14

“The first rule of escape: Assess your situation.”

Daddy be pacing the floor of the cottage like it a classroom. I ain’t been to the nuns’ school since I been tiny small, but now I listen to Daddy. He a good teacher and he be teaching me how to survive.

“Look around you, Fen, know your situation. Then identify your assets. Anything that can help you escape.”

I be looking to escape, to get outside in the sunshine to play, but Daddy say this ain’t a game. This be serious. It be serious all the time, and I don’t like it, so I say so. Daddy get real close and bend down and look me in the face, and his eyes so big and dark, I can see my whole head in them. He say, “Baby Girl, this is life or death we are talking here. I know those are big ideas for a little thing like you, but that’s what we are up against.” He pull me into a close hug then, so tight, it like to break my arms, and I hug him back just to get him to loosen his grip. I don’t know why, but for some reason, I start to cry.

• • • 

Baby Girl be crying again, bringing me back to myself. She screaming in my arms, and I know I been hurting her. I tell myself to let her go, to relax my fingers from digging into her through the swaddling. It take a long minute or two, but I finally let her breathe and lay her down on the floor.

My chest be so cold from her not being there that I start to shiver again. A song come to mind, one my mama used to sing me to sleep. I sing it now to calm Baby Girl, and maybe myself, too. We got to both keep it together if we getting out of here alive.

I look around. We in a white room, maybe twelve feet by fifteen, maybe less. There be small windows in the shorter walls, set high and covered with wire instead of glass. The sky be turning gray through them windows. If I strain, it enough light to see by. Sunrise not too far away. There be one wooden door in a long wall, with a lock I seen on the outside and metal bars across. There be hay in the room, spread on the floor for sleeping. I be in one corner, on the floor with the baby. They took my pack, but I still have a bottle wrapped in my waistband. The leper be leaning his back up against the far wall, looking like he already dead. May as well be, with the disease in his blood. Hunters’ll kill him the minute the fire’s hot enough.

Baby Girl stop crying. I turn my back so the leper think I be breast-feeding her. I give her the bottle and try to concentrate.

The first rule of escape: Assess your situation.

We in a room; but a room within a room, like a closet almost. They walked us through the main building when they brought us in here. It be like a hospital out there, beds set up three in a row, with silver stands next to each one. They be running the generators here night and day to keep that equipment running.

A locked room in a building on a blood farm. And it close to morning. The hunters go out at night, so soon they be going to bed and nothing but a few folks be awake, the blood workers running they tests and sorting they catch. Technicians. Maybe we can get by them. And the dogs. Dogs got to sleep, too. And they be locking them up for sure, so they won’t go harassing the captives.

The second rule of escape: Assess your assets.

I got two legs and two arms that work, so that be something. They took the chains off when they threw us in here. I got a half-empty bottle of baby formula. I got a shirt tied into a sling, and a baby. I got some hay, and that about it. Not a lot to go on.

Then a cough come from the other side of the room and I remember I got one other thing. I got the leper.

His coughing make me cringe, and I think maybe I can use him like a weapon. But he got to want to help me. If he know they going to burn him up, he’ll help. He got to know.

“Eh,” I say. “Eh la bas.” Don’t know if he speak the patois or no, but he look up at me and his rags be coming off his face, and in the pale gray dawn I see what I ain’t seen by firelight. Now I know why his voice sound so flat. He not a leper. He a smuggler.

I hiss at him. “Hey,” I call, quiet in case they be listening at the door. He ain’t been coughing ’cause he sick, but ’cause he been crying. His rags slide off his face and I see he ain’t got a nose showing because he in an encounter suit, filtering his voice and the air he breathing. I seen it with McCallan.

McCallan. That old bastard supposed to bring me clean blood. If he had, maybe Lydia be alive now. The thought make my stomach hurt. I feel a tear drop and it hit Lydia’s baby on the cheek. She wiggle when she feel it. I wipe it away and don’t let another fall. Smugglers be users, people who know what we need and make us pay for it chère. Too dear, sometime.

The smuggler quit his crying now, and it be sounding like static coming from his suit. He safe inside there, even crying like that and letting his nose run. Supposed to protect from the Fever, keep they blood clean, too, so they ain’t be detected by chemical sniffers along the Wall. They can smell Delta Fever in you, even through an encounter suit. Enough fools found that out trying to cross the Wall in earlier days. But if you ain’t got the Fever, the suit can keep you clean.

Blood hunters won’t burn a smuggler. And they don’t hardly ever use them for farming, neither. They too valuable a resource, able to get across the Wall, provide things we ain’t got here. There be fewer smugglers these days, so this one be worth that much more if he go free. He just gotta show that suit and he can make a deal to walk. It be a wonder he don’t know it. But maybe he afraid they take his suit. And then he be exposed, toxic like the rest of us, and he die anyway. That an asset for me, then. He still got a reason to be afraid.

I put Baby Girl in the sling and cradle her with me when I creep over to see him.

“Eh la bas,” I say again real low. He be looking at me as I crab-crawl across the floor. I don’t want to stand up ’less they see me through them windows. I crawl over and sit next to him on the floor. “Ça va?”

He stare at me, tilting his head like he listening to someone that ain’t here. Then he sit up. “Yes?”

His voice pop a little like static.

“Hey, mister, you want to get out of here?”

The smuggler nod.

“Then we got to work together.”

He hesitate, then nod again. “What’s your name?”

I look at him and shake my head. A name ain’t gonna save my skin. “You want to leave, we leave together. What you got?”

He stare at me like he don’t understand, and I point to his coat, his rags, the pockets I can see in the dawning light. “What you got?” I ask again.

He follow my gaze and I see he understand. “Uh . . . a datalink, my suit. A compass and a chronometer.” He look worried. “They took my duffel, and the rest of my gear is, uh . . . elsewhere.”

I crab-walk back to my corner to think. He start to follow, but I wave him away. A compass and a watch ain’t much, but they be assets, too. A datalink. We don’t got that in Orleans, so I don’t know what to make of it.

“Eh, mister, what the datalink do?” I whisper to him.

He push up his coat sleeve and show me a sheet of black plastic wrapped around his wrist like a cuff. “It’s a computer. It translates for me, analyzes things, and acts as a guidebook.”

“It got a rescue beacon?” I seen beacons in the bayou sometimes, marked with a smuggler’s sign. If they left behind, it ’cause the smuggler either been rescued or they dead, but every smuggler got at least one, if he smart and he work with a team.

His face fall. “No. It’s not a transmitter, just a guidebook. And a translator.”

I shake my head. No use to me. I speak patois, French, English, and some Chinese and whatnot from trading with the Asians in Shangri-Lo. I be learning Spanish. And I know the city better than some. A rescue beacon be worth all that right now, but it ain’t what we got.

The baby kick in my lap and I see she made a mess in her diaper. She be too young for it to stink yet, but it black and sticky. I wipe her down with a strip of my sack shirt and replace the moss with a rolled-up piece of sack.

The third rule of escape: Assess your weaknesses.

Well, I got a baby. I got a smuggler who be as useless as a baby. I ain’t eaten proper since I vomited up that stew. I got no food and no diapers. And we running out of time. There got to be something else.

“What they call you?” I ask the smuggler.

He look surprised. “Daniel,” he say without even thinking.

“Daniel and the lions’ den.”

“What?”

“That story, Daniel and the lions’ den. He be thrown to the lions for keeping his faith, but they won’t eat him ’cause he been doing right by his god.”

Daniel sort of shudders and I think he laughing. “That’s supposed to comfort me?”

I shrug. “Only if you doing right.”

“What’s your baby’s name?” he ask. He be relaxing more, thinking I got a plan. I look down at Baby Girl and shake my head.

“Don’t know yet.” There a lot I don’t know about Baby Girl right now. I don’t even know if she an OP like me. She could take after her daddy, and I ain’t knowing who he be, either.

“How old is she?” he ask. I know he being polite, but I ain’t gonna say. Maybe he help me out of here, or maybe he just use me to get free. I sure be using him if I find a way. They won’t know Baby Girl clean ’til they type her. That buy me some time.

He see me staring him down and look away. “It would be good to know a lion right now,” he say. That make me snort. Then I think of what he say about his equipment.

“What you smuggling? Something worth a trade? Them hunters have lots of needs you can negotiate.”

Daniel shake his head. “It’s not like that. I—I’m not a smuggler. I’m . . .” He look at his lap and I feel my belly go sour.

“You a tourist? You buy a suit and come over the Wall for vacation?” I don’t sound angry, but I am. I’ma die a blood slave, and this fool over here on holiday. Him and his damn fool datalink. If it ain’t gonna call for help, it no use to us.

“I’m not a tourist,” he say defiantly.

“Then what?”

He drop his head back against the wall and look up at the ceiling. “It’s a long story,” he say.

“You got somewhere to be?”

He straighten up. “Yes. Do you have a way out of here?”

I think of Daddy’s lessons, and the rules of escaping, and how I just got myself a new asset. “Yeah.”

“Care to share?”

I bounce Baby Girl on my knee. She fed and she be falling asleep again. The sun be rising, and soon it be full morning. “Everybody in bed now but the day shift. They doctors, nurses, not the big men. When they open that door, we going to walk out.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“Easy,” I tell him. “You a leper, and I got a baby. Do what I tell you when I say. Then we just gotta wait.”