But then the shaft leveled off, and soon I was on my stomach, crawling through the hot air of the prison. Sweat beaded at my brow, but I crawled on until I was looking down through a small grate, staring at the same room of monitors I’d seen my last time there.
Then, on one of the screens, I saw him. Preston was lying on the concrete floor of his cell, motionless. And for a second I thought we were too late—that he was injured. Or worse.
But then I realized his feet were tucked beneath his bed. I watched as, slowly, he brought his chest off the floor. His fingers rested lightly behind his ears as he brought his right elbow to his left knee. Down again. Left elbow to right knee. Repeat.
Preston was working out.
Preston wasn’t giving up.
Also, Preston kind of looked like a hottie.
But that wasn’t the most important thing right then.
I craned my head and looked behind me. Macey couldn’t see the screen. She didn’t know what I was looking at, and I didn’t want to risk her seeing Preston and making a sound, getting careless.
Beneath us, a guard sat watching the monitors, completely ignorant of our presence.
“Guard Station A,” a scratchy voice said through a speaker in the room below. The guard reached for a microphone.
“Guard Station A reporting.”
“The interrogation team is here,” the voice said. “We’re ready for the boy.”
I watched the guard push a button. I heard a haunting sound, metal on metal as a door opened. And then, through the vent beneath me, I saw Zach walking down the hall.
His lip was swollen and his hands were bound. He wore the same kind of jumpsuit the ambassador had died in, and his feet were bare. The message was clear: You’re free to try to run away, but you’ll freeze to death before you make it.
The guard beneath me stepped into the hall, and that was all the opening I needed. As quickly and quietly as I could, I lowered myself into the office. There were buttons and switches, the same camera feeds that I’d seen my first time there. I walked through the tiny room, not making a noise. Bex and Macey followed.
I heard Zach’s voice say, “Well, hello. I remember you from this morning. I was hoping we would meet again.”
“Why’s that?” a guard said.
“So I could do this,” Zach told him. I stepped into the hall just in time to see Zach haul back and head-butt the guard, knocking him to the floor.
There was another guard with him, of course. I wondered which of the two men had split Zach’s lip, but it wasn’t the time to ask.
“Why, you—” guard number two started. He pushed Zach hard against the wall and drew his hand back to punch, but the hand never moved forward. The man whirled as if to question why.
“Hello there,” Bex said, and then she slapped him hard across the face. Not a punch. Not a kick. It was an old-fashioned slap, and the man looked almost amused for a moment before the strength slipped out of his limbs and he crumbled to the floor.
The other guard was struggling to his feet, but Macey was already on him, attaching yet another Napotine patch to the back of his neck.
“Is that all?” Bex asked.
“For now,” Zach said, then he looked at me. He smirked. “You’re late.”
I grabbed his hand. “Let’s go.”
I didn’t want to split up. I didn’t want to let him go, but being a spy is at least fifty percent doing unpleasant things, and Zach and I were the only ones who had any kind of home-court advantage.
In sixty seconds the people waiting on Zach would wonder why he hadn’t reached the interrogation rooms, which, if I remembered correctly, were just fifty yards away.
In a minute and a half they’d try—and fail—to get the guards on the radio. And, of course, at any time a patrol could sweep the corridor, a camera or sensor could tell someone that something wasn’t quite right. Time wasn’t on our side, in other words, so neither of us wasted a second arguing. We knew Preston was there, and we knew he was alive, and that was the only thing that any of us allowed to matter.
“Did you see him?” Macey asked Zach.
“No,” Zach said. “But I heard the guards talking. He’s down that way.”