Tether (32 page)

“Help me find the others,” Thomas whispered. The explosion had taken all the lights down, and it was hard to see much in the dark except for vague shapes. We’d left Tim outside Martyr to patrol the perimeter and look for escape routes. With Rocko back at the safe house with Fillmore, that left us with four people missing: Callum, Adele, Cora, and Navin. We’d spread out in Martyr, so they could be anywhere.

“I don’t see them,” I said.

“I’m jealous of the connection you have with Selene,” he said. “It’d be so much easier if I could communicate with my team telepathically.”

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” I told him. “But, yeah, it can be pretty convenient at times.”

Then I noticed a small plastic nubbin in Thomas’s ear. “Maybe you
can
talk to them,” I said, pointing to it. “The music’s off. Maybe your comm will work.”

He spoke into the tiny microphone in his mask. “Nguyen? Gunner? Patel? Can anyone hear me?”

Adele’s voice came crackling over his earpiece, audible even to me. “I can hear you, boss.”

“Me too,” Cora replied. “And I’ve got Callum.” Soon Tim and Navin checked in over the comms as well.

“And,” Navin said, “I’ve got a gun. Took it off a dead Libertine.”

“Good work,” Thomas said. People were starting to get up, wandering around, dizzy and disoriented, searching for the nearest exit. “Okay, it’s time to move. Mac, what’s it look like outside?”

I leaned in close to hear what Tim was saying. At my feet, Selene stirred and opened her eyes.
Did you see Juliana?
she asked. I nodded, holding up a finger. I could only concentrate on one conversation at a time.

“It’s chaos out here,” Tim said. “I can hear sirens in the distance. If you’re going to make your move, it has to be now. They’ve got to be regrouping.”

“Who set that bomb?” I asked. Thomas shook his head.

“Not us, that’s for sure,” he said. “But this is Libertas, and it’s the Night of the Masks. I should’ve at least factored in the possibility that there might be another attack other than our own. But it’s too late for that now. We’ve got to move.”

Thomas helped me haul Selene to her feet. She seemed shaken, but she was trying to hide it behind that calm determination she feigned so well. Thomas adjusted the mask on my face.

“As soon as we’re underground, take the masks off,” he instructed us. “They’ll make you too conspicuous. But not until then.” Selene and I needed to hide our identities as long as possible, and so did Thomas. After all, most of the Libertines probably supposed him to be dead.

“All right, team,” he said clearly into his comm. “Let’s do this.”

We’re not the only ones on the move,
Selene said. Juliana was awake and running, but the information trickling through the tether was too fuzzy and incomplete to give us a real sense of her intentions or her progress. I wanted to tell Thomas what I’d seen while I was unconscious, but he was shoving his way through the mob; I had no choice but to follow him.

Sergei ushered Selene in a different direction, but we were all headed to the same place: the back of the club, toward an enormous painting of St. Thecla enduring her sentence of being eaten alive by wild beasts. An angel hovered in the upper right-hand corner of the painting, ostensibly to save the young martyr from her horrible fate, and I couldn’t help
but wonder who was going to save us. The painting served as a giant scrim, hiding the back of the club from view, though it was clear from the way the vaulted ceiling receded from us that the cathedral was much deeper than it appeared.

“Where are you going, little lady?” A hand grabbed my arm and spun me around; I found myself face to face with Stringy Hair. He jerked his head in the opposite direction, toward the front door. “Exit’s that way. Better get out quick. No telling what’s going to happen next. KES bastards.”

My mind careened back in time, flashing to the alley in some other part of the Tattered City, to this man’s arm wrapped around my throat, crushing the life out of me. People churned all around us, bumping into us on every side. One knocked me into Stringy Hair’s embrace; he clutched my elbows hard to keep me steady.

“Take off the mask,” he said, in a voice that was almost … 
kind.
“It’ll make it easier to see.” When I didn’t, he plucked it off by one of its feathers, and his eyes widened as he got a good look at my face. His fingers dug into my flesh, and I yelped in pain. “It’s
you.
”

“Get your hands off her,” Thomas growled. Stringy Hair pulled me closer, crushing me to his chest with one arm as he reached for his gun.
“Now.”

Stringy Hair pulled out his sidearm and pointed it at Thomas. “Take off the mask or I’ll shoot you.” Thomas held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
No, Thomas, don’t,
I begged him silently, knowing that once Stringy Hair knew his true identity he really
would
shoot him, and happily. But Thomas didn’t have a choice; as soon as the mask was gone, understanding bloomed across Stringy Hair’s face.

Sensing that now was my only chance, I lifted my foot and brought it down hard on Stringy Hair’s, crushing the man’s toes with my sharp heel. He cried out in pain and lowered his
gun. Thomas sprang forward and took it, twisting the man’s arm so hard I heard it crack. Stringy Hair sank to the ground, clutching his broken arm to his chest, his eyes streaming with tears, his face torn apart with agony. He couldn’t even find the breath to speak.

Thomas didn’t hesitate; he took me by the hand, holding Stringy Hair’s gun in the other, and tugged me forward. I stumbled over Stringy Hair’s body but didn’t fall. Familiar masks emerged in my peripheral vision: Adele and Navin, Cora and Callum, Sergei and Selene. Thomas and I made eight, Tim outside made nine. And Juliana would make ten.

A tetractys,
Selene thought.
It bodes well.

What?
I asked, but then everything exploded again. Not a bomb this time but bodies, flying at us from all directions, surrounding us on all sides. Libertas. They weren’t all down for the count, not by a long shot. We were almost behind the painting; I was close enough to peek around it, and sure enough, there was a door embedded in the center of the golden retabulum that stood behind the ornate altar.

Someone grabbed me from behind and wrapped an arm around my throat. I couldn’t get the image of Stringy Hair squeezing me to death out of my head, though it couldn’t be him. I fought against my captor, swinging my arms, kicking my legs, anything I could do to sink a hard part of my body into a soft part of his—or hers.

I felt the power surge through me, roiling and ready just beneath my skin. Selene and I were close enough for it to be truly destructive, but I tried to stay calm, to channel it, swiveling in the Libertas agent’s arms and placing my hands flat against his chest like the paddles of a defibrillator. Breasts swelled under my palms—it was a woman.

I pushed the power through my hands, knocking her off her feet and tossing her, limp as a towel, on a heap of rubble.
I looked at my hands, then at her; the jolt had hit her hard, and she was perfectly still. I caught a glimpse of her gun in its shoulder holster; that could prove useful to me or to someone else. I went to retrieve it, but however badly the power had hurt her, it hadn’t knocked her out completely. She snatched at one of my ankles, and I shook her off, grinding her fingers under my foot as the sound of splintering bone echoed through my body. She yowled in pain, but I felt nothing but numbness. I took her gun, not sure what I would do with it, only sure that she shouldn’t have it, then moved as far away from her as I could get, leaving her to be gobbled up by the dark.

“Sasha, where are you?”

Sasha, where are you?

Thomas’s voice, Selene’s thought, simultaneous and confusing. Libertas had done the smart thing: they’d kept the lights off so that it would be harder for us to find our way while we fought with them in our search for the door. Shots rang out in every direction, clips emptying with brutal speed. There was too much motion; it was like being stranded at sea during a hurricane, solid things eluding me with the fluidity of water. Then I saw it: a bright glow in the shape of a door. Someone had reached the entrance to the Libertas catacombs. Someone had found the way.

I hoped it was someone on my side and not the other.

The Libertine girl’s gun was cold and heavy in my hand. I shoved my way toward the door, stepping on toes, elbowing stomachs, frantically straining toward the only source of light in the cavernous cathedral. I sensed Selene beside me; she, too, had a gun in hand, but she looked even more bewildered than I was to be holding one.

We don’t have these on Taiga,
she explained, but she didn’t
ask what it did or what she should do with it. Selene was nothing if not adaptive.

We were feet from the door now. I could hear the sounds of people grappling, fighting, fists on flesh, skulls on metal, the sounds of turmoil and hurting all around me, but I couldn’t see anything except that door, that door that looked a lot like the other door, the one Callum had drawn: a door into the unknown. My mind was in two places: in the dark with Thomas, desperate to know what was happening to him, and in the catacombs with Juliana, whose frightened thoughts and emotions were pouring through the tether in flashes like Morse code.

Limping down a hallway, feeling heavy and weak, but she had to keep moving, they were coming, they weren’t far behind.…

Leaning on him through the tangled, musty corridors. He was drenched with sweat; she could smell his fear rising off his skin, sharp and acrid.…

A door at the end of the hall, ten gold stars in an equilateral triangle shining against a backdrop of black steel. That was their way out.…

A shot, two shots; they hit him in the back and he fell, taking her down with him to the cold stone floor.…

“Sasha!” Callum came out of nowhere and seized me by the arm. His lip was split wide open, seeping blood, and his eye had already started to swell from where he had been punched, but one look at his knuckles showed that he’d done damage of his own. I looked at him in surprise, and he shrugged.

“Boxing lessons,” he said. “I told you I had a lot of useless talents.” He had told me, a long time ago. “Turns out, that one wasn’t so useless after all.”

“No kidding,” I said, giving him a quick hug. “Where is everyone else?”

“I don’t know. I lost Cora,” he said, looking back into
the dark where the others were still presumably fighting. “I thought I heard Sergei and maybe Adele, but I’m not sure.”

“We have to go. We can’t wait for them,” Selene insisted, heading for the open door. If it hadn’t been a KES agent who’d opened it, then there were Libertines down there, lying in wait. Selene and I were armed, but we had natural weapons, and Callum was without protection. I thrust my gun at him, and he took it with a trace of uncertainty.

“Hey!” Adele came out of nowhere and shoved us all through the door to the catacombs, shutting it behind her. Then she turned to us, glaring at us one by one. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, just standing there like that? If we want to get out of here alive, much less find Juliana, we have to go
now
.” She snatched the gun from Selene’s hand. “Give me that!” She took off the safety with a snap. “I had one, but I lost it. Come on, let’s move. Do either of you know where Juliana is?”

I shook my head. We were standing at the top of a staircase, but from what I could tell from Juliana’s mind, we were about to descend into a winding maze of tunnels and corridors and windowless cells. The only thing I could remember of any particular significance was the door with the tetractys on it, the Libertas symbol. I told Adele this, adding, “And she’s with someone. A man, I think.”

“Who?” Adele demanded. I’d never seen her so fierce; she was in action mode, and she wasn’t looking to make any friends tonight.

“The god with two faces,” Selene said. “Janus.”

“Janus? You mean Lucas,” I said. But Selene wouldn’t know about Lucas. She might not even know that Thomas had a brother at all.

“Who’s Lucas?”

“Never mind. He has Juliana?”

“He’s helping her escape,” Selene said. “But he’s been shot.”

“Lucas? Lucas
Mayhew
?” Adele asked. “What’s he doing here?”

“Mayhew?” Callum searched my face for information. “Isn’t that Thomas’s last name?”

“Will you all just shut up and stop asking questions?” I snapped. “We’re wasting time.” I turned to Selene. “Janus’s real name is Lucas.” Then to Adele: “Yes, Lucas Mayhew. He’s a member of Libertas, has been for a while.” Then to Callum: “Lucas is Thomas’s brother. Now, are we all caught up?” They nodded. “Great. Selene, since you apparently know the most about where Juliana is, you tell us where to go. Adele, since you’re the best shot in the group, you go first.”

“Hey, who said you could give the orders?” Adele said with a weak smile. “I’m the only KES here.”

I pointed down the staircase. “Go.”

We crept through the hallways, which were disconcertingly empty, like the pathways through a maze where monstrous creatures lay in wait. When had these catacombs been built? Surely not with the original church, or perhaps partly, but this extent of winding corridors and barricaded chambers implied a more ambitious purpose, one that could only belong to Libertas.

Adele took the lead, prowling along with gun in hand, on high alert for anyone who might want to stop us, but Selene and I were just as dangerous. I’d seen what my bare hands did to that Libertas girl. Perhaps it was naïve, but I felt safe and self-assured with my new power. I just hoped I could use it to protect others as well as myself.

Callum, though also armed, seemed to me particularly
vulnerable, and I made sure I stayed near him. Selene had her internal radio tuned to Juliana’s frequency and was impatiently parsing it for information in her head, but I knew—because I was doing the same thing—that there was no more to learn. Something had made Juliana go silent again. We were afraid for her, but we knew she wasn’t dead; that was something we would feel if it happened, I was sure of it.