Page 130 of Black Curtain

Jem frowned. Reluctantly, he shook his head.

“We may not be able to communicate once we’re down there,” I said to Jem. “Do we need to separate you and Jem? Send you instead of Jax?”

Jax frowned at me. He clearly didn’t like that idea.

At all.

Before I could stop him, or grab hold of him, he jumped lightly onto the same blue-chalked square where Black had jumped.

“Jax,” I complained. “Jesus––”

The chute’s door flipped straight down.

Jax plummeted out of view.

Being less heavy, Jax fell slightly slower than Black, which was weird as hell to watch. It was like watching someone get swallowed up into the ground. I couldn’t see anything in the chute itself except blackness.

I looked at Jem.

He frowned, exchanging looks with Nick.

Then both of them looked back at me.

“Just go, Miri,” Jem said, motioning with a hand. “We’ll wait a while. If we can’t get through on our own, then Nick can feed on me, and one of us can go through the chute. We should be able to communicate through the blood, no matter what kind of sight blocker Brick has on that lower level.”

“And if you can’t?” I asked.

He frowned, exchanging another look with Nick.

Both of them focused on me a second time.

“We’ll figure that out later,” Dalejem said diplomatically.

I frowned, but there wasn’t much to argue about.

It’s not like any of us had much choice.

Not good choices, anyway.

And we’d already been in here too long. All of us felt it.

It’s probably why we were starting to act a little reckless.

“That, and they took Kiko and Dex,” Dalejem reminded me.

I nodded, once.

Right.

Without saying anything else, I did what Jax and Black had been.

I jumped lightly onto the hatch door.

There was a second. A bare heartbeat.

Then the floor dropped out from under me.

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