by J. D. Heath
Morgan shouts something but I don’t hear it over the ominous screech coming from the ankle monitor around Baumer’s ankle. He’s still going backward but I’m moving forward too, yanking at the doubled and looped wire and putting pressure on that cuff.
The ends of the wire slice into my palms, spills my blood. I have to hang on, have to, for just a moment longer. I haul backward, pulling on that wire with everything I’ve got even as my flesh splits again and my blood slicks the wire, making it nearly impossible to hang on.
Baumer makes one last attempt. He tries to come toward me but the bomb’s already engaged. Norton wasn’t lying. Any attempt to remove it will result in death—and it does. Baumer doesn’t even have time to scream.
Blood and bone and Baumer’s head all blow toward us. I drop the wire and turn away but the hot splatter hits me anyway, turning my stomach and making my body jerk and jump.
Morgan lets out a deafening scream. I leap to my feet, my hands on his chest, digging into the sides of the coveralls. I take us backward, into a wall. That wall hits his back, cuts off his voice and my mouth silences the rest of that scream.
I kiss him and I feel his rage in the teeth that tear at my bottom lip. I kiss him anyway. I trust him with my lips, my tongue, and my breath. His tears run down his face and leave salt to dissolve on my tongue. He shoves me away and screams, “Why?”
I just press him back against the wall and kiss him again. Beneath my chest I can feel the thunderous roar of his heartbeat. I can feel his rage and his grief, all of it a storm that’s breaking through him and transferring into me, and oh God, I know that pain. I know his hatred. I taste it and I take it and I kiss him through it all.
I kiss him even though Tayne’s still out there somewhere and so is Norton. Norton, who’s definitely the most dangerous player in the Dying Game.
I kiss Morgan even though we have no time for kissing, even though we could be killed as we stand there with our mouths joined and my body shoved so tightly against his that I can feel every locked and rigid muscle of his chest, his arms, and his thighs, against my skin.
He breaks that kiss off again but this time he just leans against the wall and takes in one long and slow breath. There’s dark shadows under his beautiful eyes and tears running down his face, cutting channels in the blood and dirt and sweat.
He whispers, “He killed my family.”
“I know.”
His voice shakes and breaks, loses strength with every word. “I didn’t do anything to save them. I just stayed there, in that crawlspace, and let them die.”
“You were a toddler for God’s sake. There was nothing you could do but die with them.” It’s true. He knows it’s true but when it comes to watching someone you love die, when it comes to letting someone you love die because you’re too small and weak to stop it, knowing you can’t stop it, can’t change it—well that doesn’t mean much. It sure doesn’t stop the guilt.
That guilt never goes away. There’s nothing that will ever ease it.
I should know.
God, do I ever know that guilt and how it clings on and on and on.
Morgan says, “Thank you,” and I know he’s back. Or as much of him that’s left is back and here with me.
I nod. “Welcome, but right now we have two problems. Clark was right about that door. We have to get back to it. And we have to figure out how to get the cuffs off our ankles.”
Morgan’s shaky and shocked. He’s trying to think but he’s not there yet. I can see that. I can also see that he has to have something to focus on. He says, “I think Clark was right. If we take the implants out first we may be able to deactivate the cuff.”
That’s not an experiment any of us were willing to try. I look at Clark’s body and revulsion makes my throat and nostrils burn again. “There’s only one way to find out.”
Morgan reads my look at Clark’s body correctly. Morgan’s cheeks blow out as he releases an audible breath. “We have to at least try.”
“It’s all we can do.”
Morgan says, “Let me do it.”
I stand aside. He needs this, he needs to do this and really, I don’t want to. I can’t look at what’s left of Clark without feeling like I’m standing on the lip of some yawning abyss that’s reaching up for me.
Morgan takes the knife from the floor and slides it into Clark’s arm. Skin parts. The blood barely seeps from that sliced skin. I look away, overcome with pity for Clark, a pity I don’t want to feel. The only wounds Baumer gave him were to the neck, and Baumer did that with his teeth. I don’t want to know how savage a death that had to be.
All I can think of is Clark saying that he knew that one day he’d have to come to an accounting for his crimes, and he didn’t care because he died the same day his daughter did.
I understood Clark too. I did, and I do. I too know that one day, there will come a reckoning and when it comes, I’ll have to pay the price for what I’ve done.
Morgan gently lifts the tag out. It’s a complicated bundle of wires and circuits. I stare at it, trying to think. This is my wheelhouse so I take it from him and examine it. I say, “Yes, it has to be this. It sends some sort of current, I’m guessing it works with the nervous system or something. We have to try to get the cuff off now.”
Our faces are grim. That tag’s one thing. The cuff’s another entirely. We kneel beside Clark. My knees are awash in blood, some Clark’s and some Baumer’s. Paisley’s blood, Ally’s blood. Their blood, and it’s all over me.
Morgan gives the cuff a short tug. We wait. Nothing happens. I say, “He had the lock-pick he made hidden somewhere on him.”
We go through his pockets, run our hands under his clothes. Nothing. Frustration courses through me. “Maybe he lost it.”
Morgan says, “No. I bet he didn’t. I bet he used an old prison trick.”
He levers what’s left of Clark’s jaw open and fishes around inside his mouth. There’s a thick sucking sound and then Morgan’s fingers come out again, holding the small bent piece of metal between them.
It takes us far too long to get the cuff unlocked. Time’s ticking away. Norton could be anywhere. Control could be on the way, ready to shut the whole thing down—permanently.
The cuff breaks open and apart. I begin to cry. I can’t help it. Morgan hugs me, hard. “I’ll go first. Just in case.”
“No. Let me.”
He smiles. It’s a small smile, but it’s real. “I insist.” He holds to his arm and makes the cut. The implant comes out and then he squeezes the edges of the cut, which is bleeding badly shut to help put pressure on it.
My palms are hurting, badly and the sight of the long cut on his arm awakens that ache all over again. I say, “I’ll do the cuff.”
“No.” He brushes me off and I watch, my heart in my mouth, as he puts the pin to the lock.
God please, I pray, please. Not him. If someone has to die here today, don’t take him. He doesn’t deserve this. He’s a good person. I know you and me have never gotten along but come on, just once hear me, will you?
The cuff falls into two halves on the floor. A low whoop comes from Morgan’s mouth and another comes from mine. He takes my hands and examines them. “That looks bad. Hold on. I’ll try not to hurt you.”
The cut to my arm does hurt but I’m in so much pain for so many reason that I barely register it at all. The tag comes out and the cuff’s gone and we climb to our feet and stand there, smiling at each other.
Freedom is just a few hundred yards away now.
We’re going to make it.
CHAPTER 16: MORGAN:
Baumer’s dead. I can’t wrap my head around it. I want to rage, to scream, to hit things and break them open until they bleed.
Gina killed him, and he was mine to kill.
I don’t have to ask her why she did it. I know why. She knows me. She knows I never killed anyone unless it was self-defense. She knows I’m an undercover agent, and she knows justice is what I need to survive.<
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There would have been revenge in killing Baumer, but no justice. Something in my very fiber would have been twisted by killing him like that, but I wanted to do it anyway.
And I’m grateful she stopped me because I don’t know that I could have lived with myself after the killing was done. It strikes me that she now has to live with it, and I wonder, I really do, how this is going to be for her when we get out of here.
When. It’s not a question of when and not if and the relief that fills me is so sweet I can taste it. We’re almost there.
Cuffs off and our tags gone, we stand there for a moment. Then I take her into my arms. She nestles against me. Time’s working against us and I know it but that last kiss we shared was not the kiss I wanted to end this with, so I kiss her. Soft and slow. It’s a kiss that promises life, promises that beyond this prison is something better, something pure and free.
When it breaks off she murmurs, “I’m ready.”
Me too. We star down the hallway, heading back to the cell room. The room where Norton may or may not be waiting. I tick off a litany of the dead in my mind. It’s just us now, and Norton. The cell room is still. The scent of blood is fading but it’s still there. The floor is coated with dried clots and splashes. The bodies are everywhere. The door to Baumer’s cell is open and the ravaged bodies of those he ate catches my eye. Sickness knots up along my stomach and I have to force myself to look away.
My family’s been avenged. But they’re still dead and I still can’t stop reliving their agonies.
The staircase creaks and groans a little under our weight. The door to the room is bolted shut and resists all of our attempts to open it. The glass proves unbreakable, just as we thought.
Frustration mounts inside me. This is the way out. I know it. But how do we get into that room? Even Clark hadn’t had a plan for that one.
Gina steps back, her head tilting to one side. She’s thinking, her face is screwed up into lines of concentration. Her fingers move in the air like she’s playing an instrument, or tallying up her scores.
She says, “Morgan?”
“Yeah?”
“I think…” She pauses and then rushes onward. “If you were Norton and you had a lot of things to protect, like your life and the files that could uncover who the people behind Control are, would you really hide them in such plain sight?”
That question makes me blink. “No.”
“Yeah, me either.”
She’s coming at something and I can see the shape of it. She can too. We just aren’t there yet. She turns and looks back down at the cells. She pivots back to the door. The frown on her forehead carves deep grooves into the silken flesh there.
I say nothing. I’m thinking as hard as she is. Clark was right. This is the way out, but Norton would have known eventually one of the career criminals he brought through here would figure that one out. He’d hidden everything in plain sight. But that just meant…
Gina says, “The Purloined Letter.”
I blink. “The Poe story?”
A smile flashes across her face. “You like Poe?”
“I read some of his stuff while I was in school.”
She looks back at the cells and then at the door. Her fingers play that invisible instrument or adding machine again. She says, “It’s here. The exit I mean. But it’s not through this room. Norton knew the others would leave, would have to in order to get to us. When they did, he walked out of this room and into the real control room.”
Either she’s making perfect sense or none at all. I glance around again. “But there’s nothing here.”
Gina says, “It’s all here. Look, there’s computers in plain sight, and they shouldn’t be here. No way. Norton would never have left them here, not with all the information they should hold. There’s this door, which we can’t get through. This is where we saw Norton go, all the time. But when he came into this room, he came in through that door on the side there.”
She’s right! How did I not notice that? Norton never came from the control room. He usually entered through the side door and then he went up, and to the control room!
I study the fake control room through the glass. The computers sit silent and dark. The chairs are all neatly aligned to the long counter that must also serve as desks. There’s only one way in or out that I can see.
And that’s the whole point of it.
Clark had said that Norton would have a back door just in case the players decided to play a different kind of game. He was right. Norton had played us.
I look along the walkway that seems to go nowhere. It stretches along the front of the control room and past it. The sides are tightly bolted to steel beams and concrete that make up the walls both the bottom and top floors. “So where the hell do we go?”
“Through the door.” She tugs at my hand and leads me toward a wall. “Have you ever seen a safe room?”
“I’ve heard of them but I’ve never actually seen one.”
Gina studies the concrete and steel, the huge rivets holding the walkway in place. “I’ve seen more than a few. The good ones look like a closet, or a wine cellar. Hell some of them actually are closets and wine cellars, with the safe room behind it. But the best ones? The best ones look like nothing at all. Like just a bit of wall. You’d go by it a hundred times and not notice it, not if you’re like most people. Forced perception, that’s what this is.”
Forced perception? I study the wall again. Gina moves, stepping toward the other wall. She gets to the door and counts her steps until she comes to the other wall. She crosses back to the door of the control room and then past it, back to where I stand.
“There’s fewer steps between the door and this wall than there are between the door and that wall. But, if you look up or step back and look at it, it looks perfectly even. It looks like the control room sits dead even in the center of the walkway.”
My gut tells me she’s worked this out. Curiosity springs into life too though. How the hell does she know so much about safe rooms?
And who, really who, is Gina?
She’s not said much about her life outside the Fortress and I want to know what her life’s been like. Why she has such bad dreams, because I have major doubts that they all stem from this game. I don’t know why, but that is just not something I believe anymore.
I say, “Okay, so there’s something about this wall…”I can’t grasp it. I can see the shape of it, but not its face, so to speak.
Gina says, “This is the control room. Behind this wall is the way out.”
Oh fucking great. I study the wall again. I say, “I hate to tell you this, but I am at a dead loss here.”
She giggles. It’s a merry little sound and it causes an answering grin to come up on my mouth. She says, “That’s because you’re not supposed to.”
Then she reaches out and, very gently, runs her fingers down the face of the concrete wall until she’s near the bottom of it. There’s a nearly silent click. A tall and slim section of the wall swings inward. Behind it lies darkness. I stare at the darkness. “Why didn’t he just come down the stairs?”
Gina says, “Only one way to find out.”
We step through the door. My heart throbs and beats in my chest as we do. The door swings shut and I spin toward it. There’s some light, but it’s very pale and coming from a distance.
Gina says, “There’s your answer. It’s an automatic lock. Once in, you have to choose another way out. It can only be opened from the outside. That’s one hell of a design flaw.”
I ask, “Why would anyone design a door that they can’t open again?”
Gina points to the back of the door. It’s solid steel. She says, “The door locks from this side. So anyone on the other side would have to know exactly how to open it to get it open. And they would have to be able to get past this lock too.” She fondles a keypad. “He could lock this side once inside.”
A curse erupts from my lips. “It’s just a way for him to buy time so he
can escape. It worked. We might never catch up to him now.”
“We don’t have to catch up to him. We just have to find the exit.”
We walk down a steep concrete staircase because it’s the only option. It’s hot and the walls are very close together. At the bottom there are two doors, both steel and equipped with locks but neither lock has been engaged.
Either Norton’s sure that nobody will be able to figure out the safe room trick or he’s on the run and scared and in too much of a hurry to worry with the locks. Gina opens one and sticks her head out. “It’s the hall and there’s the door to the cell room. It has to be the other door.”
She opens it and we step into a room that’s been trashed. Computers, their guts gone, sit on the floor. There’s been some kind of small, controlled explosion, the sound of which was muffled by yards of concrete. There’s scorch marks on the floor. There’s no sign of life.
We’ve found the Control room, or what’s left of it.
There’s a door leading off it and we go out it, ending up in a tunnel. There’s nothing to do but take that tunnel and we do, walking as fast as we can now.
I see something, in the distance, that makes my heart pick up a faster rate. “Is that what I think?”
Gina looks up at the span of the ceiling and in the direction I’m pointing in. Her eyes go wide. A low happy gasp comes from her mouth. She whispers, reverently, “Are you seeing an exit sign?”
I could cry right now. Literally, I could cry right now. My voice goes hoarse. “Yeah.”
Her hand finds mine. Her fingers, warm and slightly damp, cling to my fingers as we set off down the hallway toward the sign.
It’s real. We stand under it, looking at the bright green-and-red lettering, reading those four letters over and over again. Like everything else here they look tired and run down, worn out. They don’t glow like they should but they do give off a light and as far as I’m concerned that light’s a burning beacon.
We don’t speak. We just move. Our hips brush together and our hands stay joined. We move forward, side by side, down the tunnel. Happiness, so huge and fierce that it beats against my ribs, makes my heart swell and knock at the bones of my chest, roars through me. We’re free from the trap. We’re alive.