Page 16 of Mutant Mine

It may be a long shot, but what have I got to lose? I haven’t got anything to eat or drink, if you don’t count licking condensation off the pipes. My lips are already dry and cracked, and my belly is cramping with hunger. I’m going to have to risk coming out of the crawlways sometime. And what better reason will there ever be than the chance of saving other lives?

In fact, the sooner I do it, the better, before I get too dehydrated and exhausted to be any use to them.

* * *

I MAKE MYway through the crawlways and shimmy down a ladder to get back to the same maintenance hatch that I first scrambled through in the dark. Shit… That was only a day and a half ago, but it feels like a thousand years. Just remembering the feeling of running with Roth at my heels makes my heart kick up a gear.

Taking a deep breath, I ease the hatch open. The crew room is empty and dark. Good.

As quietly as I can, I clamber out of the safety of my tunnels, and back into the real world.

I leave the hatch open behind me. That’s a risk, since itreveals my hiding place, but it will help us to escape quickly if I manage to get the others out of their cells.

I creep across the room. With my pulse loud in my ears, I peer out and check the hallway.

Abandoned. Quiet.

I cross the hallway and head down the corridor of max security cells. It looks so different now, with most of the cells empty. One thing hasn’t changed though: Gregory is still lying dead on the floor. He’s been kicked carelessly out of the way.

My eyes burn. It’s not just the indignity — it’s the smell.

“Rory?!”

It’s Tommy, he’s seen me. I jog the rest of the way down the corridor and crouch beside the three cells that the remaining guards have been squashed into. A grin breaks out on my face. It’s the first time I’ve smiled since the lights went out.

They look terrible: tired, bruised, bloodied, traumatized. But they’realive. Tommy, Ellis, and seven others who look familiar.

“Hey,” I whisper, still beaming.

“Hey?” rasps Ellis. “You show up alive, and the best you can do is ‘hey’?”

That startles a laugh out of me, which I stifle with my hand.

“Really, Rory, how aren’t you dead? Where the fuck have you been?”

“In the crawlways,” I whisper. “It’s safe, we can all go in there. I’m going to bust you out.”

“Only a supervising officer’s ID card can lower the force fields,” says another man from Ellis’s cell. I think his name is Reginald something. “I’d give you mine, but they took everything off us when they threw us in here. So you’re going to needhis.” He’s pointing at Gregory’s body.

I blanch, wanting to protest. But there’s no time for that.

Okay. After everything I’ve seen over the past couple ofdays, I can do this.

I go back to Gregory. He’s face down, so I roll him over as gently as I can. He’s heavy, though, so he flops over hard once I’ve heaved him up on one side. The slapping noise his body makes on the ground makes me cringe, and I glance back up the corridor.

Still clear.

Trying not to look at Gregory’s blank, staring eyes, I reach under his uniform collar, finding the lanyard and pulling it off over his head. On the end is his ID card, streaked with blood. I wipe it away, revealing the little holo-vid of Gregory’s face underneath.

He’s a few years younger in the vid. He looks serious, as if he’s posing for the camera, then glances to the side and smiles. I wonder if someone was outside the holo-booth while he had this taken, trying to make him laugh. I guess he wasn’t always my grouchy supervisor.

“You need to go to the control panel at the end of the corridor,” says Reginald briskly. “Scan the card, then go through the options until you find ‘Deactivate force fields’. It will let you choose the cell numbers. You might need to re-enter your security credentials at that point, since it’s an unusual action. I’ve only ever heard of these force fields being lowered mid-journey in a medical emergency.”

Reginald knows his stuff. I wonder how many runs back and forth to Chronus he’s done.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

“You got thith, Rory,” says Tommy. His lips are swollen and his two front teeth are missing, but he still gives me a smile.

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