most of our family.
“I need to get out of here,” Clete whispered from in back of me. “I can’t breathe.”
There were three more striped rectangles of light ahead of me. We’d be turning around soon. Suddenly I felt a whoosh, and air started flowing strongly past us. The next few feet showed me why—there was a giant fan on my right, so powerful that I couldn’t help leaning toward it as I crawled past.
“Careful,” I told Clete, who was gulping mouthfuls of fresh air.
I crawled past a vent, scouring the room for any sign of the kids. Nothing. The closer I got to the end of this duct, the more a sense of dread wrapped its clammy cloak around me. We might not ever find them. I’d blown off any feelings I had about losing them, but now those feelings seemed bigger than me, bigger than Clete, bigger than this whole building.
We might not ever find them. They might be gone forever.
“No, no, no, no!” I froze as the piercing scream echoed through the duct, filling my ears.
“That’s Calypso!” I told Clete and scrambled toward the sound.
They were in the second-to-last room. I’d been moments away from leaving them behind.
Peering through the vent, I saw that Calypso was strapped down to a hospital bed, like a troublesome prisoner. Which I guess she was.
“Argh!” The animal-like roar came from Moke. Looking through the vent at an angle, I saw that Moke had grabbed the thick bars on the one window and was shaking them, trying to break them or pull them out. When he couldn’t, he just kept yanking on them and shouting.
And Rain? I had to lie flat on my stomach to see her. She was curled up in a ball beneath Calypso’s hospital bed, so still I couldn’t tell if she was alive. Calypso screamed again, Moke roared again, and I waited wide-eyed for guards or doctors to come running. But they didn’t.
“They’ve gone crazy,” Clete said, not bothering to lower his voice. “And I think Rain’s dead.”
Those were the exact same thoughts I was having, but I didn’t want to admit it, not even to Clete.
“We have to try,” I said, and started kicking at the air vent. It was screwed in from the room side and there was no way for me to get it out neatly.
“I’ll do that,” Clete said, and I gave way. It would take his mind off his fear.
At the sound of the first kick, Calypso turned to look, her face red and wet with tears. The only thing she could move was her head, and no doubt she was seeing dust falling and plaster chipping.
“Rats!” she said. “There’s rats in here!”
“Rats?” said Moke and let go of the window bars. Coming closer to the wall, he peered upward.
“Moke!” I called over the sound of Clete kicking. “It’s us, we’re here!”
There was a noise of breaking plaster and creaking metal, and the vent fell out into the room, leaving a space about two-thirds of a meter wide and a third of a meter tall.
I put my head out, checking what I was about to jump into. “Moke! We’ve been looking all over for you guys!”
I couldn’t wait for them to meet the Flock, see the expressions on the gang’s faces when they saw adults like me, with wings.
“Can you get Calypso free?” I asked, pulling my head in and sticking my feet out.
I lowered myself carefully, glad the ceilings weren’t higher. With one last little jump, I was in the room and trying to hug Moke.
He pulled back and looked at me blankly. “Who are you?” he said. “What’s wrong with your face?”
I couldn’t believe he was joking around. I rushed to Calypso’s bed and started undoing the straps around her arms. “Hey, sweetie,” I said gently. The pupils in her blue eyes were so wide I could hardly see the color of her irises. I checked her neck, beneath her wild red hair. It was there, the tiny, blinking green sensor.
Like Moke, she looked at me with zero recognition. “There, one hand free,” I said, and no sooner was it free than it shot out and grabbed my shirt.
“Got any dope?” Calypso asked, her voice ragged and raw.
CHAPTER 54
I unhooked Calypso’s fingers from my shirt.
“Yeah, sure,” I said miserably. “Up in that duct. You just need to climb up there to get it.” I managed to free her other hand and she clapped them together to get feeling back, then rubbed her