I grabbed his ankle with both hands and tried to gain traction with my bare feet. His weight dragged us both down. He slipped fully over the edge, and so did my head. A huge fan spun below.
“The sides!” I yelled frantically. “Spread out your arms. There are indents.”
Shade spread his arms wide and his fingers found the hollows. They were barely there and hardly visible, but there was enough contour to sink his palms into and stop his fall. I pulled on his leg, and he climbed with his arms, indent after indent. His shoulder muscles bunched, and his triceps bulged under his shirt, standing out from the effort.
Once his hips cleared the edge, he wiggled back, and we flopped down together in the mostly level tunnel, both of us breathing hard.
“Who the fuck builds a shaft like that?” Seeming incensed, Shade adjusted a still-sleeping Bonk. “There are kids in this place.”
The depressions along the sides of the steep shaft were a half-assed safety feature for whoever was in a harness every year or so doing maintenance on the fan. The slippery drop over the edge was designed to fool intruders. It didn’t seem so steep or different at first, and then,bam!You were falling.
“It’s a booby trap,” I explained, my heart still racing to a panicked beat.
“A booby trap?” Shade echoed, scowling.
“Starway 8 is equipped for war, prepared for just about anything. Except for during those few hours every now and then when the security cameras are undergoing maintenance—like right now,” I said a little sourly.
“I wondered why no one questioned me on the docks.” Shade snorted softly. “Great timing.”
I shrugged. I knew Mareeka well enough to guess at her reasoning. “I only let them know we were arriving five minutes before we got here. They didn’t know when we’d come, or evenifwe’d come, and they didn’t realize I could be bringing this much trouble with me. Honestly, if it’s necessary to take security off-line, what better time to do it than when the news has spread about an awful virus?”
Shade nodded. “It got me to you, so I’m not complaining.”
I frowned. “How did you find me? This place is huge.”
“Bridgebaneusedto like me. In his way, at least. He sent me his personal com signal the second he located you on Starway 8, hoping for backup.” Something rather devilish crept into his expression, despite the strain of worry and injury. “All I had to do was follow it around a few corners before I came up behind you.”
“He didn’t even look surprised to see you so fast.”
“He knows I’m good.”
I huffed. “And insanely arrogant.”
“Hardly, sugar.” He winced, straightening out his wounded leg. “Just telling the truth. Now tell me more about this ‘equipped for war’ while I bandage my thigh.”
“With what?” I asked.
Shade ripped an entire sleeve off his shirt, sat up as best he could in the tunnel, and started to wrap his leg. I moved to help him, and our fingers tangled, reminding me of other times we’d been tangled up together.
Unsettled, I drew back, and he tied off the knot.
“Nothing terrible has ever happened here,” I admitted. “But the orphanage is prepared for an invasion, an attack, whatever. Bullets don’t ricochet; it would take very heavy weapons to blow a hole in the wall; the entire place is a grid of fifty-meter zones with airtight safety doors that close automatically in case of depressurization. Stuff like that.”
We both lay back down rather than sit hunched over while we finished catching our breath. I reached out and touched the furry curve of Bonk’s back through the side mesh of Shade’s tightly strapped-on pack. Bonk didn’t stir, but I felt his little body move as he steadily drew in air.
“Like my uncle said, you’d have to nuke it to destroy it.”
Shade gazed at me. “Impressive. Sounds expensive.”
I shrugged. “Having a near monopoly on honey helps.” Currency didn’t buy medicine, though. It was where you lived and who you knew that counted for that.
“I hope kids don’t crawl around in these tunnels,” he said.
I’d probably spent a collective two months of my life in these tunnels—at least. “We do evac drills to the pod docks using the ventilation shafts.”
Shade looked incredulous. “You can’t just take the stairs?”
“What if there’s a fire? Or a depressurized zone cutting off a level? Or someone’s pumped noxious gas into the residential areas? You never know.” We were ready, because we took risks here. Not physical, but intellectual. Emotional. The thousands of children who grew up here were the seeds to every plant the Overseer didn’t want blossoming in his galaxy. So far, we’d stayed beneath his notice, germinating far and wide but without him grasping the connection. Partly, it seemed, thanks to Nathaniel Bridgebane.
