Illuminate (41 page)

When I got back to the lobby, I spotted Lance running toward me. He slowed to a walk as he got closer. We met near the front desk.

“Was that you? Is everything okay?”

“Whaddya mean?”

“Yelling?”

“You heard that?”

“I think everyone did.”

I was about to open my mouth to respond, but he cut me off. “Look, there’s no cereal.”

“What?”

“The cereal, it’s all gone, every box in the pantry, even the ones they keep in those bulk shipments—”

“Back in that closet off of the walk-in freezer?”

“Yeah.”

“How is that possible?”

“I don’t know. I just know there’s more home-cooked meals left for us in the fridge and I’m not touching that stuff.”

“Good, we can’t. Who knows what they might be putting in there.”

“But I’m ravenous. I mean, brink of starvation.”

“I have a couple Power Bars and I have an idea,” I said, walking back toward the elevator as he followed me. “Get your coat, we’ll make a break for it.”

What’s open around here, this time of night, besides the restaurants in the hotel?”

I led us around the deserted, desolate block—the neighborhood really cleared out at night, and I couldn’t tell if it felt particularly creepy because of the things we’d started to understand about the Lexington or if it really just was a sketchy area. What little light there was illuminated the cold clouds our breath made. My bare legs went entirely numb. Eventually, after making almost a full loop, I found that dive bar I’d seen from the tunnels below the hotel.

The warm air inside heated our faces instantly as smoke billowed from every corner of the place, from the pool tables in the back to the bar up front. There were baskets of shelled peanuts on every table. I could have eaten thousands of them. But we hadn’t even attempted to sit down at one of the sticky, beer-sloshed tables yet when a bald, middle-age bartender with a jiggling beer gut stopped us for ID, holding out his hand and shaking his fingers with an air of impatience.

“Could we just get something to eat?” I asked, trying to channel Aurelia by smiling in a way that might help our cause.

“Not if you’re not twenty-one,” he said.

“C’mon, we look twenty-one,” Lance tried.

“You don’t even look eighteen,” the man countered.

“We’re starving,” Lance said.

“And surprisingly well paid,” I added.

“Sorry. Move it along. Let’s go.”

We pleaded a little while longer, unsuccessfully, and finally gave up. I was getting that feeling again, my blood starting to bubble up, until I thought it might burst every capillary; I felt like I just might have the power to punch out a window or something. I was angry now, angry
again,
and I was sick of having to fight for everything: for food that wouldn’t potentially poison me; for time with my best friend; for my life. We went back around the corner to the hotel, heads heavy with disappointment, stomachs painfully empty. I dug out a Power Bar for each of us. Lance took a seat on my bed and ripped open the wrapper, devouring the bar.

“You’re so smart to have snacks. Why didn’t I ever think to have snacks?”

“Probably because you thought we’d have access to food that wasn’t going to cause us physical harm.”

“Maybe so.”

I took a bite of my own Power Bar and kicked off my shoes, tucking them in the closet and then stopped, thinking. “Get out of the uniform—”

“I’m sorry?” he asked, shocked and confused. He seemed to think I was flirting with him.

“No, go change into something comfortable and come back.”

“What for?” He got up and went to the door.

“We’re going on a snack run.”

When he returned—in jeans and a sweatshirt—I had changed into a version of the same thing and I had the flashlight in my hand, my empty backpack on my back, and the panel in the floor of the closet already open. I had folded up the ladder and leaned it against the wall for easier access. Lance had his coat with him. I took it from his hands and tossed it on my bed.

“You don’t need this.”

“You still have this in here?” He put a hand on the ladder.

“We’ll get to that later. Here’s something I left out earlier today: remember how all those Chicago books talked about tunnels during Prohibition?”

“Sure.” He shrugged. I opened the closet door wide and flicked my head toward it. He walked over and peered down then looked at me and said, “Seriously?” I nodded. He nodded back, impressed.

I warned him to watch his grip and footing, since it was easy to slip, and to take his time and then, together, we made our way down with that lone flashlight guiding us. I would have to get another of those. I led him down my usual path, pointing out the turn that would have led to the Vault.

“I have a secret too,” he said then, a little nervous.

“Oh?”

“I know that one—behind the fire wall, right?” he asked. I couldn’t disguise my surprise; my feet even stopped walking for a moment to look at him and consider this. “I found it when I was doing some work for Lucian one day, but I didn’t get very far and had to go back. We’re not the only ones who know about this. You know the Outfit—”

“Yeah, I know.”

“We should just watch it, is all.” He looked nervous now, recalling whatever had gone on when he was down here last.

“Did they see you then?”

“No, I ran, just booked it. You?”

“I hid.”

“Bold choice,” he said, with respect.

“Only choice,” I said, trying not to let on just how terrified I had been.

“Well, for the record, if it happens tonight, I’m running.”

“It was right around here actually.” I pointed as we approached that crumbling room.

“Me too. What’s the deal in there?” We both looked through the exposed wall beams.

“I’ll tell you later, so you don’t start running before we feed you.”

“Good call.”

We walked along together through the warm, musty passages. I could see Lance studying our surroundings, trying to figure out where we were in relation to the buildings on the block. He rolled up his sleeves and then unzipped his hooded sweatshirt and took it off altogether. He had his new cuff on his wrist—it looked nice, like it belonged there, even though I wouldn’t have guessed he would have been the kind of guy to wear something so rock ’n’ roll.

I shed my sweatshirt too—it was particularly warm down here today. We heard the first strains of very faint music as we reached that doorway into the pantry. We listened first, facing each other with our ears against that rotating panel that would be the way in, just in case we could hear any signs of rustling inside. We exchanged looks that said
It’s a go,
and I pushed slowly through the creaky, nearly stuck doorway, Lance following.

Footsteps stomped above and the roar and glass clinking of the bar came to life at the top of that staircase.

Lance pointed. “So that’s the place? Where we just were?”

“That’s right. Let’s make them sorry they didn’t let us in. Stock up.”

The shelves lining the space were piled high, and since I hadn’t fully investigated last time, I was pleasantly surprised—there was more here than I would have guessed. the majority of nourishment did, naturally, come in alcohol form, and the general nutritional value of everything else wasn’t much higher than that, but Lance and I moved through, filling up our arms with chips and jars of salsa and packs of pita bread. It wasn’t the fanciest place in town and they seemed to have a small menu limited to greasy staples, most of which needed to be microwaved. the freezer was chock-full of bulk quantities of mozzarella sticks, onion rings, fries, but we didn’t see any sort of appliance for heating these things. Still, the fridge held a few minor treasures and we took a tub of hummus, a block of cheddar cheese, and some Diet coke. We would make do. We debated heartily over whether to leave some cash behind in exchange for what we took, and though we were irked at having been denied entry upstairs, we decided we could use the good karma so Lance made a small donation—wedging ten dollars under a bag of chips—just to be nice.

We wanted to head back up with our contraband, but we were too famished. We decided we needed a snack before facing that climb, so we set up a picnic on the outer banks of that dark hallway, in a spot where we could still catch the last of the light from the grand concourse of the tunnel. We ate frantically, silently for several minutes, but once we began to feel sated, we slowed our pace enough to talk again. Now that I had finally started to tell someone what was going on here, I couldn’t stop. I wanted to unload more secrets every opportunity I had. It freed me to be able to share all of this with someone. I felt less lonely and less scared. So, I told Lance of the next place he needed to see, the passageway up to Aurelia’s office. I told him about the induction I’d witnessed perched up on that catwalk. After I’d been talking for what felt like ages, he had to interrupt me midsentence,

“Before you go on, I’m curious. You asked me earlier why I trust what you’re telling me. But why do you trust me?”

I thought back to earlier in the day, to Neil’s death, to Dante’s distance. But it hadn’t been desperation that had gotten me to open up to him; there was more. I tried to put it into words. “I guess because I feel like we’re alike.”

“You just plagiarized my reason. That’s the best you can do?”

“I can’t describe it, it’s just an instinct. And I generally trust those. When I don’t is when I get into trouble.” Lucian’s face flashed across my mind.

“You just think I’m not smooth enough to be a double agent, right?”

“Not necess—”

“Because you’re right, I’d be terrible.”

“Smoothness is overrated—even if it takes a little while to fully realize that sometimes.” We both laughed.

When we finished eating, we packed our leftovers and our emptied containers and discarded chip bags into my backpack to bring back upstairs—the last thing we needed was someone, or a pack of rats, to find this and make it even less pleasant to come down here. I had promised to show Lance one more thing before we climbed back up and I took him there now.

Together we pulled back the velvet covering over the photos.

“Whoa,” he gasped, taking them all in. And that was all he could manage. We pawed through looking for his. When I came across Lucian’s, I noticed that he looked slightly less gnarled and decayed than last time. His eyes had been restored to their gray-blue; you could tell it was him and not some horrific anonymous burned corpse. I kept looking through others, until Lance piped up, finding his and kneeling down before it, studying it.

“I held up okay,” he said to it.

But I barely heard him. I located Dante’s portrait and my heart stopped for just a moment. I leaned in closer to be sure and held out a hand to touch the new impurities that had crept onto his features. It sent a chill running through me. His smile dipped down a bit at the corners now and his eyes had dimmed—you would have to know him as well as I did to detect that. Much more noticeable, however, were those few fiery pockmarks that had surfaced; that was the way it had started with Aurelia’s photo when it had turned.

“We’ve got to do something about Dante,” I said, still staring at the picture. My voice came out flat, drained of all life. Lance got up and came over to look, standing just behind me. “They’re getting to him. It’s starting.”

“We will. I promise,” he said, his voice heavy, like mine, with concern, processing all of it.

We covered them all again and quietly, slowly made our way back up to my room. We made a plan to meet again tomorrow night like this so that I could acquaint him with the winding passageways up above my closet.

“Night,” he said, as he was leaving my room. He rubbed at his eyes, underneath his glasses, weary after our long day. I looked at that scar. We were so much alike—I wondered about that now. “We’ll figure all this out.” He sighed. I just nodded.

The book was on my pillow when I got into bed, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered reading it at all. My entire body ached for rest. I hadn’t even fully understood how I had made it back up that ladder from the tunnels. It had to have been the combined force of having finally eaten something and having Lance there. It was just a relief to not be alone.

I had changed into my scrubs, lain down in bed, and placed it next to me, propping it up with one tired hand. I flipped through and found the page with today’s date and new words:

You are to be commended for your fire today, for your aggressiveness, and for your fearlessness in the face of horror. Don‘t be afraid of your rage. It is a safer feeling than that of fear right now; it is a greater motivator. But you would do even better to convert fear to shrewd, calculated action—that will serve you best of all. To be daring is good, but you need to be stealthy now as well. You need to filter all emotion down to an essence that can be tucked away, undetectable by others.

I got a shiver at that, this power I was supposed to have but just didn’t feel. But it went on:

You must maintain the general illusion that you know nothing of what is going on there and that you are oblivious to anything and everything that seems even the least bit out of the ordinary. To those watching you, you should appear to work hard, take orders, and complete assignments with your usual care and quality. Secretly, you will continue your physical training with vigor and your information gathering with a sharp eye. When the time is right, you will assume a role of action, no longer concerned with maintaining appearances. You will know when that time has come and you will rise to battle and aim to conquer.

I turned the page and the writing got larger, displaying a new urgency.

You have reached a turning point in your evolution. You cannot go back, which is to say, most simply, that you cannot escape. Your duties and responsibilities would only follow you now, but along with them comes the opportunity for greatness in your ascension. I tell you this now as I deliver a harsh fact, but one you are entitled to know and must guard with supreme secrecy: