Chapter Thirty
Callum
As he waited by the door to his makeshift prison, Callum looked around the room one more time, wondering if there was something he had missed. He only saw the same things he had seen all the other times. The blank walls, the cot, the blanket on top of it, and the mug in his hands. The last, he only had because Alec had asked someone to bring him coffee this morning. Even now that he had lost some of his faith in his brother, the gesture of kindness still warmed Callum’s heart.
Of course, that didn’t mean Alec would lift a finger to help him when his father sent him away. Or worse.
The smell of coffee had tormented Callum for the first hour or so—or maybe it had been two hours, or fifteen minutes. He hadn’t been wearing a watch when he had come back, so his timekeeping abilities were limited to noticing when he got his daily meals. In any case, enough time had passed since then for the coffee to grow thoroughly cold and unappetizing. Not that he had ever drunk coffee for the taste anyway—unless he could dump in a mountain of sugar and an ocean’s worth of cream, it was more a matter of tolerating the taste for the sake of not stumbling through the day like a zombie—but even after a month of caffeine deprivation, he drew the line at cold coffee. He didn’t know why, only that without the warmth, it turned into nothing more than bitter brown water, and made him feel like he was drinking from a polluted river.
At least he wasn’t tempted to drink it now. Of course, it also wouldn’t be nearly as effective for his purposes cold as it would have been hot, but there was nothing he could do about that. When the right moment came, he would use what he had.
A long, low rumble issued from his stomach, reminding him that the right moment would come any minute now. But then, his stomach had been growling for the past half hour or so—unless it had been five minutes, or three hours.
He waited. And waited some more. Nothing happened.
He tried not to let his thoughts drift, because when they did, they always came back to Tom. But with nothing else to do in here but think, he was never able to hold off the memories for very long, and today was no exception. Today, though, his mind didn’t torment him with a memory, but with an image of Tom sitting on the cot, studying him with that familiar look of single-minded intensity. The vision was almost detailed to be real. Was he starting to go crazy in here already? Was two weeks and a handful of days all it took?
Well, if he was going to lose his mind anyway, he might as well make the best of it. With a thought, he removed dream-Tom’s clothes. There—that was better. He let his gaze roam unhurriedly over Tom’s body. If he wasn’t ever going to see the real thing again, he could at least enjoy what he had. He took a step closer, willing himself to believe Tom was actually waiting there in front of him, trying to pretend he couldn’t see the empty cot where Tom should be—
And the door began to open.
Silently cursing himself for letting himself get distracted, Callum hurried back into place as the guard stepped through the door.
Of the people his father had assigned to this job, this guard was the friendliest one. While the others treated him like a piece of furniture or greeted him with a sneer of contempt, this one always gave him a smile and a cheerful greeting. Callum didn’t know his name, but every day he hoped this guard would be the one to bring him his meals, his one bit of human interaction for the day.
He was going to feel bad about this later.
The other man smiled as he held out a paper plate with a slightly squashed breakfast sandwich. “Good mor—”
Callum tossed the coffee into his eyes.
If the coffee had still been hot, it might have caused real damage. As it was, the guard only staggered back, sputtering. Before he could get his bearings, Callum smashed the underside of the mug into his face. He had only expected to disorient the man long enough to get out the door; instead, he heard—and felt—something crack under the impact. Blood streamed from the guard’s now-broken nose. Callum winced. But for Leila’s sake, he couldn’t afford to feel guilty right now. He ran for the door, mug still in hand.
He didn’t risk a glance behind him until he reached the outside door. The guard, one hand pressed to his face, was still a crucial few steps behind him. But not for long, if Callum didn’t make his lead count. He hurried outside, but didn’t run for the fence. Instead he darted around the back of the building, hoping his memory wouldn’t fail him.
It didn’t. He hadn’t thought about this place in years, but there it was, as if he had been here yesterday. A gap in the foundation, partially obscured by weeds, where a young Callum used to hide for hours. Alec had never figured out his hiding place; Callum could only hope none of the guards here knew about it either.
The space had been big enough to fit a skinny boy. Callum was still slim, but he was no longer a boy, and what had once seemed like an almost roomy hideaway now caused his breath to constrict as the walls seemed to close in on him from all sides. His arm scraped against a jagged bit of concrete, and he bit his lip to keep from letting out a grunt of pain.
The air under here smelled musty, like a mix of dirt and rotting things. The dirt tickled the back of his throat; he held back a cough as he heard the guard’s voice in the distance. Callum couldn’t hear his words from this far away, but his urgent tone made it clear he was alerting someone else to Callum’s escape. A moment later, heavy footsteps circled around the back of the building. Callum held his breath as a pair of booted feet passed by his hiding place, close enough that he could have reached out and touched them if he had developed a sudden death wish.
He let out his breath only after the footsteps had safely passed him by. Still, he didn’t dare move. Not even when he felt a crawling sensation along his scalp, and started cataloguing all the different possibilities for what could be living under here. Were there any poisonous spiders in this area of the country? Hadn’t he read a story a while back about a kid around here who had been bitten by a black widow spider and died, or had that turned out to be a hoax? Of course, it might not be a spider. It could be fire ants, a whole line of them, marching one by one like the stupid song he suddenly couldn’t get out of his head as he imagined them crawling towards his ear. He knew he had heard about someone who had gone to the doctor with an earache and had gotten three ants pulled out of his ear canal—and not before they started biting.
He pictured Leila’s face in his mind, and didn’t move.
When he couldn’t hear any more voices or footsteps, he counted to a hundred, then eased his way out of his hiding place as quietly as possible. The first thing he did was brush his hands savagely through his hair, dislodging anything that might have decided to make a home there. Then, sticking close to the wall, he crept toward the door. Everyone would assume he had gone over the fence. That meant that while they were out looking for him, he had a chance to find Leila. But only if he hurried.
He hurriedly keyed in the code and slipped back through the door he had just escaped out of. There would be other people down here, of course—he had to be prepared for that. At the very least, someone would be guarding Leila’s door. He planned to take a page from Tom’s book and say his brother had sent him. If they knew about his escape, or that he had deliberately lied about Leila’s death, he would be right back where he had started. But he was banking on the likelihood that the guard he had attacked would be more concerned about going after him as quickly as possible than informing everyone in the building of his escape—and as for how he had lied, he had a feeling his father had made up a story to save face while he privately figured out what to do about Callum.
The factory basement had always made the hair on his arms stand on end when he was a kid, and walking down the hallway now, he remembered why. His footsteps, the only sound he could hear, echoed off the walls in distorted patterns, louder than the original sound. He didn’t see a single other person, but he couldn’t let himself relax, knowing what might happen if the wrong person saw him walking free. A couple of weeks before all this had happened, he had caught a few minutes of a zombie movie on TV, just long enough for him to watch a man walking through a deserted village, casting glances over his shoulder all the way. When the man had made it past the row of houses to the underground bunker he had been looking for, he let out a sigh of relief—only to be torn apart in the next moment as the zombies swarmed up from the entrance to the bunker. That was the scene he pictured every time he passed a door or turned a corner.
He lost count of how many corners he had turned, and how many doors he had passed. How long had he been down here? It felt like hours. He had begun to half-wonder if the zombie apocalypse really had happened and he was the only one still alive, when a scream broke the silence. A child’s scream. Leila’s scream.
He took off running in the direction the noise had come from, no longer worried about keeping quiet or staying hidden, thinking only about protecting Leila from whoever had hurt her. A second later, his mind caught up with his instincts, and he realized it hadn’t been a scream of pain, but one of outrage—no one was hurting her, she was simply locked up in here, and wanted out. But that didn’t make him slow down.
He turned one more corner and saw the door, and the guard in front of it. His heart sank even before the guard began to turn his way.
The man in front of the door was his brother.
Callum ducked back around the corner, hastily trying to formulate another plan. But it was too late—his brother had already seen him. “Callum?”
Callum stayed silent. It didn’t make a difference. Alec’s footsteps were already heading his way. A second later, he caught up with Callum, grabbing him lightly by the arm.
Callum pulled away. Alec grabbed him again, tighter this time. The first time had felt almost like a friendly gesture; this time made it clear whose side Alec was on.
“What are you doing down here?” It was all Callum could think to ask. “He only assigned me to guard her because he wanted to show me my place. He thought I should be humiliated to be given a job that was so far beneath me. What is he punishing you for?”
“I’m not being punished. He asked me to watch her because he wasn’t sure who he could trust, after what you did. He didn’t want someone else to get any noble ideas into their head.”
And Alec had been the person he could trust not to save a child. The thought made Callum sick inside.
“But I should be the one asking that question,” said Alec. “What are you doing here, Callum? What have you done?”
Alec sounded disappointed in him. Once, that would have made him feel ashamed. Now all he felt was anger. “What are you doing?” he demanded. “A kid is screaming in there, and you’re just standing here.”
A flicker of something—doubt? guilt?—passed across his brother’s face. “I’m doing what I have to do,” he said, more harshly than necessary. “The way you didn’t. You know I love you, little brother, but you’ve made a major mess here. If you hadn’t done what you did, she would be long gone by now, and none of us would have to think about this anymore.”
“Until the next kid showed up down here. You know our father—if this worked out for him, do you really think he’d stop with her? He’s making money from this—he has to be, if he’s willing to take the risk. That means more money for the Syndicate, and more attention from the higher-ups. In what universe would he turn away from that chance?”
Another hesitant look crossed his brother’s features. But in the next instant, he looked like himself again. No, he looked like a stranger—not the big brother who had always looked out for Callum, but someone who could listen to a child’s screams and not respond.
“I’ll try to make sure he only sends you away,” said Alec. “That’s all I can do.”
Callum shook his head. “That’s not all you can do, and you know it. You could walk her out of here right now, and no one would bat an eye. Everyone here trusts you. You can use that.”
Alec hesitated. He glanced at the door. Callum held his breath.
Then Alec tightened his grip on Callum’s arm. “Let’s go,” he said. “Before you can make things any worse for yourself.” He led Callum away from Leila, and back toward his prison.