Chapter 26 #2
“Me?” Hunter places a hand over her heart. “I am doing my job. The real question is what are you doing here?”
“We are on our way to the Piccolo mansion.”
“For what, a party?” Hunter tries to peek around me. “Who else is coming? Anyone good? Anyone famous?”
“No more famous than you,” Lucy says from behind me. She confidently walks up to Hunter with a pistol raised. “Put your gun down, Hunter.”
“Now this is no way to greet the woman who saved your life,” Hunter replies, but she complies and lowers her gun. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
“Hunter, why are you here?” I repeat myself again and I still don’t lower my weapon. Neither does Lucy. “How did you know about this tunnel?”
Hunter sighs, and I get the first glimpse of vulnerability in her face of supposed indifference. “I had a lot of reading time at HQ. Found your notes on recon. I put a few pieces together.”
“Sure.” Those files were kept very much hidden in my room. Hunter would’ve had to tear it apart to find those plans. Hopefully I’ll never have to return and see the disarray. “How did you know to come here?”
She knows what I’m asking. How dead are we?
How much time do we have before Theia comes for us?
At this, the facade falls. “Nobody knows I’m here.
When you got deployed, I did my best to keep tabs on you.
I, uh…” She glances away. “Had Javier figure out a way to track your watch, even if it was off. I’ve been here about two days, waiting.
Well, not here-here, not in this horrible tunnel.
I stayed above ground like a normal person.
Been here long enough to not smell great, though. ”
Mason approaches us from behind, walking right past Lucy and me to hug Hunter with his one big arm. She relaxes into his hug and pats his back. When he pulls away, he looks at me. “Put the gun down, T. You know for a fact she coulda shot us a mile out.”
Lucy and I exchange glances, and in tandem we lower our weapons. He’s right, of course, that those two shots were warning shots. Delilah moves through everyone and quickly embraces Hunter as tightly as she can. “How are you, my dear?”
“You know me. I’m always grand.” A strange emotion passes across Hunter’s face. It is almost like grief. I suppose if a small army of trained soldiers were homing in on my mother, I might look the same. I just met my mother, so I can’t be sure. “What is this?”
“You know as well as I do that things are not going as planned,” Delilah replies softly. “I know you’re unhappy with her too.”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever been happy with her, so,” Hunter scoffs under her breath, blinking to look away into the dark tunnel behind us. “If this is an assassination trip…”
“It is not. I want her to step down as peacefully as possible.”
“Peacefully, right. So, you’re going to show up on her doorstep with…who? Her disgraced lieutenant, the heiress she tried to execute, the boy she abandoned, some girl I barely know who looks about ready to eat me, a mouthy rebel, and—” Hunter stops. “Roxy?”
Roxana steps forward into the light of a lantern Cassie propped up near us. “Hello, Hunter.”
“No, shit, you’re still alive.” Hunter whistles, and it echoes down the tunnel. “Mom is gonna be so pissed. Good luck getting her to step down after this.”
“Roxana leads the rebel group giving the UR soldiers trouble in the Southeast. If Theia resigns, the rebels will surrender. I am hoping that might convince her.”
Hunter laughs almost straight in Delilah’s face. “Right, because Mom’s always been so reasonable. Look, I’m not here to stop you. I’m coming with.”
“You are?” I ask.
“Might as well, right? What’s one more person she hates knocking on her door?
” The sarcasm falls flat as Hunter’s true feelings emerge in each syllable.
This falling out that Mason described clearly hurt her deeply.
Most of that is my fault. “She’s still at the mansion, so we’re in luck there.
Maybe if I’m…maybe if I’m there too, it’ll make some kind of difference. ”
“I’m sure it will help us greatly,” Delilah replies, stroking Hunter’s cheek softly. “Let’s keep going. I think Mason is going to lose his lunch if we linger any longer.”
“Like you all aren’t smelling this smell,” Mason mumbles as we continue on down the tunnel.
We’re about halfway through when I briefly step away from Lucy to catch up with Hunter near the top of our pack. I give Mason a nod and he respectfully hangs back, chatting quietly with Lucy.
“Hey, kid.”
“Hey.” I glance back at Lucy—it’s almost a compulsion. If I let her out of my sight, she might vanish again and I’ll wake up in her room, grief-stricken and despondent. “Thank you.”
Hunter smirks. “For what?”
“You know for what. I don’t understand why you did it, but I owe you a debt so large, I can never hope to repay it.”
It’s like no time has passed when she slings her arm over my shoulder like she used to do before the war.
“It’s simple. I did it because I love you.
Because I agreed with you that it wasn’t fair for Lucy to get lumped in with those other fuckers.
Because Mom lied to me and I don’t like being lied to.
But most of all? I did it because if any of us deserve a shot at true happiness, it has always been you. ”
Her words shake around inside my chest and rattle my lungs. When I study her face, as well as I can in the darkness, I see truth. “You deserve it too.”
“We’ll see about that, I guess,” she replies and pulls her arm back, but smiles. “Cute hickey, by the way.” Hunter calls over her shoulder, “Real classy with the hickeys, Piccolo.”
Finley wolf-whistles over the sound of everyone’s laughter, and I consider never leaving this tunnel and living with the grime and goo forever.
We do, eventually, see daylight on the other end of the tunnel.
Hunter and I take point, with Lucy and Mason close behind us.
Since the tunnel is abandoned and the entrance almost completely blocked off, we don’t run the risk of encountering soldiers or Lightbringers for a few blocks.
Instead, after we crawl out of the nearly collapsed entrance, we rest and breathe in a lungful of precious oxygen.
“Man, I need like ten showers.” Mason sniffs himself and grimaces. “They’re gonna smell us coming from a mile away.”
“I almost feel bad for Theia. We’re like a stink bomb about to go off on her.” Finley yanks off an outer shirt and reveals a white tank top. “I got slime on that one.”
Cassie looks about ready to hyperventilate, and I remember keenly when Lucy undressed in Leader Thorne’s place and my soul left my body. I understand now how Mason saw Cassie’s crush, and I wonder how obvious my own crush was, and for how long.
“We’re not too far. Actually…” Lucy jogs ahead toward the nearest wide avenue, upon which a few cars zip up and down.
More traffic than before the war, but not the kind this city used to see pre-Rift.
Still, it’s something. Lucy points to an underground entrance boarded up with wood.
“Here. If we can go through the subway, we can go straight to the mansion.”
“Why are we always going underground?” Mason complains, but he and Finley start using their brute strength to pull the wood off. Roxana and I join, and between the four of us, we manage to wrench the boards away and reveal a cement staircase with metal treads. “Man, it’s gonna smell so bad.”
Lucy shrugs. “It’s not that bad. They still use the Tube sometimes, but lots of entrances are closed. Always way more rats than you think. Like however many rats you’re imagining, triple it.”
“Great. Good thing that’s not how plagues start or anything,” Hunter mutters as we follow Lucy down the steps.
The station isn’t nearly as dilapidated as the tunnel, and it’s easy to find the defunct line and jump down onto the tracks, careful to avoid any live lines.
We head due north, climbing back onto the platform periodically in case a train does come by, despite Lucy’s insistence most of them are dormant.
In addition to being gunned down by a robot, flattened by a train is not a favored way to go.
About four stations in, we climb up onto the platform and walk the length of it. The tile floor makes our footsteps echo and that, coupled with Finley’s chatter, makes it hard to hear Delilah when she asks us to stop.
“Guys!” Finally, everyone halts and Delilah puts her hand to her ear. “Does anyone else have comms? I thought maybe I might pick up soldier movement, but I’m getting high-pitched feedback.”
My blood runs cold. Lucy knows it too and grips my wrist hard.
Mason steps toward Delilah. “Can I listen?”
She nods and hands him her earpiece, which even I can hear is giving off a shrill, high-pitched noise that is eerily familiar. Mason chucks the earpiece into the tracks and readies his rifle. “Lightbringer.”
Finley points around with her rifle at the low ceilings. “Where? In here? Aren’t they, like, mega fucking tall? How is one going to get in here?”
“Not Lightbringers.” Cassie points down the station platform, where the clang of metal against metal grows louder. “Flashmen.”
Down the stair entrances and out of both track tunnels, dozens of the tiny fighters approach with calculated, slow steps.
Dozens upon dozens of glowing red eyes bear down at us.
The intel on Flashmen was as sparse as Lightbringers—they protected state assets like banks, city halls, etc.
, until they proved to be highly dangerous and unpredictable.
After a couple Upperclass deaths, Leader Piccolo’s father decommissioned them.
But, predictably, did not have them destroyed.
Hunter swings her sniper rifle up into position and cocks it. “Well, time to get busy.”