It was impossible. Not just difficult, but downright impossible. Ollie and Laszlo had too much dead weight to carry, and too much ground to cover. They managed to descend only two more floors before collapsing in the stairwell, propping Laszlo and Matteo against the curved walls as they gasped for breath.
They would never make it all the way to the bottom. Not in time. Not like this.
“The door,” Ollie gasped. “The wood door.”
Leonard looked confused for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll go get it,” he said.
A few minutes later he returned, lugging the oversized door he had kicked down at Matteo’s cell—and a second one, too. He laid them on the steps like sleds. Ollie sat on one of them, propping his father in front of him and using his own arms like a seat belt around the lethargic man’s waist. Leonard sat on the other door and did the same for Laszlo.
And then, they were off: four guys and two doors, sailing down the stairs with the speed of gravity, bumping and spinning in endless, dizzying corkscrews. Ollie’s teeth chattered as his butt slammed down hard with every passing step. His hair flew back from his forehead. The scabrous walls scraped flecks of skin off his arm every time he got too close.
They heard voices below: Guards, running up the stairs. Ollie knew he couldn’t stop the speeding sled if he tried, and so, instead, they knocked down the guards like bowling pins when they came upon them. Ollie felt the impact, saw the shock on the Reds’ faces as they flew through the air. The sledding doors barely slowed. Around and around and down and down they went, leaving the toppled and possibly concussed guards to flounder somewhere in the darkness above.
Finally, the winding staircase came to an abrupt end. The wooden doors hit the landing and stopped; Ollie, Leonard, Laszlo, and Matteo, meanwhile, kept moving. They shot out of the doorway like circus performers from a cannon and landed in the dirt with a wallop.
Ollie somehow ended up on his back, staring up at the vast, open expanse of the tower. In the distance, he could hear roars, shouts. Pandemonium. But here, in the empty courtyard, all was still. Somewhere nearby, he knew, the shards of the broken scoreboard lay scattered on the ground. He squinted, trying to see all the way to the top, to the suspended platform they had been standing on just an hour or two before, but could not. He saw only speckled dust in beams of light, and nothingness. And then, a face.
“That was quite an entrance,” Tera said. She was standing above him, staring down.
Ollie bolted upright. His face broke into an astonished smile. “You made it!”
“Of course, I made it. You, I wasn’t so sure about.” Tera looked around at the others, who were starting to pick themselves up off the ground. “I’m gone for five minutes and you decide to start a bobsled team?”
“Funny,” he groaned.
“Looks like you picked up an extra passenger on the way,” she added, glancing at Matteo.
“Yeah.” Ollie rose to his feet and brushed off his pantlegs. “That’s, uh, my father.”
“Your—?” She stopped. Her eyebrows lifted.
“Long story,” he said.
“I’ll bet.”
Ollie walked over to stand beside his father’s motionless, emotionless figure. “Tera, meet Matteo. Matteo, this is Tera.”
“Lovely to meet you, sir,” Tera said.
Matteo Delgato lay on his side, dirt now stuck to his cheek. He didn’t reply or react in any way.
“That one’s not much of a talker,” said Leonard, who had hobbled over to stand beside them.
“I can see that.” Tera said.
“We must get us out of here, no?” Laszlo said, coming up from behind. He was dragging his bad leg, wincing. Sweating profusely.
“You look like shit, Laz,” Tera said.
“Mmm,” he agreed with a cringe.
She turned to look at Ollie. “So. Mr. Mastermind. Ajanta mentioned a Plan B?”
He gave a weary nod. “We have to get to the west trash chute.” That was the backup plan. He said a silent prayer that the backup hadn’t crumbled to pieces, too, because the backup-backup wasn’t likely to do anyone any good. “If we can get to the fifth floor, I can find my way from there.”
They turned as a unit to look at the staircase the men had just descended. Far-off rumblings from injured guards echoed against the rounded walls.
“Can’t go that way,” Leonard observed. “Sounds like they’re coming back down.”
“The kitchen doorway’s clear now,” Tera said. “I just checked. And I grabbed this.” She gestured toward a nearby slop-wench supply cart.
“You are busy,” Laszlo said, sounding impressed.
“Yeah, well, I had to do something to occupy my time while you guys went for the gold medal,” she smirked. “Laz, I think we can get you under here. Then you don’t have to walk anymore.” Tera approached the cart and pulled back the hanging fabric to reveal an empty storage area inside.
“Is small,” he said dubiously.
“And you’re an acrobat,” she pointed out. “Can’t you twist yourself up into a little ball?”
He considered this, then nodded.
“What about him?” Leonard asked, pointing toward Matteo’s inert body.
“Yeah, that’s, uh, an unexpected twist,” Tera said.
“Sorry,” Ollie muttered. “Maybe we can just kind of…flop him. On top. And cover him with something.”
Two minutes later, they stood next to the ramp that led back down into the fighting pit. Laszlo was curled up and hidden inside the cart’s storage shelf, and Matteo was concealed, just barely, on the top by gathered bits of broken scoreboard and chain links.
“There,” Tera said, sounding satisfied as she shoved one last chunk of wood under Matteo’s armpit. “If anyone asks, I’m just a servant cleaning up the mess. You guys wait here until I give you the signal.”
Ollie and Leonard nodded.
As they watched, Tera lowered her gaze and pushed the cart down the ramp. She approached a set of loitering guards and pointed off to the right, looking concerned. They listened, looked at each other, and then hurried off in the direction of her pointed finger.
Tera waited only a moment before turning around and waving Ollie and Leonard inside. They tiptoed down the ramp. Tera kept her hands on the cart and jutted her chin to indicate a stack of barrels near the wall; the guys jumped behind them. Then she held up a hand in a clear signal: Wait.
They did.
Crouched behind the barrel, Ollie dared a look around the cavernous pit. Most of the fighters were back in their birdcages, screeching and flailing and seriously pissed off. A few stragglers were being zapped and dragged by groups of guards. The Mallet’s cage hung like a sore thumb among the rest: conspicuously empty.
Ollie turned to watch Tera’s path toward the kitchen, ogling in horror as the cart hit a bump and one of Matteo’s hands flopped out into plain view. He started to jump up, to warn her, but Leonard held him down. The big man gave a firm shake of his hand.
“She’s got this,” Leonard whispered.
Sure enough, Tera noticed the dangling hand and moved swiftly to push it under the pile of debris while approaching the double doors. Ollie and Laszlo waited anxiously as she disappeared inside. Finally, she reemerged, darted her eyes left and right, and waved her hands. Now.
They stepped out into the shadows and ducked through the doorway. Ollie didn’t know what Tera had said or done—maybe some kind of secret slop-wench handshake—but whatever it was, it had worked. The female servants gave them only surreptitious looks as they passed through the kitchen. No one screamed or alerted the Reds. And when the ragtag group reached the far end of the long room, the wenches simply stepped aside and allowed them access to the pully-system elevator in the back. Tera pushed the cart inside, Ollie followed, and Leonard began to yank on the creaking chain, lifting them up, up and away from Floor Zero.
* * *
Ollie gave a shudder when they stepped out onto the fifth floor. The familiar sights and smells hit him like a Knockdown one-two.
They pushed the cart and limped through the hallways while keeping an eye out for roaming guards. Ollie led the way, finally stopping in front of a metal sliding-door panel. The trash chute. He had approached this spot more times than he wanted to remember during his days on the Labor Force, usually lugging bags of unspeakably disgusting garbage.
He held his breath. Not just from the stench, but also from the anxiety. This was it. Plan B. If this didn’t work, they were truly screwed. Ollie looked at Tera for courage, then slid open the panel. He saw a short but wide slide, and a torch flickering at the other end.
A well of relief rose in his chest.
“Derrin?” he whispered loudly. “You down there?”
A pale face surrounded by blonde, ropy hair appeared below. She looked up at him. “Took you long enough.”
At the sound of her friend’s gravelly voice, Tera gave a gleeful smile and pushed Ollie aside. She leaned forward into the chute. “Derrin!”
“And me, too!” someone else called out.
Tera pulled her head free and looked up at Ollie. “Kuyu’s down there, too.”
He nodded. “They’ve got a boat waiting.”
All eyes fell on Laszlo, who had crawled out from his hidey hole inside the cart. His sweat had morphed from drops into rivulets; his eyes were glassy. His face contorted in pain.
Ollie stuck his head back into the chute. “Laszlo’s been poisoned,” he called out. “You’ve got to get him to Ajanta.”
“Send him down,” Derrin said.
Together, they helped Laszlo climb up and into the raised panel opening. “Wait,” he said, grasping Ollie’s arm. “I get bad feeling now. What are you going to do?”
Ollie’s mouth set into a hard line.
“No,” Laszlo said, shaking his head. “I know what you are thinking. You cannot do this. You must leave, now. With me.”
Ollie didn’t reply.
Tera looked at Laszlo quizzically. “What do you mean? What’s he thinking?” Then she asked Ollie, “You’re not leaving?”
Ollie paused. Then he answered, “Not yet.”
“Why the hell not?”
“You know why not.”
“Please, enlighten me,” she said folding her arms.
“He’s going to go after the Warden,” Leonard said quietly. “Aren’t you?”
After a moment, Ollie nodded.
“What?” Tera yelped.
“Not such good idea,” Laszlo said grimly, still hanging on to the side of the chute. “You do not know Warden like I know Warden.”
“Oh, I know the Warden well enough,” Ollie replied. His eyes narrowed.
“Ollie, this is nuts,” Tera said. “I mean, even for you, this is nuts.”
She was right, he knew. He also knew that it didn’t matter. “Nothing will change,” he said. “The Warden will just come after you again. How long do you think you can hide before he finds you? A day? A week? He’ll find you, and he’ll drag us all back. And then all this…” He waved his arms. “All this will just…go on. The same. And no one will be safe.”
“But you have to go,” Tera interjected. “You don’t have time to—”
“And what about you?” Ollie pressed. “And Derrin, and Dozer, and all the others?”
Tera waved a hand. “We can take care of ourselves. That’s not your problem. Your problem is getting out of here while you still can. Like, now. Please. Get in the hole.”
Her expression was pleading. Ollie wanted to follow her orders. More than anything. Instead, he shook his head. “It’s not right,” Ollie said. “This place, this whole thing… Somewhere along the line, it all went wrong. George Herrick knew it, but he couldn’t do anything about it. But Tera, we can.” He gripped her arm. “We can.”
“We?” she asked.
He nodded.
Her face was still stern. But Ollie could see it in her eyes—she was weakening. “Fine,” she finally said. “Let’s finish this. But we’d better make it fast.”
Laszlo watched the exchange warily. “So, what? You want that I just leave you? No,” he said, shaking his long black hair. “No! I cannot! You will not make it out of here. You understand that? He will eat you alive, that Warden. I know that man. What he does. At least you must let me—”
“Laz, you know that’s impossible,” she interrupted. “We’ve got to get you healed up.”
The acrobat looked at each of them. He looked at Matteo, slumped on the ground against the wall. He looked down into the dark mouth of the trash chute. Then he sighed, sounding resigned. “If I do this, you must promise me to get out,” he said. “All of you, out. No matter what. That is most important thing, yes?”
“Yes,” Ollie smiled. “That is most important thing.”
Laszlo reached out and tapped Ollie’s forehead with a finger. “Smart behind the eyes,” he said affectionately. “All along, I knew it.”
Ollie held his gaze. “Thank you,” he said. “For everything.”
“Ah, is nothing,” Laszlo answered, running a hand over his lumpy bicep. “This body was meant for greatness, was it not?” Then he turned to Tera with a wink. “You take care of this young man.”
“I will,” she said.
Laszlo appraised them both. “No time like now, then.” He turned and shouted down the chute: “Here I come to you, beautiful ladies!” He gave a short, two-fingered salute before falling away into the darkness.
For a moment, all was quiet. Then Leonard pointed to Ollie’s father. “Him, too?” he asked.
Ollie nodded. “One more, coming down!” he shouted into the chute.
The three of them hoisted Matteo’s body and placed it at the top of the slide. The old man’s arms dangled; Ollie grabbed one of them, ready to fold it over the other, when his father’s back inexplicably stiffened. His neck snapped up. His eyes darted left and right, suddenly alert. A whining sound escaped through his nose.
Tera jumped back, stifling a scream with her hand.
“Holy shit!” Ollie breathed. His heart was thudding. “Papa?”
Matteo’s eyes were open and active but didn’t land on anything. His lips parted in a ghoulish grimace, releasing a sudden, rumbled rush of words: “Message from your mother,” he wheezed.
“Wh…what did you say?” Ollie whispered. His limbs had gone tingly.
“Message from your mother,” Matteo said again, looking but not seeing. Speaking in a monotone voice that didn’t seem to be his own. “Message from your mother. Message from your mother. Message from your mother. Message from your mother. Message from your mother.” The words shot out, louder and louder, like bits of jagged shrapnel.
Leonard took a step back, pulling Tera with him.
Ollie, on the other hand, leaned closer. Mama. A swelling in his throat threatened to choke him. “What…message?” he asked.
“Message from your mother! Message from your mother! Message from your mother!” Matteo was shouting now, a demented, animated robot. His head bobbled. His gaze spun then stopped abruptly, landing on Ollie’s face. “Message from your mother. Rivers do not freeze.”
“Rivers…?” Ollie gripped the man’s arms. “Wait, what? What does that mean?”
But Matteo’s stare, once again, was empty. His muscles had gone slack.
“What does that mean? I don’t understand!” Ollie shook his father’s shoulders, his arms, his face. “Look at me! Tell me what it means!”
Tera reached out, gently pulling him away. “It doesn’t mean anything,” she said. “He’s just…somewhere else, Oll. He’s already gone.”
Tears stung his eyes. Of course, she was right. His insane, barely conscious father was not carrying messages from his dead mother. His father had dementia, or something worse. His brain was dying, or dead, or stuck watching a ceaseless firework display of neuron explosions inside his skull. Nothing he said would make sense, ever again. He pressed his hands against his face, trying to erase the image of his father’s ghastly outburst.
“Ollie,” Tera pressed. “We have to keep moving.”
“Right,” he nodded, lifting his head. “Right. Let’s go.” He cleared his throat and yelled into the hole: “Here he comes!”
They pushed and let go. Matteo slid like a sack of rice all the way to the bottom.
“Get them out of here and then come back,” Ollie called down to Derrin. “If you can.”
She gave him a thumbs up and disappeared. He stared for a disquieting moment into the suddenly empty chute, then slid the panel shut.
Leonard turned. “You know it’s impossible, right? This Warden thing?”
“Not necessarily,” Ollie said, reaching into his pocket and closing his hand around the small package Ajanta had given him. He had been rolling the vial between his fingers for the past 20 minutes. Knowing, instinctively, what it was. “Not if you come prepared.”
“Prepared with what?” Tera asked.
Instead of answering, he rubbed his chin. A strange and giddy anticipation was pulsing through his chest. “We’ll need the cart,” he said, turning to examine it. “Can you get some cups and bowls, too? Serving stuff?”
“Probably. Sure.”
“What about me?” Leonard asked. “I hope you don’t think I’m jumping down that damn chute.”
Ollie grinned up at him. “Actually, I was hoping you could round up some of my old coworkers.”
Leonard raised an eyebrow.
“It’ll be fine,” Ollie told them, rising up onto his tiptoes. “It’ll be good.”
“I’m getting the feeling that your idea of good and my idea of good are two very different things,” Tera said warily.
Ollie laughed. “Forget good,” he said, a mischievous light glinting in his eye. “Guys, if we do this right, it might even be great.”
He gathered them close and told them the plan, there in the dark hallway. And as Tera and Leonard listened, their frowns inverted slowly into cautious, surprised smiles.