by Lumen Reese
“I know...”
Henry put his face in his hands.
“That's not acceptable,” Jericho said. He was still calm. Used to getting his way in the civilized world he inhabited, but I was not civilized, not anymore. “We have the power to put a stop to this, and that aside, we're your employers. We need to know what you know.”
“You understood when we had to keep Anna Goodspeed safe, you can understand, now.”
“I understood the necessity of not sending a young rape victim off with a bunch of strangers. I don't understand you playing God with the lives of these missing girls because of your paranoia.”
Hatley interjected, “It's not that simple, Jericho, and you know it. Someone with significant power over the company has to be involved in this. To have let an operation of this size go on undetected for years? Stella is only doing what she thinks is best, and I did the same thing. I let her speak with the fugitive, last night.”
“-But she didn't know about the rest,” I rushed. “I did it on my own. I did what I had to do...” I was looking at Henry but he was looking at the ground.
Jericho said, “You were complicit in a man's wrongful imprisonment and assault. You are going to tell us what you learned -so that I can send in my trusted security with tactical training- or we're going to have you arrested!” His patience had finally broken. My heart lurched.
“Jericho,” Henry said, finally. “They're right. It only takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch. We're not saying every part of this place is infected. But any part of it could be.”
“What would you have me do?”
“What you've been doing. You trust us to handle it, you let us go wherever Stella leads us-.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Isaac.
“No-,” I began, but Jericho had already spoken again.
“-None of you have enough training for that, I'd be sending you to your deaths!”
“Yeah, you would,” Spicer quipped.
“I don't want anyone coming with me,” I said.
The room had become a torrent of voices.
“-This argument is pointless,” from Kayla.
“-Jesus Christ,” from Isaac again.
“-So how does this play out in your mind, then, Stella?” Jericho again, angry again.
“You let me go, I go alone.”
“What?” Henry gawked.
“Jesus Christ.”
“-Out of the question! I'm not sending you off with a psychopath like this!”
“ENOUGH!” I finally shouted, and everyone did fall silent. My voice went shaky. I was a culmination of desperation and nervous energy. “I know him. The fugitive. He's a cop from Brooklyn. I've known him half my life. He's not going to hurt me. You want to send your men in because they've run through some simulations and they have big guns, but he has real experience saving lives. His sister is one of the victims and we know he's not in anyone's pocket. And I trust him.”
Spicer chimed in, “First rule of bounty-hunting, Sweetie, is never get cozy with a mark-.”
I wheeled around. “-GET FUCKED, SPICER!” He scoffed and Hatley hid a smile, while I turned back and went on. “He told me to meet him, just me, and I need to do that. Finding and rescuing the girls is the most important thing. I'm not helpless and I'm not a screw up. Let me go.”
“We don't think you're a screw up, Stella,” Kayla said. “But it just can't happen that way.” She leaned out and grabbed a remote off of the glass table between us, clicked a button and the pillar further into the room showed street views of the first, second and third Quarters. “We've already evacuated the first three Quarters. We'll finish evacuation today, and we'll cover every bit of the city with our most trusted and capable people. It will be handled with absolute care.”
Dr. Foster, I realized, had not spoken since I had entered. But he said, then, “You've all been invaluable. You know that. There's no shame in letting the head designers take over from here.”
Jericho said, “You'll all be compensated well for your time. Stella, considering what you've been through, we're going to give you the full amount we had offered you to find the fugitive.”
I was staring at the ground. Clark put a hand on my back.
“Stella, Henry, please turn over your guns.”
We set our guns on the glass coffee table.
Hatley piped up, “I need to go and get my son, and probably pack a bag, so I won't be staying with you. Will you be on the first train out?”
“Why not?” I murmured. There was a hollow in my chest.
“It's goodbye, then.” She lifted her purse's strap higher on her shoulder as she stood, and the rest began to rise, too. Only Dr. Foster remained seated. Hatley put a hand on my shoulder as she started for the door, and we shuffled along after her, then stood in a bit too tight of a crowd waiting for the elevator.
Hatley hugged Henry, first, and he picked up her up off the ground, and said nothing.
“Bye, Jer-,” she pulled him in next, and said into his neck, “No hard feelings?” He shook his head. “Do me a favor? Call me a car?”
He nodded as they broke away, and went across the room to his desk. The elevator dinged open. I was the first one in, and Hatley shoved through the crowd to stand beside me, saying, “Ladies first, places to be.”
Henry and Clark stepped in, too, and then Spicer. There was an awkward moment where Kayla and Isaac both stepped forward and then stopped.
“I'll take them to the train,” she said, and joined us inside, pressing the button to close the doors.
I said as we began our descent, “I'm sorry, Henry. I didn't want to tell you, because I didn't want to put you in that position.”
He half-looked over his shoulder at me. “It's alright.”
Soundlessly, Hatley opened her purse, lifted her small, black handgun out and passed it into my hand. I looked at her only a second before tucking it in my satchel. She passed me one spare magazine, too.
I watched the back of Kayla's orange head, and Spicer's, too, which did not move.
Kayla exhaled grandly after a moment, which spiked a fear in me. Henry's shoulders had tensed, too.
But then she said, “Go get them.”
*
When we reached the street, Jericho's voice boomed from everywhere. “This is head designer Jericho Sullivan speaking. I regret to inform you that beginning immediately, we are enacting a total evacuation of Wonderland. We will begin with Spades. All available trains are waiting at the station. There are also helicopters en route to collect clients, your scripts have been updated with information on pickup points.”
Losing Hatley to her own town car, Kayla put Spicer in a cab with a personal check she had made out for him as we stood on the curb. He was to say nothing about the exchange in the elevator, and get on the train and go home. We were nearly guaranteed our escape, but that was all. We piled into a black car, a company driver took us to the train station. The streets were flooded and traffic was at a slow crawl, and so at least an hour passed with Henry, Clark and I in the back seat, looking soundlessly out the windows. Some citizens of Wonderland were laughing and embracing, some were comforting crying children. The station was shoulder to shoulder, when we climbed out of the car and started for the enclosed platform where people were being herded on board a silver train. As we watched, the first one pulled away and another pulled up to take its place.
In the tight crowd I felt nervous. Henry took my hand. Kayla tipped the driver and went with us. People parted for her as soon as they saw her, which left Clark, Henry and I following in her wake, with all eyes on us.
I knew he would not let me go on my own. I knew Kayla would give us time, but I also knew Jericho had stripped me of my authority to move freely in his world. One step back the way we had come made me an illegal, a fugitive, just like Corso. I had been promised the full payment, enough to save Josie and Anna from being sold to a plantation or factory at tax time. That could be stripped from me as soon as I deviated. But i
f I found the girls, and if Corso gave himself up, I could only hope they would be grateful and reinstate my award.
I set a hand on Clark's back. He turned and nodded. He could not go with us any further, and though he wouldn't be so useful I was sorry to lose him.
And then Henry and I turned back, still holding tight to each other as we fought the enclosing crowd. Henry was a spearhead clearing the people on the way to the street again, where it lightened up. There was a roundabout up ahead packed with cars, a glass extension of the station with a crown of treetops reaching for the sky over top of it. We made a beeline for it, passed through a door into a serene, clean lobby with full benches, and out the other side, heading into the forest, heading south toward St. Ayrs. It was a few miles, as the crow flew.
Henry let go of my hand once we were in the shade of the woods.
As soon as I had caught my breath, I said, “I really am sorry.”
“It's okay. I wish you would have told me, but I understand.”
“It's not that I didn't trust you-.”
“I know.”
We walked a minute, and it reminded me of walking the snowy trail to the wolf's cave, the second day. Overwhelmed for a moment by how long he had been guiding me, I felt the need to convince him of my trust.
“His name is Miles Corso. He's Joey's partner, he has been for thirteen years.”
Henry nodded. I knew I was apologizing, too, for the fact that I would soon be leaving him behind, again.
St. Ayrs was a small village in a round clearing in the trees. Buildings were brick, and not more than two stories, apart from what had been a clock tower which had toppled over and landed on a squa t, little building, partially collapsed in on itself but mostly intact at a maybe forty-five-degree angle.
Its face was frozen at about two o'clock.
I saw nothing and no one else noteworthy as I glanced down the main street, and so I said, “Let's go in there.”
The tower had ripped up part of its foundation and left a view into a dark basement. The stairs leading to its door had been left, though, and its door was a few feet higher up and made for a tricky entrance. Once inside, I had to fight the creaking, slanted floor with a guiding hand on the wall. The first floor was high-ceilinged and empty. The stairs looked to have been steep to begin with, and at their new angle were nearly a vertical climb. I started on one side, using the railing slats like a ladder. My arms were screaming by the time I reached the top, and still had to pull myself up onto the dusty, creaking, slanted floorboards. The stairs had opened into the center of the top floor.
A similarly high expanse up above held twisted gears and the ghostly frozen glass of the clock's face. At the back, in the higher part of the room, a shadow moved. Corso was there, by a broken place in the bricks. I moved over to him, where he said nothing and only clambered over the broken ledge of the wall. And with the building's slant, he dropped out and slid the long drop, several stories worth of building, down to the ground.
I kicked my legs out, less sure than he had been, and that was when I heard my name called behind me.
Henry's shaggy head peered over the landing. I felt a tug of regret, but then I shoved myself out and the building scraped roughly along my thighs and ass as I went sailing down. The ground hit my feet hard and the impact ricocheted up my ankles and knees. Corso grabbed my hand and we made it around the corner of the building to one of the back streets in a few seconds. A few more and we were disappearing into the trees.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I heard the waterfall before I could see it. A constant roar below the surface of the forest sounds, and that was when Corso spoke for the first time.
“We can leave our stuff up here. It's not much further to the aqueducts.”
“She might not be there,” I blurted out. It was a thought that had been troubling me since we met up. “We could have missed something in any of the other Quarters, or they could even have moved all the kidnapped girls someplace more secure by now.”
“She'll be there...”
“What if she's not?” I was worried about the idea of continuing the hunt as a fugitive myself, not sure if I had the fortitude for going hungry and sleeping on the ground. I was worried about the encroaching deadline of tax season, and my reward already muddled or completely surrendered. And I was most worried about how Corso would react in the moment he realized Alex wasn't there.
“She'll be there.”
And he pushed through the last stretch of trees, leading me into a vast clearing. I was frozen on the edge for a minute.
A trail led through the weeds and up a rocky slope to a cave behind its rushing waters. Each second, thousands of monarch butterflies tumbled over the base of the cliff and spilled down toward the pool below, which was clear enough to see large, golden fish turning under the foam. On the side opposite the trail, the cliff was covered in green. A spring of water trickled down past a tree growing out of the side.
It was a waterfall of butterflies. The butterflies themselves didn't seem to be hurt at all from the fall or the crash. Some drifted along the surface of the pond, swirling with the currents like lily pads. Others fluttered around, thick in the air. I held out a hand as one flapped a little closer, seemingly meant for me. It landed. Its belly was faintly glowing blue. They had to be genetically engineered somehow to glow and to be strong, and maybe to be attracted to people, too; they were gathering thicker around Corso as he stood, watching, too.
“I hear it's really something at night,” he said.
I marveled for another few seconds and remembered: Come join us in an adventure crafted by the brilliant mind of Jericho Sullivan. Brilliant mind, indeed. What other beautiful things could be in that man's head?
“The water's clean, too. Come up into the cave, we'll leave our things and sit a minute.”
I was happy to get a rest, but first I walked over to where a tiny dock reached out over the pond, and moved to the edge. In the depths below, I could see that the fish were glowing faintly, too. I had wondered how successfully people could give themselves over to the world, how much they could believe their scenarios knowing they had been designed, scripted, and paid for. But I knew, then, the place could make you feel special. It was a choice to welcome the denial. A choice I had probably made a few times, even in my average life, before Four Quarters.
And in the past days, hadn't I often wanted to think of myself as a hero? Really I was just a person, doing my best. And my best so far had been not too shabby.
Corso had to clear his throat to get my attention. I joined him at the place where the tall weeds gave way to rock. He showed me where to find my first hand-holds; it was steep, almost vertical. I was so tired of climbing.
So I hauled myself up, leaning into the slope, and Corso waited until I had made some headway before beginning to follow. When I looked down it made me feel dizzy; it wasn't far, but it was far enough. In fact, the very top of the cliff didn't seem to reach as high as the forest's canopy.
The rocks were slick and the air was warm and humid. My clothes were sticking to me like a glove when I finally hauled myself up onto the cave's ledge, where inside the rock walls were glowing blue everywhere that the spring of light from the small entrance did not reach. As I lay panting, and Corso a minute later flopped down beside me, I saw that in the shade the butterflies rushing past the cave's mouth glowed more brightly. They moved like a cascade of a million blue sparks.
“You still have a gun, right?”
“Yes,” I said. I felt a chill.
He sat up with a loud sigh, slung his backpack around and pulled out two spare magazines, putting them in his pockets. “It'll be pretty scary in there. Just try to remember what I'm telling you now, and above all else, listen to what I say once we're in. We're going to try to go in soft. That might not happen, but if it does, it might mean me putting you where the girls are, trying to contain the rest of it myself. I don't expect you to help me kill people. If I split us up, you have sixty
seconds from the time the first shot goes off, then I want you and Alex on the way out of there.”
“I'm not leaving you there.”
“Yes, you are. If that's the way it happens, it won't matter if you're there or not. I'll try to stabilize things, and if I do, then the rest of the victims will be safe and I'll meet you back here. If not, then at least you know where they are, and you'll have to figure out how to handle it from there. I think your best option is to try to get out on your own. If you do, remember they have cameras in the cities. But maybe you'd be better off arranging to meet them along with the people you trust. If you do get picked up, just keep your wits about you, keep your gun on you. Get the media and the Federals involved as soon as you can, because you won't be safe as long as there's a chance they could contain the story. The ones in charge are going to try to make it go away.”
“They're not like that,” I said. “The woman let me go, earlier, she wants the girls safe.”
“Companies look out for themselves,” he hissed, suddenly irate where a minute before he had been talking calmly about the possibility of his own death. “What good has a corporation ever done for you, that you think you can trust these people!?”
“Have you met them?” I demanded.
“You want to risk your own life on it, I wish you wouldn't, but I can't stop you. But if I die today, you are responsible for not wasting my life, and you are responsible for the lives of every girl we leave behind. So you'd better wake up, real fast, and most importantly, you take care of my sister.”
My teeth were clenched. I nodded.
“Alright, then.”
He pushed himself to his feet and lumbered over to the cave's edge, where he held out a hand for a little water to splash on his face, on the back of his neck. With his back to me, I found the transmitter the designers had given me, the small, black capsule I could activate whenever I wanted, and I tucked it in my pocket. If the chance came, if it looked grim, I would use the thing. I would take his fears seriously; I would stick to Alex like glue if we found her, and I would keep Henry, Clark, and Hatley around me if I could. Corso might be willing to give his life for his paranoia, but I was not.