22. Left Behind
22
Left Behind
“Ripley, you rat bastard.” Grimm offered a hand for the scrawny teen to shake. “How long has it been?”
The doctor surveyed the rest of us hanging back. A short distance away, Vinton lumbered to his feet, red-faced and frowning.
After a pause, Grimm grabbed Ripley’s hand from where it hung at his side and pulled him into an embrace, then thumped his palm against the other man’s back.
“Twelve years,” Ripley replied, yanking free of Grimm’s grasp. “Long enough for that one to grow up.” He nodded to me. “You were right about him.”
“I’m right about most things, old chap.” Grimm smiled while the doctor’s expression soured. “And I was right when I told the boys you could be reasoned with. Didn’t I tell you so, Avery?”
The conjurer stood with his arms crossed, skeptical. “I wouldn’t go counting your wins just yet.” He tipped his chin toward the doctor. “Nice to see you, Rip.”
“Likewise,” Ripley replied.
Grimm’s gaze flicked up to the caged clock on the wall. “Well, that’s about it for pleasantries. Fitch tells me you’re on board with the plan?”
I glanced at Donovan, wondering what had been left out of our limited conversations. My brother had been clueless as to Grimm’s purpose for the defunct healer, which meant I was, too.
Ripley didn’t bat an eye. “‘Twas no mention of a plan, mate,” he told Grimm. “Just the same dirty tricks as always. But yes, I’m on board.”
Grimm smiled. “No questions, then?”
“No point,” Ripley said.
Grimm turned toward where Avery, Donovan, and I clustered just inside the entry. “Gentlemen?”
The word was directed at all of us, but only Avery moved. A stack of gas masks appeared in his arms, ominous on their own, more so in this already eerie setting. When he began doling them out, Donovan voiced the question that sprung to my mind.
“What are these for?”
Grimm took his mask and secured the straps across the back of his head. The mouthpiece rested above his brow so he could speak. “Ripley here is going to clear our path for escape.” He gestured to the doctor, who made no move to take a mask for himself.
“Fitch.” Grimm’s summons drew my attention. “Give Ripley the visitor pass.”
My hand moved to cover the badge tucked safely in my breast pocket. It took all the composure I could muster not to tell the doctor to pry it from my cold, dead hands. Losing access to my magic again was a crueler fate than spending another night in prison. I couldn’t bring myself to give it away.
As the gas masks were passed around, Donovan offered one to me.
Grimm stopped him with a shake of his head. “Fitch has a date with the Capitol tomorrow. Wouldn’t want him to miss it.”
“But the trial’s tomorrow.” Donovan turned toward me, but I dodged his gaze. The lump in my throat worked as effectively as a gag, not that I had anything to say.
“My point exactly,” Grimm said.
Donovan’s face washed pale. “He can’t go to court. They’ll kill him!” Again, he looked at me and, again, I stared at the floor.
“I happen to believe otherwise.” I heard the smile in Grimm’s voice.
Donovan fell silent, leaving the room quiet until Avery huffed a breath.
“Is there something you’d like to add, Mister Hale?” Grimm asked him.
“Nope,” came the clipped reply.
“Fitch,” Grimm rumbled. “The visitor pass? I’d like to be out of here before morning.” His chuckle grated on me.
I looked up to see Ripley watching with the faintest hint of judgment in his eyes. Anger flared, and I snatched the badge from my pocket, ready to throw or drop it and make him pick it up off the floor.
Before I could do either, commotion in the hall outside piqued my interest.
“We’ve got company!” Avery announced.
“That shadow bitch must’ve led them right to us,” Vinton added with a growl.
The visitor pass had been forgotten in my hand until Ripley skirted by and plucked it free.
Weight from the prison’s antimagic poured over me. I swayed, abruptly queasy and too dizzy to focus on the supposed healer as he marched alone toward the hallway I imagined to be crawling with guards.
“Masks on!” Grimm roared .
Voices clamored outside, too, but I didn’t bother to discern them. My attention lingered on Ripley, who stood with his back to us while drawing an impossibly deep breath.
He expelled it in a soft, hissing sound like a pressure valve releasing. Sickly yellow smoke followed. It didn’t billow in clouds or plumes. Instead, it spilled like incense in a fountain, flowing down then across the floor.
More shouts came from the hall, accompanied by what sounded like a call for retreat. Boots dragged against the cement floors, but I had a feeling they wouldn’t make it far.
Grimm pressed a gas mask against Donovan’s chest. “Time to go, my boy,” he said, his words muffled by his own mask.
Donovan looked from our leader to me. “Come with us,” he said.
“Donnie, I can’t—”
“You break the rules all the time,” he argued. “Why not now?”
A glance at Grimm found him wordlessly watching.
“Don’t worry,” I told Donovan. My mantra of late.
The smoke, which had first moved only forward, began to roll back into the close quarters of the infirmary. Was it deadly? I hoped not. For Grimm’s plan to progress, I needed to survive this.
I grabbed the gas mask from Donovan’s limp grip and placed it over his head. The antimagic was staggering, causing the room to spin around me. I closed my eyes in a hard blink, then opened them to Grimm’s summons.
“Get up on the bed, son.” He gestured to the nearest gurney. “We have to give you a story you can sell. ”
The handful of steps to the rolling gurney felt like slogging through mud. I was trembling by the time Grimm came beside me and used the handcuffs to secure my wrist to the bedrail.
“Relax,” he said, an impossible request while the room around us filled with an unknown toxin.
Held breath began to go stale in my lungs. When Grimm turned to go, I exhaled in a call after him.
He stopped to look back, and I hated myself for what I said next.
“Take me with you.”
Hello, bargaining.
Smoke crawled up the wall and onto the gurney. I thought to hold my breath again, but that would only delay the inevitable.
Finally, Grimm bent down and patted my cheek. “I’ll see you in court, Mister Farrow.”
In the aftermath of the jailbreak, they forgot to put me back in isolation. Or maybe my time there had been served. I was surprised they didn’t lock me down there and throw away the key after the Bloody Hex practically emptied the place and made fools of everyone left in their wake. Which included me, so maybe I’d earned a bit of sympathy. Something must have gone wrong, after all. The gang wouldn’t have left me behind on purpose, would they? I struggled to believe it myself.
I spent the night in my old cell, finding it too quiet and lonely without Clyde. I hoped he escaped and hadn’t met a worse fate like some I’d seen in the riotous mess that had been made of the prison. Blood smeared the walls, bedsheets hung from cell doors, and at least one had been tied as a noose off the walkway railing outside. A woman’s corpse hung between the third and second levels for hours before they finally cut her down.
I waited for someone to talk to me. A guard, the warden, even Holland Lyle. Surely they wanted to know how the Bloody Hex successfully sacked the prison, and where they went next. But I was as ignorant as everyone else. Was it part of Grimm’s plan to keep me in the dark? He’d given me a story I could sell, but no one was buying.
Time proved difficult to track with the daily schedule so thoroughly disrupted. No one was permitted to leave their cells, which was fine at first. Gradually, though, complaints arose as shouts echoing from one side of the cell block to the other. Within an hour or so—my best guess—it turned into a full-blown screaming match that no one bothered to silence. The guard staff was nowhere to be seen, content to let us sweat it out or howl ourselves hoarse.
I huddled in bed with my head sandwiched between the folded sides of my pillow. Sleep proved impossible with all the racket, so I laid awake, hunger gnawing at my stomach while the noise drowned my anxious thoughts.
“You’re going to trial, and you’re going to win.”
Absurd.
I never stood a chance at being anonymous. I’d been paraded around the Capitol in my youth as an exemplary specimen of the coming generation, then publicly kidnapped with my face plastered on every missing person poster, news bulletin, and milk carton in the city. My appearance hadn’t changed much between my teenage years and now, even if I’d managed to keep a low profile during my time with the Bloody Hex. But unlike Vinton, Avery, Grimm, and my kid brother, I was sighted publicly, and often. I didn’t recall how it started. Maybe I thought if the Capitol saw me, they would come to my rescue and save the day like the heroes my father convinced me they were.
But those hopes were dashed when the powers that be shifted from offering rewards to anyone who could find me to advertising bounties to those brave enough to hunt me down. The Capitol had wanted me dead for a decade. Now that I was firmly in their sights, they wouldn’t miss their shot.
The jeering and heckling in the cell block outside grew louder and targeted enough that I sat up and peered through the barred door. A guard—the first I’d seen since they’d dragged me out of the infirmary—approached.
“Got your court clothes, inmate.” He held a rolled garment bag and wore a look of disdain. Tossing a pair of polished black shoes through the bars, he said, “Just putting lipstick on a pig, if you ask me.”
He stuffed the garment bag in next and let it drop onto the floor.
“Someone’ll be by in a bit to take you to the showers,” he added, then turned on his heel.
“Are they gonna watch me, too?” I called after the retreating guard. He stopped and looked back, chagrined.
“I’m not shy,” I continued, “and I could use a lookout. This may come as a shock, but there are people in this place who want me dead.”
Or maybe not. Jax and his cronies might have made their getaway during last night’s chaos, but I had no way of knowing for sure.
The corner of the guard’s mouth curled in a sinister grin. “Oh, we all want you dead. But we’ll make sure you get out of here alive. And all the way to the guillotine, too.”
He left then, dodging random objects hurled by prisoners in the cell next door.
It would take days or maybe weeks to restore order to this place. Even with half the inmate population missing, the staff had lost all control. I was trapped in this powder keg, but only temporarily. I’d be long gone before it exploded.
Slowly, I climbed down the bunkbed ladder and went to inspect the offered clothing. Anything would be an improvement on my stained, smelly coveralls, and I was eager to get out of them. Unzipping the bag revealed a gray suit coat with a vest and slacks, a black button-down, a leather belt, and a tie. A small velvet pouch tumbled loose, and I caught it before it hit the floor. Inside nestled a tie pin, pocket square, and cufflinks. Checking the tags on the clothing found them to be my size.
Hot damn.
The clothes and shower would mask the past week of suffering. They might even convince a jury I was too young, too handsome, too great of a talent to waste. Regardless, if I was going to trial—and a possible death sentence—at least I would look good doing it.