The Line Book One: Carrier (23 page)

Using his good arm, Ric helped boost me up, and I followed Sonya through another airshaft until we stopped at a vent and dropped into the middle of a darkened room.

Floor-to-ceiling cabinets holding rectangular black boxes lined every square inch of the walls and formed rows across the room. The soundproof padding on the walls and ceiling muted the hum from the machines. It was the server room, undisturbed as if Sonya hadn’t been there the first time.

It was hard to believe that had been nearly a week ago.

It felt like a lifetime.

Sonya took me to the rack of shelves in the center of the room and braced her feet firmly on the ground, her hands on the shelf corner. “Ready?”

“What are we doing?”

She smiled sadly. “As Tym would have said, we’re crashing the system.”

I put my hands on the opposite side of the shelf and leaned my entire body against the rack. “Ready.”

“Go.”

With a great heave and more than a few tries, Sonya and I toppled over the entire center shelf of server boxes, which knocked one shelf into another, sending them all crashing to the floor. It made a huge noise, and the moment it started tipping, she reached down and swiped her old flashlight from the floor, then boosted me back up into the airshaft.

Following just behind me into the shaft, Sonya wiggled around, pulled a piece of gum off the server room camera and then snatched something from her pocket. She scratched a small stick against the wall, creating sparks.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s called a match.”

With another try against the wall, the match’s end burst into flames. Sonya hardly blinked as she tossed the lit match back out the vent and into the server room.

“Move,” she said, and I slithered toward the storage room, where Ric was waiting.

Before we reached the vent opening, a siren sounded, so loud it hurt my ears. I wanted to grasp at them, but Sonya was pressing me from behind and we were obviously in a rush.

We reached the vent, dropped back to the floor with Ric’s limited help and peeked out into the hallway.

Guards filled the halls, all running toward the server room, though we could hardly hear a thing with the sirens sounding so loudly.

Once there was a break in the guards, Sonya led us back to the stairwell and we ran up as fast as we could. People from all floors of the building were coming into the stairs as well, running up alongside us.

No one seemed to notice Ric was covered in blood or that none of us had any shoes. I guess they heard sirens, and they ran. No questions asked.

When at last we reached ground level, we followed the crowd and filed out into the lobby, where guards were herding people into the street.

Ric and I, still hand in hand, followed Sonya as we walked away.

I couldn’t believe our luck.

* * *

Out in the street, it was day, but the air was so thick with smoke it felt as dark as night. We followed Sonya a block or two, then turned in to an alley to catch our breath.

“I can’t believe that worked!” I leaned against the building and wiped my hair from my face with a heavy sigh.

“It shouldn’t have been that easy.” Sonya raised an eyebrow. “There were half as many guards as there should have been.”

Ric let go of my hand and pressed the bloody splotch on his shirt. “Where’d they all go?”

He was pale. He must have lost a lot of blood from the bullet wound. But he was on his feet and looked determined. I had the urge to tell him to lie down and rest, but I knew that would have to wait.

Sonya shook her head. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“How’d the fire spread so quickly?” I asked.

Ric coughed. “Something’s wrong. There’s no way it should be this smoky from a fire ten stories underground.”

He was right. The air was black.

Sonya jogged back down the alley. “Wait here.” She turned the corner and disappeared from sight.

Ric winced and leaned against the wall.

“Oh, you poor—What can I do to help you?”

“Don’t suppose you have a sling handy, do you?” He held his arm to his chest as if it were a newborn baby. “Or a scalpel?”

“Here.” I pulled the drawstring from my pants and helped him tie his arm down. That inevitably made my pants loose, so I rolled the top over a few times and knotted them on one hip.

The string didn’t do anything in the way of subduing the pain, but at least it stopped Ric’s arm from flopping around, which would help some.

“It’s not much,” I said.

Ric grinned at me sheepishly. “I’ll take it.”

I raised my hand and absently brushed his hair from his eyes. He closed his lids at my touch and leaned toward my fingers. I froze them in position, absorbing the heat of his skin.

I lingered on the curve of his brow and trailed my hand down his temple, reveling in the feel of him.

When he opened his eyes and looked into mine his expression was ablaze.

The intensity of his gaze paused my hand and I slowly pulled it away.

“Don’t stop,” he whispered.

“I don’t want to,” I admitted, and the realization shocked me. “Just do me one favor.”

He turned his head to the side, listening.

“Don’t die again, or I’ll kill you.”

A laugh erupted from his gut, shaking him from head to toe, and he grunted in pain as his arm banged against his chest.

“Oh,” I moaned with remorse. “Sorry.”

Footsteps approached. Sonya ran up to us, a grim expression on her face. “There’s more than one building on fire. That’s why all the smoke.”

I asked, “Where else?”

Her eyes filled with tears. It was so unlike her both Ric and I were momentarily speechless.

Ric found his words first. “What is it?”

Sonya swallowed hard. “It’s the Line.”

My first instinct was,
Good.
I
hope it burns to the ground.
“Are you sure?”

“Just heard some guards talking about it,” she said. “They’re closing it down.”

Ric’s eyes brightened. “That’s fantastic!”

Sonya sniffed. “No. It’s worse than that.”

“What?” My bubble burst. I was missing something big, otherwise Sonya wouldn’t be so upset. I was almost afraid to ask.

Sonya was dour. “They’ve locked the doors.”

“Oh my God,” Ric gasped, and his eyes flared.

“You mean, they’re not letting the girls out?”

Sonya shook her head, apparently unable to say the words.

“They’ll burn to death!” I blurted. Images of all the girls I knew inside the Line walls scorched my memory.

Oh my God.

Peni.

“We have to do something,” Ric said. He pushed off the wall with his good arm but swayed. I reached out to steady him, and he leaned into me.

“You’re not going anywhere, Doc,” Sonya said.

“We can’t just let them die!” he shouted, desperation creeping into his voice.

“I’ll go.” The words were out of my mouth before I’d thought them through.

“You can’t either,” she said. “What about the babies?”

“I’m going. Peni’s in there.”

Ric disagreed. “No, Sonya’s right.”

“I know she’s right. But I’m going anyway.” I leaned Ric up off my shoulder and onto his own feet. Then, shoving my own exhaustion down so far into me I hardly knew it was there, I said, “I’ll meet you at the bridge. Can you get there all right?”

He was white as a sheet. “The clinic. We’ll meet at the clinic.”

“I’m coming with you, Naya,” Sonya said.

“Take him to the clinic first,” I ordered. “Then meet me at the Line. I think I can get in okay, but getting back out could be tricky.”

“No,” Ric said. “Sonya, you go with her. I can make it to the clinic by myself.”

“You’re in no condition—” I started to protest.

“Neither are you,” he snapped back.

“Nobody else is going to die for me!” I bellowed.

The words hung in the air. This stopped him for a second. He clenched his jaw.

Sonya bit her lip and cast a nervous glance down the alley.

“Auberge doesn’t want word of you or those babies to leak,” he said. “It’s important enough for them to burn down any trace of their mother. Don’t you see? They’re killing anybody who’s ever known you and starting all over again. It’s a trap!”

“I’m not going to stand here while they kill every girl on the Line.” Unable to bear the pleading look in his eyes a moment longer, I turned to leave. He grabbed my hand. “One hour,” I said, ignoring his fearful gaze. I took my hand back and rested it on his cheek. “Meet me at the clinic in one hour. And if you don’t, I’ll hunt you down and murder you myself. Got that?”

He suppressed a smile.

I pulled my hand away from his burning face and jogged down the alley toward the street.

“Same here!” he yelled after me.

“One hour!” I yelled back.

“Go with her, Sonya,” I heard Ric say.

“B-But...” she sputtered.

“I’ll be fine. Just go.”

I ran to the street, not bothering to wait for Sonya to catch up.

I heard Ric yell after me. “One hour!”

* * *

By the time Sonya caught up to me, I realized our problem.

We were all the way by headquarters, at 20th and Q, and the Line was quite a distance away, at 10th and X.

There was no way we could run ten blocks and make it in time enough to save anybody. Plus the streets were packed full of people who were evacuating the area surrounding the HQ fire.

Finally, Sonya got frustrated on 17th Street and detoured us into a parking lot. We ran up and down the aisles of cars until she found what she was looking for. Then she smashed open the window of a parked car with her elbow, hopped inside, jammed a piece of metal into the key hole, reworked a few wires under the dash and started the car.

It was an old gas-guzzler that roared to life noisily, but it worked enough to suit our purpose.

She drove, zigzagging through the streets of Central, which was not easy since all hell had broken loose and the congestion was worse than ever.

After what seemed like forever, I started to recognize where we were—the stoops of the apartment buildings just outside the Line and the people dangling outside the windows. They were all watching the same thing, looking toward a large black smoke cloud to the west.

The pit of my stomach lurched.

Sonya parked the car at the curb, and we ran the rest of the way.

That was when we realized where all the guards had gone.

They were in front of the Line, about twenty of them, blocking the door with rifles over their shoulders. Smoke poured out from the building, and a crowd of people had gathered around, as if there were fireworks.

I wanted to take each person and shake them until their teeth came loose.

Don’t just stand there!

“What do we do?” I asked Sonya.

She frowned.

It was a good thing she’d come with me. With the front door blocked, I had no idea how to get inside.

“I know a way,” she said. I followed her away from the Line.

We walked one block west, then a block north, then back around, so we arrived on the back side of the Line. On this side, the building was a rundown apartment complex. It had already been evacuated and was empty, which was a good thing.

Sonya picked the lock on the front door, then led me into the central hall of the apartment building. Down the dimly lit hallway, she went to the back, where there was a stairwell leading up.

But instead of climbing the stairs, Sonya pulled open a big red door marked “maintenance” and flicked a few switches. “They’ve disabled the fire alarm to the Line.” She flicked a few more switches.

A piercing, loud shrill pierced the air and echoed off the walls of the empty stairwell.

Sonya slammed the electrical box closed, then yanked a few trash bins away from the wall. Behind the trash bins was a large airshaft vent with a wad of thin electrical wires running through it. She whipped out her electric screwdriver and made quick work of removing the vent from the wall.

Once it was off, we crawled inside.

It was a huge vent, but most of it was full of electrical wires, though the vent was quite sizably bigger than the ones inside headquarters and gave us room to crawl on our hands and knees, versus just on our bellies.

We followed it for quite some time, straight back. The smoke in the air grew thicker and thicker, and I could already feel the back of my throat burning in protest.

Finally, we reached the end of the airshaft. It plummeted straight down into blackness.

“This is where it gets rough,” Sonya said. She jammed the edge of her bare feet onto the walls on either side of the downward slide and braced her body with wide palms. “Don’t grab the wires,” she warned. “They’re live with electricity and if we pull them out of the socket and touch these metal walls, we’ll get fried. If you start to slide, try and slow yourself using your hands and feet against the wall. It’s a long way down.”

“How did you know this was here?”

“This was how I got out of the Line.”

“How on earth did you climb up this shaft?”

Sonya smiled sadly. “An inch at a time.”

She started the slow climb down, and I followed her.

My hands and feet were sweaty from the increased temperature in the shaft, and I immediately slid several inches down the sides the moment I let go of the ledge. My stomach dropped as I slid.

Sonya heard me coming and tried to get out of the way, but I ended up colliding with her and she struggled to keep her grip.

Sonya grunted in pain, and I felt the sharpness of her shoulder in my hip.

“Ow. Sorry!”

“Use your back,” she suggested.

In addition to having her hands and feet pressed against the sides of the shaft, Sonya had leaned into it with her upper back. It was an awkward and uncomfortable position. But it did lend a certain amount of stability.

“This is crazy,” I said. “There has to be another way.”

“Probably,” she said, grimacing as she inched her way down the shaft. “But we don’t have time to find one.”

We made our way down the shaft a millimeter at a time. It was hard to concentrate, and I had started to sweat quite a bit, which made the slippery shaft worse.