“Quiet,” came a voice, its voice, like a death rattle.
My muffled wail died out, more from shock than anything. Had it really spoken? Being devoured by a monster, a creature with little resemblance to humankind, that was one thing. But there was something far, far worse about being carved up by a beast that could speak.
“Quiet,” came the voice again, softer. It was familiar. The footsteps had all but died away, and I felt the weight on me lift. The hand on my mouth was as firm as ever. “I need to know you’re not going to call out,” the harsh whisper continued. “I need you to trust me.”
I lay there for a moment, trembling too much to reply. But what choice did I have? I nodded my head hard enough for it to feel the movement.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” it went on, gently removing its hand. I tasted blood, although I couldn’t tell if it came from my lips or its fingers where I had bitten them. Gasping for breath, I thought about screaming. Even if I’d wanted to, I doubt I’d have had the strength.
“I’m sorry,” said the voice again, the sound of joints clicking as it shifted position. “There was no other way. I only had seconds to get you out.”
“You could have just asked,” I replied hoarsely, sitting up. I felt a hard surface behind me, metal shelves, and shuffled until I was leaning against them. The creature was invisible in the gloom, and I was still terrified of it. But I had thought I’d have claws beneath my skin by now, teeth in my neck, so I couldn’t complain.
“You wouldn’t have come,” it said. “By the time I’d convinced you it would have been too late.”
And then it struck me, where I’d heard the voice before. I suddenly realized how hot its hands had felt on my face.
“You’re the thing that saved me, right? Back in the cavern.”
A grunt that could have been yes. I could hear something else, a gross squishing sound that reminded me of raw meat sliding into the food grinders in the prison kitchen.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I think you broke my nose,” it replied, its voice laced with pain. “But it’s healing, just give me a minute.”
I’d never known a broken nose that could heal in a minute, but I kept quiet until the noise stopped and the creature spoke again.
“You’re Alex Sawyer,” it said, and I was about to answer before I realized it wasn’t a question. “You broke free.”
I nodded, forgetting that it couldn’t see me. To my surprise, however, its silver eyes seemed to focus on the movement.
“I thought so. We heard the explosion from down here. Didn’t know what had happened at first, but when we saw you in the river we couldn’t believe it.”
“We?” I asked.
Before it could respond there was another screech from the corridor outside, more gunfire. Something flew past the distant door, a shadow too swift to make out. I squinted, wondering why it seemed to have been running along the wall, tearing chunks from it as it passed.
“There’s no time,” the creature hissed. “You’ve got to get back.”
“Back?”
“To the hole.”
I started shaking my head but it rested its hot fingers on my arm, snatching them away a second later as if fearing they might burn me.
“Just listen to me. I needed you to know that we’re down here, that you’re not on your own.”
More footsteps drumming out a panicked rhythm as two blacksuits sprinted past the door, little more than a blur.
“What’s going on out there?” I asked when the noise had faded. “Are you one of those things? Those creatures?”
“Yes and no,” came its answer. “I’ll explain later. All you need to know is that there’s a war going on down here, and we’re on the losing side. We need you, Alex. If you can get out of general population then you can get us out of here.”
My head was spinning, the sensation amplified by the darkness. My thoughts were like planets careening out of orbit, crashing together and exploding into meaningless dust. I saw one clearly, snatched at it before it vanished along with the others.
“Donovan. Carl Donovan. Is he down here?”
“I don’t know,” it said, but I could sense the hesitation in its answer. “There are some kids in the infirmary, including the guy you escaped with.”
“Not him,” I interrupted. “Another guy, about the same age, dark skin, big.”
“There might be.” The creature’s silver eyes blinked uneasily. “I don’t know, I can’t tell, they’re all…”
“What? They’re all what?”
“Just forget about them, okay? Forget about him. It’s too late. But not for us.”
It had been quiet outside since the blacksuits had run past, and the creature stood. I felt its fingers searing through my overalls again as it pulled me to my feet, leading me back toward the door. I wanted to ask it more about Donovan, ask it to take me to him. I wanted my old cellmate to know that I was here, that I hadn’t abandoned him. But the creature was the first to speak.
“The guards should be occupied by the north door,” it said, mumbling to itself as we walked slowly toward the corridor. With more time to look around I could see that we were in some kind of storeroom, the light from the passageway outside too weak to identify what was in the countless boxes and jars lining the shelves. “That’s where the breach took place, where the rats got in. We should be clear back to the hole.”
We reached the door and I turned around, ready to plead not to be taken back to solitary. But it grabbed my shoulders and held me tight, kept me facing forward.
“Don’t look at me,” it said, and I could sense a boundless sadness in its voice, the choked whimper of shame. “Please, don’t look at me.”
It held me still for a moment, during which a far-off shot whispered down the corridor. Then it pushed me forward, telling me to run. I didn’t argue, sprinting back the way we’d come. The passageway containing solitary was clear and we made our way down it faster than I thought was possible, the creature’s hands pressing at my back and betraying the sheer power of its body. Keeping one hand on me to make sure I didn’t turn, it swung the lever around and wrenched open the hatch.
“I’ll be back,” it whispered. “The next time there’s a breach, the next time the blacksuits are distracted, I’ll be back. Hurry, get in.”
I sat, gripping the edge of the hole and angling my feet in.
“Just tell me your name,” I said.
“My name?” the creature replied as I dropped, as if unsure what the question meant. I hit the floor, immediately turning my head. The hatch was already closing, but through the shrinking gap I could make out the top half of a monstrous body, one arm as thick and bulbous as a tree trunk, the other wasted away to skin and bone. It raised its scrawny arm as I looked at it, covering itself with a gnarled hand. But not before I caught a glimpse of the face beyond—that of a teenager, little older than me, silver eyes set into gray skin.
“It’s Simon,” he replied, then the hatch slammed shut, the lever turning, leaving me with nothing but the fleeting echo of the boy.
RECOVERY
FOR WHAT SEEMED AN ETERNITY I stood in my cell staring into the infinite night, giving my body time to remember how to breathe. My heart was struggling as well, its rhythm frantic and forgetful, thumping too hard and too quick and then missing a beat before trying to catch up. The tiny space felt like it was spinning, even though there was no way I could actually tell if anything was moving or not.
I thought I could hear thunder in my ears until my clouded mind focused and I pictured Zee next door. He was banging his grille furiously, waiting for a response. Touching the wall to push away my dizziness, I crouched and used my other hand to reach out, finding my own grille upended in one corner. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I simply smashed it against the pipe three times.
There was silence from Zee’s cell and I could picture him crashing back against the stone in relief. A few seconds later he started hammering again, h
is long sentence giving me plenty of time to recover.
“I thought they’d taken you,” beat the tuneless notes.
“They did,” I answered, taking my time over every letter. Zee was responding before I’d even finished.
“Where? Who?”
I tried to think of an answer, an explanation, but my mind drew a blank. Just so Zee didn’t think I’d gone AWOL again I gave him a very brief summary of the last few minutes—they’d seemed like hours—the creature that had opened my cell, then the boy who had killed it and dragged me out. I told Zee where we’d gone, and what he’d said.
“Not alone?” Zee responded. “Who are they?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. I truly didn’t. From what I’d glimpsed of the kid, Simon, he looked like a monster. The way the skin of his arm had bulged, stitches encrusted with blood and dirt and threatening to tear loose, reminded me more than anything else of Monty, cut open and packed so tightly with something else’s flesh that he looked like an overripe, flyblown fruit about to burst. He had the same silver eyes too, those of a wolf caught prowling in the moonlight.
But why hadn’t Simon acted like a monster? Why had he ripped me from my cell and then given me hope, rather than smuggling me into the darkness and feeding from my squirming torso? He could have killed me in the time it took to open my mouth to scream, yet he hadn’t.
“It said it needed me,” I went on, fragments of the conversation coming together in my head like a jigsaw puzzle. “To escape.”
“Escape?” Zee said, and I could sense his excitement by the eagerness of his taps. “You think there’s a way?”
Not a chance in hell, I thought. I mean, we were cocooned in a cell the size of a coffin, miles of rock in every direction except one and a big chunk of reinforced steel there to make up for it. Not only that, but we’d been pushed even deeper into the stinking bowels of Furnace.
Down here there was no chance of salvation. Even if we made it out of solitary, if we found our way back into the labyrinth of tunnels and passageways that made up the guts of the prison, we still had them to contend with. The rats with their eel-like mouths and endless rows of needle teeth, their infected claws, which looked like they could slice through skin as if it were tissue paper, their soulless voices screaming through wet throats as they started to feast. I banged out another sentence if only to keep my mind busy.
“How can there be?” I said, regretting it as soon as I’d smacked out the last word. In the hole, keeping up our spirits was the most important thing we could do. Even though I could literally feel the weight of the world pressing down on my shoulders, I knew I should at least try to sound positive.
“I’m not sure,” I hammered out, contradicting myself. “Maybe there’s a way. Gotta wait for the kid to come back, next time there’s a breach.”
Zee didn’t reply, and I knew his blistered hand must have been as sore as mine.
“Gonna get some sleep,” I lied, just so he didn’t worry if I was silent for a while. I wasn’t sure how to sign off, so ended with “Speak soon.”
I wasn’t tired, there was enough adrenaline pumping around my system to keep me awake for weeks, but I needed time to think. What the hell was happening down here? If I could just figure it out in my head then maybe I stood a chance of avoiding the same twisted fate as Simon and Monty and God only knew how many others. Staring off into pitch black I thought about my old cellmate, and sure enough after a couple of blinks he strolled toward me, forming as he went.
You’re getting good at this, said the hallucination, taking a seat on an invisible chair on what should have been the other side of the wall. I wished I was as insubstantial as my own conjuration, able to float up past the hatch, through a mile of rock, and keep on going—soaring into the calm blue sky until all the world was at my feet. You wish, he went on. You couldn’t get your fat ass off the ground, let alone drift up to the surface.
“Ha ha,” I replied dryly. “You’re in my head, you should be nice to me.”
You obviously know me too well, Donovan said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. So what do you want, anyway? I’m not sure I like it when you drag me down here.
“Just someone to talk to, I guess,” I replied, the sound of my voice alone in the cell making me feel foolish even though I knew nobody could hear it. “Someone to help try to make sense of what’s going on, what happened to that kid Simon.”
Sorry, kiddo, we share the same brain at the moment. What you know, I know.
“You could at least pretend to help,” I pleaded.
Fine, fine, he said, cupping his head in his hands like someone deep in thought. I think this is all some big reality television show, being broadcast right now to the whole nation.
“Gee, thanks,” I said, smiling despite myself. “Seriously, D, what is going on here? Those things, those creatures, they were human once, right?”
Yeah, Donovan replied, staring at the floor. His face was a mass of shimmering white, but his eyes seemed to be glistening even more than usual. You’d better not be picturing me crying, Alex, or I’m gonna pound you into the middle of next week.
This time I laughed, and he laughed with me for the fraction of a second it took our faces to fall again.
Yeah, they look human. Look like they were once, anyway. But they’re not anymore, especially not the rats. They’ve had every last scrap of humanity torn out of them. They’re animals now; monsters, demons, whatever you want to call them.
“Specimens,” I said aloud. Donovan nodded.
I think you’re right, it’s gotta be some kind of experiments. Some sort of genetic crap. Real nasty. Maybe they’re trying to create super-soldiers or something. Those blacksuits could kick some serious ass. You should try to find the real me, I’ll know the answer.
“Why would you know any more than me?” I replied. “We both know I’m the clever one.”
Donovan just snorted, peering up at me with eyes made from moonlight.
Because whatever happened to Simon, to those freaks, is happening to me right now.
“No,” I said, a groan that lurched into a sob. I couldn’t bear to picture him in the infirmary while everything recognizable was flayed from his body, everything good was sucked from his soul. I put my head down, staring at the abyss beneath my feet, and when I lifted it Donovan had gone.
“No,” I shouted after him. “I won’t let it happen. I’ll come for you, D, I promised I would. Just hang on.”
I steeled myself, clamping down on the emotions, letting the logical thoughts creep through. If Simon and whoever else was out there needed me to help them escape, then I’d give them what they wanted. Somehow I would get us out. But only if they led me to Donovan, and only if he was still alive. Come hell or high water, he was leaving with us.
“Just hang on,” I repeated. “It won’t be long.”
And I was right, it wasn’t long at all.
THE WAR
THEY CAME BACK WHILE I SLEPT. I heard them in my dreams again, the sound ripping me from nightmares of hanging limbs and plunging me back into the hole. It was only the faintest echo of a scream, but it left me wide awake, senses heightened, my heart pumping more adrenaline than blood.
This time it was excitement rather than fear that drove me to my feet. I was still terrified, don’t get me wrong, but at least I had an idea of what lay on the other side of my cell door, and that gave me some control. Not much, admittedly, but enough to keep me standing, fists clenched at my side, instead of cowering in the corner praying for peace.
I stood on my tiptoes, put my ear as close to the hatch as I could. For what seemed like hours there was no sound except the rush of blood in my head, my pulse like the ocean crashing against a stony shore. Then I heard it again, a squeal, distant even through the solid metal.
I was concentrating so hard on the sound that a sudden hammering from Zee’s cell scared me half to death.
“Take me with you,” he tapped out patiently.
I had my grille raised to tell him “Okay” when the bar on my hatch squealed, metal grating against metal as it was unlocked. I shifted the heavy grille over my shoulder, ready to swing it up into the face of anything that wasn’t Simon. But when the door lifted and I blinked away the burning light of the corridor, it was him I saw, silver eyes peering shamefully out at me from behind crooked fingers.
“Quick,” he said, his voice like that of an old man who’d smoked a hundred cigarettes a day all his life. He offered me his other hand, the skin taut and smooth like ancient leather, crisscrossed by stitches. “Quick!” he repeated, more urgently. I placed both my hands in his and with no effort at all he hoisted me from my cell, then slammed the hatch shut.
He started to run, heading toward the storeroom he’d taken me to before. I didn’t follow immediately, skipping over my hatch to the one that sealed Zee’s cell. I had my hands on the bar, straining to open it, when I heard Simon whisper in my ear.
“What are you doing?” Breath as warm as desert dust on the back of my neck. “There’s no time.”
“He’s coming with us,” I said, my weakened arms unable to swing the lever more than a hair’s breadth. “Help me get this open.”
I heard the beginnings of a protest swell up in the kid’s throat, but he swallowed hard then barged me out of the way, sending the bar crashing around with a single sweep of his oversized arm. He wrenched open the hatch, revealing a pair of eyes in the darkness so wide and so white that they seemed to be glowing.
“Alex?” came Zee’s voice, a flutter no louder than a bird’s wings. He didn’t have time to say anything else before Simon plunged his hand into the shadows and pulled him out, dropping him on the floor. Simon kicked the hatch shut and locked it, then started sprinting again.
“Stupid stupid stupid,” I could hear his voice with every thunderous footstep as he swung around the corner into the smaller corridor. I grabbed Zee’s hand and followed, ignoring his cries of confusion until we’d ducked through the opening in the wall and stumbled blindly into the storeroom. There was a moment of panic when I couldn’t see Simon, but then I spotted the twin moons of his eyes blinking at us from a far corner.