2

I move back from the window, reeling from Tuco's speech. He said everything and nothing at all. He said the Ianua isn't protecting prisoners any longer, which tells me there aren't enough faithful Contego left to go around. The most trusted would be dedicated to protecting Addo Larry and Sean. I wonder if any of the Contego can even focus properly on the task. They might all be busy watching their own backs if our community has lost as many as it sounds.

Tuco didn't give any indication which side he is on, but everything about him, from his suspicious eyes to the heavy hunch of his shoulders, kind of points me in one direction. The guy reeks of secrets and danger and now he wants to know who we are loyal to. And he'll kill us if we pick the wrong side. I consider lying and telling him I'm loyal to The Fury, but even if Tuco buys it, I already know we'll never get close enough to Van to be able to kill him. Van will make sure of that.

But with the Outer Curas swallowing Van's garbage, I'm not sure what good it will do to tell Tuco anything. He probably won't believe we're faithful to the Ianua, no matter what we say. If he wants to hear that we've turned to The Fury, he's still going to want proof and I don't know what I could give him that would prove anything, either way. And then, there's the worst and most likely scenario: Tuco might be loyal to Van. If he is, it won't matter what I pull out of my sleeve. The Fury don't care about proving things. They care about scratching the back of whoever has something they want, until they obtain it. And that's the end of their loyalty. The trick will be finding something that Tuco wants, that Van can't get him, so I can become less expendable than Van.

Another happy thought is that if none of this goes well Tuco will kill us. At least he'll have to fight us one by one. I really don't expect it to go any other way. But as experienced a Procella as Tuco might be (and he looks like he could kill me with a flick of his pinky finger) he is also twice my height. I might be the David to his Goliath. Or by the time he gets to me, he might be worn out from fighting someone else. The idea of who would wear him out, or who he would have to defeat before he gets to me, braids my nerves in knots. It's going to come down to who can play dirtiest and who's going to get the advantage by pulling the first sucker punch. I hope whoever of us has to fight first goes for the upper hand.

A couple seconds after Tuco goes, the lights in the hall switch off and the ones in my cell dim. I try to focus again on something--anything--outside of my cell, hoping Robin or Nok will return. The hall might as well as be a black wall and my bed doesn't even quiver.

Being in a cell like this takes a crazy amount of sanity. Knowing that whoever is outside my cell can hear and see everything I do creates one kind of paranoia, while wondering if anyone is even out there at all creates another. I pace around in the dusky lighting, staring at the glass like a suspicious lab rat.

Despite having to go to the bathroom, I bounce from foot to foot. I am determined. My bladder will explode before I make myself pee in front of a stranger.

But after ten more minutes of telling myself that, I yank the blanket from the bed and whirl it around my shoulders in a weird teepee formation that covers both me and the toilet. I try to yank down my pants with one hand while keeping the flap of the blanket securely shut. When I finally get to go, it is like being shot down a slide from Heaven. My entire body relaxes, although I keep a death grip on the blanket. And the emptier I get, the more furious I become.

The people who have us trapped within the walls of what is supposed to be our safe sanctuary, the people who might even be watching me pee, are supposed to be my people. What they've done to us, since we landed on the Free Ball, isn't some little mix-up that they just have to get straightened out. They've imprisoned us and no one is reassuring us that they're working on getting down to the truth of what we are. Well, besides Tuco. And I don't know that he gives a rat's chest hair about the truth. He just wants us to read his mind and give him the answer he wants.

The what ifs and omgs overtake me as I remain perched on top of the toilet, clutching my blanket. I don't understand why I'm on this side of the Celare's slammer walls. When did the Ianua become so gullible? Maybe this is the way the other Curas have always been or maybe they've all traded out to The Fury. But what about our Cura? I don't even know who's left. I shiver, gripping the sheet even tighter in my fists. Robin said we lost Mrs. Neho and Carducci. She would've said if we lost anyone else, wouldn't she? The surface of the toilet seat seems to drop ten degrees. I get off and wrestle my pants back up, one handed, before climbing out of my blanket cocoon. I shoot a glare out the window-wall, just in case anyone is out there looking in.

Once the blanket is on the bed, there is nothing else left to do, but pace. There's nothing in the cell- no food, no magazines, no music. Not even a mirror. I think of Larson across the hall. I wonder if he's moved. I wonder if he even swallows his own spit. And I wonder, most of all, if any of the Ianua are out there, why they're not doing anything to help him.

I pace. I stomp. I kick the glass. It's like kicking a brick wall. I drag my fingers across the glass and make a squeegee sound, just to hear something. I try to formulate some kind of strategy to a situation I don't even fully know.

The lights dim a shade deeper in my cell. The murky golden glow is replaced with the midnight blue tinge, cast from an enclosed bulb too far over my head to reach.

I guess this is the equivalent of when I was little and my mom would announce that it was bed time. I'm not four anymore. But I guess it doesn't contradict the idea much when I prove it by dragging my blanket and pillow under the bed.

I hook the fibers of my blanket on the springs at my feet and around the outer edge. It's not a perfect curtain, but good enough as I lie on my back and stare up at the bottom of the mattress, trying to figure out how Nok got into it and if I can do it too. I stare up at the crosshatch of cot springs, but see nothing.

The mattress is thick, but it's still not thick enough that I'm sure I'll fit. But fitting is the least of my problems. Even running my fingers over the flexible springs and pushing against them, I can't find any slit in the material, like I was sure there was when Nok popped out of it. It's got to be here. I push harder, jabbing with three fingers, past the springs and against the firm stretch of the fabric. The slit has got to be right in front of my face, but I can't find it.

I begin another sweep of the mattress. This time, I work my fingers from the foot end toward my head, testing every intersecting spring wire and every diamond of fabric that presses through them. My fingers locate something, a nub, near my knees. It is a tiny piece of wire, the smallest little elbowed piece, bent in the wrong direction. It could be nothing--a stray wire, something that got pushed out of place, a stray, meaningless end of metal. But I hold my breath as I twist the elbow and smile as it slips backward. The springs slide with an itty bitty grit. A piece of fluff floats down and lands on my upper lip. I exhale, sending it gliding straight back up. Right into the bed. The opening.

It is just a slit, the springs bent like knuckles down the center now, raw wire fingertips turned out toward the outer edges. I squint. I still don't know how in the world I'm going to get inside, and worse, what it's going to be like if I do. I slide my fingers through the slit and feel stuffing...stuffing...and then, hollow. If I lift my back off the floor and keep pushing my arm through, I've got to bend it so my knuckles don't hit the top of the mattress 'tunnel'. I guess it makes sense. It's a mattress, not a magician's top hat with a banquet room hiding inside.

I pull out my arm and lay flat against the floor as my breathing hitches up. I'm not good in tight spaces. I think I more than proved it when Sean, Garrett, and I had to crawl through the Veritas' wall tunnel to escape The Fury, when they invaded Nok's hideout beneath the library. I totally panicked and Sean had to reach in and pull me out. My entire body goes clammy as I imagine myself suffocating in the stuffing, caught in the springs.

I can't do this. The thought pounds in my skull like a migraine and my heart beats in time with it. I can't even breathe, until I think of Tuco and his ugly slit of a mouth, asking which side I'm on.

I let myself imagine how badly it will go, how his suspicious little eyes will squint as he rejects whatever answer I give. Then his field will blow up around him like a greasy, black bog. My field will answer by popping up too, but without any Connections sharing it, my mother's diamond strength or my father's titanium protection, my field will be flimsy. As easy to tear apart as dried moth wings. And then it would be just me and Tuco. I shudder and push both my hands into the mattress slit, spreading back the springs as far as I can before I shove my head straight into the opening.

As soon as I'm in, I realize my mistake. Holy crap, I'm stuck. I try to yank my head back out, but the springs dig into my neck. I grope, trying frantically to locate them and bend them back, but my fingernails just scratch at the box spring. The wires tighten. The inner stuffing presses against my eyes. I can breathe, but the air is hot and linty, filtered through the guts of the mattress. I'm going to lose it.

I can't go back. I'm caught, but as I push my head upward in my panic, I break through the inside material and hit the air pocket I'd felt earlier. I open my eyes, but it's not like there's a nightlight in here. It's black, which almost freaks me out worse. I close my eyes again.

Stuck up to my neck inside the bed, I know there's no turning back. I've got to go through with this.

It's not like I can just climb right in. It's a mattress and not very thick. I weave my hand inside, up past my head and shoulders, my knuckles hitting solid wood right over my head. The opening continues laterally, toward the wall.

I corkscrew my way in, grunting. If anyone is listening in, I hope the mattress muffles all the noise I'm making. I try to remember what Sean and Garrett said about wiggling through small spaces, but I can't remember a thing. So I wing it, grunting like a hog being stuffed into a corset.

I wiggle in and grab hold of what feels like a leather belt, or a strap, attached to...something. I tug on it and it holds. I use it to pull myself through and when I've gotten in a foot, there's another strap. I take hold of it and keep working my way in, strap by strap, feeling along for the next and jackknifing my body to get around a corner of the tunnel.

I've got to be inside the wall now, and the first strap I capture there, pops something shut. The wall shifts. A piece slides over the opening I just came through. Instead of concentrating on where I'm at, I open my eyes and focus on finding another strap to pull myself along.

The minute I open my eyes, I wish I hadn't. The tunnel is as I could feel it around me: tight. There is only enough room to hold up my head and not enough to even work my arms back down to my sides. The straps are staggered and, after a few minutes, I figure out how to hook my toes into the ones near my feet and grab the ones further ahead of me and scoot along, climbing, horizontally. I get the hang of it, but I don't have any idea where this tunnel leads. It's just long and dark with corners that I can't see around until I get there and I could end up in a sewer or climbing into a whole new cage or getting stuck.

I try not to keeping thinking about being stuck.

But it's tight in here.

I scuttle along until I come to a board that blocks my path. Focusing, I see a loop on the front of the board and hook two fingers through it. I pull, expecting to tear it out of my way, but instead, the tunnel floor tips. I slide and flop down the sloped floor with an unintentional squeal.

I'm dumped into another mattress. Whose mattress, I have no idea. But the sharp springs, the squishy material around me are all too familiar to be anything else. My knuckles scrape a tiny bent wire, just like the one that opened the slit in the mattress beneath my bed.

So, I hook my finger on it and give it tug.

The mattress opens up and gravity grabs me. I thump down onto somebody's floor. Startled by the glimpse of a foot, I scuttle toward the wall. It's makes about as much sense as when I used to throw blankets over my head to keep the boogeyman out.

But then a familiar face appears in the faint cell light, peering beneath the bed at me.

"Hey, Rebel." Garrett's head is sideways and his eyes are lit up, right along with his smile. My entire body relaxes and my own smile warms my entire landscape--from my toes to the tips of my hair. Garrett reaches out and when we touch, his electricity roars up my arm. It's enough to solar power the entire hotel. He pulls me out from beneath his bed and wraps his arms around me so tightly, I puff a breath in his ear. No jailors come running, so I guess we're safe. For the moment.

But with Garrett's arms around me, it hardly matters. I'm a warrior again. I'm not afraid of a claustrophobic little tunnel or The Fury or even death. That I was kind of forced into coming because my head got stuck in the mattress isn't even part of my inner monologue right now. I'm just a wicked-clever, Contego-warrior-slash-girlfriend, who can maneuver Veritas tunnels like a boss.

"I was worried about you," he says. "Why did Nok send you through the tunnel?"

"He didn't. I figured it out on my own." I shrug, for extra smoothness. "I came because of what Tuco said. You heard him, right?"

Garrett's eyes sparkle in the dim light and he smirks, as if he's half amused, half just proud of having such an awesome girlfriend. I'm slapping myself on the back until the second he sighs. Something is wrong.

"I'm not sure how we can hide you so you don't get caught in here. Do you know how to get back?" he asks. His sparkle and smirk dissolve. I can tell from his expression that there is a wrong answer. He's genuinely concerned and I'm confused.

I stutter out my answer, "Well...the uh...the same way I got here."

"It doesn't always work like that, Rebel," he says softly. The worry sags me a little in his arms, but he doesn't let go. "This exit point might not let you back in. Not all the tunnels are made to go both ways like that."

The full impact of what I've done hits me. Our captors will know that I didn't just beam through the wall. They'll search for tunnels. They will assume a Veritas is involved. They'll look a lot more closely at all of us and I'm sure it won't take them forever to peel off Nok's make up. And then they will kill us all.

My guts turn to rocks and sink into my shoes. I didn't think this through, and now I've screwed it up for all of us. Some frackin' warrior I am.

I drop my chin in shame, but Garrett's hands are there, tilting my head back so I have to look at him. His unexpected smile warms me to my soles.

"It's okay," he says. "You didn't know."

I sniffle behind a fake smile and he brings his lips down on mine. It is a gift, a forgiveness. He presses my body in closer, pulling my bottom lip between his teeth. It shoves my entire world off its axis.

The hunger leaps between us and I devour his kiss. I gasp, inhaling him, and my nerves respond. They prickle and dance beneath my skin, rising up like animals, waiting to be fed. All I want is: closer. He grips my hips, pulling me against him. His lips are where mine search for them, my body waiting beneath his fingertips.

"You never taught me how to dial this down," I whisper.

"No," he says with a grin, "I didn't."

Our perfect synchronicity makes me a little dizzy. I stumble backward, falling on Garrett's bed and he falls with me. He catches me, cradles me. Our kiss continues. His muscles direct mine, and mine respond, directing his. His hand slides over my ribs. My body arcs. Garrett's head dips toward my heart.

The lights pop on over our heads. They might as well be spotlights. Disoriented from the kiss, Garrett and I push away from each other, not out of shame, but because I think we both assume we're going to have to fight. After all, I'm not even supposed to be here. There's bound to be consequences.

Garrett jumps to his feet and I land right beside him, our fields up, ready. The door swings open and the Tuco's shoulders fill the frame. He rumbles out a filthy laugh.

We totally miss our chance to get the upper hand.