together, and a fissure opens in my heart. A few seconds later, though, not a trace of sorrow remains. “Go, hatchie. Fly this coop for both of us.”
She backs away from the bars. I tuck the leaf into the pocket of my jumpsuit, my limbs solid with regret, and trail after Logan. I feel like a carbonated bottle, filled to bursting. A single flick is all it will take to make me pop.
But then we reach the end of the hallway, and the entry stands before us, as imposing as ever. Inside the glass-walled room, Burly Whiskers slumps over his desk, bear-like snores shaking his shoulders.
The pressure leaks away. I can’t feel badly about Sully. I don’t have time.
I turn to Logan. This is where he needs to work his magic. “Let me guess. You’ve got the numbered code and have found a way to bypass the fingerprint, retina, and blood scans.”
“Afraid not. They change those codes on a daily basis, and to get those scans, we’d have to move three hundred pounds of unconscious guard.” He grimaces. “Not happening.”
“What then?”
In response, he opens the door across from the guard’s station, the mysterious one that was always closed. The room where they made Beks shoot and kill a man.
We walk inside, and it’s just a room. Four walls and a simple interrogation table. I don’t know what I expected. Blood stains on the floor, the stink of a rotting corpse. Something to reflect the nightmares that took place here. Apparently evil can be washed out with disinfectant and a bottle of air freshener. Nothing remains but a cold, sterile canvas.
Logan crosses the floor and taps twice on the back wall. A panel slides away, revealing a locked glass cabinet chock-full of equipment. Everything we could possibly need to break out of jail. Tasers. Firearms. Cutters.
I swallow hard. This is his plan? Knees to the groin notwithstanding, I’m not much of a fighter. “Um, Logan? You should know my combat skills are a bit…marginal.”
His brow furrows in concentration. “How’d you do in the Self-Defense track?”
“I took the basic core and then opted out. Too busy learning how to cook manually.” I cringe. My former dream seems frivolous compared to the practical life skills I could’ve been learning. “But if your Meal Assembler ever breaks down, I’m your girl.”
He smiles as though I’m a live comedian, and I want to kick myself. I’m your girl? What possessed me to say that?
“We’re not battling our way out,” he says. “This place is like a fortress. We wouldn’t get two feet.”
I scan the weapons in the locked case, stopping on an electronic pulser with more buttons than I have fingers. “Then why are we here?”
“It’s not what’s in the cabinet, but what’s under it.”
The cabinet hangs a foot above the floor. Underneath, I see the same concrete blocks that make up the walls of my cell.
Logan gets on his hands and knees and backs into the space. He inches backward until his body disappears into the concrete. One moment, he’s there. The next, he’s gone. Talk about being swallowed whole.
“Logan?” I blink. “I think I’m hallucinating again. I just saw you disappear.”
His head pops out of the wall, as though he’s a taxidermic animal. “You’re not hallucinating. The wall’s not really there. It’s a holographic projection.”
I crouch down. The concrete looks so real, as solid as any wall.
His head disappears again. “Come on, Callie. There’s an air shaft back here that will lead us to freedom. What are you waiting for?”
Nothing. There’s nothing for me here but a mad scientist who wants to experiment on my brain and a messed-up agency who will make me kill my sister.
I take a deep breath and back out the same way Logan did, straight through the concrete.
15
I expect my feet to bump into solid rock, but they move past the floor and dangle in midair.
“Slowly.” Logan’s voice comes from underneath me. “There’s a ladder. Swing your legs toward the wall and get your feet on a rung. I’ll catch you if you fall, I promise.”
Great. How far is the ground below us?
I scrabble for, and then find, the ladder. I ease myself down, one rung at a time, until my entire body is in the shaft.
I look down. I can’t see a thing. This shaft could go on forever. If I slip, I’ll hurtle through the air—but probably not forever.
My heart pounds. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. My heartbeat thunders in my ears, drowning out the