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I’d forgotten how lonely Freedom could be in the daytime.
Shattered tiles and fallen-in ceilings clutter barren, shadowy halls. Ange says it still comes alive at night, the club-goers’ desperation to escape the grinding dullness of their lives for a few hours enough to bring them creeping back to risk a very final escape at the rending talons of the Mara.
If they were here now, this place would be lit up with spinning lights and shaking with throbbing beats, the air alive with the threads of the dancers’ every dream and desire, their desperate longings beacon and bait to the ravenous nightmares.
But soon the Mara won’t be the only hunters stalking these halls. I’ll be waiting for them—maybe even as early as tonight.
I hope.
“I won’t tell, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Cadence says. She’s just as eager as I am to get back to the fight. Eager enough to sneak out at the earliest opportunity.
We left Ash sleeping, with Lily dozing at his side and Amy nodding off in a nearby chair. Ange was out for the day, busy running the hidden collective and silent resistance that occupies a portion of the tunnels miraculously spared from the floods.
Ange thinks I need more time to heal, but it’s not like I fight with my feet. My hands are working just fine. I should be able to seize the threads of desire and longing that unwittingly call to the monsters and weave the Mara’s mortal prey to safety without any trouble.
Ash wants me to wait until he’s back in fighting form, but it wasn’t him that beat back the Mara in the first place. I can do this with or without him—and it’s past time I stop waiting for other people to take care of the hard stuff.
I can make my own decisions now, and choose a path for myself. Though, to be honest, I could use more practice at it. One of the worst things Refuge did to me—and it messed with me plenty over the years—was insisting on unquestioning obedience. Turns out, shutting off your brain and learning to suppress everything you need or want is only good for the people who want to control you.
I’m done being controlled.
“Took you long enough,” Cadence says, without a hint of irony.
She never used to be able to listen in on every thought. Or, at least she never let on she could. Lately, she’s been busy enough chattering away with Ash to leave me in peace. But out here, there’s no one to entertain her but me.
Lucky me.
“You don’t have to be rude about it. Besides, it’s not like I want to be stuck with you, either.”
I trace patterns in the dirt to avoid dwelling on our warped reality. It was a shock to discover we’re the same person. Except, we’re obviously not. We don’t think, or act, or talk alike at all—
“And thank goodness for that,” Cadence says. “You’re so boring, even when you’re not.”
—So we basically went back to normal. I pretend she’s a ghost and she pretends not to be mad I exist—
“I’m not mad. I just think I’d have done a better job if I were the one walking around.”
“You’d have got us killed in the first week.”
“Like you did so much better. ‘Ooh, I’m so obsessed with corpses, look at me all angsty and conflicted.’”
“It was a confusing time! And you weren’t exactly helping.”
“I helped plenty. Without me, you’d never have held on to your sanity. You’d either be a mindless drone, or Mara-chow.”
“I almost was because of you!”
“Whatever.”
I pick up my pace as if I can outrun her. It’s chilly and damp down here without a roomful of sweating bodies warming the place up. The air smells sour. I’m worried Ange will smell Freedom on my clothes, until I remember there’ll be no hiding it from her anyway. Not when I show up with Lily’s dad in tow.
“You’re gonna be in trouble,” Cadence singsongs.
My feet hurt. I shouldn’t stomp, but rage helps keep me warm and moving. All those lives lost to the Mara, both in these halls and in all the floors layered above them . . .
The girl in my nightmares—Suzannah Bell—wasn’t the first Mara-taken I’ve ever seen, but she was the first I’ve encountered in the dreamscape. I met her there after she’d died, which shouldn’t have been possible. Maybe that’s why I keep reliving her final moments. Or maybe it’s that she was so young—at least, the dream-version of her was.
Just the thought of kids getting hurt makes me choke up like nothing else. I had to fight not to cry in front of Lily when she asked me to save her dad. Which I will do—
“We’ll do,” Cadence says.
—Just as soon as we can. And then, after we save him, we’ll save everyone else.
Despite the dank atmosphere, it feels so good having a plan. Tonight, after a quick-and-easy rescue mission to retrieve Lily’s dad, will be step one: chase the Mara from Freedom once and for all. Step two: clear them out of Refuge. Step three: save the rest of the city.
“You know they won’t just wait nicely for you to come end them, right? They can go through walls.”
“We have to start somewhere.” Plus, apparently there are other monsters outside. Turns out, the Mara aren’t the only thing that haunts this city.
“Just saying, your strategy sucks.”
“You want to go back, have a little planning session with Ash and Ange?” I can practically hear Cadence pouting. “Didn’t think so. So maybe keep that snark to yourself.”
***
GETTING TO THE EXITS isn’t the hard part. I used to be a surveillance technician. I’ve seen the maps.
But I’ve never actually gone outside, not unless you count that time I climbed up to Refuge’s roof. Or the time I got sucked into the dreamscape and walked the desperate streets living the miserable life of one of those clinging to life outside through her own eyes. I’m more than a little curious to see what it feels like to experience the rest of the city in my own skin, especially now that I know how to protect myself.
However, despite all the dreary hours I spent as a drone in Refuge staring at floor plans on a screen, I get turned around more than once. Turns out, when you’re just one of the little dots running around a maze, it’s harder to keep the shape of the whole thing fixed in your mind. And easier to forget all those tiny signals represent real people. In this case, Refuge Force, patrolling the exits.
The tromp of their boots emerges so gradually from the distant murmur of wind swirling through fog, the surf lapping at the shoreless rubble, the far-off cries of circling seabirds, that I nearly stumble out of a side corridor into the enforcers’ path. As it is, one of the two uniformed agents of Refuge falters, his blank goggle-and-mask-covered face swivelling in my direction.
My breath catches. I glue myself to the wall, pulse roaring, and hope to disappear into the shadows.
The second enforcer continues on for several paces, passing safely beyond the opening. I hear him grumble, words muffled behind the filter of his mask. The first raises a hand, still peering in my direction, and waves the other on. When he turns to catch up to his partner, the light catches the ID printed across his back: 09-Hayne-05.
I swallow a gasp. Haynfyv. He’s back on duty so soon? I nearly sacrificed him in my quest to take out Serovate. Keeping him in one piece hadn’t been my main priority at the time, but I must’ve done a better job protecting him from harm than I’d realized . . .
Is he letting me go out of gratitude? Unlikely. He must not have been able to see me in the shadowy side corridor. There’s no way one of the mayor’s special commissioned enforcers would just let me go, even if we didn’t have a history.
Which reminds me—I never did figure out what Maryam Ajera wanted with me. Assuming her “summons” wasn’t just another one of the monster-possessed enforcer Serovate’s schemes all along.
“Does it matter?” Cadence says. “Hurry up—before they come back!”
Wary, I creep to the rusty double doors as fast and as quietly as my burning feet can carry me and spare no more than one heart-pounding-dry-mouthed-wide-eyed breath before pushing through to the open street.
Cadence snorts at my awe and laughs all the harder when I immediately choke on the dense, toxic fog that eddies in the wake of the just-closed door.
The brilliant sunlight that had so astonished me from the rooftop of Refuge barely filters down to this level. I stumble up a dank heap of rubble that might once have been steps and into a shifting, muddy-yellowish landscape.
I can’t see more than a dozen steps ahead, not for any length of time, though the swirling fog offers fleeting glimpses of dark water and looming walls. I set off in as straight a line as I can manage, suddenly conscious that I’ve stepped beyond the edges of my maps without any idea how to return.
“Dramatic much? No worries—I’ll get you home safe.” Cadence says, with more condescension than reassurance.
It’s too late to turn back, anyway. I keep walking, ankles rolling on slimy bits of crumbling concrete and rusted steel, trying not to make more noise than necessary. My clothes grow damp, then drenched, chafing over suddenly sensitive skin. My eyes water. My nose and throat burn.
How does anyone survive out here? And, more to the point: how long can I?
“Such a whiner,” Cadence sighs. “Don’t worry princess. I got you. We’ll be in and out in no time—or, more like ‘out and in,’ I guess.”
I shake my head and blink streaming eyes clear. Maybe I should’ve put a little more thought into this. Lily had made it sound so simple, but to save her dad, first I’ll have to find him. Her directions—head straight until you run out of street, then climb—seem less helpful with every step. Especially as those steps stop clinking and crunching and start squelching and splashing.
“You do remember the part about the city being flooded, right?” Cadence says. “Relax. I know where we’re going. Tide’s just a little high is all.”
Reassuring—if something hadn’t just broken the surface of the water in front of me.