by Robin Banks
“How do you know where to go?”
“It’s tugging at me.”
“Have you done this before?”
“No. I don’t even know if I’m doing it now.”
We walk down a maze of streets getting narrower and narrower. I start out trying to keep track of where we’re going, to remember the way back, but either the drug hitting me or the need to keep the contact with Quinn tight fucks that right up. All I know is that I’m getting closer to her, because she’s getting louder. That, or shit is going downhill fast with her. If that were the case, though, she’d get louder everywhere, not just in one direction. I guess I’ll find out when I get there. If I do.
I look out of my own brain for a moment and nearly shit a brick: I’m walking through streets that are just like home. I mean, I could be home, I could be in any of the dozens of identical alleyways around my mom’s house. It’s like the Fed decided once how to build grubber’s housing and just stuck to that plan ever since and everywhere. I look up at the balcony on one of the H-shaped buildings blocking out the sky: that would have been my mom’s flat. I know exactly what I’d see out of those windows, how far I’d have to lean out to glimpse a view of the bubble wall above.
I get so spooked that for a moment I nearly drop the link with Quinn. I have to stay still for a bit and get myself back into it. When I do, the signal is louder. I have to stop myself thinking about what that might mean.
We round a corner and suddenly I know we’re there. She’s here. She’s not that close, but that’s because she’s high up somewhere.
Asher stops next to me. I can’t believe how calm he is. I guess that’s what practice gives you, but it’s still spooky as fuck.
“This is it.”
“Where is she?”
“Up there somewhere.”
“Ok, then.”
He starts to walk towards the entrance and I stop him.
“I don’t think this is going to work. If this building is used for anything illegal, which it almost certainly is, they’ll have watchers minding the stairs. We won’t get past them. We don’t belong here.”
“How the fuck do you know that?”
“I grew up in a place like this. You see those kids there?”
Three grubby girls are playing on the steps leading up to the entrance.
“Yeah.”
“First line of watchers.”
“They could just be kids playing.”
“Possible, but unlikely. Kids that small, it wouldn’t be safe for them to be out here alone unless they were affiliated with someone. And they wouldn’t have toys that nice.”
“Why?”
“Bigger kids would take them from them.”
“You don’t know this. I’m not going to sit out here and leave Quinn in there just in case you’re right.”
“Not my plan. We can get in through the back.”
I walk around the wing of the building to the wall around the back courtyard. Quinn’s signal gets stronger. I guess we’re in luck.
“Luke? What is your fucking plan?”
“I’ve been breaking in and out of this kind of place since I was old enough to wipe my own ass. All the pipes are external. Lower repair costs. The two lowest and highest floors have barred windows, but the mid ones don’t unless a tenant pays to have them fitted, and nobody does that.”
“Why?”
“Lets people know you’ve got something worth stealing. You might as well paint a target on your home. All I’ve got to do is get into the courtyard, climb up a pipe, get on the right balcony, and I can break into wherever Quinn is being held, unless they’ve reinforced the windows. If they have I’m kinda fucked. Hey, you got those darts things on you?”
“Yes.”
“Can I have one?”
“No. Luke, I’m the better climber and the better fighter. You’re drugged up. Quinn is my partner. I should be the one going up.”
“I can’t tell you where she is. I have to feel my way there.”
“We can both go, then.”
“No. If I don’t make it or I get caught I’ll need you to get Alya and Raj. If we all get stuck in there we’re all fucked.”
“Ok. So you climb up, find her, get back down, and I go get her.”
“That’ll depend on what I find. There may not be time.”
“The darts are single use.”
“This isn’t.” I take my arc-knife out of my boot. I’m not into weapons – I’m not good enough at using them to feel comfortable fucking around with them. There’s something comforting about a blade that can burn its way through pretty much anything, though. It won’t totally make up for my lack of skills, but it could help some.
“Since when have you been carrying that?”
“My eighteenth birthday. Raj got it for me.”
“And only now you see fit to tell me? That’s an illegal weapon.”
“I promised Raj to keep it quiet. I’ve not even told Alya.” She got me the other knife, the one that fits along my belt, the one I swore not to tell Raj about. “Look, we don’t have time for this.”
“We don’t have time to fuck this up, either.”
“Ok. I go up. I see what I find. I come down if I can. We make a plan. If I don’t come down in a half hour you go get Alya and Raj.”
I can tell he’s not happy, but he has to agree.
I shimmy up the courtyard wall. That’s easy enough. It’s supposed to have razor wire on top, but that stuff is worth money so it always gets stolen as quickly as it gets replaced. If anyone sees me getting in, they don’t make a fuss. That could be very good or very bad news. Either way, it doesn’t matter: Quinn is up there and I’m getting her out.
I look up the pipe, up the building, at the bubble above us. I didn’t tell Asher everything. The reason the pipes aren’t considered a security risk is that nobody with any sense would climb them. They don’t always hold. Sometimes you go up fine, and sometimes you find yourself holding a length of pipe not attached to anything. I’ve not done this since I was sixteen. I have no idea if they’ll hold my weight. I’m not sure I can hold my weight either. The g-force here is lower than at home, but not that low.
Maybe this is how I go, flying backwards through the air until the concrete catches me.
It doesn’t matter, though, ‘cause Quinn gets to go home. Maybe my body plummeting to the floor alerts a neighbor who alerts the guards who raid the place and find Quinn, or causes enough of a disturbance that Asher can get her out. I don’t know and I don’t care. Quinn gets to go home: that’s what matters.
I put my hands on the pipe and it all comes back to me. Four steps to a bracket. Rest only at the brackets, if at all. Keep going up. Never look down. It’s all perfectly safe as long as you don’t fall off.
When I start going up, everything seems to happen faster than normal. I guess that’s the advantage of being a foot taller than I used to be. I’m a ton heavier, though. This is hard work, but Quinn is getting nearer. The ground is getting further away, but Quinn is getting nearer. I manage to get my hand caught in a bracket and slice it up like a damn newbie, but it doesn’t matter because I’m there: Quinn is parallel to me, so close, only a little jump away. I throw myself sideways at the nearest balcony railing. It seems to come at me really slowly and for an endless moment I think I won’t make it, then suddenly the rail slams into my chest and knocks my breath out while I scrabble frantically at it, slashed hand and all. Once I’ve pulled myself over I stop for a moment to get my breath back. That gives me a chance to look down. I can count the balconies across the courtyard. I’m five floors up. Finding that out makes catching my breath a bit harder.
That settles it, then. There is no way in hell I can climb back down, with or without a slashed hand. I could try and slide down, but I don’t fancy my chances. My best way out is by going in.
The flats on this side of the H-block are laid out the opposite way round from my mom’s. I’ve landed on the bedroom side. The second, sm
aller window is the ‘fresher, then there’s the kitchen door, then the lounge. If Quinn isn’t in this flat, then I have a problem: the balcony for the next flat is a long jump away. It’s not a jump I’ve ever seen anyone make or even try. It’s not a jump I’d attempt. I’d have to break into this flat, break out into the hallway, make my way down it until I found the right place, and break into that. I’m not sure my luck would hold. I don’t think Quinn is that far, though. If I’d let her study my psi-bility or whatever the fuck it is I’ve got, I might know for sure. If I kept a closer eye on her, this may not have happened. If I don’t get on with this, this is going to be the most pointless rescue mission ever.
I peep through the bedroom window to see what’s what. The shades are closed but not all of the way, and I can see through the gap. There are two bunks on either side of the room. Two dudes are sleeping on the bottom ones. I guess it’s good that my landing was quiet. I crawl along the balcony towards the kitchen door. There’s nobody in there, which is just as well as the door is full glass. The next window is my last chance. If Quinn isn’t there, I’ll have to make my way in and out again.
She is there. When I see her, my heart does a weird half-hop. Then I spot the state she’s in, and my heart does a full hop in the opposite direction. She’s tied to a chair and gagged, which is bad but not that bad. I’d kinda figured she wasn’t here of her own free will. There’s a burnt horizontal line across the side of her shirt. I can’t see underneath it, but it looks like an arc-knife slash. Her shirts are never tight so there’s a chance it didn’t cut through skin, but I don’t reckon we’re that lucky. The rest of her clothes look fine from here, so I’m kind of hoping her body underneath will be too.
Her face, though… She’s fucked up. She looks in so much pain it makes me gag. For a moment I can’t work out what the fuck is wrong with her, then I see it: she’s got one of those damn drug plasters stuck to her neck, too. I guess I was right about the absorption rate.
She’s so out of it she’s not seen me yet. There’s no way in hell I’m leaving her here. There’s also no way in hell she’s climbing down five floors in that state. I need to get that fucking thing off her as soon as I can.
Maybe this is how I go: I break the window, the guys hear me and they knock me off. Quinn goes home, though. Quinn goes home to her kids.
I tap gently on the window to get her to notice me. I hope to fuck she won’t scream, though I bet she’s screamed plenty already. When she hears me, her eyes roll forward and slowly focus on me. She strains against her bonds for a moment, then goes limp. I motion at her to stay put, get my knife out, and start to cut a hole into the window pane. It only needs to be large enough for me to get my hand in there and turn the handle, so it doesn’t take long, but I’m so wired that it seems to take forever. I have to stop myself just punching the fucking window out. I know from experience that it wouldn’t work, and it would definitely make a racket.
The window isn’t stuck, thank the gods, and it only squeaks a little when I open it. I lift myself into the room and take the few steps to Quinn. She’s been getting so loud in my head I can hardly think, though she’s been still and quiet in the real world.
I cut the straps holding her arms to the chair. She immediately starts fighting against the gag, so I cut that off too. A chunk of hair comes off with it. I undo her feet next and she tries to get up, but she’s so fucking wobbly she nearly falls over and takes me with her.
I push her back down into the chair and whisper in her ear, “You have to calm down.” She doesn’t, though. She starts struggling against me instead, trying to slap my arms off her. I rest my forehead against hers and try to send over some calm, though it’s not as if I’m that calm myself. If she doesn’t fucking settle we’re never getting out of here.
Either she gets that, or I’m calm enough to calm her. Her eyes close and she starts to do her slow breathing thing. Three breaths in, she’s got herself together enough for me to let go of her.
I sit back on my heels and think. Maybe I should have done it earlier, like Asher said, because I have no idea how the fuck we’re gonna get out of here. I know I have to, though. I can smell scorched flesh on her. They’ve fucked her up good.
We need an edge and we don’t have one. We have an injured, drugged empath and a panicky, drugged fuckwit. We have two knives and one dart thingie, and only one person able to use them, barely, and with only one good hand. If we can’t walk our way out we’ll have to fight our way out, and I don’t rate our chances. That’s our best chance: to walk out of here. It’s a ridiculous plan, but I don’t have a better one.
I strip the plaster off her neck and she stifles a whimper. When I slap it on my neck next to the other one her eyes widen and she looks about to say something. I put a finger over her lips to keep her quiet and grab her hand. Her fingers find their way through mine.
Our bodies are touching, but our heads aren’t because there’s a wall between them. With the drug pushing behind me, I tear that fucker down.
22. Quinn
When Luke barges into my head, he does it so forcefully that I’m convinced he’s going to tear the place apart. Instead he stops, takes a look around, and finds me, even though my head is so loud with the noise of other people that I can barely find myself. He wraps his arms around me, throws a cloak over me, and suddenly all I can feel is him. Us. I’ve been naked and skinned for I don’t know how long, feeling everything and everyone, and now it’s all gone quiet. I can only feel Luke. He is an ocean of calm and I don’t understand that, because we’re not safe. He wants me to be calm and quiet and hide under his cloak, though, and it feels so good, so much better than all the raw-flesh pain I’ve been feeling, that I let everything go and do it.
He gets my body up and out of the chair. It doesn’t work very well; they hurt it to get it in here because it tried to fight back. The pain is outside Luke’s cloak though, so I don’t mind it. I know it’s there, but it doesn’t touch me. I try to help as best I can, try to make my body do the right thing, but it’s far away and damaged so I’m struggling. Luke thinks that I’m doing fine, though, so I carry on.
We get out of the room. I can see the outside door only a few feet away. I manage to help Luke to get my body there. Once he gets to the door he props my body against the wall and leans against it while he does something to the lock. It makes a burning smell, worse than my body did earlier. My body starts to slip down, so he yanks it up again, slides a leg between mine, and leans his hip right into me. Back when my body and I were one thing I would have really liked this. He sighs and leans his cheek against my hair for a moment, then goes back to working on the door.
When he steps back and drags us away from the door, it’s all so sudden that my body does nothing to help him. I look out of my eyes and see that we’re going back, back towards the room with the pain in it. I nearly manage to get my body to fight, to stop going back in there, when Luke yanks it through another doorway and pushes it into the corner behind the door. He leans hard against my body, his lips pushing against my forehead, his cloak wrapped so tight around me that it’s almost painful. Then he goes away. He’s not there. His cloak still is, though, muffling everything, making it all bearable. I still feel the man behind him, one of the bad men; anger, fear, and confusion are swirling around inside him. The man is just behind the door, so close he could touch Luke if he was there, but he isn’t, though his body is still holding my body up. None of it makes sense. Then the man leaves, and after a few moments Luke comes back.
He pushes away from me so he can look at me. His eyes are enormous. A lot of noise happens outside, then stops. Luke’s mouth starts to move. His voice sounds weird outside my head.
“Fuck me sideways: that actually worked. Quinn, I need you to do something for me. Can you try?”
My body refuses to nod, but I do.
“Can you feel this?” He goes away again. He comes back and looks at me. I have no idea what he wants. He frowns. “Shit. Ok. How about
this?”
He loves me. It’s a weird, fucked-up kind of love, full of daggers turned against him, but he loves me. I melt into that.
“Ok. Can you follow me now? All you’ve got to do is what I do.”
He starts to get smaller, further away, and insignificant, to turn inside himself. I follow him as he goes. When we’re both tiny and hardly there we stop, and when I’m sure I’m holding him tight I start to project the feeling outwards. I make it as big and loud as I can.
I can feel his smile. “Great. Ok. We’re going to walk out of here. We’re going to take it easy. It’s a long way. If I got this right, if there’s anyone out there they won’t see us. I don’t know about them hearing us, though, so you have to be quiet, even if it really hurts. And it’s going to hurt. If I let go of you, I want you to do that thing all by yourself and shut me out. Can you do that for me?”
I don’t want to agree to that. That doesn’t sound nice.
“Quinn, please, you have to do it. You have to promise me.”
I agree because under his cloak and his not-there-ness he is getting tired and sad and scared, and that’s not nice either.
He slides one of my arms over his shoulder and holds it tight. His other arm goes around me, right over the spot where the bad man slashed me. When he feels the cut and the pain he moves his hand. It still hurts, but it’s not as bad.
We walk out of the room, into the hallway, out of the door, into a bigger, darker hallway that seems to stretch on forever. My body is starting to really hurt, so I make myself as small and as far away as I can go and still operate it. Luke squeezes my hand. He’s pleased with me.
The hallway ends into a square staircase. It’s brighter here, a dim light filtering from above. We start to walk downstairs. That makes my body really hurt, and it doesn’t like it at all. It wants to stop moving. I try and make it focus on Luke’s hand holding mine, on all the contact points between us. That doesn’t help much, but it helps enough.
A couple of times people come walking up the stairs. Luke pushes me tight against the wall, chest to chest, until they’ve passed. Three times we pass children sitting on the landing or dangling their feet through the railings into the void beneath. One of them lifts his head up to look around as we go by, but he doesn’t spot us.