I pace my cell, willing the blood to flow into my legs fast enough for me to leave before a guard decides to investigate my conversation with Eloise. The dungeon is full of the sounds of dripping water and heavy sleep. I’m chilled without my shirt, but I can’t yet put on my cloak.
I need to dismantle it first.
My legs still tingle, but they’ll hold me when I need to run. Approaching the far right corner of my cell, the one with the draft seeping in through the cracks, I run my fingers along the damp, craggy stone, judging distances and looking for a weakness I’m not convinced is there.
It doesn’t matter. I’m about to obliterate the whole thing, weakness or not.
Turning to my cloak, I remove the five buttons lining the front flap. They come loose with a soft pop and reveal the plain steel fastenings underneath. Ignoring those, I flip the face of the buttons over and smile. The back of each holds one of my most destructive inventions to date—the gears of an ancient pocket watch attached to two tiny vials of liquid. One holds acid. The other holds glycerin. All my experiments have proven the combination to be explosive.
I hope it’s enough to turn the back half of my cell into rubble.
I slide my fingers along the bottom of my coat until I feel a tiny knot of thread. Pulling on it, I rip out the extra seam I painstakingly installed just days before the Claiming ceremony and remove a length of wire already spliced into five pieces at one end. Finally, I sit down, tug my left boot free, jiggle the sole until it comes loose, and remove a tiny, copper-sheathed detonator.
The buttons attach to the wall with ease, the same gluey substance that stuck them to the plain steel fastenings on my cloak easily clinging to the wall like a second skin. I carefully wrap the loose wire ends around the central gear in each button, and then back away to the cell door, taking the thin straw palette of a bed with me.
Pulling my cloak over my shoulders, I fasten the toggles, flip the hood over my head, and crouch beneath the palette, my back to the wall. With steady fingers, I wrap the other end of the wire around the coils on the detonator and take a deep breath.
Time to show the Commander which of us can truly outwit the other.
I press the trigger on the detonator and hear a faint clicking sound as the pocket watch gears engage and set the vials on a collision course with each other. Then the entire dungeon shakes with the force of the explosion at my back.
I don’t give the debris time to stop falling. I can’t. The main door at the end of the row is already opening, and a guard is shouting an alarm. Keeping the palette over my head to protect myself from the worst of it, I stand and face the destruction of my cell.
The back corner is nothing but crumbled bits of stone and dust. A slippery pile of dirt is sliding in through the hole, but above that pile, the night sky beckons. I race forward, scramble over the debris, and dive through the hole as someone rattles a key in the door of my cell.
The straw palette wedges against the opening as I go through it, and I push as much dirt as possible against the back side of the hole while climbing my way toward level ground.
From the main compound, an alarm bell peals, disturbing the darkness with its insistent clamor. I scan my surroundings, take in the distance between me and the iron fence surrounding the compound, and start running.
I’m still ten yards from the fence when someone shouts behind me. I don’t bother looking. It would just slow me down. Instead, I reach inside my inner cloak pocket and remove what look like two slightly thick Baalboden coins. A quick toggle of the tiny switch embedded in the ridges of the coins releases the spring-loaded mechanism inside, and they become a smaller version of the handgrips Rachel tried to use on her disastrous escape attempt.
More shouts echo across the yard, and I catch guards with NightSeer masks running along the fence line, primed to intersect with me if it takes me longer than twenty seconds to scale the iron poles.
I lunge forward, slam my hands onto the metal, feel the magnets latch onto the iron like they’re soldered to it, and start climbing.
My rib screams at me, even through the pain medicine I took, but I ignore it. I won’t get a second chance at this, and I refuse to fail.
The top seems impossibly high, and my arms tremble with the effort of ignoring the weakness on my right side, but I reach it just as the guards converge below me. One grabs at my foot, but I slam my boot into his forehead, wrap my hands around the top of the fence, and vault over to the other side.
I don’t wait to see who’s following me.
The compound is located in the eastern quarter of the city. I turn north and run, hoping the guards take note of my direction and report it back to the Commander. Let him fortify the North Wall. Let him comb the city streets. I won’t be there.
Once I’m sure I’m out of sight, I change my trajectory and head southwest, trusting the magnetic field of my hand grips to block my wristmark from any Identidiscs being used to find me.
The only way out of the city is over the Wall or through the gate. Over the past week, thanks to Rachel’s prodding, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time thinking of another way to escape.
Most of the ideas I came up with had one fatal flaw: They were obvious choices, and the Commander isn’t a fool. I discarded them all and decided the perfect solution is the one no one would be crazy enough to try. The one that could end with me accidentally calling the Cursed One to devour me in a single, fiery gulp.
I’m going out under the Wall.
I enter North Hub, avoiding the street torches by using backyards and alleys, and circle Center Square in favor of moving west. When I’ve gone far enough to be sure I won’t be seen by any upstanding citizens, I cut south and hurry toward Lower Market.
I’m sure the travel bag I left behind in Center Square is long gone. I’m equally sure the bag I always keep at Oliver’s has been confiscated too. If the Commander thinks he’s backed me into a corner where my only two choices are heading home for more supplies or hitting up merchants who’ve undoubtedly been warned that the penalty for doing business with me is death, he’s wrong.
I have Rachel to thank for it. When I chased her to the Wall, I went through the alley between the armory and the deserted building at the base of Lower Market, and realized it was the perfect place to hide a backup escape plan. No one ever goes into the abandoned building. And as I have no ties to the place, the Commander would never suspect it as a base of operations for me.
It takes me nearly an hour to reach it. I stick to the shadows, sometimes sacrificing speed for stealth, but I never see any signs of pursuit. Either the bulk of the guards are converging on the North Wall, or the guards in the western edge of the city have the brains to keep silent about their search.
It doesn’t matter which is true. All that matters is that I’ve reached the building. I duck inside and use the faint moonlight streaming in through a broken window to sort through my stash.
Tossing the handgrips into my pack, I don a new tunic and pants and hastily chew on some mutton jerky to replenish my flagging strength. The leather of my cloak chafes the burn on my neck, so I take a minute to snatch salve and gauze from my first aid kit and secure a bandage in place. Then I strap on a sword, slide a sheathed dagger into my boot, wrap my cloak around myself again, and pick up my travel pack, ignoring the way my rib aches against the weight.
The distance between the building and the Wall is relatively short, but it takes me nearly twenty minutes because I’m constantly checking for guards. I aim for the curve of the Wall nearly at the halfway point between the two closest turrets. When another scan of my surroundings shows no glowing NightSeer masks, I drop to my knees at the base of the Wall, open my pack, slide on a mask to protect my eyes and filter the air I breathe, tug on a pair of heavy leather gloves, and remove a machine that looks like a metal crossbow with a thick spiral-shaped steel drill jutting out the front. Fastening my pack to my back securely, I slide my arms into the straps for the device, secure another strap around my waist, and flip the switch on the battery pack I built beneath the spiral drill. It comes to life with a muted whine.
Bending forward, I apply the spinning metal drill to the ground at the base of the Wall and it chews through the dirt, flinging debris to the sides. The vibrations send sharp jabs of agony into my ribcage, and I have to constantly remind myself to breathe through the pain. When the hole is large enough to accommodate me, I slide forward and switch my goggles to NightSeer, trusting the green glow to illuminate my path even as I quickly calculate angles, trajectory, and all the possibilities for failure.
Except that failure isn’t a possibility.
Not when so many depend on me.
The drill eats through the ground, and I aim deep. Deep enough to bypass the Wall’s foundations. Deep enough to avoid causing any trembles through the tons of stone and steel resting above me. Deep enough that calling the Cursed One is a real possibility.
My mask lights the dirt around me a few measly feet at a time, and the air feels damp and cloying as it brushes against my skin. Every breath ignites a fierce agony around my broken rib as if I never took any pain medicine. The need for space crushes me, whispering that I’ll go crazy if I don’t get back into the open now.
I ignore it. Mind over matter. I have plenty of other things to think about. There are math equations to solve. Minute adjustments to make. And beneath it all, a terrible grief for Oliver mixes with a desperate worry for Rachel until I can hardly tell the difference between the two.
I will not be too late.
I will not.
When I calculate that I’ve traveled well beyond the width of the Wall, I begin slowly tunneling my way back to the surface, making sure to continue my trajectory until I’m beyond the circumference of Baalboden’s perimeter. I break the surface with caution, instantly shutting off the machine so I can listen for threats.
I’ve come up between two ancient pin oaks. Keeping my NightSeer mask on, I scan the area. I’m far enough into the Wasteland that Baalboden is a distant, looming bulk on the eastern horizon. The western Wall appears quiet.
Best Case Scenario: No one discovers my true escape point until daylight.
Worst Case Scenario: The Commander realizes my flight north was a false trail and orders a search of the entire Wall.
The answer to both is the same: Run.
I close the machine, slip off the mask because I’d rather let my eyes adjust to the dark than announce my presence to others with the mask’s glow, and pack them both away. Then I slide a copper cuff from my bag, the gears on it lined with the same blue wire I used for Rachel’s, and pull it over my arm.
The wires glow faintly, but they’ll light up like a torch the closer I get to her. By my best guess, she should still have a week’s worth of travel before she hits Jared’s Rowansmark safe house. I take a moment to mentally review the map Jared once had me commit to memory for the day when the Commander would allow me to leave Baalboden on my first courier mission. If I push myself, using dangerous shortcuts Jared would never have used while on a journey with Rachel, I can cut the distance between us in half in just four days. Three if I don’t sleep much.
I have to hope Melkin didn’t want to risk bringing Rachel through highwaymen-infested trails either. If Rachel was spotted, she and Melkin would be viciously attacked within hours. Melkin would never make it out alive, and Rachel would wish she’d died too.
Shoving that thought aside before it takes root, I settle my pack between my shoulders and brace my arm against my aching side. Then I turn my face to the south and disappear into the Wasteland.