explain when we get there.”
We walk for a full ten minutes down the straight corridor. We pass other rooms with the same, abandoned look, similar to the one we started in. The air is cool but warmer than outside and has a stale, recirculated odor I remember from windowless buildings in the capital city.
The main corridor still continues with no end in sight, but Aerin suddenly changes direction and heads down a wide auxiliary hall with a tiled floor. The hallway ends with a double doorway, sans any actual doors. The large room beyond the doorway is lined with bunk beds topped with thin, partially destroyed plastic mattresses.
“This was used to house all the researchers,” Aerin says softly. “Through the door in the back is a kitchen. A few canned goods are in there. You hungry?”
“I’m a Naught,” I reply instinctively. “I’m always hungry.”
Aerin glances over her shoulder and raises an eyebrow at me again.
“What?” I ask.
“You don’t have to pretend with me, Talen.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You want me to call you Theodore instead?”
I glare at her. No one ever called me that, not even when I was a child. It was always just “Theo,” but I’m not about to tell her that.
Aerin walks through the door and into the next room. She pauses for a moment as she glances at me and then flicks a switch on the wall, and the room lights up with a yellow-gold glow.
The area is set up like an efficiency apartment, complete with a kitchenette. Along one wall is one of those beds that fold up into a couch during the day, and a dresser sits beside it. A flat pillow and blanket lie on top of the bed and have clearly been used recently. Perpendicular to the bed is a desk complete with a computer monitor. A folding table and two folding metal chairs sit in the center of the room, near the kitchen area. In one corner, a shelf is filled with books.
The room is remarkably clean compared to the other areas of the complex, and I wonder how long it took her to get the grime out of here. I don’t see any dirt or dust anywhere in the room. I’m accustomed to everything being covered in ash, and when I take a deep breath, I even notice the difference in the air.
I look over at Aerin as she pulls her hood off her head. In the yellow, artificial light, she looks completely different than she did outside in the usual, grey haze of ash-filled skies. I’m reminded of the quick change from black and white to color during The Wizard of Oz, and I feel like I’m seeing her for the first time.
Her rich, brown hair falls over her shoulders and down her back in thick waves. Her eyes are clearly bright green in this light—like the eyes of a cat—and her skin glows with the kind of healthy complexion rarely seen in the valley.
“Wow.” I quickly look away from her, directing my attention at the lights themselves instead of her. I blink a few times as my eyes adjust to the brightness and try to recall the last time I was in a place with actual electricity. I look up at the ceiling and the recessed light bulbs spaced evenly across it. “Where does the electricity come from?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” she says. “The map shows a generator room, but the entrance to it has collapsed. Whatever the power source is, it’s still working for this room.”
“What about the other rooms?”
“I’ve tried all the ones I’ve gone into,” Aerin says, “but as far as I know, this one is the only room that has working electricity. I assume it’s set up on its own circuit with a different power source from the rest of the complex.”
She walks over to the desk, drops her pack beside it, and places her hand on top of the monitor. I drop my pack next to hers and continue to look around, astounded that such a place existed all this time while I remained oblivious in the valley.
“No computer now, but I think this is where communication back to the capital might have been.”
“Communication?” I place my hands over my face for a moment and shake my head before looking back to her. I don’t even know where to start with my questions.