Chapter 34
34
Bodie
With Toorin at Ranno’s feet and me at his head, we scooped Ranno off the gurney. On either side, Darwin and Lyric lifted in the middle, keeping Ranno as level as possible and all his organs in the general vicinity of where they were supposed to be.
At least they weren’t in a bucket on their way to the allocated recipient.
Marc held the stairwell door open for Lux as he ran down the hall with a bundle of supplies under his arm. Juniper ran past him toward the other end of the hall for a lookout position.
She spun around and sprinted toward us. “Guards!”
“Hurry,” I yelled out to Juniper and Lux.
We disappeared into the stairwell with Ranno. It was slow going, and it wouldn’t pay to stop and wait for them. I glanced down at Toorin as he started down the stairs, Marc holding the door for Lux and Juniper.
The guards’ shouts came louder, their combined footfalls making the stairs vibrate beneath our feet.
Marc pulled Lux into the stairwell. “Run, Juniper!”
I glanced up the stairs when we’d reached the first landing, the guards so loud I knew they’d catch her. I’d have to drop Ranno if they did, but she ran through, and Marc and Lux put all their weight against the door, their feet scrambling on the slick floor, trying to get the door latched.
Juniper jammed her blade through the crack in the nearly closed door. A man screamed, and the door closed and latched.
“Go,” Marc yelled down to us. “We’ve got this.”
I watched long enough for Juniper to pull out her wooden blade and jam it in the latching mechanism, effectively locking the door. I didn’t have time to wonder how she’d gotten it back from the girl at the corrals attending the camels before the guards pounded on the door as if we’d be out of our bloody minds enough to let them in. It wouldn’t take them too long to find a way around and catch up with us, so we had to be quick.
Marc, Juniper, and Lux scrambled down and passed us on the stairs. Toorin reached for the doorknob when we hit the ground floor.
“Keep going.” Lux led the way. “And stars above, keep his body level.”
We went two levels down, the temperature in the stairwell dropping the farther we descended.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“The morgue,” Lux said.
Juniper asked, “What is a morgue?”
“Where they take dead people,” Lyric said between his panting breaths. Truth be told, we were all breathing hard. Lugging dead weight down flights and flights of stairs wasn’t easy work. Who knew?
“He’s not dead yet,” Juniper said, then stopped in the corner of the landing and added, “Is he?”
“He’s not dead.” I didn’t have to stop and think about it. I’d kept a close eye on the condensation that appeared and disappeared in the tube in his throat every time he exhaled and inhaled.
He was alive.
For now.
Despite the sweat building on my skin, gooseflesh popped on my arms when we maneuvered Ranno through the door to the morgue. This far underground, I didn’t know how we’d escape when the guards found us. Maybe we should have made a run for it on the ground floor and taken our chances we’d find shelter before the guards found us.
Toorin scanned the room—finding as I had—that there was no exit besides the door we’d come through. “If we stay here, we’re good as dead.”
“Not where we’re going.” Lux pulled a rickety gurney from against the wall. It looked like it should have been sold for scrap a decade ago. “Put him here.”
Gladly. My legs shook under Ranno’s weight. At least, that’s what I told myself.
In between Ranno’s legs, Lux dropped the bundle of supplies he’d brought with him. “Let me see him.”
We all backed away and turned our heads as Lux lifted the drape over Ranno’s abdomen. I didn’t need to see what was under there. But then Ranno tossed his head, and I rushed to take his cold hand.
“Do something.” I couldn’t contain the panic in my voice. “He’s waking up.”
Lux glanced at me, one irritated brow raised. “You don’t think I know that?”
Ranno coughed and thrashed his head.
I had no clue what to do. “ Lux.”
Lux did something to the tube and then removed it. “Talk to him.”
I tucked Ranno’s hand against my body and palmed his cheek as sweat poured from his brow.
“H-h-hurts,” Ranno managed as Lux riffled through the supplies.
“Look at me.” I cursed myself for saying that because when those eyes locked on mine, it nearly cut my knees from beneath me. The confusion, the pain, the unmitigated fear…
It scorched me.
“You’re going to be fine,” I told him.
Toorin laid a hand on my shoulder, lending me strength.
If I had been as good of a liar as a fresh spawn as I was right then, I wouldn’t have seen the backside of my sire’s hand as much as I had.
Lux drew a milky liquid into a syringe and injected it into the catheter in Ranno’s other hand.
“What did you give him?” The accusation in my voice had that brow of Lux’s rising again.
“It’s a short-acting anesthetic. I’m trying to keep him under until I can close the incision.”
Ranno’s head lolled to the side, and his hand slid out of mine. “Then close him up.”
“We can’t do it here. The guards will find us soon enough.”
“There’s no place to go but the way we came,” Juniper said.
“Look at this place.” Lyric spun around. There wasn’t much to look at besides a couple of gurneys, small tables, and a curtain across one wall. “There isn’t even anywhere to hide.”
“We’re not staying here,” Lux said. “We’re going into the catacombs.”
As soon as ‘catacombs’ left Lux’s mouth, my gooseflesh grew gooseflesh.
“Great,” Toorin said.
It clearly wasn’t.
Marc shivered.
Darwin and Lyric looked at each other as if they wanted to bolt. They wouldn’t, and I had to hand it to them for that. It was rare to find good mates like them.
From somewhere in the stairwell came the shouts of the guard.
Lux tossed his head toward the curtain. “That way.”
Toorin and I each took one end of the gurney. I guided it with one hand so I could keep the other on Ranno’s chest to feel the steady rise and fall. Juniper tossed back the curtain, revealing a thick, heavy door and a tall, narrow basket on the wall full of torches.
“The steel is on the shelf,” Lux said as he tugged torches from the sconce. “Light one, and we’ll save the rest.”
Darwin struck the steel, the sparks hitting the torch Lux held out to him. The guard’s shouts grew louder.
“The guards will follow,” Juniper said.
Lux held the spare torches to his chest. “Not without torches. Besides, everyone thinks the catacombs are cursed.”
Brilliant .
We all glanced around at each other. Toorin shrugged. What could we do now?
“Is it?” Lyric asked.
Lux smiled. It was one of those manic smiles that gave me little confidence I’d like what he’d say next. “We’re about to find out.”
“Everybody in,” Marc said. He unlatched the door and pulled it open. Juniper, Lyric, Toorin, and I entered with the gurney. Marc closed the door behind us but stayed back to help Lux and Darwin with the torches. The shift in air pressure made my ears pop.
In all my life, I’d never been in that kind of absolute and utter, complete darkness. I couldn’t see my hand, much less anyone else, and all I heard was the combined rasp of our breathing.
And that smell…
The catacombs didn’t smell. They reeked . They reeked of death and poor decisions.
And I couldn’t be certain we’d have light before we had to retreat further into the catacombs.
The door opened, and Lux entered first with the lit torch. Marc divvied up the rest of the unlit torches between Lyric, Darwin, and Juniper, who swung hers around the cavernous antechamber like a mace as if she could keep the curses at bay or, at the very least, collapse all the spider webs.
“Whoa.” She stopped in a shaft of light cast by the torch. Reaching out, she touched a sun-bleached skull. “Are these real?”
Lux held the torch high in his outstretched arm and spun in a slow, small circle, illuminating the macabre chamber with the walls lined with skulls, long bones, and ribs. The hairs on the back of my neck noticed, too.
This place had to be cursed.
The guards must have reached the morgue because a door slammed against a wall, but we were so far underground that nothing shook. We didn’t have time to contemplate the dark cavities of every skull staring back at us.
“Keep going,” Toorin ordered.
I didn’t trust that the guard wouldn’t follow us, but if they couldn’t see the light from the torch by the time they opened the door to the catacombs, I felt certain our chances of escape would greatly improve. I’d only stood in that utter darkness for seconds, with all the empty eye sockets staring back at me.
The gurney thumped and bumped down the narrow tunnel. I kept one hand on Ranno’s chest and one on the gurney, which meant I couldn’t slap at the bones held together by sinew that reached out and tugged at my shoulders, my calves, my feet.
Lyric screeched and kicked at a leg bone that nearly tripped him. It skittered across the ground.
“Stop,” Darwin turned around. “Before you bloody well piss them off, and they all come alive.”
Juniper froze. “Tell me they can’t do that.”
Toorin gave her a gentle push to keep her moving. “They can’t do that.”
She turned around but kept walking. “You don’t know that.”
Toorin didn’t answer because if anything in this world were possible, I felt like they could, and none of us would be the least bit surprised.
I heard shouts behind me. The guards had found the heavy, fortified door. You would think it would be better suited for the entrance to a castle, not a tomb. I waited for the familiar sound of their heavy boots on the hard-packed earth, but we’d already disappeared around a bend, and I doubted they could see any light from Lux’s torch up ahead of me.
A few minutes passed, and I heard nothing from behind us. “I think they turned back.”
“Great,” Toorin said with dark sarcasm. “Now we only have to worry about the dead.”
We walked for a while before the tunnel opened up into a chamber. Well, not a chamber, not like the one near the morgue, but it was large enough that we could spread out a bit.
“We have light.” Marc pointed at a zig-zag of light on the ground. It looked like ragged lightning in the middle of a squall.
All heads turned upward, and we collectively stared at the crack in the chamber ceiling above. Luckily, it wasn’t large enough for anyone to climb through. Ranno stirred. When I spoke, I kept my voice down to keep anyone who might be outside from hearing. “I think he’s waking up again.”
Beneath my hand, Ranno’s breathing became rapid. Was he in pain? Or was this the last throw before he died?
Lux shoved the lit torch into Marc’s hand and stepped to Ranno’s side. Lux felt Ranno’s pulse at his jugular. “Pulse is rapid, like his breathing.” He glanced around. “We’ll need more light. Light two more torches, and let’s bring him to the center for the natural light.”
Darwin and Lyric held unlit torches to Marc’s, and they flamed before settling into the soft, golden light, matching Marc’s torch.
Lux drew up more of the milky substance and re-injected Ranno. “That’s the last of it.”
The last of it? “What happens if he wakes up while you’re working on him?”
Lux turned to me, the look on his face grim. He knew the reality of what he was about to say next, and my heart dropped because, in a second, I would, too.
“Then you’ll have to hold him down.”
Almost immediately, Ranno’s breathing slowed, and the pulse on his neck didn’t look like it was about to jump out of his skin.
Lux didn’t waste any of Ranno’s dwindling time discussing what he was about to do. He opened the supplies he’d brought and got to work.
I couldn’t watch.
Juniper seemed fascinated. Toorin averted his eyes. While Marc, Lyric, and Darwin followed Lux’s orders on where he needed the lighting.
Okay. So maybe I watched a little. A glance now and then.
Inch by inch, layer by layer, minute by minute, Lux closed the wound he’d made in Ranno’s abdomen. Lux was right. I don’t think we could have done that and had Ranno survive.
While I was glad Lux had come with us, I didn’t know what that meant long term, but for now, I was grateful.
“Done.” Lux put down the device he used to close the outer layer of Ranno’s skin with metal staples. “With the portable regeneration laser, the staples might singe the skin, but I didn’t have time to find the right sutures.”
“It’s better than nothing,” Toorin said.
I couldn’t agree more.
Marc’s torch started sputtering, the light going dim since it was the first one we’d lit. He snuffed it out before the embers of the dying flame caught Ranno or the bedding on fire.
From his supplies, Lux produced the hand-held regenerative laser. It was much smaller than the large plates Toorin and Marc had woken up with on their chests.
Lux handed it to me, and I waved it over in my hand. I felt nothing. “Does this thing work?”
“Not like the big ones. But it’ll cut down on his recovery time. And time is something we’re all short on. We can’t stay down here forever.”
Lux was the doctor. I wasn’t going to question him. Besides, I was willing to try anything that would get us out of there sooner rather than later.
Lux filled a couple of syringes and gave Ranno the injections. “Antibiotics and pain meds,” he said to anyone listening. Then, to me, he said, “Run the laser up and down the incision. Slowly. It won't last long without an external power source, but that’s all we can do.”
I glanced around at everybody. They’d all sat on the ground, the torch Darwin held giving enough light that no one blended into the shadows.
“Okay, to douse the torch?” Toorin asked.
“I can see well enough for the laser.”
When Toorin turned his gaze to Lux, Lux said, “Yes. I’m done here.”
“How do we get you back?” I wasn’t sure how we’d do it without getting caught. The guard had to be swarming all of Mercy.
“There’s no going back for me.”
Toorin shifted, putting his arm around Marc and tugging him into his side. “Then why did you insist on coming?”
Lux set the supplies on the ground and sat, his back propped against the rough wall. “I have my reasons.”
I caught Toorin’s eye. Neither of us asked follow-up questions. Right then, it didn’t seem imperative that he share.
The ceiling crack gave me enough light to see Ranno’s chest rise and fall and run the laser over the wound. It didn’t take long for the charge to die, which was probably good because the staples turned a hot red under the laser, and faint wisps of smoke drifted up from the overheated skin beneath.
Ranno’s fingers twitched, and I set the dead laser aside to take his hand. I leaned over him so that I was the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes. I wanted him to know he was safe.
“You’re back,” I said as his eyes opened.
It took him a heartbeat to focus on me. His free hand traveled up to his abdomen, and I brushed it away before he could touch it.
“Everything’s there. We found you before they took anything.”
His eyes closed, and he released a long, shuddering breath. “You came for me.”
The sheer disbelief in his voice had the back of my throat closing. Maybe because I knew exactly what it felt like to wake up knowing I was bloody lucky to be alive.
The reply was obvious, but I said, “I did.”
Ranno cupped the back of my head and brought my forehead to his, and we shared the stale air of the chamber. A calmness I hadn’t known in maybe ever settled over me.
Unexpected.
So unexpected that I couldn’t tell if I welcomed it.
He released me a fraction, enough for our eyes to meet.
Enough for his gratitude to unravel me.
His hand pressure increased on the back of my neck, and I leaned closer, thinking he wanted to tell me something. I turned my ear to his lips to hear him better. His hands cupped my cheeks, and he turned my head back, brushing his lips to mine.
I stiffened, then leaned into the kiss. His tongue darted across my bottom lip, and for the life of me, I don’t know why, but I opened them for him.
Bodie
“They should be back any minute,” Toorin said.
As much as I trusted Juniper, Darwin, and Lyric, I couldn’t dispel the unease that settled in my gut. “Unless the guard recognized them.”
“No one recognized us,” came Juniper’s voice as they rounded the corner.
“They have no faith,” Lyric said. “We told them we’d be back.”
Toorin stood as they handed over the full packs to him. “You took half the day.”
Marc took the packs from Toorin and set them on the ground. “They had a lot of supplies to gather and guards to dodge. Give them a break.”
Toorin’s chin dropped to his chest momentarily. Then he raised his head again. He’d been agitated the last few days as we all waited for Ranno to regain his strength. For only being five days from when he’d been strapped on a gurney and nearly stripped of his vital organs the same way all the prewar buildings had been stripped of copper, he was doing pretty bloody well.
Slinging an arm around Marc’s shoulder, Toorin tugged him close and kissed his temple. Reminding me of the kiss Ranno had planted on me days before. My tongue brushed against my lower lip as if I could taste him there.
I couldn’t.
And that was a bloody shame.
“You’re right,” Toorin told Marc. “At least we know there’s a way out of the catacombs. We’ll distribute the supplies between us and head for the Lark in the morning.”
“Maybe we should wait a few more days,” I said. “Give Ranno more time to—”
Even though Ranno held a protective hand over his abdomen, he said, “I’m good enough to travel.”
“Sure you are,” I said, not believing him for a second. Ranno was as eager—or more so—than Toorin to leave.
“You do remember the way, right?” Lux asked the three. “We won’t have the torches the next time we leave.”
Darwin dropped to the ground and leaned against the wall. “Two lefts, a right, squeeze through the boulders, then up the incline and—”
“It’s a left and two rights, and the incline is before the boulders,” Lyric said.
“Moon and mars…” Toorin stared up at what had been our only light source for the past few days. And since Juniper had taken the last torch with her to find the exit to the catacombs, our only light source until we found our way out. “… we’re never getting out of here.”
Juniper untied her blade from around her waist and settled next to Darwin. “Both of you have it wrong.”
Toorin turned to her with hope in his eyes. “And you know the way?”
“Better than these two.”
Toorin’s proud sire smile made Juniper smile in return.
Squatting down, Toorin emptied the packs to divvy out the supplies. “We leave first thing in the morning, then.”
Ranno tugged at my shirt. He wore a pair of my trousers and one of Toorin’s shirts that fit him better than mine. “I need to piss.”
I turned toward him. “I already took you.”
He tilted his head and stared at me. Yes, he had healed quite a bit, but where we chose to relieve ourselves was far enough away that we wouldn’t have to live with the stench, and he needed help walking that far. That’s why we should stay longer. He wasn’t ready for this.
I held out a hand and helped him to his feet. “Yeah, sure. I’ll take you.”
Slowly, we made our way down the tunnel toward the morgue until we hit an area that widened enough to use it to relieve ourselves. Without the light from the chamber, we had to feel our way, my hand dragging along the wall and the other bent at the elbow for Ranno to hold on to.
He stopped.
From the smell alone, I knew we were well short. “It’s a little farther.”
“I know. I don’t have to piss. I needed an excuse to talk to you.”
That sounded ominous. We’d done nothing but talk late into the night since we’d rescued him. But this was different, his tone… “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t go with you.”
“What? What do you—”
“ Shhh . Lower your voice. I don’t want the others to hear.”
I leaned closer but was unsure how well I controlled my volume. “What do you mean you can’t go with us?”
“I have somewhere I need to be. It’s urgent. Life and death.”
If Ranno didn’t stop being so cryptic, I would shake the truth out of him. Gently . Because I bloody well didn’t want to hurt him. Not really .
I folded my arms, my words more of a growl when I asked, “Where do you need to be.”
Ranno opened his mouth. I couldn’t see it because this deep down the tunnel, you couldn’t see a bloody thing, but I heard the intake of his breath and the hesitation.
“To the Sanctuary. To save my little sister. If she isn’t already dead.”
“Why would she be dead? The Sanctuary is the safest place in all the provinces. She’s safer there than anywhere.”
“The Sanctuary isn’t what you think.”
My hands found his shoulders on their own, my thumbs stroking across the pulse point at the base of his neck. A rapid, staccato of a beat that made my heart accelerate along with his. “Then tell me what it is.”
“It’s a body farm.”
“A what?”
“A body farm. There’s a reason they only accept the healthiest people there. It’s why they feed them well and clothe them and—”
“I thought they were chosen by lottery. That a lucky few escaped the rest of the world and could live out their lives there.”
“The lottery isn’t random. Yes, they are chosen, but not to live out their lives in safety. They’re there to live out their lives until their organs are needed by someone who can afford the chips and the credits to pay for them.”
“But—”
“My sister’s been there a year. I’ve been trying to rescue her ever since. It’s why I became a reaper. I thought if I could figure out how it all worked, I could figure out how to save her.”
I stood there, no coherent sentences or words forming in my head.
He stepped closer, his hands gathering mine and grasping them between us. “I’m so sorry. I’m so bloody sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. We were told you were to be harvest only.”
“Harvest only?”
“It means we take your organs and leave you where we harvested them.”
“To die.”
His grip tightened, and the tips of my fingers went numb. “Yes. But I convinced Elrin to let us take you to the Eden facility. They have the bloody bottom barrel mechanical organs, but at least it would give you a fighting chance.”
I pulled Ranno in, our foreheads knocking together in the dark. In a way—a sick, twisted, tortured way—I owed my life to Ranno. I cupped the back of his neck and pulled him into the kiss I’d wanted since the one we’d shared in the chamber.
He clung to my shirt. The kiss was gentle and innocent and so bloody desperate. More of an end to something rather than a start. But I wasn’t ready for goodbyes.
My chest ached, and I wasn’t even the one who’d had his heart stolen.
His grip loosened, and he broke the kiss, turning to walk away.
I snagged his hand and brought him to a stop. Why couldn’t I let him go? I should be the one to turn away and not look back.
He’d saved me, and I’d saved him.
We were even now.
“Wait,” I said before reason could stop my words from leaving my mouth, and I thought about what my decision would mean to Toorin and the rest of the crew. “I’m coming with you.”