Estranged (22 page)

She looked down at the
lump of tortilla-wrapped beans.
This is
what I have become: the butt of some slut’s pranks.
This time, Kalei really did kick the
burrito.

She regretted it immediately. The lump
became a brown smear across the bottom of her cage. It looked like
shit. Kalei tried to wipe it off her boot, fighting the urge to gag
as she did so. Then she noticed something.

Within the mess of beans sat a square
chunk of hardened plastic, small enough to fit comfortably in the
palm of her hand. When she wiped off the beans, she found it was
white underneath, with smooth, rounded buttons bubbling up on one
side. It looked like some kind of remote.

What the hell is this,
Shenaia? A remote to nothing? This is sick. I’m not anybody’s
monkey in a cage to be laughed at!
Kalei
flung the device into the wall. It ricocheted off the glass, hit
her leg, and then landed in the pile of beans. Kalei turned her
back on it and looked out at the hall.

Her cell felt smaller now, as though
the burrito mess was crowding her. She wanted to get out – she had
to get out – but she couldn’t. She knew that.

Across from her, a bearded man sat
cross-legged in his cell with one leg pulled up at an odd angle so
he could chew on his toenails. Disgusted, Kalei turned
away.

She stared at the ceiling for a while,
played thumb wars with herself, even attempted to clean up the
burrito mess with her jacket. Once everything was scooped off to
one side, more or less, she sat down again. Only now, she had to
sit at odd angles since her burrito-filled jacket was claiming a
fair portion of what little space was left to her.

Left with nothing better to do, she
picked up the remote again. She cleaned off the worst of the beans
and read the buttons: “OPEN ALL,” “CLOSE ALL,” “LOCK DOWN.”... As
her eyes scanned down the list, it dawned on her. This wasn’t a
remote to nothing — this was the remote for the cages.

Kalei felt something sharp
pull at her finger, so she turned it over. A long crack ran down
the back, presumably from when she threw it at the glass.
That can’t be good.

She turned it back to the front. She
ran her thumb along the cool, smooth buttons, glanced around the
hallway, took a deep breath, and looked back at the
controller.

She took a final breath to steady her
resolve, moved her thumb to the “OPEN SINGLE CELL” button, and
pressed it.

The glass fell away into the floor,
sending a soft breeze up into Kalei’s face as it descended. When
the tube was low enough, Kalei jumped out of the circle and
stretched her arms as far as they could go. It felt
great.

As she lowered her arms, Kalei noticed
her bearded neighbor stretching as well.

That’s not
right
.

His glass tube had disappeared. She
glanced down the hall and saw they weren’t the only ones. Along the
entire expanse of the prison, inmates were jumping, shouting, or
dazed as they discovered their freedom. She immediately grabbed the
remote from where she had dropped it on the ground and started
mashing the “CLOSE ALL” button. The tubes didn’t return. It seemed
the remote had sustained more damage than just a crack.

Kalei dropped the remote in favor of
punching the closest inmate. She started cracking skulls left and
right in an attempt to contain the building riot.

Then the door at the far end of the
hall opened up. A dozen Wardens charged in, the front row pushing
back the growing mass of bodies with their riot shields as the
Wardens in the back row tossed canisters of tear gas into the fray.
Kalei dropped her latest victim and ran in the other
direction.

After shoving and kicking her way
through the swarm, Kalei arrived at a narrow door just as it
opened. Two Wardens stepped out, no riot gear, just pistols at the
ready. Kalei stepped wide of the first Warden’s gun and slammed him
hard under the ribs. Then she shoved the Warden into his companion
and bolted past the both of them to run down the
stairwell.

From the moment Kalei became a
Recruit, she had studied the building’s escape routes in
preparation for the day she would betray SWORDE. If Landen Franklin
hadn’t taken so long to contact her with the device, she might have
had her chance. But it was too late now; she wouldn’t be getting a
second shot at those computers.

Kalei’s research told her the nearest
exit was down: through the sewers if she could get to
them.

She grabbed the railings and used them
to catapult herself from landing to landing, skipping stairs
entirely, a trick she had learned from chasing down criminals in
the city.

Several flights later, the stairs
ended at a service tunnel. There were no more lights ahead, only an
exposed live wire dangling from a power box at the end of the hall.
The wire’s sporadic sparks lit the floor in fits, as random and
bright as lightning. By these spurts of light, Kalei could see that
the walls and ceiling were covered in pipes stacked side by side
like so many logs building a cabin. Many of the pipes appeared
severely rusted, and some jutted out or hung from the ceiling at
odd angles.

Kalei glanced over her shoulder,
listening to the clatter of the two Wardens above, then she charged
into the tunnel, heedless of the danger as she ran through the
dark. Unable to predict the next burst of light from the wire or
the location of any obstacles in her path, Kalei was lucky she
didn’t snap her neck.

At the end of the hall, Kalei stepped
wide of the arching wire and entered a large storage room. The
brief flashes of electricity from the hallway showed her a space
crowded with rusty utility shelves, each spewing its own array of
tools and rotted cleaning supplies. Kalei made her way to the back
corner as fast as she could, tripping and cursing the whole way in
the unreliable light. Behind a collapsed desk, she found what she
was looking for: an access ladder to the sewers. It looked like a
short, cement mound with a manhole cover on the top.

While the sound of running boots
started to echo down the hall, Kalei pulled the manhole cover off
the opening, climbed onto the ladder inside, and replaced the cover
above her.

The lighting was even worse inside the
manhole. Suspended on the ladder in complete darkness, the brief
flares from the wire were too faint to give any meaningful
illumination. Instead, they only impeded Kalei’s eyes as they tried
to adjust to the darkness.

Kalei paused on the ladder for a
moment to catch her breath. She tried not to think about what the
slimy substance beneath her hands could be. She tried not to
imagine what was producing the smell of chemicals and rot. Instead,
she covered her nose with her shirt, took a couple more deep
breaths, and focused on finding her next handhold as she made her
way down.

She was two steps down when her foot
slipped. Kalei fell. She frantically attempted to grab the ladder
again with her left hand, but the slick metal slid from her grip,
sending her down a few more feet until she shoved her right hand
between the rungs and hooked her arm around one of the bars. Kalei
cried out in pain as the rung pulled sharply against the inside of
her elbow, nearly pulling her arm out of its socket, but she
finally stopped falling.

Kalei leaned her forehead against her
arm, adrenaline pumping through her body and her darkness whirring
through her head like a crazed monkey. During the descent, her
shirt had slipped off her face and now she was breathing the putrid
air of the sewers again. Her stomach threatened to hurl.

Before Kalei could collect her senses,
a light came on. The sudden illumination blinded her and nearly
caused her to lose her grip again. She blinked and cursed, and when
her eyes finally adjusted to the light, she looked over her
shoulder to find Shenaia standing at the bottom of the manhole with
a flashlight.

Above, the sound of shouts and
crashing utility shelves marked the arrival of the
Wardens.

Kalei hissed, “Shut that off! They’ll
see it.”

Instead, Shenaia shielded it with her
hand, reducing the light to a dim glow. Kalei accepted the
compromise and silently focused on finishing her
descent.

When she reached the bottom, Kalei
spun around and shoved Shenaia. “What the hell is this? What do you
think you’re doing here?” Kalei struggled to keep her voice at a
whisper.

Shenaia replied in an equally strained
whisper, “Hey! I’m tryin’ ta help you, sis. Didn’ Mama eva teach
you, you shouldn’ bite the hand dat feeds you?”

“
I don’t want any help
from a murdering addict. You could’ve left me in there for all I
cared, but now that I’m out, I need to find my husband, and there’s
no way in hell I’m letting you anywhere near him.” Kalei walked
past Shenaia and into the tunnel.

The tunnel itself was seemingly
endless in the dim light of the flashlight. To her right, the
tunnel stretched on for a few hundred feet before disappearing into
the black, and to her left, it was much the same. Lining the tunnel
were two narrow cement walkways on either side, and connecting the
two was a long, rusting metal catwalk. Kalei crossed the bridge
without heed, intent on the service door on the other side. She
made it about three steps across when her foot fell through the
floor, sending a chunk of rusted metal into the wash below. She
heard a faint splash and the smells rising from the putrid water
wafted up, stronger than ever. Kalei coughed and paused to pull her
shirt tighter over her face.

Behind her, she heard Shenaia stepping
onto the walkway.

“
What the—? Get off!”
Kalei turned and waved at Shenaia to go back, but the young woman
continued to walk onto the bridge. Kalei whispered, “This thing
can’t hold both of us, you idiot.”

Shenaia was close enough to whisper
back, “Yes it can, dumbass. Just gotta watch where you walkin’.”
Shenaia shone the flashlight upon the catwalk, illuminating patches
where the rust was lest prolific, and the metal seemingly more
sound. Shenaia started to walk past Kalei, but Kalei grabbed her by
the shoulder and spun the young woman around to face
her.

Kalei said, “Get the fuck out of
here.”

Shenaia knocked Kalei’s hand off her
shoulder as she replied, “Dat’s what I plan ta do, sis.” She
reached into her pocket and pulled out a set of silver, jangling
keys. “See dat door over there? It’s locked, and you ain’t goin’
through it without me.”

“
Really? You think I’m
going to take you with me just because you managed to pick a
pocket?” Kalei grabbed for the keys, but Shenaia pulled her arm
back and closed her hand around them.

“
Did that cell make you
stupid?” There was a shout followed by the loud screech of the desk
being moved up above. Kalei knew what that sound meant: the Wardens
had found the manhole. Shenaia said, “You can try ta take this from
me, but you don’ have time. You can try to find Fenn on your own,
but you don’ have time. Tusic are the only other people in dis city
who might know where Fenn is, and I can take you straight to
‘em.”

“
I can find Tusic on my
own, thanks.”

“
You don’t have time!” The
words came out as a yell. Both women fell silent and looked back at
the ladder. For a moment, the only sound was the sluggish flow of
the putrid water below. Then they heard the harsh dragging sound of
the manhole cover being pulled back. Shenaia stepped forward and
grabbed Kalei by the shirt. “Listen, little sister; we can get out
of here, find Tusic, and get ta Fenn within the hour. Are you gonna
take my help or not?”

Kalei knocked Shenaia’s hand free and
glared at the young woman’s heavily shadowed face. “Open the damn
door.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

E-Night

Out in the city, Shenaia worked her
“persuasion” on a few of the Tusic grunts. Some methods violent,
others not-so-violent, but in every case, she found an excuse to
pull out one of her guns. The teenager was seemingly in love with
her pair of silver etched pistols, and she didn’t seem capable of
resisting the opportunity to show them off. It had started when
Shenaia put her gun to the head of a gangster, demanding
information on the section manager’s hideout. Then they moved on to
the section manager’s office where Shenaia switched tactics,
leaning over his desk to show him the new modifications she had
added to the slide.

Kalei was revolted by the whole show.
The section manager was a stout pile of rolls sitting behind a
cluttered desk, with probably no recollection of what it felt like
to have a chin, and here Shenaia was, leering over the man as if
she wanted to have his babies. Kalei told herself that it was all
just an act on Shenaia’s part, and hoped it was true.

But Kalei’s mood grew darker as the
section manager told them he had no information on Xamic or Fenn.
Kalei was about to step forward and throttle the man, assuming she
could find his neck among all the lard, but then he smiled and told
Shenaia something useful: Landen Franklin would be at his mansion
hosting “E-night” tonight.

“’
E-night?” Kalei
asked.