The Calling

by Rachelle Dekker

  Neil led them across the brightness toward another door. This one had a pane of glass in it, allowing them to see through to the other side. Neil glanced through and confusion lit his face. He opened the door and let the others in.

  It looked the same as the hallway behind them but was lined with big glass panels on both sides. They were dim against the white walls, and Carrington slowly moved to look through one. It was a window, but somehow no light from the hallway seemed to pass through it. The room on the other side of the glass was all gray. It looked cold and hard, a box without any light except for the dim bulb panel that hung from the center of the ceiling. A bed lay in the corner, a side table to its left. A chair and table stood in the opposite corner; all of the furniture was bolted to the walls and floor like in a prison cell, which was essentially what this room appeared to be.

  A section of the far wall slid open and Carrington jumped away from the window. She waited a moment as her breathing calmed, then slowly peeked back around the window’s edge. A small girl was standing inside the room, the panel in the wall sliding shut behind her. The girl was in a gray uniform that Carrington recognized all too well. She was a Lint worker, thin—almost gaunt—and too young to have been in her position for long. Carrington noticed the girl’s hands trembling at her sides. She couldn’t see the girl’s face, but she imagined it was probably stained with tears. Carrington moved forward so the girl could see her, but the girl didn’t react.

  “She can’t see you,” Neil said.

  Carrington was startled by his voice.

  “These are blackout windows. We can see them, but they can’t see us.”

  “Them?”

  “All these rooms are holding people,” Ramses said. “People from all over the city.”

  Carrington moved from window to window and saw men who looked like they were from the Cattle Lands and the Farm Lands, more Lint women, shop owners, High-Rise Sector workers, even CityWatch guards locked away in the rooms.

  She stepped up to the last cell and her stomach tensed. Ian Carson lay on the single thin mattress, his face ashen and eyes glazed. She had spent so much time fearing this man, so much time wanting to please him and the other Authority members, to be perfectly what society required of her. Looking at him here, she couldn’t imagine how she had ever feared the once-proud man, now reduced to a shriveled reflection of his previous self.

  “What is going on here?” Carrington asked. Her heart broke at the sight of these people stowed away in solitude, the terrified expressions on their faces—or worse, like Ian, the lack of any expression at all.

  “I think you should come see this,” Ramses said. He was standing above them. Carrington noticed for the first time that a steel bridge was secured along the left side of the room, above the windowed wall. At the end of the hall a steep staircase led up to where Ramses was. Neil and Carrington made their way to the top.

  The bridged walkway trembled beneath their weight as Carrington and Neil moved toward the end where Ramses stood staring through another long windowed section of the wall. Carrington looked down as they walked, and her stomach turned over. Though they were only twelve or thirteen feet up, she had never been a fan of heights. She was relieved to reach Ramses and grabbed his arm for support. He was fiddling with the device Wire had given him, pointing it toward another door to his left side with a paneled lock.

  She looked through the glass before her and saw what appeared to be an old laboratory of some kind. It was dark, but the light from the hallway bled through enough that she could make out the edges of the room. This was not blackout glass, apparently. The lab was small, containing only several long steel tables with different medical equipment on them.

  A soft click indicated that Ramses had successfully unlocked the door and he, Carrington, and Neil carefully made their way inside. The floor was much sturdier than the walking bridge they’d just stepped off and Carrington was glad for it. She moved forward to one of the closest rectangular tables and touched a microscope that sat on its end. Dust caked her fingers and black splotches appeared on the device where she had touched it. Clearly it had been a while since anyone had used this room.

  The light overhead buzzed to life and she turned to see that it was Ramses who had found the switch. She scanned the illuminated room scattered with medical testing supplies, petri dishes, syringes, and test tubes. Two large refrigeration compartments stood against the farthest wall, while the table closest to her held beakers, Bunsen burners, and several centrifuges. The rest of the items Carrington didn’t recognize, but she assumed they were other tools that performed medical and research functions. Everything was covered in a heavy layer of dust, and the air was musty and stale from lack of circulation.

  Ramses and Neil slowly moved about the room. No one said anything. What could they say? It was clearly a very old medical laboratory, and below them people were caged like animals waiting to be tested. The question was why? And who was responsible? Neil opened one of the refrigerator doors and a cool whiff of air spread across the room.

  “Interesting that the coolers were left on when the rest of the space is clearly out of use,” Ramses said. He moved to stand next to Neil and reached inside the unit. He retrieved several different tubes, capped and filled with liquid.

  “It seems keeping these cool is important. Let’s find out why,” he said, carefully placing the tubes in his pocket.

  A voice drifted up from below and all three of them froze. It came again, louder, and Neil moved to shut off the light. They stood still in the dark, hardly breathing. The creak of heavy steel ripped across the air, and the voices were loud enough to make out.

  “Bow and arrow, I swear,” one voice said. Footsteps mixed with the voice and echoed up into the small laboratory. They all dropped into crouches below the windows, out of sight from outside the lab.

  “I heard he was pretty good with it,” the other voice echoed.

  “I’ll say,” the first voice came again. Both voices were male and close by.

  Neil peered around the window’s edge and motioned that there were two of them. He made a CW with his fingers—CityWatch.

  Carrington wondered if the door they had entered through was the only way out of this room and had a sinking feeling that they may have trapped themselves in. If the guards came up the stairs and onto the steel bridge, they would surely discover the infiltrators hiding in the lab.

  The guards continued to chitchat. One of them was worried about his sick mother, the other concerned about getting transferred to High-Rise Sector security. They had stopped walking, as if they were just using the hallway below as a place to escape from their duties. Carrington controlled her breathing, fighting off thoughts of peril. What if they didn’t leave? What if they came up the stairs? What if more guards came?

  Finally, after a handful of long minutes, the footsteps began again and their voices seemed to move down the hall, away from the laboratory. Another loud creak sounded as the voices muffled further and then a thick layer of steel banged behind them. They had left. In one door and out the other.

  Neil stood slowly, checking to make sure they were alone again, and nodded that it was safe for Carrington and Ramses to move. The three exited the laboratory and descended the stairs quietly. Neil moved with cautious steps toward the door they had entered through and cursed under his breath. He shook his head and Carrington knew they couldn’t exit that way. The guards must have posted up outside the door, which meant their only remaining option was venturing farther into the facility and trying to find another way out. She wondered if they could simply wait for the guards to move on, but she knew that would risk more guards coming and trapping them in this hallway. They had to move on.

  Ramses led the charge, slowly slipping through the door at the opposite end of the hall.

  This wasn’t a hallway but rather a square room with four walls and four doors, each door holding a tiny glass window. The room was the same stark white as the hallway they had just
left. They each went up to a door and reported what they saw. Ramses and Neil said their doors led to more hallways with more window-filled walls, more human cages. Carrington’s door led to what looked like a medical suite with a long gurney stretched out in the center. Wires and tubes hung limp near the chair, and Carrington struggled not to think about what happened in that room. It reminded her of the execution room in the Authority City, and she fought through a ball of pain that was forming in her gut.

  She wanted to rush back the way they’d come and smash through the darkened glass that held these people captive. How was she supposed to leave this place when people were being treated like animals?

  A soft whistle yanked her back to reality and she saw Ramses and Neil had chosen one of the doors that led into another hallway. With a nauseated swallow, she followed.

  Down the hallway, forcing herself not to see the people imprisoned on either side of her, she followed the men as they passed through another door at the end. This time it opened into a large open space that looked more like a storage area than a medical facility. The huge room was filled with wooden crates, making it hard to see what was waiting at the other side. They moved along the side wall, trying to keep behind the boxes.

  Neil stopped and nodded to another large door. Light leaked through the cracks and Carrington knew the rays were too bright to be artificial. Fresh air and sunlight lay on the other side of that door.

  But what else was beyond it? For all they knew they’d walk right into a gathering of guards. But what other choice did they have? Ramses and Carrington silently assured Neil they were ready to move and Neil stepped out from behind a crate to head toward the door.

  “Hey—you can’t be in here,” a voice rang out.

  Carrington turned to see a CityWatch guard standing across the room, surprise and confusion on his face. They stood opposed, each waiting for the other to make a move. The expression on the guard’s face changed and he paled. Ramses grabbed Carrington’s arm, and they took off.

  “Stop!” the guard yelled.

  They rushed behind another tall stack of crates and out of sight.

  “I need backup in sector H, possible Delta-67,” the guard reported into his walkie-talkie. A voice answered back and Carrington knew that more guards would be here quickly. Neil was ahead of them, racing toward the exit as Ramses yanked Carrington along behind. The door had felt closer without the threat of the CityWatch closing in. Sweat collected at Carrington’s hairline, and her chest heaved as they ran.

  Neil reached the door and yanked. It was locked. Several more shouts echoed through the warehouse and Neil cursed.

  Carrington scanned the space around the crates. They were stacked too high to see over and blocked their view of their enemies as well as any opportunity of finding another exit. They were going in blind once again.

  They left the door that they’d hoped would lead them to safety and went back into the maze of wooden boxes. They rounded a corner and saw a guard racing toward them. Neil spun around, nearly crashing into Carrington and Ramses, and shouted for them to go back. They backtracked several long strides and turned down a different aisle. It felt impossible to know if they were headed back the way they’d come or into new territory. Everything looked the same, each aisle and clearing filled with crates.

  Carrington moved her gaze upward as they ran and was struck with a thought. The boxes were stacked to different heights; if they could climb up them, they’d be able to see and maybe escape.

  “Ramses,” she said, pulling out of his hold. He turned his head, and Carrington was already pulling herself up onto a lower stack of crates.

  “What are you doing?” Ramses asked.

  “Getting us out of here,” Carrington replied.

  Ramses whistled for Neil to stop. Carrington heard Ramses behind her but kept her gaze upward. She scaled the stacks carefully. The crates were sturdy, most of them large enough for even Neil to climb. They held steady as Carrington moved across them. She approached the top layer and slowly raised her head to look around the room. She guessed she was maybe twenty feet above the concrete floor. From here she could make out the entire room. Behind her to her left was a single door; she assumed that was the door they’d already tried. Two guards hurried past it, talking to each other and into their wrist comms.

  In front of Carrington lay what was most likely the front wall of the warehouse. It housed two large cargo doors that were closed and sealed. Beside them was another door, standing ajar with the sun streaming in through its opening. That had to be the main entrance. Leaving that way would surely lead them right into more trouble.

  She heard more voices and saw a group of three soldiers walking the aisles in search of the intruders. That made at least five CityWatch guards looking for them.

  They needed a way out. Ramses tapped her arm and pointed down at a window. It was probably ten feet lower than where they were; it looked accessible from a nearby stack of crates and was half-open. She glanced at Neil and Ramses and nodded. It was their best option.

  Ramses took the lead, carefully maneuvering from crate to crate as they descended toward their escape. Reaching the window, Ramses slowly opened it the rest of the way and glanced down.

  “It’s gonna be a drop; be careful,” he said before heaving himself onto the sill. Using the window’s edges and his strength, he managed to sit so that he could slide his feet out first and drop to the ground. Carrington watched him disappear over the edge. Neil went next, and Carrington followed. She was balancing on the ledge, glancing down and hoping she wouldn’t break an ankle from the drop, when someone called out behind her.

  “There,” the voice shouted. “Up there.”

  She had been seen. She held her breath and dropped down. She fell awkwardly and felt pain shoot up the back of her right calf. Neil pulled her from the ground and more pain exploded through her kneecap.

  “Hurry,” Ramses called. They raced for the covering of trees. More voices called behind them as they ran.

  Carrington felt tears collecting as pain pulsed through her leg, but she pushed on. Boots pounded the ground behind her and she pleaded with her body to move faster. Ramses and Neil were both quite a bit ahead of her. She didn’t dare glance behind, but she could feel the guards getting closer.

  An arrow whizzed by her head and she heard it hit its target. A painful cry erupted behind her and then another arrow sailed by, followed by a third. She saw Jesse standing at the top of the hill she was scaling with his bow raised and eyes fixed past her. With a final push, Carrington raced up the remainder of the hill and over the top into the trees.

  Ramses moved to her side and assisted her as they continued to run, Neil in front and Jesse behind with his back to them, his bow still raised. They moved through the trees, several guards still following them, but Jesse kept them at bay. After at least a mile of running for their lives, the coast seemed clear.

  Carrington heaved to a stop and closed her eyes, forcing the vomit nestled in her throat back down. She clenched her fists at the raging pain in her leg and tried to breathe deeply.

  “We need to keep moving,” Neil said.

  “Give her a minute,” Jesse said.

  Carrington turned and gave Jesse an appreciative look. “Thank you.”

  He shrugged, but a smile was pulling at the corners of his mouth.

  She took another deep breath and looked at Neil. “I’m fine; let’s go.”

  He nodded and again they were on the move. The sun was moving toward the western mountains, and Carrington focused her mind on getting back to camp. Getting back to Remko and Elise. She let their faces defuse the overwhelming ache in her body, praying all the while that Remko was safe and would be there when she returned.

  18

  Remko halted and placed his palm against the tunnel wall for support. He didn’t know how long they’d been running, but it had been a long time since they’d heard any footsteps besides their own. They’d been forced to take a longer way t
han usual to lose their pursuing enemies, which would add at least an hour to their journey back to camp.

  Kate had passed out once during the run. Remko and Wire had stopped to wake her and bandage what they could so she wouldn’t bleed out. The bullet was lodged deep, and healing her was way beyond Remko’s medical skills. They needed to get her to Connor as quickly as possible. She’d started off fighting against Remko and Wire as they tried to move her to safety. She’d refused to leave without Sam, crying that Remko was letting her brother die, but at some point she’d gotten too weak to fight, and Remko had been grateful for it.

  Her accusing words still bored into his insides. She was right—he had probably gotten Sam killed. Wire had stayed very quiet the entire journey and even now, as they took a moment to breathe, he kept his eyes on Kate and away from Remko. Remko could only imagine what the boy was thinking, and it tore at his chest.

  Remko set Kate down on the tunnel floor and she moaned as he slipped his arms out from underneath her. Her eyes fluttered open, then closed, and each time they did, Remko worried that she was fading again. Wire bent to help Kate drink what water he had left and Remko tried to breathe past the racing of his mind.

  Powerful emotions rocked him and he turned to lean against the wall beside Kate. He closed his eyes and fought the tears collecting behind them. He saw Dodson lying on the stone, blood creating a halo around his head, eyes open and still, an image he knew would always haunt him.

  Logic sharpened his guilt. He should have known this would happen. He was building a track record of failing; why had he imagined this time would be different? How could he have been foolish enough to think he could fight against the system? Why were they still fighting? Like stones shot from a sling, one after the other, projectiles of uncertainty crashed inside his brain.