Play at Soul's Edge

by Sophia Amador

  She heard a noise from the other side of one of the lab doors, and froze for a second, glancing up. Nothing. She pulled at her wrists with renewed vigor. The plastic band dug into her skin. She pulled and pulled.

  It slipped free.

  She took a deep breath, slid both hands out of the zip ties, and pushed herself up to standing. She rubbed her wrists.

  At the far end of the lab was another door. She had no idea where it led; she only knew it was the one that Holman hadn’t used to enter.

  Just then, the doorknob rattled from the outside.

  Rory

  It was the smell that hit him first. A thick, fetid, overpowering reek that was worse than animal waste. It was the most repellent mixture of feces, vomit, and human sweat Rory had ever encountered in his life.

  Cages.

  Rows of cages stretched out under long strips of pale fluorescents to the far end of the room. There were dozens of cages in each row.

  Then he saw what lay within.

  Rory had seen some pretty terrible things in his life. Hell, he’d been responsible for a few of them. But he’d never seen anything like this.

  The wire-mesh confines weren’t more than four feet tall and about as wide and deep. Each was padlocked shut. Inside each, a human being squatted or lay, sometimes covered by a bundle of rags.

  Somewhere in the room, someone was whimpering and crying.

  Rory glanced at Adrian. He was accustomed to seeing no emotion on his face; the Captain issued orders in a dead-calm voice, no matter the nature, his expression always serene and unruffled.

  But now he saw Adrian’s face twist with disgust and pain, for just a moment before his lips firmed.

  “We’re going to get them all out,” he said. “You find Sierra.”

  There were two rings of keys hanging on a hook by the door. Adrian grabbed one and tossed the other to Rory. He walked down the row, methodically trying the keys in the padlocks until he unlocked them.

  Rory hesitated only a second, then ran down another row, glancing from side to side, searching for Sierra.

  The cages were coated with grime and reeked of human waste. The figures inside turned dull, hopeless eyes on him as he made his way past.

  Then he caught a flash of a familiar profile.

  Within one of the cages was a girl who would have been pretty if she weren’t so thin and dirty. Her blonde hair hung in lank tresses on either side of a skeletal face. A torn, shapeless flannel shirt hid the lines of her body.

  He stopped, curled his fingers around the wire mesh of her cage and brought his face up close to the bars. Their eyes met. Hers were vividly blue, insanely blue, a blue that pierced him so deeply he felt as though his breastbone had been split and his heart exposed to the air, pumping blood that only mattered if it could give her life.

  “Sierra.”

  She staggered to her feet and croaked, “Rory.” She offered him her unique lopsided smile.

  His hands trembled as he tried to fit the key in the padlock. As though from somewhere far away, he heard shouts and screams, cage doors clanging; someone wailed long and loud. Adrian’s voice rose above it all, organizing the escape, directing people to help one another. As always, Adrian possessed the mesmerizing ability to get others to fall in line before his will, the power to quiet the hysterical and steel the terrified. The battered, previously hopeless prisoners formed themselves into an escape party. They passed the keys from hand to hand, and helped carry those too ill or poisoned to move.

  But Rory could not take his eyes off Sierra. Something in her eyes had always compelled him, some power deep within her restored him, made him believe he was somehow more than just a worthless criminal or a slippery survivor. More than a mere collector of nasty tricks and shady deals who simply managed to get by.

  Rory no longer remembered his parents. He had grown up on the streets, been in an institution briefly, and had run away. He was good at sneaking around; good at eking out a living on the streets by begging, stealing, running odd jobs. He went to school because they gave him free food. He lied about his address and about everything else, but he got by.

  He had no friends. Who needed them?

  Until one day.

  He had been making his usual rounds when he saw a young girl, face half-covered by tangled blonde hair, wrapped in filthy clothes, scrounging in one of “his” garbage cans. He was going to warn her away when she turned her pretty, dirty face toward him and he was caught by the intense blue of her large, wide eyes. She took a step backward, her legs buckled, and she slumped against the can.

  Surprising himself, he squatted down beside her, pulling out his latest treasure: a bar of chocolate, stolen from a nearby drugstore.

  “Hey,” he said. Those astonishingly blue eyes opened and fixed on him.

  He held the candy bar out to her. “Collapsing from hunger ain’t a good thing around here.”

  Her eyes focused avidly on the chocolate and one hand came up to take the bar. Then she hesitated, gazing at him fearfully. “Naw, it’s okay,” he said, feeling an odd desire to reassure her. “You can have it.”

  She sat up and gobbled the chocolate, eyes fervent. He watched her in silence.

  “What’s your name?” he asked. He wondered at himself. Why did he care?

  Her eyes darted back and forth. He saw her planning to lie, saw the moment she changed her mind. She swallowed the last bite of chocolate and lifted her chin. “Sierra.” Then she tipped her head to one side. “Now you have to tell me yours.”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Rory.”

  She smiled, and it lit up her thin face, like a flood of sunlight pouring through the narrow alley.

  After that, Rory scavenged a cardboard refrigerator carton from a recycling truck and the two of them lived together under a rusty old fire escape in an alley. They watched out for each other when they stole food, fought back to back against the other street kids, and huddled together for warmth at night.

  And they talked. She was the first person—the only person—Rory had ever opened up to, shared his feelings, fears, and dreams with.

  Then one day they caught her, sent her back into the system. Rory had never understood before what it felt like to be lonely. He went back to the empty box, slept curled around himself, haunted the social services office in hopes of catching a glimpse of her. But weeks went by with no sight of her, until one morning he woke up to a hand scrabbling at the front flap of the box. He jumped up instantly, his small knife ready in his hand.

  It was Sierra.

  She looked wonderful. She was clean and she had new clothes. She crawled into the box beside him and for a few moments it was just like the old days, the two of them chattering away about anything and everything. Rory pressed her about her new foster family, and she was evasive. It was okay, she said, but Rory could see the lie in her eyes. But her voice trembled when she told him that she couldn’t live on the streets anymore. She liked being warm and indoors.

  Rory didn’t like it, but what did he have to offer her? After a couple of hours, she was gone, leaving him alone once more.

  Ever since then, Rory had tried to keep tabs on her as she moved from foster family to foster family. She started drinking, and he warned her about it, but she shook her head. She said it was the only thing that kept her going. Rory said nothing more.

  Then one day, he lost track of her. There had been some incident with her foster family, and Social Services had moved her away to protect her.

  He had no idea where she had gone.

  He was alone again. Then Adrian had attracted him with his cold certainty, his utter fearlessness. Rory attached himself to him with tenacity, fought beside him, and demonstrated his loyalty over and over. He became Adrian’s closest companion, his right-hand man, privy to many of his inmost secrets.

  But he had never trusted him. Had never trusted anyone.

  For the past few years, he had been squirreling away cash. Working for Tenebras had its advantages. When he
got out of high school, and Adrian moved off to college, he hoped to stay behind, find Sierra, who would be turning eighteen soon and leaving the foster care system, and get them a real place to stay. Find a regular job. The two of them could be together, with an actual roof over both of their heads.

  He had always kept his attachment to Sierra a secret, not mentioning it to anyone. Especially Adrian. For, as he well knew, attachments were a liability. A weakness.

  When Adrian approached him a few months ago with his offer, asking him to play the role of traitor, it had taken a while for him to really believe it. But Adrian had never lied to him.

  Rory had been the one who had faltered in his loyalty.

  He’d been an idiot. When he realized the truth, he had thrown himself into his role with all his skill and ability. He was good at it. Lying was his forte. Hadn’t Sierra herself told him that?

  But still, he hadn’t been good enough to find her. He’d never been good enough.

  Rory fumbled with the key in the padlock. At last, he fitted it in the slot and swung the door open.

  Sierra fell into his arms. Thin, so thin, but the shape of her body within his embrace was still familiar.

  “Are you all right?”

  Her eyes were bloodshot but she winked at him. “Let’s get out of here so you can really be my hero.” She grabbed the keys from his hand and unlocked the next cage in the row.

  “Come on,” she urged the boy inside. A dark purple bruise ran down one side of his face, and his eyes were wide and staring. “Get out and follow them.” She pointed to a stream of people headed out the back, shuffling toward the loading dock, where a tall, skinny kid had been commandeered by Adrian to make sure that the stronger prisoners helped the weaker ones.

  Sierra’s wrists were almost translucent, she had lost so much weight, and her hands shook.

  They had freed several of the prisoners and Rory was working on another cage door at the end of the row, when he heard a side door latch rattle behind him. He spun to face it.

  Mario stood framed in the door, a Glock cradled in his arm.

  His eyes flicked over the room, and his face twisted into a snarl.

  Then he raised the gun in slow motion.

  “No!” Rory shrieked.

  Sierra began to turn, slowly, so slowly, her eyes widening.

  Rory saw the gun so clearly, as though it were outlined in brilliant light. The barrel pointed directly at Sierra. The muscles in Mario’s forearm were just beginning to flex as his finger curled over the trigger.

  Rory reached for his own gun, but it was too late.

  There was only one thing he could do.

  It would go against everything he had learned on the streets, all his careful training, all his reflexes honed in a lifetime bent on survival.

  The moment Mario’s finger contacted the trigger, Rory bent his knees and jumped.

  Directly in front of her.

  An unbelievably loud gunshot split the air, and something hit him hard in the chest. It spun his body around. Losing his balance and toppling over, he glanced up and met her eyes one more time.

  They were blue, blue as the sky, blue and vivid.

  With a quiet sigh, he smiled and closed his eyes.

  31

  Schwartz

  SCHWARTZ SLAMMED DOWN his office phone. His contact in the police department had just warned him that a warrant had been issued against his company. A SWAT team was on the way.

  He ground his teeth in fury.

  It was too soon for the police to arrive. He had laid plans for most of the blame to fall on someone other than himself, but right now there was still too much evidence against him personally onsite.

  It was time to take more extreme action. He opened the locked drawer at the bottom of his desk and pulled out the special security key. He examined it for a moment. He had planned to use this system only in the direst emergency. Was it too soon?

  Off in the distance, he heard a gunshot.

  Gritting his teeth, Schwartz slid the key into his pocket and left the office, locking the door carefully behind him. The central control room for the security system was just down the hall. He swiped his card through the slot and leaned close for the retina scan. He pulled the heavy reinforced door open and strode inside, slamming it shut and dropping the safety bar into place.

  He sat at a bank of computers and typed furiously for a few seconds. Images popped up on the screens all around him, displaying views from external security cameras. A crowd had gathered in one of the back parking lots.

  It seemed the police had already arrived. Their undercover agents looked particularly scruffy.

  No time to lose. He inserted his emergency key in the special slot.

  He had only recently installed this state-of-the-art security system. It was originally designed for labs located overseas in hostile territory. Some might call it overkill. Paranoid.

  But now Schwartz congratulated himself on his foresight.

  As the key twisted in the slot, monitors flicked on. A warning signal beeped.

  With a rumble, blast doors lowered over all the exits of the building, including the windows. Schwartz’s ears popped slightly as the chamber pressurized.

  The entire building was now effectively sealed off. All external walls had been constructed from reinforced steel, designed to repel attacks. No one could get in or out—except through the secured exit from this control room. Of course, it was after closing time, so most of the employees had left. The remaining humans in the building were primarily people who knew too much. People who needed to be cleaned up.

  Schwartz gave his reflection in the computer monitor a tight smile.

  That would take care of the external threat. It would keep the police out—at least for the time he needed.

  Now to deal with the internal threat. He flipped several more switches, transferring control of the entire system from the front security office to here. More alarms went off as bank after bank of monitoring devices were reassigned to his control.

  Several screens lit up, and security cameras displayed empty corridors, fire doors hanging open, a row of cages unlocked with their doors hanging open. Bodies on the floor.

  Schwartz narrowed his eyes. What was going on?

  It didn’t matter. It was time to clean up this operation and move on. He’d gotten all he needed from it, and one of his talents was knowing when it was time to cut his losses. He had everything in place for a clean getaway.

  Holman had been useful, but he had become more and more unstable recently. Another loose end to snip, along with the local kids. Schwartz had been playing Mario off against Adrian, using the gang as foot soldiers. They would be left hanging so the police would have someone to scapegoat. As a bonus, it would take some of the pressure off Schwartz. Handy.

  Schwartz sighed in regret. Now Adrian Salas… there was a truly promising young chemist. With a mind like that on his side, the sky would have been the limit for Schwartz’s drug profits. It was too bad.

  All the work he had spent establishing this cover, building up a legitimate business. Gone.

  It would be a terrible accident. Too bad all those people would die. But it was necessary. It had to be a clean sweep. No witnesses.

  He’d installed the high-tech chemical fire retardant system himself, after the company who sold it to him kept insisting on those annoying safety procedures. Of course, he hadn’t let them know about the blast doors.

  Yes, his foresight was definitely paying off.

  He flipped open the clear plastic cover over a set of red switches, and pressed all three of them down.

  Immediately the lights all over the lab dimmed, red and white strobes illuminated the corridors, and a voice boomed out over every speaker on the intercom system.

  “Warning. Emergency fire retardant process activated. All personnel must evacuate. In thirty minutes, all oxygen will be ventilated from the building. All personnel must evacuate immediately. Please proceed to the neare
st exit.”

  Not that the warning would do any good, now that he had lowered the blast doors. All the exits were sealed.

  On the security cameras, a few people rushed for the doors, only to find them locked. He watched their panic-stricken pounding for a few minutes, and smiled.

  No one could escape, and in thirty minutes, the only room in the lab that would contain sufficient breathable oxygen was this control room.

  Elisa

  As the doorknob rattled, Elisa ducked behind one of the lab benches, her heart thumping. Someone shouted, and footsteps pounded away from the door, gradually fading into the distance.

  Silence fell, and she waited, immobile, for what seemed like hours.

  She knew she had to get out of there before Holman came back. She steeled herself, crept to the door, opened it carefully, and peered into the corridor. No one in sight. Off at the far end of the long hallway, an exit sign glowed. Elisa took a deep breath and slipped out the door. She ran as fast and as quietly as she could toward the exit sign.

  Before she reached it, the lights dimmed and a loud alarm blared. A white strobe began to flash directly over her head. She jerked to a stop, crouching. Had they already detected her escape and raised the alarm?

  A robotic voice emanated from a loudspeaker in the wall. The words were almost unintelligible.

  “Warning. Evacuate immediately. Proceed to the nearest exit.”

  No problem—that was exactly what she wanted to do.

  Elisa zipped down the hall and swung left at the far end into another long corridor. Up ahead was an external door, but when she opened it, a solid slab of metal blocked the exit. She pushed, but there was no give.

  Strange.

  Time to look for another way out. She had passed a lab door on her way, so she retraced her steps. Through a glass panel, she saw a dim room full of what looked like long rows of cages.