Metaltown (36 page)

“
Flight of the Fox,
” answered the boy.

Flight of the Fox.
Colin searched his memory for where he'd seen that name before, and then pictured it. Sitting in a pile of papers on the table in an apartment in Bakerstown.

His insides bottomed out.

“Gabe?”

Silence. Then: “Who are you? Who's there?”

Colin swallowed. Schultz had killed Gabe's father, Mr. Wokowski, possibly because of him. Because he'd told Schultz Wokowski didn't want his money. He grasped the bars so hard his hands began to shake, but his body melted down, until all his weight was hanging onto them.

“It's Colin,” he said weakly.

Gabe didn't say another word for a long time.

*   *   *

Hours, maybe days later, the lights in the hallway buzzed, then flickered on. Colin, curled in the back corner of his cell to keep warm, shoved himself up, blinking back the brightness. His squinting eyes shot around his cell—no more than a cement closet, the floor damp, the corners marked by black mold. It may not have been a jail, but it sure looked like one.

He was so hungry his stomach hurt.

A guard in a beige suit came to the front of his cell and told him to put his hands between two bars. They were cuffed; the cold steel bit into his wrists.

“You got a visitor,” the guard said. The cell next to Colin's was silent. Whether that meant Gabe was sleeping or listening, he didn't know.

Colin had a hard time keeping his steps even and measured as he followed the guard through a maze of halls. There were no windows, no signs posted. He looked for something to track his progress—to learn the layout of the building as Gabe had suggested—but he was surrounded by white-painted bricks.

His pulse had doubled by the time they reached a small room, large enough only for a single metal table and two chairs. His Ma had come. Or Ty. Maybe even Lena. Someone was going to get him out of this place.

The guard told him to sit, then fastened his cuff to a circular ring at the edge of the table and left the room.

A frantic kind of hope exploded in his chest. The terror of what lay behind him seemed so much worse with even this little separation. He couldn't go back into that cell. The cold floor, and the thick darkness, and the fear that no one was coming, had all been seared into his memory. So what if he
was
yellow about the whole thing. This was a place of nightmares, worse than he could have imagined. If leaving was a matter of telling Hampton he was sorry, he would do it. He would kiss his damn shoes if that's what the man wanted. He didn't care, as long as he didn't go back.

His hope was crushed by thoughts of Gabe, and Mr. Wokowski. He couldn't leave Gabe behind. No one deserved to rot here.

Colin waited. And waited. His nerves wrenching tighter with each passing minute. After a while, he began to think this was some kind of trick. They were going to tease him with the prospect of getting out, then crush his relief by throwing him back in a cell.

He stood, but couldn't extend to his full height with his cuffs locked to the table. Just when he was about to call out, the door opened, framing a thin man in a suit with a tail of slicked-back hair. A thick wool coat draped over his arm, and Colin shivered just looking at it.

“Colin,” said Jed with a smile—the same smile Colin had once been warmed to see. He turned to the guard. “I'll knock when we're finished.”

The guard nodded and closed the door. Jed laid his coat over the back of the chair opposite Colin, then took a seat. Overhead, the harsh yellow lights buzzed.

Jed kept smiling. Colin's hope dried, and turned sour, and burned in his chest. Slowly, he sunk into his metal chair.

“How do you like your new place?” Jed held his arms out.

Colin didn't answer.

“It's a little drafty,” Jed said. “But I hear the food is wonderful.”

Colin's eyes narrowed.

“Have you sampled any of it yet?”

“What are you doing here?” Colin asked.

“I thought that was obvious,” said Jed. “I came to visit an old friend. We are friends, aren't we, Colin?”

He wanted, more than anything, to wring Jed's neck. To tell him what a liar and a crook he was. To call him out for being Hampton's pet, and maybe even
killing
Mr. Wokowski. But Colin was cuffed to a table, and Jed was not. He could go back outside, with Colin's ma, and Cherish, and the charter, and leave Colin inside this festering pit, wondering what was happening to them.

“You made a good run of it out there.” The sudden drop of Jed's voice took Colin off guard. If it had been anyone else, he might've thought the sentiment was real. The People's Man looked down at his hands, folded on the table. The sleeves of his suit jacket covered his wrists.

“In this world, you have to fight to get to the top, or get crushed by the heap, am I right?”

Colin's fists bunched, and the chain between his cuffs clattered against the table. Much as he didn't want to go back to that cell, he'd rather be there, alone, than out here with slick Jed Schultz. He hadn't come here just to reminisce about the press, or philosophize on life. He had a purpose. He needed to get to it.

“You nearly did it,” Jed continued. “You just forgot one crucial step.”

“Yeah?” said Colin. “What's that?”

Jed spread his hands over the table. “You have to take out the competition.”

Colin snorted. Of course it was too much to press for his own charter's rights while the Brotherhood was around. Two separate charters couldn't possibly exist in the same place at once. Not when Jed wasn't getting paid for both of them, anyway.

He forced his shoulders back, and his jaw to stop grinding.

“Is that what I am, Jed? Your competition?”

Schultz met his stare evenly, and despite himself, Colin was humbled. The man was conniving, but he'd survived Metaltown a lot longer than Colin had. Even if he'd gone about it the wrong way, he'd built himself a small empire, and that was nothing to sneer at.

“Not mine,” said Jed. “Hampton's.”

Colin gave a wry laugh. “Yeah, how's that?”

“You threatened him,” said Jed. “Not with your little blade, or your little army. You yelled loud enough that he could hear.”

Colin flinched. “We didn't ask for anything the Brotherhood doesn't get.”

“Yeah,” said Jed. “Difference is, I tell the Brotherhood what they want.”

His meaning filtered slowly through Colin's irritation. “Hampton pays you to make it seem like it's their idea.”

“It's called strategy,” said Jed. “You listen to your people. I listen to Hampton.”

“You do whatever he wants, you mean.”

“I'm not stuck in here, am I?”

A thin, tenuous silence stretched between them.

“Why
are
you here?” Colin asked again.

“Guess I just wanted to tell you I was impressed you tried.”

“You say that like it's over.” Colin's voice broke a little as he said it. He hadn't truly considered that it was, even alone in his cell. Believing there was still something left to fight for was what had kept him from losing his mind. But hearing Jed say he was impressed tore the last shreds of confidence from his fists. You knew you were in trouble when the devil himself said he was proud.

Jed rose and pushed in his chair. “It
is
over, kid. We don't beat men like Hampton. We just find a way to live in their shadow.”

He knocked on the door, and Colin was alone again.

*   *   *

Back in his dark cell, Colin's thoughts consumed him. Much as he hated to admit it, Jed was right. The press was only ever a dream. They were just kids in Hampton's eyes. Poor kids, who should have been happy to have jobs at all. He'd thought if they all came together things could be different, but this was Metaltown. Things didn't change in Metaltown.
You
changed, and if you didn't, you paid. You ended up here, in a place so bad even men like Schultz pitied you.

Jed had been wrong when he said you had to climb to the top or get crushed by the heap. Their places had been set when they were born. Jed was no higher than he was; sometimes Hampton just threw him a scrap from the table.

The anger sparked in him, warming his cold body. He didn't want Hampton's scraps. He didn't want Jed's pat on the back. He didn't want to take what was given, when what was given wasn't enough. He wasn't going to lie down and die—Ty had taught him better than that, and soon as he was back outside he was going to set things straight with her. Maybe the press was over, but he still had people counting on him. His family. Gabe, in the cell next door. Lena, wherever she was.

The only thing keeping him sane was believing that Josef Hampton, however ugly he could be, would not send his own daughter to this place.

Colin closed his eyes, and saved his strength. The next time the guards opened that door, he was getting out.

*   *   *

Hours passed before the lights were turned back on. A different guard appeared outside Colin's cell and told him to clear the door. He could hear other guards, including the one outside Gabe's cell, telling the other prisoners to do the same. Colin checked the weapon at the guard's belt and found a defuser. Just a defuser. Not a gun like the Bakerstown cops had carried.

His heart was pounding as the guard cuffed his wrists behind him and shoved him into the hallway. Gabe was pulled out a moment later, wearing the same old denim pants and loose shirt he'd seen him in before, only now his face was gaunt and pale as the moon, and his eyes tinged with red. A scab on the side of his forehead descended into a purple welt at the top of his jaw.

There was a fury in his glare that stabbed into Colin and painted him with shame.
You killed my father,
that glare said. And Colin wondered if he wasn't right.

Colin glanced back to the four other men behind him. All were in various stages of the corn flu. The closest had almost no lips, the scarring and burns on his mouth were so severe. The man behind him also had a red mouth, and red cheeks, too, but his gaze was so unfocused that Colin suspected he was blind. The others weren't much better.

Food testing.

He'd heard about it. He knew Rico had once worked for the food testing plant, and that was what had turned his grin into a perpetual sneer. The reason for the defusers was clear now—the guards didn't need guns; no one was strong enough to fight.

Colin forced himself to stand tall because he wasn't yellow. He wasn't a coward. He was the man of his house and people were counting on him. He hated that he had to lock his knees to keep them from giving out.

I will not die here. I will not die here.

They were led out of the cell block and into a brightly lit hallway, and Colin's eyes watered at the sudden white light. Here it looked more like the facility he'd pictured in his nightmares. Sterile. Cold. His wrists worked against the harsh plastic bindings, and his gaze locked on the backs of Gabe's sneakers.

They were brought into what he figured was the white room Gabe had talked about. It was segmented in the back by a separate observation space, the length of the far wall. A flat-faced, redheaded woman in a white lab coat ordered the guard to put Colin on a scale while she took notes on his height and weight. She made him open his mouth and looked inside for any previous scars, and then shined an even brighter white light in his eyes.

“Baseline readings: unremarkable,” she said.

He felt a tug of resentment.
Unremarkable.
But gauging by the other poor saps in the room, he felt very remarkable, if only just because he could still make a fist. Which he did. That earned a clinical “relax” from the woman, and a sharp jab between his shoulder blades from the guard.

He broke down and asked, “What are you doing?”

She didn't look up at him. “Developing a safe balance of natural and synthetic materials to feed a hungry world.”

Ever since Cherish had gotten sick, he'd never eaten anything that hadn't been tested. His ma had made sure to grind that lesson into his brain. He'd rather die of starvation than start now.

A man entered the room from behind the glass observation partition. His bald head was too shiny, and his eyes bugged out from their sockets. He carried a metal tray and set it on the counter near Gabe. Atop it was a clear glass bottle, filled with liquid.

Colin felt his palms go clammy.

“What is that?” he asked, bracing for another warning from his guard.

The woman continued to add to her notations.

“That's the cure to the corn flu,” she said. He felt the acid churn in his stomach. There was no cure to the corn flu. They were still running tests. Experimenting on otherwise healthy people.

On him.

She motioned to the guard. “Motor skills.”

The guard cut Colin's bindings, one hand on his weapon. Colin rubbed his wrists and followed the woman's directions, which involved tracing a pattern of circles on a piece of paper with his finger. She took more notes.

Colin took notes of his own. Six guards. Four testers. And only two subjects strong enough to fight. At least the security seemed relatively low here—it would have been a different story if they'd been at the jail.

His attendant departed to the front of the room and unlocked a door with a scan of her ID badge hanging around her neck. He watched her emerge behind the glass observation window and sit with three other scientists, all with no-nonsense expressions. Behind them was a metal door with a push bar handle. That must have been the exit Gabe had talked about.

He focused on that door through the glass. That was his way out.

They were brought to a long white table where Colin was forced to sit on the end. Gabe was seated next to him, then the blind man, and so on down the line, until the sickest man, an invalid who could barely register his guard's commands, was placed at the opposite side.