Break The Ice (22 page)

“It did,” I say. “It most certainly did.”

He shrugs. “My friends like it a certain temperature.”

“I’m just saying, you over did it a little bit. I had trouble breathing whenever I left the house.”

“Sool ma ken talc ninstapo,” Tinjen says.

“What now?” Dan says.

“He said stop talking and get inside,” Ti says. “Sort of.”

He has a point. Dan and I keep rambling. Jittery nerves getting the best of me.

Tinjen squeezes his fists, knuckles popping. “Would you prefer I say it in a way you can understand? Get everybody inside the building before I–”

“Why do you think it’s so cold in here?” I say, interrupting him. “Are they trying to keep something frozen?”

“That would explain a lot,” Loch says. “It must be very cold in here for us to notice it like this.”

“Someone,” Tinjen says.

“What do you mean?” I say.

Tinjen, who entered the lobby and stands ten feet ahead of the group, points at something. An outstretched wall obstructs my line of sight. I meet him ahead of the others and follow his stare. On the other side of the outstretched wall, there’s a fountain taking up a large portion of the lobby. At some point in time, the Dinmani froze the water inside the fountain, mid spray, creating a massive pillar of ice.

In the center of that pillar sits the warped reflection of a body.

“Care to lend a hand?” I say, looking at Dan.

He approaches the fountain and rubs his hands together again. Placing both near the ice, he acts like a portable convection heater. Water melts at the base before the main block at the top. After a minute, the ice thins out.

“You still have that salt?” I say.

Lock pulls the bag out from his pocket. “Not much left,” he says.

Freezing the remaining handful, I wind up and toss the small but dense chunk at the center. It breaks to pieces but a crack splinters down the middle. Dan finishes the job and the ice-prison falls apart at the center, two halves dropping and shattering.

To my surprise, the body still hovers above the fountain. A metal pole sticks out from the fountain’s tip, spearing the dead body. Once the final pieces of ice fall off, the distortion disappears and the details flood in.

Pale skin. Tousled brown hair. Oversized t-shirt bought from the discount clothing store in Utah.

“Tell me I’m not looking at what I think I am,” Dan says.

I want to say something but can’t seem to move any muscles. I’ve seen a lot of people die over the last week, and I haven’t suffered any loss as great as Dan, but I stand there, looking up at Ted’s open eyes, hands limp at his sides, and an emptiness spreads inside. Nothing painful like when I thought mom died on the kitchen floor. Not even angry, like when I think about Kaitlyn getting hurt. Just…empty.

“Have you never seen a dead body before?” Tinjen says.

He shd
Something crashes behind me. Dan stands over Tinjen, hands wrapped around his neck.

“He was a good kid, damn it,” Dan says. Ti and Loch both grab Dan by the arms and pull him off. He swings wildly until Ti lets go and Loch gets hit in the ear. “And it’s your fault he’s dead!” Dan says, pointing at Tinjen. “You and your psychopath father.”

Tinjen doesn’t say a word. He stares back at Dan with malevolence in his eyes. Or is that shame?

“He’ll get what’s coming to him,” I say, my eyes back on Ted.

“Where do we start looking?” Ti says. “Would they have stayed in this city?”

A door slams somewhere on the floor above us. “Sounds like they stayed in this building,” Loch says.

I’m up the stairs before anyone has a chance to react, sliding around the first corner. Footsteps pound the floor behind me, but I can’t tell who it is. “This way,” I say, almost falling as I turn another corner.

A door ten feet in front of me swings open. I’m going too fast to stop in time, so I dodge it as best as I can, spinning away. Only the edge clips my shirt at first until my side slams into something.

After falling to the ground at the same speed as me, a man lies still for a few seconds. I’m on my knees before he scrambles to his feet, using the wall to hold himself up. His eyes lock with mine.

I’m standing next to a Dinmani. And not one I came in with.

He catches up with what’s happening a few seconds late. When he tries to yell for help, I swing, aiming for his cheekbone. Using a little trick Shinmar taught us, I coat my fist in a layer of ice. Even though it breaks apart when in contact with a Dinmani’s skin, it shields my knuckles from breaking. My punch lands with more force than I thought possible, and it knocks the Dinmani’s head into the door behind him, shattering the glass window.

Dan swings around the door, out of breath. “You okay?” A piece of broken glass crunches under his shoe. The Dinmani sprawls out in front of his feet. “What the hell…”

“Bring him in here,” I say, pushing the door open. There’s no other Dinmani inside the room. At least not the part I can see. The walls spread out, opening up a wide office. Two small couches and a coffee table sit in the center with a large desk in the back. A man leans back in the chair, but it’s not until I’m halfway into the room that I can tell he’s human. And that he’s dead.

“What’s that smell?” Dan says as he backs into the room, dragging the unconscious body with him.

“More of the same,” I say. The sense of emptiness fills me again as I look across the room at the dead man, blood staining his business suit. I’ve never felt this way before, and I don’t like it, but it makes the pain lingering on the edge of my emotions a little easier to push away.

“Why are we in here?” Tinjen says. He’s the last to enter the room.

“I heard something,” I say, walking around the room and checking every inch.

“You heard a door slam,” he says. “That is your culprit. Can you not see this room is empty?”

I walk along the wall, guiding my fingers around paintings and along any reachable crease. “Why would they keep one guard in here all by himself?”

“Because they are getting careless. My father believes he has won the war. His men do whatever they wish.”

“Your father is many things. Careless? I don’t think so.”

“You do not even know him.”

I laugh and it bounces around the empty room. “I know enough. He–”

Ti, leaning against the back of a couch, holds a hand up. “Shh. Do you hear that?”

Everybody stops what they’re doing. For a few seconds, nothing but silence. Then a dull thumping, like somebody hammering nails underneath our feet. It stops, but only for a moment before the beating gets faster.

“Where’s it coming from?” Ti says.

Loch, who has spent the entire time so far walking around the edges of the room, pokes his head up from behind a counter. “Over here,” he says. “I found something.”

The others rush over, but I wait. I lean against the desk, unfazed by the dead body only a foot behind me. What would have happened if I never abandoned them? If I stood my ground and fought? I might have saved Ted.

Or gotten them all killed even faster.

Dan throws a rug over the counter.

Dan
. He would have died too, if I hadn’t ran, escaped to Dintar, and vouched for a Sunjin on their planet.

“On three,” Dan says. “One. Two.” All four of them stand at once, their eyes bulging, backs straining. They wobble out behind the counter and onto the open floor, each holding the corner of an ice chest. When they set it down, there’s a brief silence. And there it is. The pounding again, but this time, a muffled scream.

I hurry across the room, sliding past the others onto the floor.

“Now he wants to help,” Ti says.

I ignore it. My attention locks on the trap door. I’m not crazy. Somebody beneath it screamed. The door sticks, and I strain myself lifting the sealed entrance. I try breaking my way in but even the largest chunk of ice I muster breaks to pieces without scratching it.

“Think there’s another way in?” Ti says.

An unexpected sense of anger flushes through my veins. She hasn’t even tried yet, and she’s giving up. I can’t give up. Somebody is on the other side of this door, and I can’t let it go without knowing if it’s Kaitlyn or Mel. The anger makes my hands shake, and I grab hold of the counter to steady myself. When it doesn’t work, I run a hand through my hair, rubbing my eyes and trying to breathe. Still shaking. Out of desperation, I bang the countertop and yell, “God damn it.”

My eyes open and I’m surrounded by blackness. Not dim, like the lights went off and there’s moonlight streaming in the cracks. It’s not even the same level as waking up at six thirty in the morning to go to school with thick curtains blocking out the tiny window that lets a semblance of light into your basement bedroom. I might as well be staring into the depths of space, surrounded by an infinite blackness.

The mumbling becomes clearer now. It’s a person, that I’m certain. Whoever it is keeps banging. The effort has slowed to an almost pitiful speed.

“Sam?” It’s Dan, his voice above me, but I can’t tell from where because I have no idea where I’m even at. “Did you see where he went?”

“I saw a portal flash,” Tinjen says.

“No way,” Ti says. “That’s impossible.”

“You’re telling me he teleported somewhere else?” Dan says.

A few seconds of silence pass before Tinjen says, “Do you see him around us? He had to go somewhere.”

I’m about to say something, but I wait. The banging stopped, and I want to know why before revealing that I’m so close. If there’s a Dinmani down here, I’ll need the surprise factor. I let my feet slide a little in front of me before taking a step forward.

As I move deeper into the tunnel, a voice behind me says, “One of you get something strong enough to break this open.”

I count each step, not sure why it comforts me. It doesn’t help me keep my balance or see as far as my eyelashes extend, but it helps me concentrate. A dozen steps in, my toes smack into something hard. I reach out and wrap my fingers around a bar, about three inches in diameter. There’s an entire row of them, all vertical and extending higher up than I can reach. It’s a cage.

Clearing my throat, I say, “Is someone here?” My voice sounds raspier than I expect, and I clear my throat once more.

Somebody is close to me and the noise startles him. Or her.

“Don’t be scared,” I say. Cliché, but the most comforting thing I can think of.

There’s a mumbling again. Even though it’s distorted by something covering the person’s mouth, it sounds high pitched and a part of me knows it’s a woman trapped in the cage.

“I’m here to help you,” I say. “But I can’t see anything. If you come closer, I can try taking the gag out of your mouth.”

Something about the darkness makes my other senses sharper. Even though she doesn’t make a sound, I know she pushes up against the bars. I start high and fish around in the darkness for her face. My fingers close on her shoulder. It’s thin but toned, her cold skin exposed through a series of holes riddling her shirt.

“Stay still,” I say, guiding my fingers across her collarbone and over her chin. The rough edges of the cloth sticks out from her mouth. Following the fabric, I reach my hands out until they’re behind her, my arms cradling her head. Whoever tied the knot did a horrible job and, even though it’s tight, I pull it loose after a few tugs.

Before I remove the cloth, I hesitate. My hands linger behind her head and an unusual thought races to the front of my mind. With the twist of my wrist, I could pin her against the bars and find out why exactly she’s tied up. What if she hurt somebody?

No. She’s being held prisoner by the Dinmani following Tinjo. Even if she did something terrible, it somehow made her their enemy, which makes her an ally to me. And there’s something else, something I can’t explain. For whatever reason, deep down in my gut, I trust her.

Pulling back, I remove the gag from her mouth and let it fall to her side. She spits a few times. I’m waiting for her to thank me or say something about how long she’s been down here, but instead she pauses for a long moment and says, “Sam? Is that you?”

My stomach drops, and I’ve never been more relieved at the same time. I’d recognize that voice anywhere, even in a black hole. “Mel?”

“My hands,” she says.

I reach out again and find them, tied behind her back with a damp rope. It takes more time than the gag, but I finally fish one end out and the entire thing falls off.

Two arms reach out from behind the bars and wrap around my back, pulling me against the metal and pinning me tight. “I never thought I’d see you again. What took you so long? I sent you a hundred messages before they locked me down here.”

“It’s only been a few days,” I say.

“That can’t be right,” she says. “I spent more than that up there before they tossed me in this hole. And I’ve been down here for weeks.” She mumbles a few words to herself. “Right? Weeks. It’s been weeks. It has to have been that long.”

A single beam of light cuts through the blackness surrounding us.

“Got it,” Ti says.

“Out of the way,” Dan says. Footsteps hammer against wooden stairs. “Sam, you down here?”

“Over here,” I say. Even with the light, I still can’t see Mel. A faint shadow outlines where she stands, but not enough to make out any details.

“Is that…?” she says.

“Did you find anything down here?” he says. “Woah, is someone in there?”

“Help me find a way to open this,” I say, ignoring his question. “I don’t see a latch or a door anywhere.”

“It’s over here,” Mel says.

I follow her shadow until my hands find a small lock. “Do you have a key?” I say.

“Would I still be in here if I did?” she says.

I bite my tongue. Stupid question. “Stand back,” I say. I place both hands over the small lock and let my Dinmow do the rest. The metal gets colder by the second.

“What are you doing?” Mel says.

“Get back.” Freezing air washes over the metal for thirty seconds before smoke swirls around my fingertips. I stop and take a step back. Aiming as best I can in the dark, I kick at the lock. The heel of my foot breaks the metal apart.

Before I can back away, the door swings open, and Mel collides into me. She’s thinner than the last time we were this close, which I find hard to believe because it was only a week ago that we teleported out of the cafeteria together. Dirt and sweat clump together in her hair. Her chest shudders with every breath she takes.

“Let’s get you out of here,” I say. With her arm over my shoulder, I follow Dan’s footsteps back through the tunnel. He climbs up the narrow staircase first. I follow close behind, lifting Mel up each step as we go.

Once we’re out, she sits down on the wood floor, her right leg dangling into the open trap door. One arm shields her eyes from the bright light pouring in through the tall window behind the dead man’s desk.

“You found someone down there?” Ti says.

Mel stiffens right away. Without lowering her arm, she says, “Who else is here?”

“Some friends,” I say.

“Why does your friend some like…” She lifts one eye up, peeking over her arm.

Ti squats six feet from Mel, across the trap door entrance. She leans on her knees, a look of concern etched on her face. Loch stands behind her, arms crossed, staring at the floor.

Mel’s hands slide across the tiles as she pushes herself backwards. Her feet join the fight, but without any shoes on, they slip worse than her hands. She moves herself away from us until her back presses up against a wall. In an instant, she pulls something out of her back pocket.