20th of Arrestre, Continued

"We need to get moving," I whispered, casting a quick glance over my shoulder into the dimly lit hallway. Still no guards. "Can you stand?"

"Not without difficulty." His eyes crinkled in a wince and he looked down at his legs. "Kenoa wouldn't be loafing around out there, would he?"

"I haven't seen him. Come on. We'll have to make do." I moved to kneel next to him, offering a shoulder and a hand up.

He sucked in a harsh breath as he gathered his legs under him, pulling heavily on my arm as he struggled to get himself off the ground.

I grunted and braced myself, somehow heaving him upright. For several seconds we just stood there, both of us winded.

Then he took a slow, sliding step forward. HIs voice was tight with strain. "Did you get the device?"

Drawing his right arm across my shoulders, I wrapped my left arm around his waist. There was significantly less of him than I remembered, but for a scrawny man he was surprisingly heavy. "Too many patrols... Got the keys instead," I managed, my leg muscles already trembling.

"Keys. What a novel idea," he grunted and kept going, each step obviously causing him pain. He fell silent, concentrating on getting himself out into the hallway. We barely made it around the doorway before he stumbled heavily to the left and slumped against the wall. He came to a halt, breathing hard.

Urgency was building to a dull roar in my head. We weren't going fast enough.

As if he could hear my thoughts, NaVarre began shaking his head. "This isn't going to work," he rasped, letting go of me.

For a moment I resisted, wanting to goad him into moving, but the agony in his face made me relent. Instead, I bent to plant my hands on my knees and tried to catch my breath, disgusted by how easily winded I had become.

NaVarre rubbed his hand over his face, swiping at the perspiration beading on his forehead before squinting at me. "What's going on out there?"

"Some sort of invasion. A big one... The guards seem to have gone to join the rest of them. They're not in the guard station... Is there another way out of the Stables?"

NaVarre shook his head again.

"Where would Kenoa be?" I asked.

"I don't know." NaVarre looked at me, his green eyes serious. "You need to go unlock all the cells, Bren. Free everyone. There's no guarantee the Illyrians will be able to win, and we can't lose this opportunity."

I stared at him.

He gave me a crooked smile. "Go on. Bring everyone back here, and then we can all escape together. I'm almost completely sure I know the way through the rail tunnels."

I didn't want to leave him there, alone and defenseless, but then, reluctantly, I dipped my head in a nod. He was right. We couldn't lose this opportunity, and I had the keys. If freeing everyone else was what it took to get him moving, that was what I had to do.

With a heavy sigh, I straightened and about-faced, limping off down the hallway, heading for the cell on the other side of mine. I could only hope Kenoa was in the Stables somewhere, or getting NaVarre out of there was going to be nearly impossible.

That next cell held an older man who sported a strange folding metal device instead of a left arm. He blinked at me with uncomprehending eyes, but did what I told him readily enough, trudging over to wait with NaVarre.

Next came a gangly young man with a leg that had been replaced by a complicated contraption made of metal and wood that worked nearly as well as his original limb.

One after another I opened the cells along that hallway. I didn't take the time to do more than point quickly toward NaVare, then rush to the next cell door. Most of the prisoners came out and followed my silent instructions, but a few were too addled by drugs and simply sat on their cots staring at me.

Finally, near the end of Hallway 3, I found Kenoa.

I had never actually seen him. The resemblance was close enough a lump rose in my throat and I had to take a deep breath. He was tall and lean, his wild, unkempt hair a light wheat-blond that sent a painful jolt of longing through my chest. He wasn't quite as tall as Rathe, though, and his face wasn't quite as rugged, even beneath his shaggy beard. He also lacked Arramy's lethal grace as he got up off his cot at the sound of the keys in the lock.

The spell broke.

I tore my gaze away and shoved the cell door open.

A broad smile warmed his eyes. "Miss Anderfield."

I aimed a terse nod at the hallway. "NaVarre's waiting in Hall 1. I need your help getting him out of here."

Kenoa dipped his head in assent and stepped around me. His left hand was a flash of mirror-smooth metal in the amber lights, eerily similar to the metal soldiers Karronido had brought out to the parade ground.

I went on to the next cell. It was empty. So was the one across the hall. I checked the very last one, found it dark, and took off for Hall 1.

Coming back around the corner, I slowed. Letting each prisoner out one at a time hadn't prepared me for how many there actually were. More than seventy people were gathered around NaVarre.

For a moment, I balked. How were we going to sneak that many people out of the Medical Sector while the entire Coventry was running around, heavily armed and on high alert?

But all of them had been victims of Karronido's brand of creative medicine. Here was a man with a large black lens set in a half-mask of leather instead of a right eye. There was a bent, wizened creature with wooden, rubber-rimmed wheels for legs. Another had arms made of gears and pincers. There were enough replacement limbs and mechanical pieces to make up several whole people. They were trapped down here, and this mad scheme might be the only chance at escape that any of them ever got. A desperate, crazy flicker of hope was sparking to life in their faces.

Gritting my teeth, I moved to stand next to NaVarre, who was back on his feet and leaning on Kenoa's metal arm.

"There's been an attack on the compound," I rasped, looking around at all of the prisoners, meeting their haunted, sunken, pale-ghost eyes. "We're going to have to go out through the guard room. We have to move quick and quiet, so make sure you keep up..." I paused, taking them in, sadness tugging at me. How many of them would make it? Half? Any? "Good luck."

Then I faced the guardroom doors.

There was no way of knowing what lay on the other side, but we could either die trying to live, or just... die.

All three heavy key rings clutched in one hand like a many-bladed weapon, I walked up to the guardroom doors and pushed them open.

~~~

NaVarre held up his free hand, signaling that everyone should halt for a moment before we opened the swinging doors across from the Dissection Room. Kenoa edged up to the door, carefully peering through the small porthole window, angling his head to one side then the other to get an adequate glimpse of the hallway.

I needed to listen for the sound of Coventry guards, but I could only stare at the floor, my breathing a painful rasp in my chest.

Only a handful of meters away, the Minister was lying in a puddle of his own blood and brain matter.

I could still hear the crunch of bone, see those empty eyes staring at me... It didn't seem to matter that the Minister had been evil, or that he would have killed me in a heartbeat. The only thought in my head was, I killed a man today. I killed a man today. I killed a —

"Clear," Kenoa whispered, pushing the door open.

I swallowed hard, jerking back into the present. Kenoa and NaVarre were already through the door and lurching off down the hallway, their progress awkward because of NaVarre's nearly useless legs. With a sharp gasp, I pushed myself forward, following them to the right. Away from the Dissection Room.

Then we reached the large yellow accordion gate that I was supposed to have gone through earlier, and Kenoa shouldered it apart, leading the way down a set of corrugated metal steps to the stone floor of an apparently endless tunnel that snaked off into the mountain. Unlike the main corridors and hallways of the bunker itself, which seemed to have some sort of emergency supply of power, the servant's passage was barely lit, with only a few blinking, flickering gas sconces in the ceiling casting more shadow than they illuminated. It almost looked like a sewer, with curved concrete walls and metal trusses. It was also serving as a makeshift storage area, judging from the stacks of crates and bins and supplies.

Kenoa stopped at the bottom of the steps, causing a momentary backup in the hallway, but the passage was empty. Silent. Giving a quick wave of his free hand, Kenoa began moving again, turning left, the rest of the prisoners trailing behind him. They were trying so very hard to be quiet, but they couldn't help becoming a parade of squeaking, whirring and clicking machine parts. It was almost comical in the near total silence of the passage, and the insane urge to giggle kept bubbling up in my chest as I held back, waiting for everyone to file past me down the steps.

Once the last prisoner was through, I obeyed Orrelian's training and closed the servant's gate, stretching the accordion panels across the opening and easing the fastening bar into its housing. The latch pins clicked into place, but something, some other sound, made me pause.

Nothing. Nothing loud enough to be heard over the furtive noises the prisoners were already making, anyway. Something was teasing my senses out there, though. A faint, almost imperceptible shush-shush-shush. But when I tried to pinpoint where it was coming from, it faded. I waited a few more seconds, frowning in concentration.

It didn't happen again.

It must have been one of the other prisoners. Maybe the razor-blade sounds of Kenoa's arm echoing along the passage...

A prickle of unease raced down the back of my neck, but I couldn't stand there listening forever. Eyeing the hallway through the gate, I backed down the stairs. Then I turned and jogged after the tail end of the group of prisoners.

Up ahead, Kenoa and NaVarre rounded a slight bend, passing out of sight.

Shush-shush-shush.

The prickle turned into a sudden rush of ice. That wasn't Kenoa. Whipping back around, I faced the archway we had come from, my heart pounding in my throat.

Shush-shush-shush... I wasn't hearing things. Something was approaching the gate. Shush-shush... Slowing... Shush-shush... Stopping...

I knew what that sound was. I had heard it before.

"Run," I gasped, lurching after the last of the prisoners. "Run!" I screamed, terror blooming in my chest as I careened past the man with the wheels for legs.

A bright blue-white ray of light burst through the darkness behind us, casting the passage into harsh contrast, followed by the groan of tearing metal.

There were cries and shouts of fear all around me as the other prisoners began scrambling along beside me as fast as their patched together bodies would go, but all I could hear was the heavy thud-thud-thud of metal feet striding swiftly down the steps.

There was nowhere left to go but forward, the walls of the passage closing in like a chute, lining us up for the slaughter.

That bright light flashed again, the beam sliding along the floor to my right. I dodged away from it, then let out a breathless scream as that light caught the man with the black glass lens for an eye. He didn't even make a sound. He was running one second, then falling to the ground in two neat pieces the next, the edges of his severed torso singed and smoking.

Another light streaked past on my left, and one of the other prisoners collapsed in a smoldering heap next to me. I staggered and jumped over the fallen man's corpse, only to see a third prisoner go down just ahead of me a split-second later, his body crashing into a pile of crates, sending them toppling directly in my path, spilling bundles of gauze and bandages across the floor.

I managed to avoid the first few crates but tripped over a roll of bandages and went sprawling headlong. I hit the ground hard, rolling several times before slamming into a support girder.

Suddenly there was no air. For several heartbeats, my lungs pulled and found nothing. Breathless, reeling, I tried and failed to get to my feet, every muscle in my body trembling and useless.

Then that terrifying thunk thunk of metal feet was right there, next to me, and big, cold hands were grabbing at my shoulders, plucking me off the floor.

"This is the one," an awful, grinding voice rasped in Paradazh, and then I was hefted over a broad metal shoulder that gleamed like a mirror. The metal man turned, heading back toward the servant's gate. To my horror, a second metal man kept going down the passage, that deadly blue light flashing from his outstretched arm, piercing the darkness over and over as he hunted down the prisoners still fleeing.

"NaVarre!" I choked, thrashing against the steely grip holding me captive. I might as well have been beating on a mountain.

Realization dawned, making me sick. They hadn't been shooting at me. They had come looking for me.