by Jamie Davis
“Dinner, sir. Where would you like it?”
“Leave it there, Margaret,” Nils said. “The Director and I can take care of the rest. You may retire if you’d like. I have nothing else for you tonight.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Kane waited until the woman left, then he crossed to the cart and wheeled it to the two chairs near the throne.
“Let’s break bread and discuss our next steps,” Nils said. “If all goes as planned over the next month or two, we can finally move forward with ridding ourselves of the Assembly. Then it will just be you and I, my dear, with no one left to stand in our way.”
CHAPTER 24
Winnie left Artos and headed back to their new safe house at the city’s edge — it was time to gather the team, fill them in on the new plan. But first, they needed one more thing. They needed to bust Tris from the temporary prison where she and the other techs were being held. They were too important to ship off to a safety camp while the city crumbled around them.
Danny drove to the new safe house while Winnie thought about ways to free their friend. She was still thinking when they arrived back at the safe house — an office in a run-down industrial park. It had a garage entrance in back, large enough to hold their van and Danny’s car.
Winnie got out and punched the code to open the door. As the motor raised the overhead door, she spotted another unfamiliar car parked inside. She arched an eyebrow at Danny as he pulled past her. She checked again to make sure that no one was watching outside, then closed the door.
Familiar voices rang from down the hall as she and Danny approached the office hallway. In the small kitchen, Winnie saw Cait and Cricket talking to Victor and Morgan.
“Hey, sis,” Morgan called.
Things had been tense between them, ever since the night at the Harvester. Despite the passing of time, Winnie still felt the sting of betrayal, seeing Morgan in her Red Leg cadet uniform, knowing that she had been working with Victor all the time. Morgan had worked hard to right the wrongs between them. She’d been loyal since that night, working tirelessly to get them intel from the inside. She and Victor had both proven themselves many times over, but Winnie couldn’t help but still feel the sting.
It was strange. Even though she’d figured out that Morgan’s dad wasn’t really her father, Winnie still thought of her as a sister. They’d been working on that relationship, through good and bad, for so long that Winnie figured she’d always be the sister figure in her life. That was probably why the initial betrayal still hurt so much. But Morgan and Victor were loyal now, and their presence here must mean they had information to share. She was glad to have them along for this part. Winnie needed them for this operation to work like it needed to.
Winnie waved, then walked over to pour herself a cup of tea. She waited for it to steep, listening to the continuing conversation.
“The techs are being held at the Ambassador Hotel, downtown,” Victor continued. “They’re being treated well while under house arrest. They’re just not allowed to leave.”
“Can we get them out without bringing the whole contingent of Red Legs down on us?” Cait asked.
“That shouldn’t be too hard,” Victor answered. “There are only two guards positioned on their floor, watching the elevator and stairs to ensure that no techs leave. There are four others in the lobby to escort shifts to and from the pickup van every twelve hours.”
“Cricket,” Winnie said. “Do we have a count on how many of our people evaded the sweeps and are now hiding around the city?”
“Garraldi and his crew of four are down by the harbor. There are a few others here and there. I make it about fifteen in all.”
“Good,” Winnie said. “We’ll need them for the camp operation. First, we need to free Tris and any of her other tech friends who want to go with her. We can’t take them all. Someone has to keep the city running, and we don’t want to free the camp only to turn Baltimore into a crater.”
Victor turned to Winnie. “How many techs do you think we’ll need in the camp job?”
“I don’t know. Is there a way to slip Tris a message?”
“None of them have their phones anymore,” Victor said. “But, if I rotate Morgan in on the shift rotation, she could slip Tris a burner.”
“I can do that,” Morgan agreed.
“Great,” Winnie said. “Then let’s do that while we figure out how we’re going to break them out of that hotel.”
The team hashed out a plan to free the needed techs. Victor drew a basic map on a sheet of paper while Cait asked questions about the elevators and stairways off the floor. Morgan, Cricket, and Danny all chimed in with useful suggestions until they had a workable solution.
Winnie watched her team and smiled. They were getting along nicely considering the stress. She hoped the teamwork continued when it came to setting up the plan for the second rescue. Everything depended on it.
But for now, one thing at a time.
First, they had to bust Tris out.
———
Morgan’s shift ended. She waved to her relief halfway to the elevator. It had been two days since she’d started working here. She’d managed to slip Tris the phone her first day. That had been the easy part of the plan. She just waited until her partner took a bathroom break in one of the floor’s empty rooms. A tap on Tris’s door and she passed the phone off.
The rest of the plan was more difficult.
Cait and Cricket had handed her a series of charms to plant. Two were some sort of remote magic camera allowing Cait to monitor the hallway and see where the guards were at all times. The other two had to be planted in specific spots for the final plan to work, with one attached above the door latch to the north stairwell. Then the door could be opened from the stairwell side, and serve as a lock to secure it behind them when the rescue team escaped through the stairs.
The other set was to disable the elevators — one had to be hidden in each lift near the control panel. Cait told her it would short the magic operating the box and cause all the elevators to temporarily stop running. That would prevent any of the lobby Red Legs from coming up that way to help their comrades during the rescue.
On her way to the lobby, Morgan checked her phone for messages. She tapped one and saw two words. It’s on.
The timestamp read 10:30 p.m. It was happening tonight, while she was safely at home in bed. The plan would kick off at 2 a.m., when the night shift guards would be down to one awake in the hall and the other snoring in the spare room. They weren’t supposed to sleep, but the guards must’ve figured that no one would mind, and all the techs were too tired after their shifts to do anything anyway.
Victor would come down on them hard, use it to scapegoat their rescue. Morgan wanted to join the action, help in a concrete way to show she was truly part of the team. She knew it was more important to stay inside, but Morgan longed for the days before the Harvester, when everything had changed.
The elevator dinged, then opened. Morgan nodded to the newly arrived lobby guards on her way to the underground garage. She’d done her job, and had to go. Morgan couldn’t afford to be caught hanging around during the rescue. There would be questions, and she needed to be safely away from the scene.
She got in her car, whispering a prayer as she drove home.
It was up to Cait, Winnie, and the rest of the rescue team now.
———
The van pulled up in the alley beside the hotel.
Cait, Garraldi, Cricket, and Winnie got out. Danny leaned over, waving to Winnie as she closed the sliding door. He was supposed to wait by the alley’s hotel exit at the bottom of the north stairwell.
Winnie smiled and turned toward the others. Garraldi was working on the exterior lock, and with a faint click in the darkness, she heard the door open.
Light spilled into the alley as the big man opened the door and held it. The others rushed inside. Then he entered and shut the door behind him.
Winnie nodded to the group and they all started up the eight floors to where the techs were being held. She’d already texted Tris on the burner. She’d responded immediately. They were ready.
Winnie sent another message as they climbed. On the way up now. Be ready.
Winnie replied with a thumbs up, then returned the phone to her pocket. They were moving fast. She was already out of breath four floors up. Cait and Garraldi both seemed fine, but they both climbed rock walls for fun.
At the eighth-floor landing, Cait drew a small tablet from her bag and pulled up a display of the hallway from the other side of the stairwell door. A Red Leg guard was approaching.
Perfect.
Winnie tapped Garraldi. He nodded, reached into a pocket on his black vest, and pulled out a small square envelope. He stepped up to the door, his eyes on the video as he tore open the top and poured the white powdery contents into his palm.
Cricket gripped the door knob.
On Garraldi’s nod, Cricket opened the door and stepped back to make room for the larger man. Garraldi stepped through the threshold to face the surprised guard. He opened his mouth to sound the alarm but Garraldi lifted his palm and blew a cloud of the white powder in the guard’s direction.
It shimmered as it surrounded the guard. Then the man’s eyes rolled up into his head and he slumped to the floor, the white cloud still hovering around him as he fell.
Winnie motioned the others to go in. She followed, taking a moment to check the unconscious Red Leg.
Winnie rolled him on his side, facing the wall. That would keep him from choking on anything until he woke. The powder was ordinary cornstarch, charmed to cause a neuro-inhibitor effect. A short-term spell; the effect would wear off in an hour or so. The spell also had an amnesiac effect on short-term memory, so the guard wouldn’t remember seeing them.
Cait hurried down the hallway to stand outside the door to the spare room. Winnie tapped another message. It’s clear. Come out.
A few moments later, a door opened halfway down the hall.
Tris stepped out, then rushed over to hug her friend.
Winnie leaned close and whispered. “Danny’s got the van downstairs. We need to get the others and get going.”
Tris nodded then crossed the hall to another room door and rapped lightly in a particular rhythm.
The door opened. A tall black man exited with a bag slung over his shoulder. Winnie nodded, then followed Tris to the next door on the list. There were four other techs coming to help them on the raid. The others were all needed in the city and had volunteered to stay behind and keep the infrastructure running for as long as they could.
Once Tris and the four other techs were assembled in the hallway, Winnie motioned for them to follow her back to the stairwell door, still held open by Cricket. As they passed Cait, still outside the guard’s spare room, one of the techs loudly sneezed.
Everyone froze.
A voice came from inside the room. “That you, Jimmy? You need to get those allergies looked at.”
Cait waved them forward.
The other guard stepped onto the floor and looked around. He shouted, “Hey, you techs are supposed to be in bed!”
He spotted Cait and the others dressed all in black. Realization dawned on his face.
He reached for the radio on his belt but Cait was too fast, jabbing him in the throat with a blow from her stiffened fingertips before punching him in his solar plexus. He doubled over, gasping for breath through his bruised and temporarily paralyzed vocal chords.
Cait tore the radio from his belt and turned to the others. “Run,” she hissed.
Winnie tugged at Tris and they all started for the stairwell.
Cait raced right behind them. The big guard was back on his feet, loudly pounding the concrete behind them. He was surprisingly fast for such a giant man.
Cait pushed through the stairwell door, then stepped aside as Cricket pulled it shut behind them. He pulled on the knob while Cait leaned over and stroked the latch with her fingers, causing Morgan’s disk charm to flare with sudden heat.
Cricket cursed, jumping back and shaking his hand. The disk created a spot weld between the door and metal frame, fusing it tight.
Cait smiled at Winnie. Pounding boomed from the other side. The guard wouldn’t be getting through that door any time soon.
“Don’t forget to disable the elevators,” Winnie reminded.
Cait tapped her tablet once before she returned it to her pocket. “Already done. Let’s go.”
The others were already on the stairs, Garraldi and Tris in the lead.
Winnie smiled all the way to the ground floor. The plan had worked.
CHAPTER 25
Tris spent the ride back to Artos’s hideout reassuring the terrified techs. They were shaken by the sudden, unexpected violence and pursuit to the hotel.
Winnie shook her head, listening to Tris promise that everything would be fine. She wanted to laugh at an operation that had felt cleaner than a freshly rained on sidewalk. Sure, the guard had woken up and Cait had to put him back down, but no one had died, and they hadn’t left anyone behind who was supposed to accompany them. They’d outsmarted the Red Legs yet again. A huge success to Winnie.
The techs weren’t so sure.
“Tris, they’re going to catch us, I just know it,” said one diminutive, dark-haired woman. “Did you see that guard’s face? He was so mad.”
“But they didn’t catch us, did they?”
Winnie looked back over her shoulder. The woman shook her head.
“That’s right,” Tris continued. “We’re going to do much worse before this is over, Katie. You’ll have to work your brain around that sooner rather than later if we’re going to succeed. You’re our most powerful tech.”
“Besides you,” Katie said.
“I’m not so sure. I might be better at diagnostics, but you’ve got more raw power. I guess it’s a wash at work, but for what we might have to do … it could be essential. That’s why we all need to be on our toes and pay attention. We’ll be doing something that could save thousands of lives. I need to know I can count on you.”
“You can, Tris. I was just shocked. Everything happened so fast, you know?”
“Yeah, I do, but this is the type of work we’re doing. Tell me now if you’re not up for it. I promised my friends the best techs, and you’re all essential to freeing chanters at the camp in the western reaches.”
The tall black man jumped into the discussion. “When are we going to find out just exactly what your friends want us to do, Tris?”
“I can take that one,” Winnie said. “We’re headed to a safe location. Once there, we’ll be brought to speed on what each of you will be doing. This is an involved project and requires a level of coordination you might not be used to.”
“We can coordinate,” the man said. “How do you think we kept the city from imploding in on itself for the last year and a half? We can all do our jobs — whatever they are.”
“I like that attitude … ”
“It’s James.”
“Well, James,” Winnie said, nodding thanks. “You’ll have to coordinate between yourselves, and know you’ll be making up a lot of what you’re doing on the fly. We can anticipate some things, but until you all get in there and see what the machinery is doing, we don’t know what types of spells or technology we’ll need for the job.”
Winnie looked around the van at the team: Danny, Cricket, Cait and Garraldi. She pointed.
“We’ve been pulling operations together for a long time. We know what we’re doing, so you’ll need to follow Tris’s lead. Do as she says, when she says it. We’ll be in and out of that camp and on our way back to the city before you know it.”
Cait shot her a look, smirking behind a feigned cough. Winnie didn’t like pep talks. Cait knew it. She must have enjoyed listening to Winnie go on about their pending success. They both knew from experience how quickly things could turn again
st them. Then the lives on the line would be their own.
The van fell silent. Danny drove through the deserted early morning streets until they reached the city limits and drove through a hidden entrance into Artos’s underground bunker. He pulled the van beside the familiar black limo and killed the engine.
“We’re home,” Winnie said. “Cricket and Garraldi have rooms set up for you, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to double up. Space is at a premium here. I guess the builder didn’t plan on hosting an army.”
She climbed out and stood by the van while everyone got out. The techs were quiet, eyeing their surroundings in the concrete garage. Cricket and Garraldi gathered them up, then led Tris and the others to their rooms.
Danny came around the van and gave her a peck on the cheek. “I’m going in to get a bite. The sack right after that. You coming?”
“I’ll be right there,” Winnie replied.
Danny nodded then entered the bunker.
“I’m not sure they’re up to the task, Win,” Cait said.
“They’re tougher than they look. You heard James. He’s right. They’ve been holding this city together with charms and duct tape. They can do what we need them to. They have to.” Winnie poked friend in the shoulder. “Hey, thanks for taking out that Red Leg goon.”
“I’ve been watching your ass since we were kids, Win. It’s habit.”
“I’m not helpless.”
“I don’t know how you got along without me,” Cait said, shaking her head.
“You’ve still never told me why you let me and Tris hang out with you all the time when we were kids. You had to have had friends your own age to hang with.”
“Not really. I was never close to anyone before I met you and Tris. I was always too tall for my age and never fit in. I wasn’t girly. My friends played with dolls and stuff, and I liked being outside and getting in trouble. You and Tris never seemed to mind.”