Chapter 21 #2
I flicked my gaze to the closed door. Wondering who they had brought in, I retreated to the cot, not wanting to engage with the guards.
I’d find out soon enough. The awful cold was finally abating, and I shuffled out of the blanket, tossing it to the cot when the heavy security door opened.
Marty would be my preference, but she was probably halfway home by now.
I was guessing it was Herm, seeing as he had sat on Dana to help me escape.
I heard the lock to the cell next to mine snick shut, and then a terse, “Hands.”
I’d gone through the same procedure, and I tensed at the clink of handcuffs being removed. The cop leaned to look in my cell before he walked off. “Have fun, kids,” he said, then yanked the door shut behind him.
There was a masculine sigh. “Way to use your big mouth, Strom,” Benedict said to himself from the next cell over, and I practically flung myself at the bars.
“Benny?”
Feet scuffed, and a familiar arm pushed through the bars. It was all I could see. “Are you kidding me? Petra? Shadow spit, they didn’t tell me you were here.” He was silent for a moment, and his hand withdrew. “Why did they put us together?”
I pressed my head against the bars, but I couldn’t see past the plane they made. Twisting, I put my hand through the cell gate. “They’ve been trying to get me to talk. Maybe they think if they put us together we’ll tell them something.”
“You mean like bugging the cells?” Benedict’s hand touched mine, and our fingers laced. “Nah. They aren’t set up for that. I think they put me here because they didn’t want me talking to anyone else.”
The thought of which had its own perils.
My throat tightened, and I held my breath.
I wasn’t going to cry, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to cry in campus jail.
But my arm was twisted, and I finally pulled away when my fingers began to cramp.
I felt bad he was here, but man, I was so glad he was.
“Is everyone okay? Last I saw, you were arguing with the orderlies.”
“They detained me until after the parking structure collapsed,” he said softly. “It gave me an alibi at least. I’d still be free if I hadn’t tried to talk to the board. Cameron and Lev are with Herm at his safe house. Pluck too.”
“Good.” My brow furrowed. That only left Ryan. “Marty ran off. No word on her, I suppose?” He was silent, and I added, “Dana says Cameron’s intel is suspect because I am the one who got her out. She thinks I implanted a memory,” I muttered.
Benedict chuckled. “Well, to be fair, most comas are fever dreams.”
I slowly slid down the wall until my butt hit the floor.
“It was real,” I said, brow furrowed as I recalled Cameron’s terror, her demand that I abandon her a second time.
Maybe Aasta was right that we were in over our heads.
Thoth used Cameron to lure me to the hospital so I’d be there when he broke the vault there.
My hubris had given him the vault at the records building, too.
How was I going to get in front of his destruction when he knew what I was going to do?
“What about Ryan?” I asked.
“Ah-h-h.” Benedict sighed, and I heard him sit as well. “He’s trying to smooth things over with Dana,” he continued, voice soft as he put his face right next to the bars. “He is calling in all his favors to get you out. I made the mistake of arguing with her, landing me here.”
“Which I’m selfishly glad about,” I said, worried. This sucked. If I had a little dross, I might be able to do something, but there wasn’t even any dross dust in the corners. Fool dross protocols…“What did you do?” I prompted when he said nothing more.
He took a breath, held it, and let it out.
“Went too far,” he said softly, and then added, almost shouting, “I called Dana an antiquated remnant and an academic hypocrite afraid to explore a new way to handle an old problem.” His tone eased.
“But what probably got me in here was trying to contact her superiors behind her back. She doesn’t have any, by the way.
Whatever she says, goes.” He chuckled. “No wonder Cameron is ticked.”
I stifled a shudder, pulling my heels closer to my body at the memory of finding myself sinking into asphalt. “She could be anywhere. What is she doing here?”
“Anything she wants.” I heard him scuff his feet. “I think Ryan would be in here, too, if not for tenure. Which he’s probably going to lose.”
I rested my chin on my knees. “Not likely. He’s a Spinner. And you can’t lose tenure.”
“You can if you violate the morality clause.”
“That’s a matter of interpretation,” I protested.
“Which is also part of Dana’s job,” he said sourly.
Depressed, I began to play with the dark energy between my hands, not to make a light—which would freeze me to the floor—but to see how fast I could find a single thread.
Not that I could use it. Just exciting it enough to glow had nearly frozen me.
“And you?” I said as I flicked my hands, dislodging most of the threads with a sharp snap. Benedict didn’t even have tenure.
“I didn’t resist arrest, so who knows?” There was a moment of silence. “They took my lodestone,” he added softly. “Searched me for anything I could use to make one. Not that there’s any sun in here.”
“Or dross,” I whispered. Grimacing, I collapsed the softly glowing thread between my hands before they went numb. “Well, thank you for sticking up for me.”
“I do not like being without a lodestone.” Benedict continued his train of thought, his words almost inaudible. “Makes me feel like a mundane. Dana is hell-bent on proving that you and Pluck are cracking the vaults using my frozen dross. I could almost believe her myself.”
I thumped my head back against the wall and clasped my arms around my drawn-up knees. “She’s scared of change.”
“More like scared of how important you and Pluck will be if you can create a viable way to get rid of dross. Something other than putting it in a hole in the ground to wait for it to dissociate naturally.”
“That doesn’t give her the right to stop it,” I said, but I didn’t think he was listening.
“Unfortunately she’s not the only one who is afraid.
It’s a mess out there. The sweepers are refusing to pick up.
Ambient dross levels are rising. Accidents are happening.
To tell you the truth, the parking garage collapse hardly made the news after the pileup on the interstate and a six-inch gap formed in the train tracks.
” He hesitated. “It’s clean in here, though,” he finished sourly.
I gazed at the ceiling. “The one time you need some dross. You saw the news? Did everyone get out of the parking structure?”
“Yes.”
I blew a sigh of relief. No funerals was a very good thing.
“Cameron made a few calls,” Benedict said. “But I’ll be honest. It’s not looking good. Most of the people who can help you are turning a blind eye. Cameron is pissed. But that might be because Herm won’t let her leave to find Marty.”
“Yeah?” I inched closer to the bars. “I have to believe she knows enough not to take this home to her boyfriend. Benny, I have to get out of here and find Marty. She came to me for help, and I tried to trick her into staying. Into being something she doesn’t want to be.”
Something she was already, I thought glumly.
“It’s scary enough finding out that you are capable of bonding to another sentient creature who kind of desperately needs you, but that it’s one that we’ve been told is an indiscriminate, mindless killer sort of throws a person.
” I pulled my knees tighter, feeling even more alone. “We have to get out of here.”
“No argument,” he said. “Dana is not having it, though. Ryan is having zero luck.”
I’d thought getting news would have eased my anxiety, but it had only made my mood worse, and I pushed back against the wall and stood.
“Petra?” Benedict’s shoes hiccuped on the concrete as he straightened his legs. “Lev said you tuned a drift of dross and used it to break the sidewalk.” He took a slow breath. “You really did that?”
“Yes,” I whispered, rubbing my fingers together as I wished I could handle the cold born from working with dark matter right from the source.
Pluck could, but I wasn’t shadow. I was flesh and bone, and I think the only reason I could use the dark matter I tuned from dross was because the heat of the dross and the cold from the dark matter canceled each other out—mostly.
“Huh,” Benedict said, a new lilt to his voice. “Um, you think maybe you could do it again? Like to get us out of here?”
I felt myself sigh. “You have any dross on you?”
There was a scuff as he got to his feet as well. “No,” he said softly as he reached through the bars for my hand. “But I bet I could find a way to get one of those school cops out there to do something stupid and make some.”
I met his fingers with my own, emotion tingling right down to my toes.
“You have to get out of here, Petra,” he said as he gave my hand a squeeze. “No one besides Ryan will risk their job to prove that you aren’t responsible, and barring that, you and Pluck will take the blame. Thoth will walk, and Marty? Who knows where she will end up.”
Lure a campus cop in. Get them to do some magic. Use the dross to get out of here. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was a plan, and I inched closer to the wall, whispering, “What do you have in mind?”