Soulwalker (19 page)

“Is it true?” he asked.

“Is what true?” Asher helped her sit up. It took great effort for Tarris to move about in the small alcove of rock, made even more difficult because there were no handholds to grab onto to help lift herself.

“About them. Is it true?”

“What have you heard?” Tarris placed her arms in the sleeves of her jumpsuit. The magnetic closers attracted to one another once they were near enough.

“Don’t we have to go?” Asher reminded her.

“Yes, we do. Grab your belongings,” Tarris said. “Jerad, is there another way out of here?” She didn’t want to crawl again, but she didn’t want to get caught either.

“There’s up there.” He pointed to the tiny grate way above their heads. It had been the source of the gentle breeze that had blown through the pipes.

“And there’s no way of getting up there unless we climb.” Tarris knew for sure she couldn’t do that. “What about that way?” She indicated the pipeline they were already in and pointed into the blackness.

“It comes up at another grate two blocks away,” Jerad said as he reached for a canister of water.

“And it’s sure to be covered by the guards. What about the left fork in the tunnel?”

“It goes down.”

“To where?” Tarris fastened her bag closed.

“Don’t know. No one’s ever been down there. At least, no one who ever came back to say so,” Jerad said it solemnly, as if he were reciting some sort of prophecy.

As Tarris looked upward, a shadow drifted across the grate at the top. Faint sounds traveled along the pipe and echoed down to the tiny cavern they were in. She picked up the transmitter and nicked herself with it to smear her own blood over the outside of the box.

“You are one strange woman,” Asher said.

“You’re only finding that out now?” Tarris patted herself on the back for her witty repartee. Maybe conversation wasn’t as hard as she had always thought it was. Asher reached into her bag and pulled out a small atomizer and sprayed the puncture with synthetic skin.

“This isn’t a good place to go around with an open wound.”

Tarris knew that it was the mediprac in Asher speaking. “True, but this will make them think I’ve only just discovered the treachery.”

“Oh, yeah, that’ll really show them.”

“Hey!” Tarris’s eyebrows knitted together in annoyance. “I’m doing the best I can. Okay?”

“And your best is great, Tarris.” Asher patted her hand.

Tarris dropped the transmitter on the platform and flung the bag over her shoulder. “I think I preferred the anger,” she muttered. “We’re going down. We’ve got no choice.” She grabbed Asher and pushed her back into the pipeline.

Tarris stopped for a moment and addressed Jerad. “You don’t have to come. You might be lucky, and they won’t harm you.” But Tarris knew it was a lie. The kid was a nobody, and the soldiers wouldn’t think twice about killing him on the spot. He would become just another statistic of the Sweeps.

The sound of muffled voices grew steadily closer. They would have to move now or lose their chance to escape. Tarris shifted herself back into the drain and pushed on Asher’s ass to urge her down the slight incline to the junction. The area went dark, and she heard the hiss as Jerad poured water on the flames.

“Go! Go!” She pushed Asher harder as they approached the junction. Beams of light bounced off the drain walls farther down the pipe, and while their pursuers hadn’t found them yet, it was only a matter of time.

The new passage tilted downwards gently at first, but soon the decline got steeper. The floor was covered with slime, and any sort of purchase was nearly impossible. Suddenly Asher gave out a squeal, and her voice disappeared rapidly as she sped away from Tarris. Tarris was about to call out, when her own grip faltered. Suddenly she found herself on a slippery slide down the passage at an ever-increasing speed. With difficulty, she twisted herself around so she slid feet first.

“Asher!” Tarris tried to call softly as she continued her downward trajectory.

“Tarris!” Asher yelled. “There’s a drop off! Help me!”

Tarris dug her heels in and tried to slow her momentum. A rotting smell erupted when her feet dug in and unearthed the slime she slid over. Finally, she began to slow. Asher still called out as Tarris approached her. Asher had somehow stopped but was in trouble. Was she to find herself in the same predicament?

Chapter 8

At the moment, Tarris would have been grateful for the feeling in her legs to disappear. The passage had opened up into a huge underground cavern, barely lit by some unknown source. Her quick descent had stopped just short of a sheer drop to the ground below. The pipe had broken away, and Asher hung by her fingertips from the edge.

Tarris ignored the pain, just as she ignored the putrid goo that covered her hands and ended up under her fingernails as she pulled herself along to the edge. “I’m here. Don’t panic,” she said soothingly.

“I don’t want to die,” Asher sobbed.

“And you won’t. Give me your hand.” Just as she grabbed Asher’s wrist, a body slammed into Tarris’s back, and she tightened herself to stop the slide. The suit creaked as she forced her legs outwards to brace against the walls. “Good to see you again, Jerad,” she spoke over her shoulder.

“Yeah, well. I figured you needed my help,” he said in his usual cocky tone.

“We do.” Tarris really didn’t need his help, but if it made the kid feel good about himself, then who was she to stop him? “I have a job for you. See if you can find another way down from here.”

“Sure.”

She got a push in the back for her trouble as he tried to retrace his way up the pipe.

“I’m still here, by the way,” Asher called.

“And I’m still rescuing you. Geez, woman!” Tarris wrapped a hand around Asher’s other wrist. “Can you get your foot up to the pipe?”

“I’m not a contortionist.”

Tarris sighed and released one of her hands. She reached for the tabs to her suit and locked her legs in place. She returned her hand to Asher’s wrist and pulled. Asher shifted slightly but not enough to be of any help.

Let me help, sister.

If you can. Please.
Tarris had never consciously said please to Rya before, but somehow it didn’t seem out of place.

She tried again, and this time her strength had doubled. Slowly but surely, Asher started to rise toward her. Her head, then her torso, became visible in the muted light. With a final yank, Tarris used her body weight and fell backwards to pull Asher with her and into her arms. Both lay in the mud, Tarris on the bottom and Asher on top of her.

“Are you okay?” Tarris asked softly.

“I am now. Thank you.”

“Thank both of us.”

“Really?” Asher looked into Tarris’s eyes. “Rya? Thank you.”

“She says you’re welcome.”

“Oh, yuk. You two are at it again.” Jerad seemed to have the knack of turning up when the conversation got personal.

“We’re just resting,” Tarris said.

“If that’s what you want to call it. There’s a small side passage a few feet up there. It’s not easy to get to.”

Tarris looked at Asher and sighed. “Come on.” She helped Asher steady herself on her hands and knees before she unlocked the legs of her suit and turned around. They crawled precariously back up the passage, but more often than not, they slid backwards part of the distance they had just gained. Jerad, being the smallest and the most energetic, reached the intersection first. While he didn’t have the strength to pull the two women up, he did give them a steadying hand to clamber up the rest of the way.

Just as Tarris crossed into the side passage, angry voices could be heard from above.

“They must have gone this way. Follow them!”

Moments later two bodies flew by them and jettisoned off the end of the passage. Their screams echoed around the walls as they fell, until the sudden silence signaled the end of their journey.

“Rich? Are you there? Speak to me!”

Tarris could hear the nervousness in the voice from above. Maybe he thought she had killed them. If it would keep the troopers away from them, she could accept the lie.

“Rich? Come on, buddy. Stop fooling around!”

Tarris held up her hand for silence. A few moments later, a rope appeared and descended the large drain like a snake. Tarris frantically waved her hand for her companions to hide.

“So help me, Rich, if this is some kind of joke, I’m going to kick your ass.” The voice steadily grew in volume and finished as if the speaker drew level with Tarris. She was itching to see who it was, but she didn’t dare move for fear of being found.

The smaller conduit barely held their bodies, so they had no chance of staying out of sight. Tarris braced herself for the confrontation, undecided whether to resist arrest or surrender. She was so preoccupied with the life-defining decision that she barely noticed the tingle that crossed her skin.

Two soldiers finally came into sight, and they stopped momentarily at the entrance to the smaller drain. Tarris stared directly at them, but they didn’t appear to see her. Unless they were blind, which she knew they weren’t, there was no way they couldn’t see her. She searched within herself and found Rya gone. A wry smile touched her lips. It seemed her shadow warrior had developed a mind of her own and had slipped from her to throw up a deep shadow in front of them.

The soldiers continued downwards, the rope jumping around under their jerky movements. When it stopped, Tarris assumed they had reached the end of the drain.

“Shit!” one of them growled.

“What’s going on?” a voice from above asked.

“They’re dead, sir. The drain falls away to a fifty-foot drop,” the same soldier reported to his commander.

“Come back. We’ll send a retrieval team later,” the voice from above yelled. There were muffled voices for a minute, and the commander called again. “We found what looks like a transmitter in the upper drain. Haul yourselves back up here to continue the search.”

Moments later, the two men struggled up the rope, slipping and sliding on the mud as they tried to get their footing. No one moved until the silence had been present for quite a while.

“Why didn’t they see us?” Asher asked.

“Rya.” Tarris uttered the one word and expected Asher to understand.

“What’s a Rya?” Jerad, of course, didn’t.

“Someone you don’t ever want to meet, boy,” Tarris said solemnly. “Let’s get out of here.” She sat for a few seconds to wait for the people in front of her to move.

They had only moved forward for a few minutes before Jerad stopped. “What’s wrong?” Tarris tried to keep her voice low.

“The pipe gets really narrow,” Jerad called back. “I could maybe get though…”

“But we won’t.” Tarris finished his sentence.

The walls of the drain had been closing in on them steadily since they had left the fork in the broken pipe. The atmosphere was cloying and hot, and the putrid air sat distastefully on their tongues.

“Now what?”

Tarris just knew Asher would bring that up. “We’ve got no choice. We have to go back.”

“And what about the waiting soldiers?” Asher asked all the questions that Tarris asked herself.

“Then I guess we give ourselves up.” They were in complete darkness, so Tarris couldn’t see Asher’s reaction. However, the ensuing silence spoke volumes to her. “What? No ‘are you crazy’ or ‘what’s the matter with you’?”

“You’ve figured all the angles, haven’t you?” Asher sounded almost too calm as she spoke.

“I’m open to suggestions.”

Sister…

“No? Then start crawling back,” Tarris said.

Sister…

“Hey! Where are you going?” Jerad’s voice called from a little farther down the drain.

“Can you get out?” Tarris adjusted the tabs on her suit to awkwardly crawl back out.

Sister…

“I think so. Wait…” There was a squelching sound, and a moment later Jerad said, “I’m free.”

Sister…

What!

Tarris hadn’t meant to snap at Rya, but she was at her wit’s end. She was a trooper of the Special Black Shadow Corps, and she had run out of ideas.

Rule Ten in her Survival Handbook: Never, ever, run out of ideas.

She felt the withdrawal inside her.
Please, Rya. I’m sorry.

Her shadow spread through her and lay over her bruised ego like a blanket, warm and comforting.

Hit your right foot against the wall, sister.

Why? What’s there?

The answer to your prayers.

Tarris reached the tabs on her suit once more and locked her leg straight. She kicked out at the wall as Rya had asked and hit the edge with a resounding bang. “That’s metallic.” She relocked her suit and moved back as best she could. Her hand reached out to where she thought the sound came from. The texture was different, and it was recessed into the wall. She searched for some sort of handle, button, or gap on the plate in the dark.

“What have you found?” Asher moved back and sloshed mud over Tarris’s hand. “Sorry.”

But Tarris paid no attention to it. She had discovered a way out, or what she hoped was a way out. “I think I’ve found an exit.”

“That’s great!”

Tarris smiled to herself. If she was being honest with herself, she wanted to be a hero to Asher. She wasn’t sure why it mattered, but it did. Her hand rested on a lever of some sort, and she pulled on it. It refused to budge, which didn’t surprise her in the least. It was probably rusted, like so many things of the past were. She leaned back and swung her reinforced boot tip at it.

“Shhh,” Asher said into the darkness. “Won’t they hear it?”

Even if Asher hadn’t pointed out the noise, Tarris wouldn’t do that again. Her newly awakened nerves were on edge as the vibration from the kick ran up her legs, through her torso, and finished at the top of her head.

“Come over here and turn around. I need your help.”

“You? You need my help, Trooper?” Asher joked. “I thought all you gung-ho types didn’t need help.”

Tarris reached out to find Asher’s hand. Hers landed on something incredibly soft and warm, but it wasn’t a hand. “Oh. Sorry.” Tarris withdrew her hand abruptly.