near the bottom of the tunnel shimmered like sparkly fishing wire. He inched closer and adjusted the headlamp Bonebreak had given him. It was attached to the upper half of a Mosca mask, and it smelled like death. The light shone on the shimmering wire. Not wire, exactly. It was clearly broken in places, more like a hologram or laser beam catching the chalky air.
It had to be one of the cleaner traps Bonebreak had warned him about. Trip it, and he’d combust in a ball of fire.
Slowly, he eased a leg over the trap, his muscles shaking. If only there were more air to breathe. As it was, he felt so light-headed. Pull yourself together, he ordered himself, easing one hand over the trap, then the other. A bead of sweat rolled off his forehead and fell toward the trap.
He cringed, bracing for an explosion.
But the drip landed a fraction of an inch to the left. Dizzy with relief, he eased his other leg over, and then collapsed against the tunnel wall, breathing hard.
“Try to clean me,” he muttered. “You can clean my ass, is what you can clean.” He dug in his pocket for a shard of chalk and marked the wall on either side of the trap with a cartoon bomb. He shone the headlight to admire his artwork.
Not bad.
After more crawling, and two more cleaner traps that he marked with pictures, he reached a point where the tunnel changed to roughly hewn rock, though the bluelight track continued on unabated. The surface was dusty against his hands. Ahead, the tunnel led past a handful of small metal doors.
“Well, shit. This isn’t right.”
He pulled out Bonebreak’s map but didn’t see anything that indicated little doorways in a row. The map was useless. Bonebreak was probably trying to lead him straight to his death.
A whirring sound made him look over his shoulder. A square package was coming down the tunnel, guided by the bluelight, just high enough off the ground so it wouldn’t trigger any cleaner traps. He knew the Kindred had all kinds of crazy powers, but seeing a floating box hurtling toward him was still too weird to process, until he realized the tunnel was so tight that there wasn’t enough room for the package and for him. He crawled faster, sweeping the headlight left and right to search for any of the nearly invisible traps. He finally reached the indentation for the first small doorway and threw himself into it just as the package hurtled by.
He pressed his back against the door, waiting for the package to pass. Okay, hurtled might have been an exaggeration. The package still hadn’t even passed by yet. FedEx was faster than this.
He settled back against the doorway to wait, and sniffed the thin air. Was that . . . horse shit? And were those . . . voices? Yeah, voices. Coming from behind the door. He pressed his ear against the crack. One voice was masculine and almost familiar. Leon made out a single word.
Zebra.
Zebra? Well, why not. By now he was used to weird shit. At least the voices were speaking English. He sniffed again, and it smelled stronger. He pressed his ear against the door, trying to muffle the sound of his wheezing.
“I’ll put the zebra back in its cell,” the voice said. “Mali needed your help anyway.”
Leon’s hands started shaking. He recognized the voice now. It was Lucky. And Mali must be close too. Mali, the crazy girl with stringy braids and ninja moves who, somehow, though he’d never have imagined it in a billion years, he actually kinda liked. Liked liked. He’d refused to acknowledge it in the cage, but that was what happened when you had weeks with no one to talk to but Mosca: You accepted tough things about yourself, like an undeniable attraction to a weirdo.
He raised a fist to bang on the door, but stopped. The last time he’d seen Lucky and Mali was when he’d abandoned them, unconscious and sopping wet, on a control room floor. There was a strong chance they wouldn’t be thrilled to see him again.
But still. It was Mali.
He raised his fist to knock.
He stopped again.
What if there were Kindred on the other side too? It didn’t seem likely; Kindred didn’t seem the type to hang around manure, zebra or otherwise. Lucky and Mali were probably locked in some jail or fake world behind that door; they probably needed him. He should knock.
But again, he didn’t.
Sweat