The Indigo Thief (14 page)

“’Cause you’re stupid! You really think the chancellor wants the kid to burn?”

The fat man belched loudly. “Uh—yup.”

“Cheese and crackers… You’re dumber than a frickin’ squirrel chasin’ a dishwasher. It’s like my Grams used to say: Easier to kill a fish in one hand than shoot two birds in a barrel.”

“What the hell are you even saying? Hey—where’s Stevens? And everybody else?”

I was getting very close to the two men now. Any minute they’d check my hands, and I’d be caught. But just as my body slid past them on the conveyor belt, the lights flickered. The fat one grabbed my foot. I tried to kick him, but my toes barely wiggled.

Then the lights went out, and he let go. The sound of splattering liquid echoed, and the sharp stench of gasoline rose from the floor.

The skinny one sucked in a breath. “What in the name of turkey tots is goin’ on ’round here?”

Someone struck a match. A single flame hovered in front of the two men, lighting the face of the man behind it—Phoenix. “Don’t move,” he said. He dropped the match. The floor around the men burst into flames, trapping them in a ring of fire. Mila stood nearby, a canister of something—gasoline, I guessed—held in her hands.

“HELP US!” screamed the two men. “ANYONE, PLEASE! THESE SHIRTS ARE
HIGHLY
FLAMMABLE!”

Mila turned to the conveyer belt. “You in there, Kai?”

I tried to move my tongue, but it caught in my throat.

“No use asking,” said Phoenix. “He’s still paralyzed.”

“We’re just letting him burn in the incinerator then?” Mila shrugged. “Fine by me.”

Phoenix pulled a gun on the two screaming men. “How do we turn it off?”

Their faces went cold.

“We’ll never tell you,” said the fat one.

Mila shook the gas canister in her hand. “Really? ’Cause I think that’d be in your best interest.”

The skinny one laughed. “Go ahead. We’re already dead as a doorbell after this screw-up. Besides,” he shook his head and narrowed his beady eyes, “the longer you stand here, the closer the Feds get to the club.”

Mila snarled and dropped the canister, then began yanking corpses off the belt. I was already fifteen feet away—there were at least forty corpses between us—and getting farther from Mila every second. I’d never be pulled off in time. Ahead, a mechanical arm sliced Daisies from the necks of corpses, and beyond that roared the incinerator.

Phoenix glanced at his wristwatch. “It’s 12:20.”

Mila nodded and kept pulling corpses. Phoenix fired his gun at the fat man’s foot. He fell, screaming. The skinny one cackled.

“You’re next.” Phoenix winked. “And I’m aiming for your groin.”

The skinny man fell silent, and the fat one moaned.

“Three seconds,” said Phoenix, aiming his gun.

The mechanical arm sliced the side of my neck. My Daisy dropped to the floor with a clunk.

The skinny man crossed his legs to shield his groin. “Back wall to the right,” he blurted. “Code is 5257.”

The incinerator’s heat burned my toes. I had only enough feeling in my legs to twist my ankles away, shielding them behind a corpse.

Phoenix kept his gun trained on the skinny man as Mila tried the code. The conveyer belt screeched to a halt. It felt like the bottoms of my feet were burning. Mila yanked body after body to the floor. The men in the circle of fire sobbed.

I flapped a wrist hard against the conveyer belt. Mila ran to where I lay.

“You all right there?” she asked. I nodded yes. “Can you use your voice yet?”

I let out a low groan.

She tossed me over her shoulder. “Right, then.” Either she was strong or I was really light. Probably a combination of the two.

Phoenix lowered his gun. “Let’s go.”

There was a bang against the room’s steel doors, and the men in the ring of fire burst into laughter. The Feds were here. We were surrounded.

Phoenix tossed a couple of small packages at the foot of the doors as the sounds of marching feet echoed from beyond them, and then his eyes darted to the ceiling. It was twelve feet high and unfinished. Metal air ducts hung above wooden planks.

Phoenix yanked several belts from the waists of corpses and tied them together. The marching beyond the doors grew louder. He tossed his makeshift rope toward the ceiling and over a wooden beam, then secured it with a knot.

He motioned for Mila to climb. “I’ll take the kid.”

Mila pulled herself up the rope and swung her feet over the beam, then motioned for Phoenix to do the same. He threw me over his shoulder like a rag doll and shimmied up the rope with surprising ease. When he joined Mila on the beam, he pulled up the rope behind him and patted my back. “You all right?”

I nodded and curled my toes and fingers. “GUH!”

The room’s doors burst open, and immediately the sounds of marching echoed throughout the space. I tried to plug my ears with my fingers, but my elbows were still numb, and my hands just shook a little at the wrists.

Phoenix pressed a button in his pocket, and bombs exploded at the doors.

“Gerr pacca-juhs!” I shouted. “Guh berhms ger da pacca-juhs!”
The packages. The bombs were the packages.

Chaos broke out below us. The fat and skinny men in the ring of fire of fire screamed and babbled something about corpses’ belts leading toward the ceiling.

Phoenix tossed me over his shoulder again, then leaped through the rafters, jumping from beam to beam as Mila followed.

We stopped at some metal vents just above the incinerator. The vents’ metal tubing curved around, carrying on past the incinerator toward other rooms.

Phoenix pulled a pen from his pocket and pushed a button on its side. A red beam shot from its end and he sliced a square out of the vent’s metal sheath. It hadn’t been a pen at all, but the laser I’d seen in Bertha’s lab. At least
some
of Bertha’s inventions worked the way they were supposed to.

Mila crawled into the vents first, and Phoenix pushed my body in behind her, then joined us in the vents’ metal tubing.

Thin wisps of smoke rose from behind us. These vents weren’t used for air conditioning—they were used as a chimney, to carry smoke away from the incinerator and out of the nightclub.

Phoenix held a hand to his ear and nodded. “Sparky just radioed me the Indigo’s coordinates. It’s farther back in the club. We can get there through the vents.”

We crawled on our hands and knees, making our way through the vents as Phoenix barked directions. I was slowly regaining use of my arms and legs, but still, Phoenix had to push me along, and for the most part I just slid along like a limp rag.

Suddenly, there was a
whoosh,
and a wave of smoke and wall of heat lunged at us from behind. The incinerator had been turned back on, and its fires filled the vents with smog and heat.

“Shit,” muttered Mila before a coughing fit overtook her. The vent’s temperature was rising quickly. Phoenix sliced a hole in the top of the vent with his laser, diverting some of the smoke and saving our lungs for that much longer.

“Keep moving, Meels,” he said, urging her forward. “Once the smoke floods the incinerator room, they’ll know we’ve sliced a hole in the vent and are moving through the ceiling. We’ll have to go quickly if we want to secure the Indigo.”

She nodded and covered her mouth to prevent another coughing fit.

Phoenix was smart—a real mastermind. I guessed he had to be to have escaped the Feds so many times.

We crawled onward with Phoenix slicing a hole in the vent every few feet to provide us with some respiratory relief. Smoke billowed out through the holes, but traces of it still clung to the vents’ metal sides and fought to smother us. It stank like rotten eggs, like burning flesh.

It
was
burning flesh, I realized. They were burning the bodies. I felt nauseated and crawled faster. I was finally able to move myself forward without Phoenix’s help.

Then Mila stopped abruptly. We’d reached a dead end.

She shook her head. “We’ve gotta go down, Phoenix.”

“Perfect—we’re here,” he said, and sliced a hole behind us. The vent, however, must have suffered from one too many cuts, because it chose that moment to collapse beneath us. We fell to the ground—the shock was enough to jolt the last bit of paralysis from my limbs, and I stood.

Clear plastic cases filled with blue vials lined the walls of the room—Indigo vaccines. We’d landed in the club’s stronghold. Between the cases, I figured there had to be over five thousand of them.

Phoenix ran to the small room’s door and melted its lock with his pen. “What time is it?” he asked Mila.

“12:50,” she said. “Ten minutes before Big Bertha’s show time. Did Sparky send her the new coordinates after they moved the Indigo from the safes?”

Phoenix nodded and pushed a stack of vaccine cases to one end of the room.

Gunshots sounded in the hall, followed by screams. There was a sharp bang on the door, then more gunshots. An alarm sounded. Red lights flashed overhead.

“THIS AIN’T NO DRILL!” yelled a breathless voice over a loudspeaker. I recognized it as the skinny man. “WE’RE IN FRICKIN’ LOCKDOWN! SEEK THE NEAREST AREA OF REFUGE AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS! THIS AIN’T NO DRILL!”

Mila and Phoenix pushed the rest of the Indigo cases against the wall as smoke flooded the room, pouring from the broken vent above. My lungs burned like fire.

“Give me your face,” Phoenix said, grabbing the side of my cheek and pulling hard. The synthetic skin peeled off in his hand. He tore it into three pieces, keeping one for himself and tossing the others to me and Mila.

“The synthetic skin has enough microfibers to filter out the air’s impurities,” he explained, pulling the skin taut and wrapping it around his nose and mouth. “I know it’s a bit of a
stretch
,” he winked, “but give it a go.” I did as he instructed, and the burning in my lungs quickly ceased.

The door flew off its hinges. Mila raised her gun, and Phoenix peeled off his suit jacket. Beneath it he wore a silver vest with a red blinking light: dynamite. In one hand, he held a button.

Nine Federal soldiers stormed the room in a V-formation. They had guns. Big guns. Almost as big as Bertha’s.

“FREEZE!” shouted the one in the center. “BY ORDER OF THE MINISTER OF DEFENSE & PATRIOTISM, YOU ARE UNDER ARREST.”

Phoenix stepped forward, shaking his button. “Unfortunately, gentlemen, I’m afraid arresting us is not in your best interest.”

Mila tightened her grip on her gun, and I just stood there, sort of waving my arms like I was protecting myself from a stray dog. I glanced around the room, searching for a loaded weapon, a rusty pipe, something. But there was nothing. Just a lone paper clip sitting on a case of Indigo.

Briefly, I imagined myself shaking it at the Feds as they cowered in fear. The image was comical—it was better to have nothing. I spread my hands into flat palms and leaned forward in the only stance I could remember from fourth-grade judo.

“Jesus, Kai,” muttered Mila. Maybe I had the stance wrong.

“ONE MORE STEP AND YOU’RE ALL DEAD,” shouted the same soldier. The officer in charge, it seemed. The men aimed their guns at Mila. “TELL THE GIRL TO DROP HER WEAPON!”

Phoenix pressed and held the button with his thumb. Lights on his vest beeped and flashed—it was a dead man’s switch.

“I told you,” he said, “that that wouldn’t be in your best interest. Shoot any of us, and I lift my finger from this button, detonating the three tons of dynamite strapped to my chest. We’ll be dead, and the Indigo will be gone.”

The officer thought for a second. “Hold position, men,” he said. He lowered his weapon slightly and stared at Phoenix through narrowed eyes. “You don’t have enough to blow this place.”

Phoenix smiled and stepped forward. The lights on his vest flashed again. “Guns down, gentlemen,” he said to the others. They hesitated, unsure. “Don’t make this more difficult than it is has to be. Chaos begets chaos, my friends. And wouldn’t we all like a bit of peace?”

The officer shook his head. “You’re crazy.”

Phoenix flashed him a dazzling smile. “Ah, excellent detective work, my friend. You ought to get a medal.”

The officer mouthed a silent curse before sighing loudly. “Stand down, men.”

“And the guns?” said Phoenix. “Please slide them to my associate, Ms. Vachowski, immediately.”

The soldiers crouched to lower their weapons.

“WAIT!” shouted the officer.

Mila glanced toward the ceiling and then looked at Phoenix. “It’s 12:59,” she hissed.

Phoenix stared calmly at the soldiers and moved to lift his thumb. “Three tons of dynamite, gentlemen. The choice is yours.”

The soldiers elbowed their leader aside and pushed their guns forward. Mila quickly wrapped them in a steel cord and secured them to her waist. A soldier muttered something into his shoulder—he was calling for back-up.

“Really?” Mila examined the guns. “You brought a rocket launcher?’

A soldier’s face flashed red. “Uh—well, you never know—”

She fired it at the ceiling. The soldiers ran for cover. A massive hole smoldered where the roof had once been. Through it, I saw night sky.

Phoenix pointed to the cases of Indigo. “Paper clip!” he shouted.

Mila grabbed the paper clip and tossed it at the soldiers. It melted, midair, into a thick gold gas. They coughed and yelled as it smothered their lungs. It had no effect on us, apparently unable to penetrate the synthetic skin masks we had stretched across our mouths.

More marching feet thundered in the hall—reinforcements had arrived. The thunder was soon drowned out by the sound of whirring blades roaring overhead. Through the hole in the ceiling, I saw a helicopter hovering over the nightclub.

“Twenty seconds!” yelled Mila.

The bottom of a rope ladder dropped down through the hole.

“Climb!” shouted Phoenix.

I hurried up the ladder, and Mila followed, guns swinging from her waist. I glanced down below, and saw Phoenix lift his thumb. I braced myself for impact.

Nothing.

The bombs strapped to his chest had been fakes. The soldiers had never been in any real danger. It had just been a ploy on their psyches. A small but brilliant piece of Phoenix’s master plan.