Page 72 of Silent Lucidity

A second later, soft, yellowish light illuminated the dark opening, revealing a ladder leading down.

Tenthil leaned forward, bracing himself with one hand on the edge of the opening. The ladder descended to a metal-grating catwalk which ran along the side of what appeared to be an access tunnel. Apart from the gentle sound of flowing air, the tunnel was silent.

“Climb on my back,” he said.

Abella looked at him questioningly for a few moments, her brows drawn together as she bit the inside of her bottom lip. Without full breaking physical contact, she stepped behind him, slipped her arms around his neck, and pressed her body against his back. Tenthil reached behind him and hooked his fingers around the backs of her knees, lifting her off her feet. She wrapped her legs around his middle at his guidance and locked them together at the ankle.

Her weight was slight, but he could not ignore her body.

Not now, you fool.

He moved forward and lowered his foot through the opening to settle his boot on the top rung. Releasing his hold on Abella’s legs, he grasped the sides of the open hatch and continued down until he could take hold of the rungs, descending as quickly and smoothly as he could. Her arms and legs tightened around him despite his care. Part of him felt an indescribable satisfaction at the way she clung to him; it felt good to be needed by someone, to be depended upon, to betrusted.

It felt even better to have someone he needed, someone he depended upon, someonehetrusted.

When his boots touched down on the catwalk, he moved his hands to Abella’s legs and patted them gently. She unlocked and lowered her legs, kissed him just beneath his ear, and released her arms from around his neck to slide down his back. Her boots hit the grating with a pair of soft clanks. She quickly tucked herself against his side.

The hatch overhead slid closed when Tenthil pressed the button on the nearby wall. He slipped an arm around Abella’s shoulders, turned, and surveyed their new surroundings.

The access tunnel was large—fifteen meters high by fifteen wide, at least, with a hexagonal shape—and had likely been constructed for maintenance use. A meter-wide catwalk ran down either side, and inset lights above and below provided the weak illumination. The floor of the tunnel had a narrow metal grating running down its center, likely to collect the rivulets of unknown liquid trickling down the walls in a few places.

Had he not known better, Tenthil might have thought they’d descended into the Bowels.

There were two doors on the nearby wall, separated from each other by only a few meters. Both had the look of heavy-duty blast doors, though the second was large enough to fit most medium-sized hovercars through. Tenthil had no doubt it hid some sort of vehicle.

If Abella had made it here during an escape attempt, she’d been painfully close to freedom—not that the tracker Cullion had implanted in her would’ve allowed her to stay free for long.

Face grim, Abella pointed to the smaller door. “That’s where I came out right before they caught me.”

They walked to the door she’d indicated, and Tenthil took out the masterkey again. The access panel on this door was the same as the one on the manor’s roof—it read ID chips rather than requiring an input code or some sort of keycard.

If this tunnel had been built as part of the city’s intended infrastructure, access through the alleyway hatch was likely controlled by maintenance codes—if city workers used this space for official business anymore at all. It was far more probable that the wealthy of the sector kept it open as a means of traveling to and from their homes in secret.

Tenthil set the masterkey to work. Such locks often took a long time to break, if they could be broken at all.

Abella shivered against him. “This is how…how they removed the bodies.”

Tenthil frowned, making the skin around his scars pull taut. “Bodies?”

“Sometimes Cullion would get…carried away with his punishments.”

Nostrils flaring with a heavy exhalation, Tenthil nodded. He’d seen the evidence himself in the marks on Abella’s back and legs when he rescued her from this place. Though he’d long since lost count of how many people he’d killed, Tenthil could at least say one thing about himself with certainty—he’d never gone out of his way to make any of his victims suffer.

Perhaps it was only a small, ultimately meaningless distinction, but it was all he had.

The masterkey’s small display flashed green, and the door’s maglocks released with a metallicthump. The door slid open on a hallway with metal floors. To the left stood another door, most likely leading into the garage. Depressed grooves lined the floor on both sides—more runoff drains, undoubtedly. The short corridor ended on a set of double sliding doors less than ten meters away.

Tenthil collected the masterkey, pausing for a moment to study it on his open palm. He’d expected a much longer wait; was it possible that the system controlling the door locks had also been damaged and compromised during his prior visit?

He couldn’t quite shake the suspicion that this was a trap, though logic said it was merely a matter of the would-be inheritors of Cullion’s assets refusing to perform any repairs on the manor until the legal matters regarding that inheritance had been cleared up.

When Tenthil stepped forward, Abella moved with him, her stride in sync with his own. The door to the access tunnel closed behind them.

Her tension had not eased; in some ways, he understood her trepidation, but he could never fully know what she’d experienced, could never fully understand how it had affected her. All he could do was eventually figure out how to take that pain away from her.

“Where do we need to go?” Tenthil asked as he pressed the button beside the double doors.

“He had a few stashes throughout the house,” she replied, “but the biggest was always in his bedroom. Third floor, toward the back. Right over my…over the chamber he kept me in.”

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