Chapter 33 Sem
After my third day on the pumps, the sharp spasms in my back redefined agony, my blisters had blisters, and my desire to find a way back to the surface was all-encompassing.
Even though I spent every waking moment searching for weaknesses in this infernal abyss, on the surface, I was a happy, productive underworlder.
Had to be, considering that Lars supplied Gol with nightly updates on my “assimilation.”
I didn’t know when I’d make my move, or, more importantly, what that move would be, but I did have options.
Lars restocked the market several times a day, so that route was a possibility, albeit a bit obvious.
There was the laundry delivery, which took place once in the morning and once at night via a makeshift hand crank elevator.
But the elevator supporting my weight was not a given, and I’d have to convince someone down here to crank it for me.
Which was highly doubtful considering how just hearing the word escape instilled the Fear of Gol in all the supposed devotees down here.
So that left the pipe.
Dragging ass back from my shift, I eyed the pipe, and a shudder ripped down my spine.
Like all Portisans, I’d grown up with the unwavering belief that not respecting the water was an unforgivable offense to the Saints.
Trying to swim up a pipe barely wide enough to let my shoulders through would be the height of disrespect.
Long story short: probably not the pipe.
“Psst. You, there.”
I spun toward the frail, raspy voice and found myself staring at Old Max. The wiry senior sat on his laundry stool, twiddling his gnarled fingers in my direction.
“You’re the fancy doctor, right?”
“I don’t know about fancy,” I answered warily. “But…sure.”
“Well then, don’t just stand there.” He waved me over. “Come here. Come here.”
As I approached, Old Max hooked an ankle over his knobby knee and took off a shoe so tattered it was more hole than leather. “I’ve got something I want to show you.”
I grimaced. In my experience, this statement was rarely a good start to a patient encounter. “Okay.”
In perfect comic timing, Lars chose that moment to walk by. He glanced at me, then, noticing Old Max’s pale and wrinkled foot, and said, “Woof. Good luck with that.” Then he scurried down the tunnel without glancing back.
“It started peeling last week.” Old Max picked at something on the sole of his foot. “And now it’s draining.” He sniffed, made a face. “Kinda smells.”
Setting my jaw while I questioned my life choices, I stepped through the door. “All right,” I said, because even down here, I was still a professional. “Let’s take a look.” I’d just managed to get to my knees to examine Old Max’s foot when remarkably strong fingers wrapped around my wrist.
“Listen to me, blue man,” Old Max hissed, and when I met his eyes, they were as clear as a star-filled night. Instead of the chaotic, rambling annoyance I usually read from the man, a shrewd intelligence zinged from him, crackling through my mind.
“Old Max?” I tried to pull my hand away. “Are you all right?”
“Bah. Old Max.” He stuck out his tongue. “Only the pestilent, indecorous sycophants down here call me that.” As he yanked me close, the slack lines of his face sharpened, his thousand-yard stare suddenly honed like a knife. “But I’d expected better from you, Doctor.”
It clicked into place. Old Max was a Gol denier too. “You’ve only been pretending to be feebleminded.”
He rolled his eyes. “Figured that out all on your own, did you? What a staggering intellect.”
One of the fun things about being an empath was that I not only heard any insult hurled at me, but I felt it too. This pummeling swell of condescension hit me square in the chest.
After a slow, calming breath, I asked, “Why are you pretending to be impaired?”
“Because I have been waiting,” he replied, his eyes sparkling, “for you.”
When I tried to respond, he cinched his grip, squeezing my wrist so tightly my bones ground together. Saints alive, he was strong.
“We have no time,” he hissed. “I’m old. I’m dying. And I refuse to die down here. You are Portisan.” He finally released my wrist, only to grab my hand and spread my fingers apart, revealing my webbing. “Only you can make the swim. Only you can survive the pipe.”
“No.” I pulled my hand out if his grasp. “Not a chance. I have other options.”
“What, like the market? The elevator?” His brow arched sharply. “Perhaps the pigs’ feed chute?”
I hadn’t even thought of that one.
“None of those will work,” he said. “I have been here for a very long time and have tried them all. The pipe is the only way out.”
“The pipe is impossible.” I pointed at the ceiling. “There’s someone I care about up there, and the next time I see her, I’d rather not be dead.”
After a long blink, he asked, “Are you always this dramatic? Or are you just trying to impress me?”
“Who are you?” I asked. This close, Old Max seemed eerily familiar. Something about his eyes, long and narrow nose, that little scar through his left brow. “Have we met before?”
He gave me a dubious once-over. “I highly doubt it. The name’s Osbourne. Long ago, I was a—”
“Master mechanic!” I gasped as his face snapped into place on the magazine covers from my childhood. “Saints of the deep! You’re Maximus Osbourne!”
Throwing his hand over my mouth, he warned, “Keep your voice down, for shit’s sake. Lars zaps me one more time with that cattle prod of his, and I’m cooked.”
He removed his hand, and I winced. “Sorry, but you’re, like, my hero. You designed the engine used on every Imperion Class-A warship—”
“A million years ago,” he grumbled.
“That might be true, but they still use your engine. Nobody has improved upon it yet. I used to idolize you, until you vanished without a…” My eyes swelled, realization dawning. “Until you came to Thura, and Gol threw you into this putrid pigsty.”
His sigh was heavier than lead. “Unfortunately.”
“How in the worlds did you wind up—”
“Stars above, you’re chatty. Did you see a sign on the door that read Maximus Osbourne’s Story Hour?”
I barely caught myself from turning around to check.
He just shook his head.
“Well, I’m sorry,” I snapped, a little wounded by his recrimination. “It’s not every day you get to meet your idol.”
His eyes rolled. “You Portisans are so sensitive.”
I bristled. “Sensitive, huh? Try being an empath for five seconds and see how ‘sensitive’ it makes you.”
“Fine,” he said, backing down a hair. “If either of us survives the day, I’ll tell you my entire tale of woe. But the odds of that are vanishingly small.”
“That’s heartening,” I muttered.
“Pay attention, Portisan.” He snapped his fingers in my face. “Tonight, after everyone on day shift has fallen asleep, you will leave your post and enter the pipe at the third junction after the pumps.”
“Tonight?” Dread dug its claws into me. “Can’t we talk about this a bit more? Do some practice runs?”
“At the third junction,” Maximus continued, ignoring me completely. “There is a lever, right behind the pipe. When you pull the lever, the water will shut off for sixty seconds.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because I installed it.” He winked. “Like I said, I’ve been waiting for you.
You’ll have one minute to climb into the pipe and close the hatch before the water flows again.
The pipe leads to a cistern just under the surface.
You will swim like your life depends on it.
” His grin was chilling. “Because it does. When you reach the cistern, you’ll be out of breath, and it will be very dark.
You will panic. You’ll think you’ve lost your way. ”
“Remember when I said I didn’t want to die?”
“You must keep your head,” he went on. “Swim hard to the surface, reach out with your hands, feel around. You will eventually find a latch. It may be rusty. It may not want to turn—”
“Rusty?” I raised my hands. “I’m not doing this.”
“You must! Whether you like it or not, you are our only hope. Once you find the old, rusty, brittle latch, turn it as hard as you can. It may be so rusty that it breaks off in your hand.”
“What?” I barked. My head was shaking, palms sweating.
He reached for me, fisting my shirt, jerking me so close that our noses touched. “Listen to me. If the latch breaks off, you will need to punch and kick and force the hatch open. Do not give up. The hatch will give.”
Terror gripped me. “Have you ever tried to punch or kick underwater? Can’t I just bring a wrench with me? Or a hammer?”
Releasing me with a disgruntled shove, Maximus sneered, “Of course not. The weight will slow you down. You shouldn’t even wear clothes. And you should probably cut your hair before you go if you want to live.”
I ran a hand instinctively through my beloved hair. But the old man had a point. “What do I do once I”—I couldn’t even believe I was saying this—“punch through the hatch?”
“Once you get to the surface, you’ll need to find a gen-1 up there named Mal.”
“Mal? I know him.”
“Stars be praised!” Maximus clapped his hands together softly. “You’re not entirely useless after all.”
I pouted. Literally. Like a child. Until Maximus said, “Mal knows about the underground.”
“Mal knows?” My chest cinched tight. “He knows about us down here?” Did he know that I was here? “And he does nothing about it?”
“Do not judge him, Portisan,” Maximus bit out.
“Mal has his reasons for staying subservient to Gol. But he can be turned. You must convince him to come to the underground. He’s stronger than Gol, he just doesn’t know it.
But I can show him. I just need two minutes with Mal, and this place will fold like the flimsy house of cards it is.
” A thick, wet cough racked Maximus’s body. “If I don’t die first.”
“That cough doesn’t sound good.” My brow furrowed as I reached instinctively for the stethoscope that was no longer around my neck.
“Don’t I know it, boyo. That’s why I need you to get me out of here. Swim out tonight, find Mal, convince him to come down here and meet with me. I’ll do the rest.”
Realizing I was going to do it, I said, “This is actually insane.”
“I know.” Maximus’s wide eyes practically vibrated out of his skull. “Isn’t it exciting? It’s so unendingly dull down here that sometimes I want to stick my finger in a glowlight socket just to feel something.”
I only stared. I was about to follow the instructions of a man who regularly considered electrocuting himself for a cheap thrill.
He sensed it, squeezing my arm gently. “Is trying to escape any more insane than spending the rest of your life down here toiling while your woman moves on without you? Of course it isn’t.” He made a shooing gesture. “Now, get going.”
This would very likely be a suicide mission, but I couldn’t stay down here. I had to find her. I had to tell her that I hadn’t left, that I never would have abandoned her.
I rose to my feet. Or tried to, just barely catching myself on a washing machine when my knees buckled. “I can’t believe this is my life.”
Maximus grinned, revealing crooked, yellowing teeth. “Good luck, Portisan. You’re gonna need it.”
Before I left, I ran my hand through my hair one last time, groaned at the soft swoopiness I was about to sacrifice, then asked, “Happen to have any scissors?”
Standing as naked as the day I was born under a metal tube that would likely be my final resting place did not fill my mind with happy thoughts. But Elanie was up there, so I needed to go swimming.
Reaching the junction, I felt behind the pipe for the lever to block the water. When I found it, my hand jerked away so violently I hit my funny bone. Hissing a curse, I rubbed the ache. But really, I was just stalling.
I wasn’t ready. I needed to psych myself up, to fill my lungs with sweet, sweet oxygen for one more minute. I needed to burn Elanie’s face into the backs of my eyelids so if I did meet my end, at least she’d be the last thing I saw.
But I needed to do it fast. Any moment now, someone could come walking down the tunnel, and my current situation would be very difficult to explain.
Praying to all the Saints I’d ever known, even the wicked ones my mother told me never to ask anything of, I pulled the lever and listened for the water to stop flowing.
While a rush became a whirl, then a hiss, then nothing, my heart kicked into a gallop.
I flipped open the hatch, took a steadying breath, and crawled inside.
It was the longest minute of my life in that pipe. While metal creaked and water dripped, I counted out the seconds. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…
I was a sitting duck waiting for the cold, dark deluge to fill in around me.
But it wasn’t too late. I could still jump out and scamper back to my cell.
Sure, I might die there, old and alone and miserable, but at least not, like, right now.
My skin crawled, breaths barely making it out of my chest. I couldn’t do this.
I couldn’t fucking do this. I had to get out—
Is she worth it? a voice in my head asked. Is she worth the risk?
My count reached forty-five, and as I stared straight ahead into the never-ending nothingness that awaited me, my breathing calmed and my heartrate slowed. Because Elanie was worth the risk. She was worth every risk. And I would do everything in my power to survive so I could finally tell her that.
A roar shook the pipe, shaking me inside it.
“I’m coming, sweetheart,” I whispered into the darkness. Then I took a final breath, held it tight, and slammed my eyes shut.
Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty.