Chapter 17
17
Sonny
I don’t know how long it takes for me to wake. There’s never been a way to tell how long we sleep down here, but it bothers me more now than it ever has before.
They killed Matilda. They did it to send me a message and I have no doubt they’ll be back to kill each of my friends off one by one, until they finally take me, too.
“Is everyone okay?” I call out, my voice hoarse.
“We’re fine,” Ava answers. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” I sigh.
“What happened?” Beatrix asks. “You went a little crazy, and then zonked out for a while.”
A while? Fuck . Time is too precious to have spent that long doing absolutely nothing.
I scramble up to my knees and get to work on feeling around for the key Raze told me to find.
“They killed Matilda,” I explain weakly. Saying the words aloud feels surreal. Have they come back to retrieve her body yet?
“Yeah, we gathered that much,” Beatrix snarks back. “What I’m asking is what the fuck happened to you to make you go completely psychotic? You had the lights flickering and everything.”
My hands pause their search. “That wasn’t me.”
“I’m pretty sure it was,” Beatrix insists. “You were screaming your head off.”
I purse my lips. That was me screaming? “I don’t know. It was like I felt every single thing Matilda was feeling. She was pouring it into me until I couldn’t take any more.”
“I thought you said yours and Poppy’s moms weren’t related,” Ava says suspiciously.
“They aren’t. We’re related through our fathers.” I do my best to answer without making it obvious that I’m scaling against every inch of my cell.
Raze didn’t mention if the key worked on their lock as well, or if he expected me to even attempt their rescue at all. I plan on trying regardless, but I don’t want to get their hopes up if it doesn’t end up working.
I also don’t want to hear their opinion on whether I should trust him.
If the key works, I’m leaving this place with them, no matter what. Whether I follow his rules and head to the cabin is still up for debate.
And I’ll leave that decision all of us to make together when I get us all out of here.
“Were they gifted?”
I laugh at that thought. My father and uncle grew up in a mobile home parked on a large lot of land. They were the absolute last choice for either woman to marry. Clearly, they didn’t come from the wealth and corruption that poisons this place. Just a single mom doing her best and a father who ran out on them.
“No, they were not from here.”
They’re silent for a beat too long.
“Why? What are you getting at?” I press.
“I just thought you said before that your mother was Aeternum and Poppy was Valerian.”
“They are.” Were. Whatever.
“As an Aeternum, you shouldn’t have been able to feel Matilda’s emotions at all,” Ava supplies, her tone carefully flat.
“You also shouldn’t have been able to control the lights,” Beatrix pipes up. “Only a Luminara can do that.”
“Especially in an enchanted cell . . . ” Jonah adds.
Frowning, I consider their words. “We don’t know that I did any of that.”
“It certainly wasn’t us, and judging by how fast those two asshats flew out of here, it wasn’t them, either,” Jonah scoffs.
“What are you doing?” Beatrix asks. Even without seeing her face, I can imagine the irritated puckering of her brows and tightening of her lips.
“Nothing,” I grunt out, then suppress a squeal as I pick something up between my fingers and feel tiny little legs moving against my skin. Chucking it in the direction I think the door is in, I turn back toward the wall and keep running my hand against the uneven stones.
“You’re breathing heavy,” Ava points out.
I feel something unnaturally smooth and pick it up, tossing it between my fingers to get a full idea of the shape. It’s some sort of metal, but judging by the twisting teeth sticking out of it, I’d guess it’s a screw.
Definitely not a key.
“Who cares? Did they mention if they were coming for any of us when they took you away?” Jonah asks me, and I realize he’s repeating the question.
“No.” I find a gathering of smoother material again and press my fingers against it to decipher its shape. Something sharp bites into my flesh and I hiss out a breath, squeezing my hand against my chest to stop the blood that I can feel dripping down my palm and onto my arm.
Fuck, it hurts.
Why is there a razor sitting beneath my bed?
“The two who brought me here knocked on the door and told Raze—I mean, Dr. Whitlock—that they had to get going. I thought they were all called back to whatever circle of hell they came from,” I explain, if only to keep them from realizing how badly I’ve just been hurt and distract myself from the pain.
“Why would they kill Matilda first?” Beatrix wonders out loud.
“She had the most information,” Jonah guesses.
Leaning forward, I keep my injured hand squeezed tight against me and use my good hand to slowly rake over the ground again, carefully avoiding the area I just passed. “I don’t know. I just—” I stop when my hand hits something long and smooth.
Sliding my fingertips along its glossy edge, I find two uniquely shaped teeth on one end and a rounded hole on the other.
It’s a key.
Fucking Raze. I’ve been sleeping beside the key to my own cell for who-knows-how-long.
“Tell us what is going on with you,” Beatrix demands.
I ignore her, instead pushing back to my feet to lunge in the direction of my door. I miss by a few feet, too blinded by this goddamn darkness and my exposure to the lights earlier that I’m way off kilter. But I recover quickly, side stepping until I can feel the cold metal against my palms.
The next challenge is going to be getting my arm through the grates and finding the keyhole. I silently chastise myself for not knowing. That was one detail I should have paid more attention to when those asshats had their headlamps down here. If I can control the lights, it would be nice if I could do it right now. I’m going to waste precious time over something I could have had figured out before.
“If you don’t start explaining yourself in five seconds, I’m going to scream as loud as possible,” she threatens.
Ava and Jonah mumble their objections, but Beatrix doesn’t back down.
I’m not ready to tell them, though. Not when the hope of getting out of here could crush them if it turned out to be a lie.
Maybe I’m stupid enough to believe Raze, but I don’t have to subject them to the same disappointment.
“Did any of you get a chance to see where the keyholes are on these doors?” I ask instead.
“What?” Jonah grumbles.
“Do you have a key?” Beatrix interrogates.
I shake my head at them in the dark, teeth digging into my bottom lip as I reach over as far as my arm can reach outside the door and feel around.
“It’s on your left side, about a foot down,” Ava answers.
I could kiss her.
But of course, my arms won’t reach that far through the small hole in the door.
Fuck . There’s absolutely no way I’m going to get this far and fail because my arms are too short.
I won’t accept it.
“He gave you a key, didn’t he?” Ava guesses.
“Yes,” I finally admit, my voice strained with the effort of climbing up further on my toes. Beatrix lets out a quiet cheer, clapping her hands together once.
I stand back on flat feet and slam my palms into the metal door in frustration. The sound echoes around us and through the corridor a terrifying amount of times.
This place is so far underground. We don’t even really know how to get out. My little trip to the interrogation room was proof enough that one wrong turn can lead us even deeper inside. Who knows when they’ll be back for more punishment?
“Use your bed,” Ava suggests, interrupting my downward spiral.
When I don’t reply right away, she repeats herself. “Use the blocks under your bed to get a better angle.”
I turn on my heel, running to the bed to rip the wood planks off the cinder blocks and drag one of them toward the door. It takes me a little longer than it should to maneuver it around with the roaring ache in my head in the spot where I fell on it earlier, and the open gash across my fingers. But after a few minutes, I manage to get it perched against the steel door and step on top of it, reaching my hand through the bars.
I have to press my chest fully flush against the metal, practically stretching my arm out of its socket to reach, but the key finally reaches the lock. Another few minutes pass before I can get it lined up perfectly, and the key slides into its home with ease.
“I got it,” I declare excitedly, twisting until I hear the metal of the lock click out of place.
There are whispered sounds of celebration as I step off the cinder block and push it out of the way with more ease than before, my victory fueling a new wave of adrenaline.
I’m still filled with shock when the heavy steel door shifts against my palms, opening into the empty space between cells.
“I’m out,” I tell them. “I’m going to see if this key works on your door, too.”
It’s so dark, I have to hold my arms out before me to feel around for their door. I know that Matilda’s cell is directly across from mine, and try to avoid the thought that her body is probably still sitting there, untouched. Veering off to the left a few feet, I stumble forward until I run into the cold, rough stone wall, then I slide my hand against it until they hit the smooth metal of my friend’s door. I quickly brush my fingers across the metal to find their keyhole. When I finally do, I jam the key in, certain it’ll work.
But it only makes it halfway in before something stops it. Reality settles over me like a wet blanket, snuffing out all my joy. I fall to my knees, leaning my forehead against the cold steel.
The key doesn’t work.
“What’s going on?” Ava asks, but she already knows.
“It’s a different key,” I answer dejectedly, inhaling a deep breath to calm my racing thoughts and form a new plan.
The disappointment wafting off them nearly cripples me.
“It’s okay, Sonny,” Beatrix mutters sadly. “Get out of here and find help. We’ll be okay until then.”
“No,” I bark. “I won’t leave you.”
“They could come back at any moment,” Ava calmly reminds, her voice resolute. She’s already accepted her fate.
“And if they find me gone, they’re going to kill the three of you just to prove that they can,” I argue, shaking my head to rid myself of the thought. “No. I won’t leave you. We’ll figure this out. Give me a minute.”
“If only we had something to pick the lock,” Jonah ponders.
Don’t we? I try to recall all the things I came across when looking for the key in my cell, my feet already taking me back in there. Surely, something can help.
I tuck the key into my bra, then slide the cinder block in the path of the door as an extra precaution. The last thing we need is for me to get locked in here all over again, and with the way my luck has been going, it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
“What are you doing?” Jonah calls across the corridor.
“I’m looking for something to pick your lock. You should look, too. There’s a ton of stuff on the floor in here. I’m sure yours is the same.”
I feel around for the screws that I found before, picking them up into my palms. The teeth on them might be too big to fit into the lock, but I’ll try anything. With those secured in my bra beside the key, I scoot around on my knees and keep searching. When my fingers brush against the sharp razor edge again, I pause. “Do you think a razor will work?”
“A razor?” Ava repeats, as if she can’t believe what I’ve just said. “You’ve been sitting in there with razors?”
“It depends what kind they are,” Beatrix answers me. “Is there a skinny part at the end?”
I shift the cool metal around in my hands, careful to only touch the dull side. “I think so. It feels like there’s a thick sharp side, and then a longer thin side. Maybe to fit into a handle?” I guess.
“Let’s try it.”
Tired legs lift me back to my feet, then drag me over toward their door again. If this doesn’t work, I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t leave them down here—even with the promise of finding help. Someone from the Syndicate could pay them a visit at any time, and I already know how that will end.
What sort of cruel universe am I living in where I’m given the freedom to leave, but only if I offer my friends as sacrifice?
I won’t accept that.
Beatrix talks me through sliding the thin side of the razor into the keyhole and it takes me a few moments of maneuvering it around, careful not to let it slice into my palm, before something clicks into place against it.
“That was the first spring. Keep bumping them,” Beatrix encourages.
Each time a spring pops out of the way, allowing the razor to press further in, the tight knot in my chest loosens the smallest bit. I keep going, raking through five more springs before the razor stops and the lock finally turns.
My hands are wrapping around the handle and yanking the heavy steel into my arms before any of us can speak. I’m too afraid to risk losing the pick and having it somehow relatch to move any other muscle. But once the door is open, the four of us can’t stop our squeals of excitement as they come barreling into my chest, their arms wrapping around my shoulders in a celebratory hug.
“When we reach the top, we’ll crack the door enough to see if anyone is around,” I tell them a few moments later, when the excitement dies down and the reality hits that this was only the first step in our escape.
“That’s a horrible idea. What if they have guards standing by?” Jonah quips.
“No one was standing watch when they brought us down,” Beatrix supplies.
I shake my head, forgetting they can’t see. “Same. Raze said no one will be watching, however reliable we find that information is. When I was brought, there wasn’t anyone to guard and when you were brought down, it was likely by those who would do the guarding,” I surmise, avoiding mentioning that those two are the ones who will be killing us unless Raze does it himself.
I can’t shake the thought that he sent them down here to handle Matilda. It just doesn’t match with the blind faith Matilda had in him, or his behavior in that room.
I’m missing something and it’s driving me insane.
“Then we can assume there isn’t anyone there now,” Ava agrees.
I run through every possible scenario in my head so we can work out solutions. “What about the lights when we get up there? I was nearly incapacitated for a few long minutes before my eyes adjusted to the artificial lights in the interrogation room. That’s precious time we don’t have.”
“Agreed. I’m still seeing white spots from when you set the lights off earlier,” Ava tells me.
“I’m telling you, I didn’t?—”
My words die off when a soft ember of light begins to glow in someone’s hand, so dim that it hardly has any effect on me. I look at the arm attached, surprised to find Jonah wielding it.
“Our gifts work outside the cells,” he declares excitedly, and the ball of light glows brighter with his elation.
“We can’t risk being caught with that,” Beatrix reprimands.
“No, but it will help our eyes adjust a little easier when the time comes.” He closes his hand, and the light blinks out. “I’ll do it again when we start to climb the stairs.”
“Perfect.”
“What do we do if we run into someone?” Ava asks.
There’s a pause where no one knows how to respond. I have no doubt that whoever catches us will want our blood. They’ll have no problem fighting.
The issue is whether we’re willing to fight back.
It’s Beatrix’s resolute voice that declares, “We survive.”
No one disagrees, and I take that as confirmation.
If we run into trouble, we fight.
“I can’t think of anything else. We’ll just have to think on our feet if something comes up. Are you guys ready?”
They all voice their agreement.
“Let’s go.”