Leonard stood frozen, staring at Ollie with wide eyes.
“Go!” Ollie shouted.
When Leonard still didn’t budge, he said it again: “Go! Hurry! We have to move!”
Leonard looked at the unlocked door and tentatively pushed it open.
“Jump!” Ollie said, pointing.
Leonard nodded. He hesitated for a fraction of a second before jumping and landing on the metal platform below with a ringing clang. Ollie followed behind, and together, they ran through the chaos. All around them, inmates were leaping, crashing, sprinting, and screaming with a ferocity that Ollie could only describe as a war cry. Laszlo, he saw, was swinging towards them. Down on the ground, Tera stood still as the mob shoved past.
Finally, he was next to her. “Are you okay?” he asked, touching her face.
“I’m fine. We have to get out of here.”
“Right. But first you have to call the guards.”
“What? Why?”
“Call more guards, and tell them all to go that way.” Ollie pointed toward the archway, where the escaped fighters were heading. Where Laszlo had told them to go. They didn’t know, of course, that he had also created a kind of funnel of capture for them there, and that the route was not an escape but a dead-end. Ollie felt a little bad about the subterfuge. But he couldn’t very well set the prison’s most violent group of prisoners loose in the Neath, could he? And he had needed the chaos as cover. While the guards were busy rounding up the Knockdown fighters and returning them to their cages, he and his friends would escape in the other direction.
Ollie, Laszlo, and Leonard hid behind a row of carts. Tera watched them go, then painted a look of fear and panic on her face.
“Heeeeelp!” she screamed, running toward the swinging doors. “Heeeeelp! Escape!”
Dozens of red-suited men appeared, brandishing zapper rods. She pointed them in the direction of the archway and they ran off with determined looks.
“Okay, they’re gone,” Tera said, poking her head over the carts. “Now what?”
Ollie stood. Derrin and Kuyu had told him to find the nearest kitchen. All the kitchens, apparently, had back staircases and dumbwaiter lifts, rarely used by anyone but the cooking staff and unlikely to be monitored during the pandemonium of their manufactured crisis. Based on his observations, Ollie assumed the fighting pit’s kitchen was on the other side of the big double doors that the slop wenches had been using to come and go. “The kitchen’s this way?” he asked Tera.
She nodded.
“How far?”
“Close,” she answered.
Ollie pointed to the shackles on Tera’s ankles. “Leonard, can you…?”
Leonard took a moment to survey his surroundings. Then he reached for a nearby toppled cart. He tore the axel from the bottom, lifted the metal bar, and smashed it against the chain connecting Tera’s shackles. With a clang, they broke apart.
They all stared at the shattered bit of chain, and then at each other. And then, they ran: Tera led the way, followed by Ollie, Laszlo, and Dozer, with a lumbering Leonard bringing up the rear. But as they neared the double doors, they could see a group of red-suited men interrogating a whimpering clump of wenches inside.
“Shit,” Ollie muttered. He held out his arm to stop the others. The doorway was blocked. He saw ten guards, maybe, and at least as many servants. He gritted his teeth. This was not part of the plan.
“Is there another way in?” he asked Tera.
She shook her head grimly.
Should they hide and wait? There was no time. Soon, the guards would head back this way with the captured prisoners and the pit would fill once again with people. They had two minutes, tops.
Sonofabitch. Ollie’s head swiveled left and right. As far as he could tell, there were only three ways in or out of the pit: the arched doorway where the escaped prisoners and guards had fled (now blocked), the kitchen doors (now blocked), and the ramp that led out into the courtyard.
The courtyard it was.
“Out there, hurry!” he pointed and whispered.
They scampered like rats up the ramp and out into the now-empty heart of the tower, where Ollie and Dozer had been fighting only hours before.
“Now where?” Laszlo asked, craning his neck. For the first time, he was starting to look concerned.
“We have to go up,” Ollie said. “Tera, is there an elevator?”
“Up?” objected Dozer. “Why the hell would we go—”
“There’s one,” Tera said. “But it’s that way.” She jerked her thumb to indicate the archway they had just passed through. “There are stairs around here somewhere,” she added, spinning in an uncertain circle.
Stairs wouldn’t work, Ollie knew. They’d never make it. They had only a minute or two before the guards found them out here. His head swiveled. He saw no other sets of swinging doors. No tunnels, no numbered holes in the walls.
All he saw was the boulder counterweight, resting on the ground. A spike and hook connected it to a thick chain, which extended up into the open reach above their heads.
Ollie stared at it, trying to remember what he had seen earlier at the start of the Knockdowns. Lower the board! the Warden had shouted, and then two things had happened simultaneously: The counterweight had risen, and the scoreboard had descended. Each had moved in direct opposition to the other. Clankety, clankety, clank.
They had to be connected by the same chain, with a crank or a winch at the top of the tower controlling the motion. Somewhere above, the massive chalkboard was hovering. Weight, counterweight. Disturb one, affect the other.
Two guards emerged into the courtyard with narrowed eyes and a matched set of sparking prods. They started marching toward Ollie and the group.
“Get on the chain!” Ollie shouted, pointing. “Climb! Hurry!”
His friends looked at him in confusion. Then they looked at the guards and started running. When they reached the counterweight, Tera went first, scrambling over the stone and climbing the chain like a macaque. Ten feet up, she slipped her arms and feet inside the massive links and held on.
Laszlo followed, leaping gracefully. Then Dozer made a less graceful but equally effective lunge. Ollie and Leonard brought up the rear. When Leonard started to climb, Ollie stopped him.
“Wait,” he said. “I need slack. Can you…?” He pointed to the hook connecting the taut chain to the boulder. Leonard nodded. He understood.
“Hurry up!” Tera shouted from above their heads.
With a loud grunt, Leonard grabbed the chain and pulled. The Reds were approaching, fast.
“Just a little more,” Ollie wheezed, struggling to spin the hook and release its grip. “Just…a…little…”
Leonard’s face turned crimson, then purple.
“It’s…coming…” Ollie said. “Just a little…”
The guards were only feet away. He wouldn’t make it. The hook was moving, but there wasn’t enough slack. He couldn’t free it. One of the Reds reached him, tried to peel his hands from the metal. A foot shot out of the air—Dozer’s?—and kicked the guard’s head, knocking him back. The other Red stepped around the fallen body and lunged.
Ollie’s fingers felt like they might break from the pressure. He gave the hook one last, agonizing yank and suddenly—it spun. The bonds holding the chain to the boulder were broken. Ollie was too stunned to move. Luckily, Leonard wasn’t: The big man grabbed the chain with one hand and Ollie’s wrist with the other. Somewhere high above, the giant scoreboard began to fall. And the chain, now holding all five of them, began to rise.
The jerk was sudden; Tera screamed. Ollie gasped as his feet left the ground and the chain started its fast climb into the heights of the tower. The only thing standing between him and a fatal plunge to the ground was Leonard’s meaty hand, which gripped Ollie’s wrist like a vise.
The scoreboard passed them on its way down. The wind whipped past his ears as they picked up speed. Up, up, up. He was faintly aware of hundreds of eyes watching them from the surrounding cells as they ascended. Shouts and whoops echoed. Ollie’s hand was sweating, slipping. How long could Leonard possibly hold him? How long could the others hold themselves? What if the chain snapped?
Then, he heard a shout: “Jump!” It was Tera.
Ollie tried to look up, but all he saw was Leonard’s hulking body above him.
“Jump!” she yelled again.
The ascent was slowing. Something had changed. The chain began to sway as his companions, he assumed, made the leap. By the time he saw the wooden ledge, it was almost too late. Tera, Dozer, and Laszlo were already standing on it. How would he reach it? There was no way—
Ollie’s thought was interrupted when Leonard swung him, wildly, and then let go of his hand. For one long, sickening second, Ollie was airborne: Just him, the shapeless oxygen, and a view of the ground, fifty stories below. He floundered his limbs in terror, reaching for the ledge. His fingers brushed the wood but found nothing to grip.
Ollie gasped. This was it. He was going down.
A hand grasped his forearm. Then another hand. Grunting, shouting. They were telling him to hold on. They were pulling. Minutes later, somehow, Ollie found himself splayed belly-first on a wooden platform, heart pounding, wondering what the hell had just happened. When Leonard landed behind him, the whole platform shook.
“Move!” Dozer was shouting. “Get up!”
Still shaking, Ollie scrambled to his feet. All five of them ducked as the chain whipped past their faces, flinging itself around the cranking gears of the platform they were standing on. Down below, the scoreboard hit the ground at full speed and shattered into pieces. The impact sent a kind of sonic boom echoing throughout the courtyard.
From their windows, hundreds of inmates cheered the spectacle.
Ollie, Tera, Laszlo, Leonard, and Dozer looked at each other, shock splayed across their faces.
“What in the Sam Hill?” Dozer gasped.
Tera ran a trembling hand through her purple hair. Leonard was bent over, panting. Laszlo stepped forward to peer over the edge.
Ollie tried to catch his breath, to still his heart. They were stuck on a skinny platform that had not been built, clearly, to hold so much weight. It jutted out only a few feet from the wall, but it was big enough to traverse. Carefully.
“This way,” he said, his voice shaking. A strange mixture of astonishment, optimism, and fear was bubbling through his veins. He had gotten them to the top. He had done his job. Now he could only hope that Ajanta, Derrin, and Kuyu had done theirs.
* * *
Ollie led the group off the platform and into a torchlit hallway, creeping along until he finally found a staircase that led up instead of down. Dark and unusually narrow, it would have been easy to miss.
“Well, that don’t look right,” Dozer said dubiously.
“This is very strange stairs,” Laszlo added. “Stairs for skinny people only.”
Ollie agreed with both of them but held his ground. “We have to get up to the roof,” he said, trying to project a confidence he didn’t feel. Just keep moving. Stick to the plan. In truth, he had no idea if the weird little stairwell would lead to the roof. But at the moment, it was their best—and only—option. “I’ll go first.”
He stepped through the opening and began to climb, winding up and around in almost complete darkness. Ollie could hear the others shuffling behind him. The further he got, the tighter it got; soon, he was ascending sideways. Something brushed against his face and he jumped. What was that? He couldn’t see anything. His body was pressed on all sides; he began to hyperventilate. This was a mistake. A claustrophobic, panic-inducing dead-end.
He was about to call out, to tell them to turn around, when a sliver of light appeared ahead. Ollie pressed forward and popped out of the dark stairwell like a Heimlich Maneuvered chunk of food. The air, murky and orange-tinted, felt glorious. He sucked it in.
Dozer landed next to him, blinking and squinting.
Then came Tera, and Laszlo.
No Leonard.
They waited, looking at each other nervously. No one, it seemed, wanted to ask the obvious question: Had he gotten stuck? Ollie stared at the narrow opening, willing the big man to appear. Finally he saw something pushing its way through the breach. A hand. A foot. And then an entire, gargantuan body, turned sideways. With an “oof,” Leonard squeezed himself through the crevice and collapsed.
“Jesus,” he coughed. “Where are we?”
“We,” Ollie said proudly, “are on the roof.”
Teracotta shingles lined the surface. Steaming pipes surrounded them, belching smoke into the thick air. They were still inside the cavern, but damn high up. So high that the wormwalkers above their heads looked less like one solid, writhing mass and more like individual, writhing tubes.
“Stand up,” Ollie told Leonard. “Take a look!”
The fighter grunted and rose to his feet, joining the others at the edge of the roof. When he saw the view below he gripped Ollie’s arm.
In another world, it might have been a picture on a postcard. Wish you were here in the Neath! The rusted smog immediately surrounding the Herrick’s End tower gave way to a crystalline, sweeping scene: Teal-green water wrapped like a hug around the islands. Life teemed in the boats, on the land, and over the narrow, white bridges. People, crows, and other creatures he didn’t recognize played their parts as tiny chess pieces on a massive board. Distended fern fronds swayed in unseen wind. And even at this distance, the tiny, multicolored flowers sparkled in the light of the blue ceiling, creating a kind of sequin effect across the entire cavern.
Ollie struggled for words. “It’s…”
“Beautiful,” Tera finished for him with a satisfied smile. “It’s beautiful.”
“Yeah, it kind of is,” Dozer said, sounding surprised. “But what are we doing here? I hope you ain’t expecting me to jump.”
Ollie swallowed. Not technically, he wanted to say. Instead, he pasted on a bright, false smile and said, “Now we just have to be patient. Just a few minutes. It’s fine. It’s all planned out.”
The five of them looked at each other uneasily. Finally, Tera said, “If Ollie says it will be fine, then it will be fine. He’s gotten us this far, hasn’t he?”
The others nodded. Ollie flashed her a grateful look, then let his gaze travel to the ground far below. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, he thought.
As the minutes passed, each of them seemed to lapse into their own musings. Leonard continued to ogle the expansive view. Dozer lay on his back, shut his eyes, and threw an arm over his face. Laszlo jogged in impatient circles, then began wandering the roof.
Tera sat cross-legged on the tiles and started tugging on her shackles. Though Leonard had broken the chain that connected them, the two metal clasps still encircled her skin like ugly, oversized anklets. Ollie sat down next to her.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
“Did they… What did they make you do?”
“I’m fine,” she said again, using her free hand to pat his arm. “Really. It wasn’t so—well, yeah, it was bad. But now it’s over.”
His brow furrowed. “For the moment, anyway.”
“Thanks for coming to get me,” Tera said.
Ollie flushed. “I was only returning the favor.”
“I guess that makes us even, then.”
The red of his cheeks deepened.
“Your friends seem nice,” she said.
Her words struck him. Friends. She was right, he realized. This odd assortment of peculiar people were his friends. And that meant that he had made more friends in two weeks in this godforsaken, underground hellscape than he had made in a lifetime on the Brickside. How was that for irony?
Ollie laughed. Softly, at first, then louder. And then it took over: A belly-rocking, all-consuming laugh that left him doubled over and crying.
Tera looked on, starting to giggle herself. “What’s so funny?” she asked.
“It’s just…it’s just…” He couldn’t speak. He didn’t want to. The laughter felt so good, like a cleansing flush for his entire body. He wanted to sit like that forever, holding her hand, laughing at nothing.
He was so lost in the mirth that he didn’t, at first, notice the constriction. It came slow and steady: an increasing pressure that seemed to crush the air out of his lungs. Suddenly, Ollie couldn’t breathe. He gripped his chest.
“Ollie? What’s wrong?”
The compression tightened. He tried to inhale but failed.
“Ollie?”
He bent over, gasping. Dozer and Leonard approached, looking concerned. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. He thought, for the second time that day, that he was probably about to die. And then, just as quickly as it had started, the pressure disappeared. He gulped the air, resting his hands on the shingles.
“Is that the first time that’s happened?” Tera asked him softly.
Ollie nodded. He looked up to find them watching him with knowing, sad expressions.
“It’s the change,” Tera said. Her face looked somber.
“What, the lung thing?”
She nodded.
He searched their eyes, feeling the panic start to well. “So, what, that’s it? I’m done?”
“No, no,” Tera assured him, reaching again for his hand. “Not yet.”
“It takes a bit,” Dozer said. “A few more times like that. If that was just your first, you’ve got a little while, yet.”
“How long?”
At first, no one answered. Then Leonard said, “It’s nothing to worry about. You’ve got time.” He flashed a smile that Ollie recognized as forced.
The awkward silence that followed was interrupted by Laszlo’s voice, booming and sharp. “Ollie, my friend! I think I find who you are waiting for!” he called out, swinging in from some higher point on the roof.
They looked up in time to see a sweeping flash of feathers and flight.
Tera’s eyes lit up: “Mrs. Paget!”
The giant crow swooped around the tower and came in for a landing, scattering the roof tiles with her feet. Tera ran to her and wrapped her arms around the bird’s neck.
Caw! Mrs. Paget replied.
It took all of them a moment to notice Ajanta, holding the reins on the crow’s back.
“Nice to see you, too,” Ajanta said, smirking.
Tera looked up, gasped, and held out her arms. The two women embraced wordlessly.
“You found us,” Ollie said, his voice heavy with relief.
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t easy,” Ajanta replied, glancing down at the scene below. “The Reds are all out. High alert. I take it you managed to make a bit of a ruckus down there?”
He nodded.
“You certainly got their attention,” she said. “I think they might have spotted me on my way in.”
Ollie’s stomach knotted. “We’d better hurry, then,” he said. “Tera, hop on.”
Ajanta gathered the reins and scooted forward to make some room.
“What?” Tera looked from one to the other.
“Hop on,” Ollie said again, gesturing toward the empty spot on the crow’s back. “We have to hurry.”
“Are you crazy?” Tera asked. “We can’t all fit on there. We’ll kill her.”
“Of course not,” Ollie said. “We have to go one at a time. You go first. Then they’ll come back for each of us. That’s the plan.”
“That’s your plan?” Leonard said, eyes wide. “She’s supposed to make a gazillion return trips up here?”
“Look, gimme a break, okay?” Ollie retorted. “I didn’t have a lot to work with!”
A thwacking sound startled them; Ollie turned to see a rod of pointed wood on the roof near his feet.
“What the hell is th—”
“Shit,” Ajanta said. “They followed me. They know we’re up here.”
“What are those?” Dozer asked, pointing at the stick.
“Poison darts,” she answered. As the words left her mouth, another dart whizzed by Leonard’s ear. He ducked.
“But…from where?” Ollie asked.
The answer came with sickening speed. From the corner of his eye, he saw them: A flock of crows, flown by red-suited guards, gliding on the horizon. More darts landed on the roof like wooden spikes of rain.
“Go!” Ollie shouted, pushing Tera towards the bird. “Hurry!”
“What? No!”
“Tera, I’m serious! You need to get out of here, now!”
“No! I’m not leaving you all here alone!”
He was going to say that Ajanta would come back for each of them, as planned. He was going to tell her that everything would be fine. But as the poisoned spikes fell from the sky and the flock of flying guards flew ever closer, he knew it wasn’t true. This was it. The scheme was shot. Mrs. Paget wouldn’t make it back for anyone else. She’d be lucky to get one of them out of there.
The rest of them must have known it, too. Laszlo and Dozer had already hidden behind a nearby steam vent; Leonard was shielding Tera with his body.
“Please, Tera!” Ollie said. “Please! You have to go now!”
“I’m not leaving you behind,” she said, her mouth set into a firm line.
Their standoff was interrupted by Dozer’s voice behind them.
“Well, hell, if she ain’t gonna go, can I?”
“What?” Ollie spun around.
“Yes,” Tera said, pulling Dozer forward. “Go. Get on.”
“What? No way!” Ollie sputtered.
“Ollie, I’m not going. Someone might as well use it. Otherwise, Ajanta came all the way up here for nothing.”
A new barrage of darts fell.
“Krite!” Ajanta shouted, ducking her head in a near-miss. “Whoever’s coming better come fast!”
“He’s going,” Tera said, shoving Dozer toward the crow.
“You did say you owed me one,” Dozer said, flashing Ollie a gap-toothed grin.
“Fine!” Ollie threw up his arms in surrender. “Go on. Get out of here.”
Ajanta held out her hand; Dozer grabbed it and leapt up onto Mrs. Paget’s back.
Caw! Caw! The bird screeched in protest.
“For heaven’s sake, I’ll be fine,” Tera told her. “I’ll see you back at the barn.” She smoothed the crow’s feathers, then looked at Ajanta. “Take care of her,” she said.
Ajanta nodded. Her long braid slipped over her shoulder as she leaned toward Ollie. “So, I guess it’s Plan B, then?” she asked.
He lifted his palms helplessly.
“I’ll tell the others,” Ajanta said with a firm nod. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, burlap package. “Here, take this. You might need it.”
Ollie took the package without comment, his eyes growing wide with dismay.
She snapped the reins. “See you at the bottom.” She and Dozer gave the group one last, long look. Then the great black wings swooshed up and out, and they were gone.
Ollie stood there, dumbfounded, watching them disappear. He turned to Tera. “Why did you do that? I was trying to get you out! That was the whole damn point of coming back here!”
“The point is to get us all out,” she corrected him.
“And how are we supposed to do that now?”
“Uh, guys? I think we’d better move,” Leonard interrupted.
Ollie looked back out across the hazy expanse. The airborne attackers were so close he could see the guards lifting the long, tubular blowguns to their mouths and puffing up their cheeks, ready to blow.
“What’s Plan B?” Tera shouted, breaking out into a run.
He didn’t have time for the long answer, so he gave her the short one. “I think it starts with getting the hell off this roof!”