by Ty Drago
“Still asleep,” I said.
“Unconscious,” he corrected. “Not asleep.”
“Whatever,” I said.
“There’s a difference. REM sleep has an entirely different electroencephalographic signature than coma.”
Yep, definitely a nerd.
“Okay. She’s still unconscious.”
Ramirez remarked, “She should be in a hospital.” But the look on his face said he now understood that wasn’t possible. He’d come around—a far cry from the outraged adult he’d been yesterday. The world had gotten a bit more complicated for Agent Hugo Ramirez and a bit scarier too.
I knew exactly how he felt.
“Listen, Steve,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”
But Steve, as was his way, rolled right over me. “I was just showing Agent Ramirez our latest innovation.” Then he held up Aunt Sally. I hadn’t laid my eyes on the crossbow since Sharyn had used it to shoot a Corpse through the watchtower window at Eastern State.
It didn’t look any different.
“I’ve seen it,” I said.
“Not the crossbow. This!” He removed the bolt that sat atop the bow. Now I hadn’t seen too many crossbow bolts in my life, but even so, I could tell this one was special. For one thing, it wasn’t metal or wood but clear plastic. And there was fluid inside.
“What is it?” I asked.
“A Ritterbolt!” he replied proudly.
I groaned. “Oh…come on!”
If the Brain Boss noticed my discomfort, it didn’t show. “The bolt is designed to remotely inject a lethal dose of saltwater. The force of penetration drives the plunger in the rear of the bolt forward, delivering all fifteen cc’s stored in the syringe. Should work at least as well as a handheld Ritter.”
“Should work?”
He shrugged. “Functions as expected on test dummies. But out in the field…well, it should work.”
I took the bolt from him and hefted it. It was light, lighter than a real crossbow bolt. “How many have you got?”
“Alex is making the shafts out of acrylic based on my design,” Steve said. “He just delivered the first ten.”
“Ten,” I echoed, thoughtfully. “Okay, I’ll take them.”
Steve blinked. “What?”
“Cavanaugh’s kidnapped my mom and sister,” I said, working hard to keep an edge of panic out of my voice. “I’m going after them.”
“Now wait a minute!” Ramirez exclaimed. “What?”
“Got a text from her. She’s taken my family and says she’ll…do stuff to them…if the Undertakers don’t disappear for the next twenty-four hours.”
“She wants us out of the way,” Steve concluded.
“That what Tom figures,” I said. “I’m guessing they’re stashed at Eastern State, so I’m going in to get them.”
Ramirez shook his head. “I can’t let you do that, Will.”
Around us, the rest of the Brain Factory had picked up on what was happening and stopped working. Steve’s “gallery” had gone as quiet as a tomb.
I faced Ramirez. He was a head taller than me and at least sixty pounds heavier. But he also had one arm in a sling. “Sorry,” I said, meaning it. “But it’s not your call. I’ve already talked to Tom. I’m going.”
He opened his mouth and then shut it again. Finally, he said, “I’ll go with you.”
“Thanks, but you’d just get in the way.”
“Will, I’m a trained federal officer.”
“With a sprained shoulder and no Sight,” I said. “No offense, but I don’t think you could help.”
“But one…person”—the way he tripped over the word made me think he’d almost said child—“against God knows how many of Cavanaugh’s people.”
“Don’t call them ‘people,’” I said. “Corpses.”
“My point’s the same.”
“I’m going to ask Helene and Dave to come with me.”
He shook his head. “So…three against a small army. It’s suicide.”
I shrugged. “What choice do I have?”
“Let me call my office,” he pleaded. “I won’t say anything about Corpses. I’ll just come up with some kind of story to get some agents to that prison to look around.”
“And the minute the Queen gets wind of it, my family dies. They’ll never even find the bodies. No way.”
“But what are you going to do?” he asked, sounding desperate. “How would you even get in?”
“Over the wall,” I said. “Like we did last time.”
He frowned, obviously trying to come up with another argument.
But then Steve said, “Won’t work.”
We both looked at him.
“What?” he added, looking irritated. “You think I can’t strategize?”
“Why won’t it work?” I demanded.
“Three reasons,” Steve replied, and in typical Steve fashion, he ticked them off on his fingers. “One, the first time was in broad daylight, with the Angels using deception to convince any passersby that they had a right to be there. This operation will be at night, and anyone who sees you, human or Corpse, won’t be fooled.
“Two, the prison walls are thirty feet high. You’d need a long ladder to get over it, and our only long ladder was used in the last prison mission and then abandoned.
“Three, the Corpses know how you got in last time, and they’ll be watching for a repeat. Even if you do manage to get over the wall, they’d be on you in a heartbeat…yours, not theirs, because they don’t have heartbeats.”
Then he crossed his arms, looking pleased with himself.
“He’s right,” Ramirez said.
“I have to go in,” I said. “They’ve got my mom and sister.”
“We’ll find another way.”
Then Steve said, “I already know another way. Hey, Kelly! Toss me that book! There…on the lab table beside you.”
“Sure thing, Boss!” one of the Brains called. A moment later, a thin paperback was whizzing through the air like a square Frisbee. Steve tried to catch it but missed, so I whipped my hand out and snagged it before it went flying into the shadows.
Frowning, I read the cover: Escapes from Eastern State Penitentiary. The cover showed an old black-and-white photo of two guards—or maybe they were policemen—examining a man-sized hole in the dirt.
“Where’d you get this?” I asked.
Steve replied, “The library.”
“The Philly library?” Undertakers, as a rule, didn’t have library cards—or any other sort of personal identification.
He shook his head. “Haven’s library.”
“We have a library? Since when?”
“I opened it about two weeks ago. I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of it. Word isn’t really getting around as quickly as I’d like. So far, we’ve only loaned out maybe a half dozen books, mostly to Brains and Hackers.”
I wanted to ask him where’d he’d found the space to set up such a thing and why he’d even bothered. I mean, I liked books fine, but lately, I’d been too busy fighting for my life to find time for a little reading. And the lighting in Haven being what it was—well, the Brain Factory and maybe the infirmary were about the only places where you could read without going blind.
I almost said all that but then stopped myself. I just didn’t have time for another Steve lecture.
“I’ll have to stop by,” I said.
“Hope you do,” the Brain Boss replied. “Open the book to page fifteen.”
I did. Across two pages was a drawing, one that had apparently appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer back on April 3, 1945. The caption read, “How twelve convicts escaped by tunnel from Eastern Penitentiary.”
I looked at it. After a
moment, Ramirez came to my right shoulder and looked at it with me. Then Steve took point on my left shoulder and did the same.
“Most people think the famous bank robber William ‘Slick Willie’ Sutton planned the escape,” Steve said—so cheerfully that, given the circumstances, I almost wanted to hit him. “Actually, Sutton simply found out about the plot and insisted on joining in. The tunnel was really dug by Clarence Klinedinst and his cell mate, William Russell. It took about two years and, when finished, ran a hundred feet from Klinedinst’s cell, under the prison wall, and came up in the grass right beside Fairmount Avenue.”
“I think I’ve heard of this,” Ramirez muttered.
Steve continued, “Twelve men escaped, including Klinedinst, Russell, and Slick Willie. Every single one was recaptured, many within minutes. They made the mistake of escaping at seven in the morning, when the sun was up, so everyone on the street could see them. Sutton got caught about two blocks away. Klinedinst didn’t get far either. Russell actually managed to stay free…until he decided to visit an old girlfriend.”
“Great,” I said. “But what’s your point? I don’t have two years to dig my way under the prison wall.”
But Steve shook his head. “You don’t have to. After the escape attempt, the authorities sealed the tunnel on both ends.”
“I’m sure they did,” said Ramirez.
“Of course,” the Brain Boss agreed. “But the actual tunnel, all one hundred feet of it, is still there! And that’s how you can get in!”
Chapter 34
Friends
Fifteen minutes later, I walked out of the Brain Factory with Aunt Sally over one shoulder and a sack of equipment over the other. The crossbow came with ten Ritterbolts—ugh!—and ten steel bolts. Inside the sack were three small Super Soakers and six standard Ritters. As Steve had put it, I was armed for bear.
I only wished that bear was all I was after.
Before I’d gone a dozen steps, Ramirez called my name and came jogging out of the Brain Factory after me.
I rolled my eyes.
“Please,” I said. “There’s no way you’re talking me out of this.”
But he surprised me. “I get that. I don’t like it, but I get it. Being here with you kids…well, I guess it’s opened my eyes in more ways than one. I still can’t quite wrap my head around everything you’ve suffered through, but I can’t deny that you’re capable. I’ve been touring Haven, just looking around since Sharyn’s surgery. Everything I see impresses me.”
I guess I was happy to hear that, but I couldn’t help wondering at the level of trust Tom was now showing our adult “guest.” Was the Chief really all that confident that Ramirez wouldn’t make for the nearest exit, regardless of his newfound respect for the Undertakers? Or had Sharyn’s condition messed Tom up so badly that he wasn’t thinking straight?
Not a happy thought.
The FBI guy said, “But before you head out on this insane mission, I want to ask you one thing.”
I shrugged. “So ask.”
“Have you ever killed someone?”
For a moment, I lost my tongue. It was there in my mouth somewhere. I felt sure of it, but Ramirez’s question had turned it bashful. Finally—and with some effort—I replied, “You know I have.”
“Booth,” he said.
I nodded.
“But that wasn’t face-to-face. You poisoned him.”
“So?”
“So…this is different. For you and your friends to have any chance of pulling this off, you must be figuring on shooting someone with that crossbow or stabbing them with those syringes.”
At least he didn’t call them “Ritters.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And as I understand it, that won’t just incapacitate these…creatures. It’ll kill them.”
I nodded.
“Ever done anything like that?”
I almost answered no, but then, for some reason, I changed it to “Not yet.”
“Ever seen it done?” Ramirez asked.
“A bunch of times,” I replied. “Over the last couple of days.”
“And how did it make you feel?”
I remembered the Corpse that Sharyn had pinned with Aunt Sally and then interrogated. Afterward, she’d killed it with her Ritter.
No, she had Helene do it.
I knew exactly how it had made me feel. These were monsters, killers of children. They’d invaded our world with conquest on their minds. They were cruel, ruthless, and completely without pity.
But to kill anything that way, intentionally and without any remorse, it hadn’t seemed—
“I didn’t like it,” I said.
“Why not?” Ramirez asked.
I shrugged.
“Think you can do it yourself?”
Sharyn did it. So did Helene—twice. So did Chuck—to save me.
“Yeah. I can do it.”
“How can you be sure?”
I met his eyes. “Because it’s my family.”
“Okay,” he said. “Good luck, Will.”
He started to turn away, but I called him back. “That’s it?” I asked. “No lecture? No speech about deciding whether I’m a killer?”
Ramirez smiled thinly. “If you’d told me you were looking forward to harpooning those…people…then I’d have been worried. But killing to protect for your loved ones…that’s another matter.”
“Oh,” I said, irritated and not sure why.
“Go,” he said. “Do what you have to do. Save the day. I wish I could go with you.” He held up his one arm, which still hung in its sling. “But since I can’t, I’ll stay here and do my part.”
“And what is your part?” I asked.
When he answered, it was without any trace of irony. “I’ll be praying.”
Grown-ups, I thought.
Then, with a sigh, I headed down the corridor toward my room in search of the Burgermeister.
I found him on his bunk. Better still, Helene was with him. When I came through the curtain, they both looked up at me. Helene’s expression was pained. But Dave looked worse. His cheeks were wet, though the instant he saw me, he turned away and wiped his face on the edge of his blanket.
“Hey, dude!” he said in a bright tone that wouldn’t have fooled a three-year-old. “Anymore news from the infirmary? Sharyn?”
“She’s hanging in there,” I said. “Tom’s with her.”
The Burgermeister nodded, screwing his face up in a way that could have been determination or something else.
In that moment, I felt something close to shame. For days now, I’d been wondering why Dave had been so distracted and so short-tempered. All this time, he’d been worried about Sharyn. Not like we weren’t all worried—but his feelings went deeper than the rest of us.
Like Tom’s. Then again, not like Tom’s.
“She’s gonna be okay, dude,” I said. “If anybody can survive this, it’s her.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling him,” Helene added.
Helene. Since Sharyn had been hurt and she’d almost died during the raid on Eastern State, I’d made it my mission to protect her. I wasn’t sure if this had been completely conscious or just something the back part of my mind had cooked up without telling the front part. My brain did that sometimes.
Either way, my shame deepened. I’d spent all that energy trying to keep her out of danger. But here I was, fully prepared to ask her to follow me into the fire, all because my family was in trouble. What kind of message did that send? Were Emily and my mom more important than Helene?
For a few seconds, I considered not telling them what I had in mind. Maybe I could get one of the other Angels to go with me instead. Or maybe I’d go alone after all.
But,
no. These were my two best friends, the two best friends I’d ever had. They’d never forgive me if I left them out of this, no matter what they were going through themselves.
“Listen, guys,” I said. “I need to ask you both something.”
“Sure,” Dave said.
“What’s up?” Helene asked.
I told them all of it. Cavanaugh’s phone call and text. My talk with Tom. Steve’s library book about Slick Willie Sutton’s escape tunnel. I even told them about Ramirez stopping me in the corridor and posing his “can you kill?” challenge.
They listened without comment as I explained my plan. At the end of it, I finished up with, “You guys don’t have to come. I know it’s a lot to ask. And I totally get it if you don’t—”
“Oh, shut up, you idiot!” Helene snapped. “Burgermeister, let’s do this!”
They both jumped to their feet.
My best friends.
Chapter 35
Breaking In Again
We stopped by the Monkey Barrel, where Alex loaned us three shovels with less gripping than I would have expected. “Just make sure to bring them back,” he muttered. “They don’t grow on trees.”
We left on our Stingrays at 2:30 in the morning, Undertakers’ prime time. Helene had tied the gun sack to the rear of her banana seat, and I’d done the same with Aunt Sally. The shovels we wore on our backs, fastened diagonally across our shoulder blades by using bungee cords. It wasn’t comfortable, but it worked.
We must have looked weird to those few cars that passed us on the narrow streets, but no one challenged us. This wasn’t all that surprising because in the city, people carry all sorts of things on bikes. I once saw I guy sporting a battery-powered TV that he’d duct-taped between his handlebars.
Three kids with shovels in the middle of the night barely earned a second glance.
We de-biked on Fairmount Avenue, about a block west of the prison, and went the rest of the way on foot, mindful of the lights around us. Steve had used his computer to pull up a Google Maps view of the prison grounds and, printing it out, had marked where the tunnel entrance and exit had been.
Well, exit and entrance, I suppose, given our perspective.