Authors: Norma Hinkens
“We won’t be able to figure out if it’s running properly or not without Jerome’s help,” I say.
“All the computers up here seem to be working fine,” Trout says, scratching his head. “I’ll head downstairs and take a look.”
“None of the wiring’s been tampered with,” Jakob says, opening and closing various compartments beneath the computers.
“What about circuit breakers?” I walk over to a solid, metal door in the corner with a hazard sign on it, yank it halfway open and stumble backward, my heart slugging against my ribs.
T
he heavy
, steel door slams shut with a resounding clang. I scramble to my feet, my pulse hammering so hard I can barely see straight.
Jakob races to my side. “Are you okay?”
“No!” I rasp, as Trout comes running up. “There are bodies in there.”
I reach out and tentatively pull open the door a second time. I suck in an icy breath and peer into the dark, cramped space. Three hooded figures are tied back to back against a steel pipe, their hands and legs bound in front of them with duct tape. Even the hoods are duct-taped tightly around their necks, but it looks like they might have chewed through them in a desperate attempt to get some air. My stomach knots. At first I think we’re staring at corpses, but then a figures twitches. “Quick,” I yell. “They’re alive.”
We throw down our packs and pull out our hunting knives. I get to work cutting through the layers of tape, sweating profusely in the hot, cramped space, only too aware that whoever did this could come back at any minute. The only blessing in this scenario is that it’s not the work of Rogues. They wouldn’t have wasted the duct tape on their victims.
I finally free the first man and yank the hood off his glistening, black face. “Jerome!” My voice catches in my throat at the look of gratitude in his eye.
I finish cutting his feet loose and watch as he gingerly reaches up and removes the duct tape from his mouth. He stretches his lips back and forth and then groans. “Any longer and you’d have been fishing me out of a coma.”
“Who did this to you?” I ask, working to help free the other two men who I’ve seen around the courthouse before.
Jerome gets to his feet heavily, rubbing at his wrists. “There were six or seven of them, all in black masks. The guards must have been in on it. They didn’t make any attempt to stop them.”
I throw him a confused look. “In on what? Did they say what they wanted?”
Jerome picks at some gummy residue stuck to his cheek. “They didn’t speak, which tells me they knew I’d recognize their voices. But I can tell you this—shutting down the superconductor was only a ruse to lure me over here and get me out of their way. This had nothing to do with the radiation. They fired the superconductor back up before they left.”
“What are you saying?” A tiny current of fear needles its way through my brain as I recall the armed Undergrounders at the courthouse.
A shadow crosses Jerome’s face. “I think someone just took control of the city.”
I blink and look around at the others. Jakob's face is blanched, his lips pressed so tightly together he looks like he’s swallowed them. Trout stares at the ground, a deep furrow in his brow.
“Who?” I demand.
Jerome rubs a hand across his glistening forehead. “I don’t know. There’ve been rumblings of discontent ever since we floated the idea of attacking the Craniopolis. It’s possible some of the men who signed up to go on the mission were really only passing on information to incite a riot.”
I frown. “The tall man at the back of the room in the meeting this morning, the one who kept stirring things up, who is he?”
“That’s Whistler,” Jerome replies. “Bit of a dark horse, I don’t know him all that well.”
“He might have had something to do with this,” I say. “He looked like a magnet for disgruntled Undergrounders during the meeting.”
“If Jerome’s right, we can’t go back to the courthouse,” Jakob says. “Whoever’s running this coup will have us arrested.”
“If it’s Whistler, he won’t have the city’s support,” Jerome says. “Not unless he’s convinced them I’m dead.”
“Why would he endanger the entire city by switching off the superconductor and staging a coup?” I say, running my hand over my hair. “He knows we have to meet The Ghost by midnight or the city burns.”
Jerome nods thoughtfully. “Which is exactly why he struck now. If he wants power, the only way to get it is to be the hero who negotiates a deal with the Rogues.”
“And he has the hostages to trade with.” My stomach twists. “If anything happens to Sook, we’ll have no leverage over Lyong. We have to find a way to let the city know you’re alive.”
Jerome turns to his men. “Grab some weapons and ammo from the safe room.” He fixes his eye on me, a hint of satisfaction on his face. “I know a way we can get back undetected. There’s a tunnel that runs between the courthouse and the superconductor. Blackbeard and a few of my men constructed it, in case the superconductor ever came under attack. It’s crude, and tight in places, but it’s our best option.”
“It may be our only option if we have any hope of meeting The Ghost’s deadline,” I say. I’m not thrilled about the prospect of going back underground and clawing my way along dirt walls for a mile or so to the courthouse in near darkness, but I’ll take it over the alternative of watching the city burn.
“This way,” Jerome says, sprinting over to the spiral stairway in the center of the room.
Trout, Jakob and I gather up our packs and clatter down the metal stairs after him and his two men. At the bottom of the stairwell, I pause and look around in awe. The entire lower level of the building, nestled below the surface of the earth, houses the main body of the superconductor, a spherical mesh that flickers from within in myriad places. A heavy harmonic hum, broken up by alternating snapping and clicking sounds, fills my ears. Even my clothes feel as if they’re vibrating on my skin like electric crickets. No wonder the radiation from this thing is killing people.
Jerome kneels down in one corner of the room and tugs at a loose board in the floor. A trapdoor hinges upward, and he motions us over. “Remember, stay calm and breathe normally. There’s enough air for all of us to make it through the tunnel, but it’s not well-ventilated like the bunker systems, so if you panic, you’ll make it harder for everyone to get enough oxygen.”
Trout twists his lips nervously. “How tight is this tunnel exactly?”
A smile tugs at Jerome’s lips. “Hold your gut in and you’ll do fine.” He lowers himself down inside the tunnel and motions for his men to follow.
“You go,” I say to Jakob. “I’ll be right behind you, Trout can bring up the rear.”
Jakob’s head bobs briefly above the trapdoor entry before he disappears inside. I throw one last glance over my shoulder at the flickering superconductor, then climb into the tunnel after him and drop to the dirt floor. Stooping over, I feel for the walls and follow the sound of voices up ahead. The familiar smell of warm earth composting in on itself fills my nostrils. My chest compresses and I imagine the air thinning with every step. The bunker tunnels are cavernous compared to this. My muscles are already cramping up in anticipation of the awkward position we’ll be forced to endure for the next hour. The thin trail of light up ahead from Jerome’s flashlight only renders the cocoon of dirt around me that much more claustrophobic.
I twist my head awkwardly to holler back to Trout. “You all right?”
He lets out a disgruntled snort. “Just living the high life.”
T
en minutes in
, and we’ve all stopped talking—we’re too busy absorbing the excruciating shooting pains in our backs and legs. We squat as we move along the tunnel in strained silence, nerves burning up with each awkward step. Our few sparse exchanges are focused on how much farther we have to go. No one voices my biggest fear. What if the tunnel’s caved in at some point and we have to turn around? Just when I think I’d rather lay down and let rigor mortis have its evil way with me, Jerome yells back to us, “We’re here!”
I let my aching shoulders sag with relief. The full brunt of the pain circulating through my body hits in a burning cramp, and I clutch the sides of the dirt wall until the wave passes. Behind me, I hear Trout take a long, rasping breath. “I’m not called to walk on all fours,” he groans.
Everyone laughs.
“Cut the racket,” Jerome calls back to us. “I’m about to open the hatch.”
“Where does it lead to?” Jakob asks.
“A supply room next to my office.”
We wait in strained silence as Jerome raises the manual entry hatch. He slowly elevates his head and surveys the space. “All clear,” he announces, a palpable hint of relief in his voice. He climbs out of the tunnel, followed by his men, and then Jakob. I pull myself up into the room after them, then sink back against a wall, stiff as a slab of half-defrosted meat.
We huddle around in the small space, rubbing the circulation back into our arms and legs. When we can finally stand without shaking, we ready our weapons.
“Remember, the guns are only a deterrent,” I say, looking around the room. “We just need to get inside the meeting room and show them that Jerome’s alive. Whistler’s not gonna shoot us in a room full of Undergrounders and riders.”
Cautiously, Jerome opens the door and peers into the corridor.
I lean over to him and mutter. “Let’s check the holding cell first, in case they’ve taken Sook there.”
He nods and motions us forward. Inch by inch, we make our way down the corridor toward the holding cell. Jerome sticks his head around the door. “Empty,” he mouths to us. I can’t help but feel some relief at the news. Sven must have managed to keep Sook hidden from the instigators.
Following Jerome’s lead, we creep farther along the main corridor in tight formation. I can’t help but notice through a crack in a boarded-up window that it’s getting dark outside. My pulse thuds at the back of my throat. If Jerome’s wrong about the city’s loyalty to him, and we miss the deadline with the Rogues, we’ll all be fried to a crisp by morning. Not something I care to picture.
At the end of the corridor that opens up into the foyer, Jerome signals to us to halt. “There’s a guard outside the main entry doors leading to the meeting room,” he says.
“I’ll approach him from the corridor on the other side and distract him while you sneak up on him,” I say. I slip off to circle back around before Jerome can object. When I reach the other side of the building I flatten myself against the wall and crane my neck around the corner. The guard is leaning up against the door, picking at something in his teeth. I can’t see Jerome around the opposite corner, but I know he’s watching. I make an “O” with my thumb and forefinger. Without taking my eyes off the guard, I reach my hand into my pack and grab a couple of fishing weights. I take a quick breath and then hurl them across the floor in his direction. He startles, looks up, then raises his weapon at me. Jerome springs from behind and lunges, swinging a clean uppercut punch that knocks him out cold. I give Jerome an approving nod.
“Let’s do this,” I say, signaling to the others.
On the count of three we burst open the double doors to the courthouse and charge through. Shouts of disbelief ring out as we thunder past Undergrounders and riders to the front of the hall. Several guards, dressed in fatigues, finger their weapons, confusion pooling over their faces as they dart glances between Whistler and Jerome.
“Traitors! Take them down!” Whistler yells, his long face hollowed out, eyes flashing.
The guards raise their weapons halfheartedly in our direction, and then quickly lower them again when the crowd protests.
“Whistler lied to us!” a burly man yells out.
Several fists shoot up and the crowd surges forward.
A low chant begins at the back of the room, then picks up volume. “Jer-ome! Jer-ome! Jer-ome!”
I look around the room, keeping a close eye on the loaded weapons, a couple of which are still aimed in our direction. Whistler’s men will be too intimidated by the crowd to shoot us now, but people make mistakes when they’re scared.
“It’s over, Whistler,” Jerome shouts out. He takes another step toward the front of the room. “I lead this city.”
“The Undergrounders don’t want a deviation leading them,” Whistler yells. “How do we know you’re not luring us straight into the Sweepers’ jaws? Is that what this sudden rush to get to the Craniopolis is really about?”
“The attack on the Craniopolis was my idea,” I shout up to him. “I convinced Jerome that we could defeat the Sweepers if the Undergrounder Council and the city banded together.”
“We want one of our own kind to lead us,” Whistler retorts. He juts his chin in Jerome’s direction. “Not some freak from the Craniopolis. He lied to us already about the superconductor. We don’t trust him.”
I turn to the sea of faces pressing in. “Jerome’s a good man,” I say. “He’s protected you well, fortified the city, and developed food and water supplies to support the growing population. He didn’t want to alarm you when he found out about the radiation leaks, but he’s doing everything he can to resolve it. And as for him being a deviation, he may not look like you or I, but it’s through no fault of his own. People, who
do
look like you and I did that to him.”
“I have no quarrel with Jerome,” says a red-haired woman holding a child by the hand.
Several voices murmur in agreement.
A bearded man at the front steps forward. “I’m with Whistler. We’ve no business following a deviation. What if he turns on us once we’re inside the Craniopolis? Sells us out to save his own kind?”
“Let’s take a vote on it,” several voices call out.
Whistler stares across at Jerome, eyes bulging. At first I think he’s waiting on Jerome’s response, but then he walks over to him and whispers something in his ear.
A deep flush creeps up Jerome’s neck. He wipes a hand across his brow and then turns to address the crowd. I can tell even from here that he’s deeply shaken. He holds up a hand for silence.
An expectant hush falls over the Undergrounders.
“There will be no vote,” he says. “My decision is final. Whistler will lead you.”