There was no escape.
Ronja felt her throat tighten. She stumbled, and Roark caught her by the elbow. She looked up at him gratefully, but he was already pulling her forward, his jaw set.
With a few more steps, the click of a lock, and the rattle of chain link scraping against gravel, they were through.
They were inside Red Bay.
Roark wasted no time. “This way,” he said, moving to the front of the group.
“Two minutes,” Henry warned, falling into step beside him.
“We’re not far,” Roark replied, his eyes fixed dead ahead.
The wall seemed to stretch on for miles. Two minutes felt like twenty. Ronja was ready to scream by the time the heir came to a halt before a nondescript white door.
“This is it,” he said as they fell into line behind him.
Roark straightened his coat and combed his fingers through his hair. Ronja adjusted her hat, touched the feathers to make sure they remained in place.
“Would you do the honors?”
Ronja glanced up. Roark was watching her expectantly, his hand motioning toward the sealed door. She nodded. Forcing down her dread, she rapped four times on the blank face of the portal. Each knock sounded like a gunshot.
The door sprang open immediately, forcing her heart into her throat. Ronja reeled back and Roark caught her by the shoulders firmly. She wrenched free of his grasp, observing the man in the doorframe.
It was difficult to see Dr. Berik. There was little light both in and outside his apartment. He was dressed in a simple button-down, a white lab coat that brushed his knees, and a hastily knotted tie. His hair was colorless and slicked into a greasy comb-over. He wore thick bifocals, behind which his gray eyes shivered and roved ceaselessly.
“Mr. Westervelt, sir,” the doctor greeted Roark. His voice was high and reedy. It matched his shifting eyes and oily scalp. “What a pleasant surprise.”
“Hardly a surprise, I phoned hours ago,” Roark replied flatly. His voice was firm and low, darker even than when he had spoken to the Off at the edge of the city. Berik quelled, quivering like a rat in a maze.
So this is Victor Westervelt III, Ronja thought.
“Of course, sir, of course. I only meant that the hour and company were a bit . . . ” the doctor squirmed as he searched for the right word. “Unorthodox.”
“You would do well not to question my companions, Wilfred,” Roark growled.
He seemed to grow taller with each word. Berik shrank toward the floor.
“Of course, sir, of course,” Berik amended hastily. “Come in, come in.” He jumped aside with surprising agility, bidding them to enter with a few sweeps of a liver spotted hand.
Roark went first, exuding authority. The rest followed rapidly. Ronja adjusted her hat to make sure it covered her wound, which itched insatiably.
Berik’s apartment was spartan. It was furnished with a threadbare pastel sofa, a low coffee table, a dining table with two spindly chairs, and worn shag carpets. No photographs or paintings decorated the beige walls. Three identical doors dominated the far wall. If Roark was correct, one of them led to the physician’s examination room.
Ronja stroked her newly programmed stingring reassuringly.
Just like with a pitched subtrain rider, she reminded herself. Besides, look at him.
Berik was even more pathetic in the lamplight. His skin was creased and spotted with age. His cheeks were skeletal, and his coat appeared several sizes too large.
“Who is my patient, Mr. Westervelt, sir?” the old man asked in his ragged voice.
Roark stepped toward Ronja and slipped a strong arm around her waist. She felt herself blush, and was for once grateful. She was posing as his lover, after all.
“As I mentioned over the phone, Ms. Mills and I are in a slight predicament. We would like you to take care of it.”
“Of course, of course,” Berik mumbled breathily. “Who are your other companions, may I ask?” he said, motioning with a limp hand at Iris and Henry.
“Insurance,” Roark said, smiling tightly. “I am to be a business man, after all.”
Ronja glanced back at the two other Anthemites. Henry was six-two and muscle-bound. He crossed his arms imposingly, reminding Ronja of the tattooed guard posted outside the Office. Iris was less foreboding at first glance, but it was difficult to misinterpret her expression.
Berik blanched. For a moment, Ronja wondered if he had lost all the blood in his body.
“Right this way, Ms. Mills,” the doctor said weakly.
He hobbled toward the center door on the far wall and began to fumble with the key ring at his belt. Ronja trailed him cautiously. She came to a halt behind Berik and watched over his shoulder as he chose an unassuming silver key and inserted it into the lock with shaking fingers.
Ronja glanced back at her three companions as the hunchback held the door open for her.
Right when he closes the door. Ronja reassured herself as she crossed the threshold. Right when . . .
Berik shut the door behind her and flipped on the lights. Ronja blinked, peering around. The examination room housed a large leather table covered in a swath of sanitary paper. There was a quaint wooden desk opposite the table and a large, plain countertop with three sets of drawers at the far end of the room.
“Ms. Mills,” Berik began with a sigh, shuffling toward the countertop. “I must tell you that I—”
Ronja crossed the room in three long strides and smashed her open hand into his liver-spotted neck. Berik did not even cry out when he crumpled to the floor, landing face down on the tiles with a sickening thud.
Ronja looked down at him for a moment, her face an emotionless mask. Then she let out a puff of air she had forgotten to release.
“Roark,” she called, turning on her heel and starting toward the door. “Berik is—”
The girl froze, her hand on the knob. Her nose twitched. She drew a tentative breath. The air scorched her.
Ronja cried out, clamping her hands over her nose and mouth, and threw her back against the door.
The air around the vents shivered as the compact room was flooded with gas. Her eyes watering, her cognition wilting, Ronja whipped back around and jiggled the knob. It would not budge.
Tucking her face into her elbow, Ronja began to slam her fist into the face of the door.
“Ronja?” came a muffled, familiar voice.
The knob rattled as Roark attempted to enter.
“Ronja!”
The girl continued to pound on the exit. The gas was thick in the air, shuddering like a mirage, bathing her senses in honey. Her knees buckled, her hand screeched down the iron face of the door.
She needed to warn them. They might have only seconds. Her brain hovered above her skull, attached by a single, groaning thread. Her mouth was numb, her tongue like cotton.
“Roark . . . ” she tried to scream, but it came out as a rattling gasp. She pressed her forehead to the iron as her eyelids flickered shut. “They know.”
41: The Old Methods
Roark
Ronja was utterly silent behind the door. Her frantic knocking was replaced by the sound of his heart throbbing in his ribs.
“Henry,” Roark said, whirling. “Do you have your tools? We have to get in there.”
Henry, who was staring at the sealed doorway with vacant eyes, never got the chance to answer.
Time froze when the pair of Offs busted through the apartment door.
Roark’s body lurched into action before his mind could react. He grabbed for the stingers holstered at his sides, but his first adversary was already upon him. Roark lashed out with his fists, but it was like striking steel with his bare knuckles.
The Off was twice his size. He wore a matte black Singer. Roark had been raised in the shadows of men and women with such onyx Singers. They lived only to fight and serve his father and Bullon. They could not be bought or reasoned with; their minds were beyond resurrection.
Ski
tz.
The heir spun fluidly and vaulted over the couch. He landed with a shuddering thud atop the low coffee table. He whipped out his stingers and flicked them to life. They buzzed in his hands like angry wasps.
“Come on, pitcher!” he bellowed.
His opponent appeared utterly unmoved. With an animalistic grunt, he shoved the sofa out of the way as if it weighed nothing. It struck the far wall and cracked the plaster.
“Now you’re just showing off,” Roark grumbled.
“Trip! He—!”
Iris’s plea was cut short when the Off she and Henry were battling smashed her into the floor like a rag doll. Roark lunged at her, but his own adversary flooded his vision.
The Off hit him with the full force of a steamer, knocking the stingers from his hands and the breath from his lungs. He heard his ribs crack. The Off shoved his knee into his gut and pressed his thick forearm to his neck.
“Henry!” Roark wheezed. “Help Ir—!”
The only response was the sound of a stinger flaring against skin and the unmistakable thud of a limp body striking the floor.
Ronja was still quiet beyond the locked door.
“Ro—!” Roark rasped.
“You have seen better days, son.”
A familiar dread settled over Roark like a toxic fog. It consumed the pain in his ribs and the fire in his lungs.
The Off released him abruptly. Roark rolled backward, then sprang to his feet, fighting a scream as his fractures spread. Still, he had known worse. Worse was standing before him now, smiling slyly.
“I long suspected you of treachery,” Victor Westervelt II purred. “All I needed was a shred of proof, but instead you offer me this bounty.”
He stood in the open doorway, his hands clasped behind his back and his chin high. Two more dead-eyed Offs with black Singers flanked him, just as large as the first pair. Victor’s colorless eyes flickered like a moving picture as they drank in the image of his son. His thin lips curled in disgust.
“You always did take after your sister,” Westervelt continued.
Roark smashed his teeth together, but refused the bait. His stingers had rolled in opposite directions across the carpet. He would have to dive to reach them.
“The years have eased my rage. I have come to realize I may have given up on her too hastily,” Victor mused, stroking his sharp jaw with a spindly finger. “Perhaps you can be redeemed, with the right persuasion.”
Victor inclined his head. The four Offs converged on Roark, their electric weapons snapping like watchdogs. One took a pair of handcuffs from his belt.
Roark snarled and lunged at the closest of the four. He was deflected like a gnat. Before he knew it, he was pinned again, arms twisted and cuffed.
“I’ll see you soon, Victor,” his father called.
The Offs dragged him from the apartment and into the bleached corridors of Red Bay. They passed scores of identical doors Roark knew led to prison cells. Pathetic moans threaded through the cracks in the doorways.
Roark assumed he would be forced into one such cell. To his surprise, the Offs hauled him into a dimly lit observation room that overlooked one of the cells. The cell beyond the one-way glass was empty. The floor and two of the walls were concrete and were stained with splotches of brown Roark knew had once been red. The left-hand wall of the cell was also a window, identical to the one Roark gazed through. It looked into another vacant prison cell.
Roark did not struggle as the sentries chained him to the steel chair facing the window. A dashboard full of blinking lights and brass knobs only Evie could make sense of sprawled beneath the glass, just out of his reach.
When he was secure, the Offs left without a word.
As soon as they disappeared, Roark began to fight against his shackles, clinging to the vain hope that the craftsmanship would be shoddy. It was not, of course. If there was one thing he appreciated about his father, it was his commitment to quality.
Roark stilled himself, his hopes bleeding away.
He waited.
Nearly two hours passed without so much as a whisper from his captors. Roark was a breath from nodding off by the time the door flew open on the opposite side of the glass.
He shot to his feet, but was yanked back by his chains.
Two Offs stood in the doorway. One wore his hair in a greasy black ponytail that matched his startlingly unattractive face. The other was entirely bald, with a hooked nose. Their Singers were black, and they were just as large as the guards Roark had fought.
Between them was a scrawny prisoner in a thin, white shift. Her head was shaved, revealing the healing scar on the side of her head. Electricity burns marred her skin, and blood gushed from her nose. Still, she raged. He could not hear her through the soundproof glass, but her lips formed a string of vile oaths.
Ronja.
Roark swore and strained against his unyielding restraints.
The guards threw Ronja to the ground, and she skidded across the concrete. She immediately sprang to her feet, her twig legs trembling. She raised her fists before her and wiped her bloodied nose with the back of her wrist.
The guards laughed. Roark could imagine their nauseating guffaws. Ronja took advantage of their amusement and bolted for the door. The Off with the hooked nose caught her and smashed her back into the ground. Her head ricocheted off the concrete. Roark was glad he could not hear the sound of her skull cracking.
Ronja blinked sluggishly, attempted to rise. The bald guard kicked her in the stomach. His partner gripped him by the arm. For half a moment, Roark thought he was going to suggest restraint.
Then he gestured to Ronja, said something Roark could not hear, but innately understood. The two sentinels shared a ghoulish grin. The black haired Off reached down and grasped Ronja by the neck. He dragged her to her feet and pinned her to the wall with a single hand. The other he began to trace up her inner thigh.
Ronja trembled. Her eyes were utterly blank. Her bare feet danged an inch above the floor, twitching.
Roark was screaming, hurling the foulest words he could think of at the glass. The Offs could not hear him, but they knew he was there. The one with the crooked nose smiled sickly, winked in his general direction.
Roark’s shackles bit into his wrists and ankles, drawing blood.
The Off holding Ronja began to fumble with his belt buckle.
Roark did not hear the door open behind him, nor did he register the lazy footfalls sauntering toward him. Victor appeared out of nowhere at his side. His son twisted around and looked up at him desperately.
“Stop this!” Roark demanded hoarsely.
“My Offs work hard, they deserve a reward,” Victor responded absently, watching the scene unfold calmly.
“Please—”
“Do you swear to answer my questions truthfully, no matter what they may be?”
“Yes! Stop them!”
Victor leaned forward with infuriating lethargy and pressed a button on the dash. The intercom screeched to life inside the cell, and the men froze. Ronja looked around wildly, panic dissolving the fog in her eyes.
“Havarland, Bayard, retreat to your quarters.”
The dark haired Off let Ronja fall without a second thought. She crumbled to the floor. Her eyelids fell shut like curtains on a terrifying opera.
Roark closed his own eyes, exhaled slowly. He sank back into his chair, which was slick with his sweat. Pain came crawling in through the slits in his wrists and ankles, but he ignored it.
“You called her name,” his father noted.
Roark opened his eyes, dread welling up inside of him.
“Ronja, was it?”
“Let her and the others go, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” Roark bargained.
“I think not.”
Victor perched on the edge of the dashboard, gazing down at him with shrewd, gray eyes. Roark had not seen his father for several months. When he was not in the Belly or on a mission, he spent most of his time at
his flat in the core, stoking the rumors that kept his traitorous double life under wraps. In their time apart, it seemed age had started to creep into his father’s brittle features, so different from Roark’s own.
“You’ve rather shown your hand, son,” Victor said, bringing him back to the claustrophobic chamber.
“Does it matter?” Roark snarled. “Aren’t you just going to stick Singers on all of us anyway?”
Victor cracked a deadly half smile. “Many are surprised to learn I prefer the old methods of persuasion to the new. Progress can and will be made at any cost, but when it comes to my family, I prefer a more personal touch.”
Roark spat in his father’s face.
Victor blinked rapidly as a glob of saliva dribbled from his brow into his eye. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a silk kerchief. He cleansed his face methodically, then tossed the cloth to the ground.
“Your comrades are your pressure point, this girl in particular,” his father said, nodding toward the window as if nothing had happened. “Why would I waste my time with a seven-hour-long procedure when I can make you talk right now?”
Victor peered over his shoulder at Ronja. She had not moved since the Offs had left. Roark felt his stomach sink as a grin split his father’s mouth, his polished teeth glittering in the bluish backlight.
The man rose abruptly, pursed his lips into an unreadable line. He began to pace steadily, just out of his son’s line of sight.
“How long have you been working for the rebels?” Victor asked.
“Since I was taken as a child,” Roark replied, his eyes locked onto Ronja.
“What do you do for them, precisely?”
“I bring them information on you, on The Conductor, on the company.”
“How long did it take them to bend you to their will?”
Roark barked a harsh laugh.
“This might be difficult for you to understand, but they actually got me to help them without the use of torture. Strange, isn’t it?”
Victor was at his back in an instant, his breath startlingly cool on the his neck. He clapped his hands to Roark’s rigid shoulders and learned toward his ear, the one that would soon be crowned with a Singer. “You were always an insolent child, even with my guidance,” Victor whispered.
Vinyl: Book One of the Vinyl Trilogy Page 24