The Fourth Sage (The Circularity Saga) (28 page)

I hope the cameras don't pick us up,
she thinks to Max, who slips through the opening to stand next to her. A shiver runs through her when she recognizes the chair. On an impulse she grabs Kiire's pad from the table, and they move to the door, which Aries opens a tiny bit and peers outside. A darkened hallway. They slip out, quietly close the door. Before them and to their right, light spills into the corridor from a doorway. Aries peers around the doorframe. There are about thirty screens mounted against the opposite wall, a chair in front of them. On the chair sits a guard with his back toward them. His head is tilted forward.

He's sleeping,
Max thinks.

They look at the screens. One of them shows Seth. Others show empty rooms. Most of them lie in semidarkness. One of the screens shows a brightly lit room. Somebody sits on a back-less chair. She recognizes Kiire right away, even though she only sees him from the side. Across from him stands a man. There are two guards on either side of a door. Aries can't make out what the man is saying, but each time he says something, Kiire shakes his head. Then the man screams something at him. Kiire tries to shield himself when the man lands a blow to his face. Desperation crawls up inside her, taking over her thoughts.
We have to find him,
she thinks.

I'm sure there are several guards outside that door as well
, Max thinks.
There's no way for us to get him out
.

Some part of her recognizes the truth in Max's words. Another finds it unacceptable.

If we stand here like this,
Max continues,
we'll get caught, and none of us will be able to help anyone.

The logic of Max's argument brings her back enough to take the first step past the opening and down the corridor. They reach the door to Seth's cell. Aries pulls the handle to the side and opens it. Seth lies on the floor, in the same position she found him in, still shivering. Aries grabs a screwdriver from her satchel and pushes it into the space between the door and the floor. When they reach Seth, Aries kneels down, touches his hair gently.

"We're here to get you out, Seth," she says. As she helps him sit up, he puts his arms around her and begins to cry. "Shhh, we're here now. Nothing's going to happen to you anymore. You're okay now. You're okay. But we need to get out of here, okay?"

He nods. Between them they lift him up. He groans in pain.

"Can you walk?" Aries asks.

"Not sure. My foot might be broken."

Seth swallows the pain when he puts weight on his foot while holding on to Max.

"We have to stay close together," Aries says. "Otherwise the cameras will pick us up."

Aries grabs Seth's coveralls and boots from the floor. When they reach the door, she pulls the screwdriver out and they slip into the hallway.

This way,
Max thinks as they move, as quietly as possible, away from the door and in the opposite direction of the control room.
There should be a utility access area somewhere.

After about twenty feet, they come to another door. Max opens it a few inches. It shows an empty cell. He closes it. Further down the hallway, Max opens another door.

That's it,
he thinks to Aries, and they enter a small utility room with an access panel on each of the three remaining walls.

Seth slumps to the floor, holding his leg and grimacing in pain.

"Seth, let me ask you something," Aries says, while handing him his boots and coveralls. "Kiire is in here, too. Do you have any idea where he could be?"

When Seth looks at her, she can see the pain in him.

"What is it?" Aries asks.

"I couldn't... I had to... tell them... They asked me who I thought was friends with you. I didn't want to tell them anything..." His voice trails off and he begins to sob. "I didn't want to tell them but I couldn't... I couldn't do it. I told them that he was your friend."

Aries holds Seth.

"It's okay, Shhh. It's okay. You didn't have a choice."

They probably would have picked him up, anyway
, she hears Max think.

"Listen to me, Seth. There is nothing we can do for him right now." Her heart belies her own words but she knows it can't be helped. "We need to get you out first. And we have to get C.J., as well."

She grabs Kiire's pad.

"I just hope we can get her location," she says. But as she opens the screen, her heart sinks. "It needs a password. There's no way we'll figure that out. And without it, we won't know where she is."

I'm going to go out on a limb and think that he might have programmed it so you would be able to get access, if you needed to,
Max thinks.

Why would he do that?
Aries asks.

I don't know. I'm guessing.

Aries tries to think back to the times when they were in Kiire's room. It would have to be something significant between them. What did he tell her? The poem, maybe? She goes through it in her mind. Born-of-Night. That's too long.

Leila,
Max thinks.

Aries types it in. Kiire's smiling face appears on the screen.

"That's it," Aries says. "I can't believe it."

She searches through his folders. Each screen has several dozens of them. A few pages later, she sees it: The folder simply says "C.J." Aries opens it. Inside the folder is a note, which she also opens.

NOT IN THIS BUILDING. MOST LIKELY INSIDE THE ONE WEST OF US

213TH FLOOR, TIER SIX, EASTERLY SIDE

Aries opens a thumbnail below it. It shows an angled bird's-eye view of five round shapes that stand in a circle. Thin, slightly bowed lines connect them.

I've never seen a picture of the buildings like this,
Aries thinks.

Me neither,
Max replies.
Must be a satellite image.

Do you think you can find her?
Aries asks in her thoughts.

I'm not sure,
Max answers.
It's worth a try. I can get us to the bridge. We have to see from there.

Good enough
.

"Seth, we have to crawl through one of those shafts—"

"I'll be fine," Seth replies, before she can finish her sentence. He closes the zipper on his coveralls and puts on his shoes. "Don't worry about me."

Aries feels as if something inside her is about to break. The realization that she has to leave Kiire behind is almost too much for her to bear.

We should go.
She hears Max in her thoughts.
Who knows when the guard makes his rounds?

Aries nods. "We need to get rid of the pad," she says. "It's traceable and if they find it in here, they can figure out where we went."

"Give it to me," Seth says. Aries hands him the pad. He twists it until it bends and then snaps into two parts. He hands it back to Aries, who separates the screen layer from the chassis and takes out the battery.

"That should do it," she says, and sticks the parts into a narrow gap between two small heating units in the corner of the room.

Max opens the center access panel while Seth gets up.

"I'm Seth," he says, and stretches out his hand.

Max takes it.

"I know you can't hear me, but I can kind of guess that you understand. Thank you for getting me out."

Max nods. They enter the shaft and he closes the hatch behind them.

* * *

Pulled from Mainframe **S-0t9nn_nf315.445. Recording 5_11100_9883 1 A.R.C//

- We found a door. It was inside a shaft that could be reached from

the lower levels of the prison. It was cut out of a wall.

- And?

- We went inside. There were strange symbols on the walls of some of the rooms. Mathematical formulas, drawings and such.

- What else?

- Nothing. It was empty.

**S-0t9nn_nf315.445. End of Recording 5_11100_9883 1 A.R.C//

Chapter 14 — Claudia Jean (C.J.)

"And let me remember the powers that sleep within me."

[
The Book of Croix
— Vol.7]

Each time the drugs lost their potency, she was injected again. She could see the man approach her. He was different from the others that came to her. He wasn't like them. He didn't touch her like they did. He didn't make her feel as if her insides would turn upside down. She didn't have to smell his breath on her face or hear him moan. He just came, syringe in hand, took her arm and almost gently inserted the needle into her vein.

Most of the time, she spent in a place at the edge of reality. She was lucid enough to realize what was happening. Part of her knew that the real pain would most likely come later, once it was all over. On the night she tried to escape, they didn't tie her hands to the bedposts like they had done before. When one of the men came into her room and held her down with one hand while loosening his belt with the other, she felt something that she had never felt before. Like a surge of power. It came from inside, streamed from her feet up her legs and into her belly. She didn't know why, but she placed her hands in front of her shoulders, palms facing him. And when he tried to climb on top of her, she repelled him.

It was as if the power surge left her at once, causing her to black out for a few seconds. When she opened her eyes, the man lay in the corner, whimpering in pain. Her heart raced when she opened the door and ran down the corridor. She didn't get any further than the next room. It seemed to be some kind of a storage area. In a corner, she saw a pile of what she thought were the other girls’ belongings. A backpack, shoes, and a few other items. Trying to focus her eyes, and fighting against the waves of dizziness that threatened to overtake her, she found her pad. The moment she sent the message to Aries, the guards came in and she was overpowered.

When she woke up later, they told her that the message never went through, that nobody knew where she was, and that nobody would ever find her. She didn't believe them. She held on to the one hope she could bear to hold on to. It was the hope that her friend would come for her, somehow. That she would find a way to get to her and untie her from the filthy bed she had lived in for the last day, month, or year. That she would take her and wash her and bring her new, fresh clothes.

Sometimes she could hold on to the thought, even through the drug-induced haze, even through the heavy breathing on her face and the stench of alcohol and cigarettes. She held it like a mother held her newborn child. She took the thought and went to a place where she felt safe, a place inside where she could nurture it and hold it and be at peace. And when she lay awake at night, she promised herself that she would not give up, and that she would be ready. She just hoped she would make it until then.

* * *

The city lies far below—a mere shadow within shadows. No lights illuminate the pavement; the structures bear silent witness to its eerie stillness. In the distance, Aries can see the dim contours of the four other high-rises against the night sky. The shape of the bridges, connecting each building with the next, reminds her of a bird in flight, maybe a seagull. Wings stretched out on either side, with the relatively small body in the center.

The ledge below her drops away and she is in the air. Back in one of the maintenance shafts in Tier Six, Aries gasps. She sits with Seth and Max, huddled together in the small space. They made surprisingly good time, crawling their way through the labyrinth of maintenance shafts and ducts to a place, Max thought, that should be close.

Born-of-Night approaches the bridge and flies alongside its exterior.

"The sides are made of glass," Aries says. "There's nobody in there."

"They must have cameras," Seth replies.

Maybe there are guards that patrol it on a schedule,
Max thinks.

When Aries repeats this to Seth, he nods. "How long do you think it is?"

"Six hundred meters, roughly." Aries repeats Max's thoughts.

Born-of-Night flies along the bridge, so close to the glass at times that Aries is afraid one of her wings will graze it. Then she lands next to a window, before the bridge connects to the next building.

"It doesn't look like there’s a door," Aries says. "It's all open. It just turns into some kind of foyer—"

The guard appears out of nowhere and walks along the window, not more than two feet from Born-of-Night's location. He is dressed in all black, with the S.S.U. emblem on his upper arm.