47. Evelyn
Urvan had finally been pulled away, and I went back towards the children’s room. I didn’t struggle this time, my footsteps confident, steady. Relief flooded me as the door came into view, and the guard was no longer in front of it.
It was short-lived.
The door was locked.
I rapped my knuckles on it, and a small voice answered.
“Daddy?”
“No, honey. I’m not your daddy, but could you open the door? Do you know how? Is there a button or a latch?”
An older, more confident voice took the place of the first child.
“No, it locks from your side. You need the key.”
“Okay. Do you see a camera in there? Look for a little red light, or a small little piece of black glass.”
While they looked, I pulled out a bobby pin, straightening it with my teeth. There was a small hole, not big enough for a key, but I recognized it. A simple release hole. I pushed the pin in, searching for a little bit of give, and when I found it, I applied firm pressure against the spring.
There was a click, and I turned the handle.
“There’s a camera there,” one boy said. He was thirteen or fourteen, the same age Laszlo had been.
I shut the door again, relieved that there weren’t any guards in the room.
“Do you have eyes?” I asked Laszlo. No response. There could be a dozen guards in here within minutes.
I covered the camera with infrared cloth that I’d folded into my gloves, and finally, blissfully, stripped off my robe. Beneath it I was wearing a black turtleneck, something simple and discrete for my getaway. My protection crystal and rhodolite necklace lay beneath it, against my skin.
Setting my explosive robe on a chair, I turned to face the thirteen children. Some looked very well cared for, with clean and brushed hair, ruddy cheeks. Others were thin, their eyes shadowed.
I worried more about the healthy ones. Laszlo had told me that their parents were likely in the mansion, having offered up their child in exchange for power and privilege within the Bratva.
The kidnapped children had families to return to. The other five?
My heart broke for them. I could only hope that…
One step at a time.
“Python?” I said, using Laszlo’s hacker nickname. We didn’t want to put our real names over the signal, as a precaution.
Still nothing. I stared at the sensors, trying to figure out how they worked, but this was Laszlo’s area of expertise. I needed him to tell me what to do.
“Do any of you know any songs?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation light. Back in Mount Aer, children were raised communally, often by the older girls. I had a lot of experience in finding ways to distract kids from the strangeness of adults.
“Oh, oh, I do,” one of the healthy children said, and launched into a Russian hymn. A couple others joined in, and I went to the windows. There were eight in the room, paired up, and each had an electronic sensor on them.
The hymn ended, and I told them to start it again, and they did.
The girl was obedient, unquestioning of adult authority, and I knew what had to be done to her to make her like that.
It had been done to me as well. The slow erosion of personhood, the belief that she only existed to please the adults around her.
“Angel,” he said, using my codename for the night.
I let out the long breath I’d been holding.
“I have eyes on you in the room. There are two more cameras.” He directed me to them, and I put the same cloth over them, blocking them.
“There’s a guard coming down the hall. They’re not to enter the room until the Pakhan arrives. He’s pontificating, but eclipse is in one hour thirteen minutes.”
“The windows have things on them. Sensors.”
“Describe them.”
“White, rectangles, plastic. There’s a red dot on the windowsill.”
“Is there any other tech around? Anything that looks out of place?”
“Uh… on the wall, in the middle of the windows, there’s like… a box?”
“Okay, that’ll be the glass break sensor. Do you have your jammer?”
I opened my purse, bringing out the signal jammer that Laszlo had bought for me. I followed his instructions, pointing it at the device on the wall first, then at the nearest window.
“Good, you’ve gone dark. Open the window.”
My heart was in my throat, and I pushed open the latch, then swung the glass outwards. I waited for the room to be rushed with guards, but nothing happened but for the autumn air coming in.
I waited. The kids singing stopped, and they stared at me, confused.
“Good girl,” Laszlo said in my ear. “You’re clear. Help’s almost there.”
I hadn’t been certain about trusting so much to Zach. He was only a kid, but then, I was only a kid when I ran away at sixteen. Laszlo was only a kid when he was sent to the mental hospital, raving about a sister his parents denied having.
Some kids had to grow up harder than others. Become adults before others.
I hoped my face looked calm and kind as I looked at the children.
“Who wants to go on an adventure?”