The Secret Sea (23 page)

Dr. Bookman passed a hand over his face. “Oh, my. You're right—we can't go to the police, then. A girl, on the loose with two boys? Do you have any idea what they'll do to her, how they'll punish her?”

It seemed like a rhetorical question, but Khalid had exactly no idea. He couldn't imagine how or why someone would punish Moira for doing precisely what she'd been doing as long as he could remember: hanging out with her friends.

“If the police don't get her, the press gangs—”

“Press gangs?”

Dr. Bookman tilted his head and regarded him quizzically. “Yes. Press gangs. Such as the Dutchmen, the Alphabet Boys, the Chelseas…”

“I don't get it. What do they do?”

“Khalid—it's Khalid, right?—where on earth are you
from
?”

North Florida
, he wanted to say. A lie would be the easiest way to deflect the conversation, and Khalid's first instinct when cornered by an adult was to, well, to embellish the truth with so much finery and gilt that it was impossible to discern.

But now, he sensed, was neither the time nor the place for his usual tale-telling. And Dr. Bookman was not the man for it.
ALL MAY ENTER
, the sign had said.

Khalid took a deep breath. And he told Dr. Bookman everything.

“Zak,” he began, “was having these dreams…”

*   *   *

Moira wondered how long she'd drifted away from her body. When her vision cleared and the rush of sound returned, she felt as though she'd been gone for hours, but the women around her were still cowering in the corner, and she didn't think even
these
women would stay in one place like that for too long.

Between her hands was the Dutchman's head, now resting on the floor. His face was streaked with blood and tears, and there was a small puddle of blood on the floor as well. Moira couldn't tell whether he was breathing and realized she didn't care. Dead or unconscious, he wouldn't be able to stop her now.

She went through his pockets quickly, discovering some small sheets of a sturdy paper that seemed to be money. She stuffed it all into her own pockets after discarding her now-broken weapons, then added a set of keys that he'd had hooked to his belt loop.

With a deep, shuddery breath, she stood. Wobbled for a moment. The adrenaline rush was wearing off, and the world became thick around her. If she'd had anything in her stomach, she might have thrown up.

The women in the cage had gone quiet now. One of them whispered, “What have you done?”

Moira coughed. Her mouth tasted like hot metal. She didn't bother answering as she headed to the open cage door.

“They'll lobotomize you,” someone said. “They won't let you get away with this.”

Moira stepped outside the cage and put her hand between her breasts, feeling the rapid and rampant pace of her heart. She took a deep breath to calm herself and then turned to look through the open door at the women inside. They huddled together, though they had nothing to fear from Moira. She wanted to order them to come with her, to smuggle them to safety, but she knew her first priority had to be rescuing herself and then Zak. Both tasks would be impossible with a gaggle trailing behind her.

But she had to do
something
.

“This door is open,” she said, “and it will stay open until they send someone else. You have a choice to make. I won't make it for you. But if you stay in there, you deserve whatever happens to you.”

“And you deserve whatever you get out there,” one of them spit back with a ferocity that, however misplaced, pleased Moira. At least the woman showed some fire. Misdirected, but present.

“I deserve whatever I can
take
,” Moira corrected her, and, turning her back to them, opened the metal outer door.

 

FORTY-ONE

Zak could walk no farther. Everything in him had been wrung out, drained. His mind willed his body to move, to push on, but no matter how forcefully he commanded his limbs to obey, they obstinately refused.

He collapsed at the foot of the stairs to what looked like a brownstone. Did they even call them brownstones in Manhattan? In this universe? He didn't know, and he didn't know why he was wasting the last few seconds of his life pondering this, except that his mind was whirling out of control, thoughts blowing by in a hurricanelike wind. Each one he tried to grasp fled from his fingers.

His heart was like a lawn mower that almost, but not quite, caught with each jerk of the cord.

I'm sorry, Tommy. I wasn't strong enough.

I'm so sorry.

 

FORTY-TWO

The hallway immediately outside the cage room was dank, ill lit, and narrow. Pipes ran overhead, dripping condensation at irregular intervals. For a moment it felt like home to Moira, like any random basement in any random building in any borough of New York City, but then she saw this spray-painted on the door she'd closed behind her:

♀

It was a Greek symbol, she knew. For woman. It was supposed to look like a hand mirror, to represent the vanity of women, she guessed. Offensive enough in her world, but in this one, it was like a warning sigil for plague.

Get ready, boys
, she thought.
Because a snapping-angry
frau
is headed your way
.

Tough thoughts, but she knew that getting out of the cage had been the easy part. She had no idea where she was or how many Dutchmen she would have to fight through or evade on her way to freedom.

Freedom.
It was a tenuous word now, a tenuous concept. For a woman, there was no freedom here. Even if she made it out of the building, she would still be … What had Sentius Salazar said? Oh, right—an uncompanioned girl. Without a chaperone or a shepherd to “guide” her, she would immediately be recognized as … as what? A runaway? An escapee? A criminal? Judging by the reactions of Officer Cheong and the gondolier, all three were likely.

A quiver overcame her, rattling her so fiercely for a moment that she thought she'd caught the flu. But it was just a momentary shake of adrenaline, and she rode it out. There was too much of import happening for her to be distracted by something so small.

With her hands outstretched, she could touch the rough cinder block on either side as she crept down the hallway, resisting the natural impulse to run, to put as much distance between her and the cage and the possibly dead Dutchman.
Slow and steady
, she told herself.
Like the tortoise.

The end of the hallway disappeared into murk. Somewhere far, far down in that direction, she made out a glowing green
X
, hovering up near the ceiling. Part of a broken exit sign, maybe?

Exit
sounded good to her. It sounded great. She was surprised to find tears gathering in her eyes at the mere thought of it. The Dutchmen, she realized, hadn't intended on hurting her, back in the alley. She was more valuable to them whole. But now that she'd attacked one of their own …

No.
She shook her head to fling the thought away from her. She had to stay focused.

She'd come ten or twelve feet down the hallway. There was a door to her left and another to her right. No signage to indicate what might lie behind either one. She frowned. It made more sense to head to the exit, right?

Just then, an echoing, overlapping series of thumps jarred her roughly back to the present. It sounded like—

Feet. Someone walking down a … a stairwell.

The footfalls were right on top of her. One of the doors. One of the doors
right here
led to a stairwell. Moira groaned. From the sound of the footsteps, she wouldn't be able to make it down to the exit before they were on top of her. She listened carefully, trying to parse the echoes. It seemed as though the stairs were to her left. So without giving herself a moment for a second thought or doubt, she wrenched open the right-hand door and darted inside.

*   *   *

Fortunately, the right-hand door led to a smallish room, walled with the same cinder block as the hallway. It had probably been a janitor's closet at some point, but now it was crammed with an overflow of rickety shelves and boxes, as well as an old metal desk. On the desk rested a small, thin flask, filled with some kind of thick fluid that lit the room with a soft, pleasant glow.

Moira's heart pounded, and she thought of Zak.
Please let him still be alive. Please, please, please.

From out in the hallway, the door opposite her banged open. Moira jabbed at the button set into the doorknob. A moment later, the knob rattled from the other side.

“Did you actually remember to lock it?” came a voice. She recognized it. Jan. The leader.

“Of course,” said someone else in a tone of self-surprise. Then, with a note of defensiveness: “I always remember.”

“Yeah, sure.” She heard a sigh and a jingle of keys. “Which one is it?” asked Jan.

Moira allowed herself a three-count of panic—
one, two, three!
she counted in her head—and then scoured the room for a hiding place. Under the desk seemed most obvious, but also
too
obvious. Anyone who came in would look under there. She opted for a corner of the room crowded with boxes. As the key ring on the other side of the door jangled, she pushed one box aside, slipped into the corner, and then—as the doorknob turned—tugged the box back into place. Something tangled around her foot, and she kicked at it for a moment before realizing it was just an old pair of coveralls.

Through a crack between two boxes, she could peer out into the room as the door opened. There was Jan and another Dutchman, this one wearing the same outfit as all the others. Her breath sounded loud and harsh in her ears; she thought of holding her breath, but that wouldn't last long. She settled for breathing through her mouth, which seemed both slower and quieter.

“Damn,” the new person said, and whistled. “It's still lit up. How long does this stuff last?”

“Not sure,” Jan said. “It's a lot dimmer than it was before. The stuff can be recharged.”

They'd closed the door and crossed to the desk by now. The newcomer had picked up the flask, studying it. The light and shadows in the room jittered and leaped with every motion as the liquid oozed around the parameters of the flask.

“Snap it,” Jan said. “No one really groks the snapping stuff. Not really. Saw something on the telly 'bout how it's all around us, bein' used in all kinds of ways, but we all just take it for granted. Like, the stuff was invented fifty years ago, but we still don't really know how it works.”

“Yeah? So?”

“You hearin' me? Not even the wild scientists
really
get it. That's why it's so regulated. You can't just buy it on the market. It's gotta be tubed and tuned and channeled. They program it when it leaves the refinery so you can't misuse it. They make it less pure or something. I didn't get all that.”

“Right. So why bother stealing it before they recharge it? I don't get that part.”

Jan snorted. “Of course not. I haven't explained it to you yet. But I need to bring you up to speed. Here. Look.”

They gathered at the desk. Jan opened a drawer and produced what looked like a folded sheet of paper, but when he unfolded it on the desk, it lit up like a screen. “This is the schematic of the recycling facility.”

A low whistle from Jan's buddy. “How did you get
that
?”

“A lot of dosh, a lot of aggravation, and a lot of patience. Now shutter and listen: The security on the drained electroleum is almost nil. They keep it over here, in these tanks.”

Electroleum? Moira's heart leaped at the word. That was it! That was the …
stuff
Tommy had told them about. She was looking right at it!

“Who wants drained electroleum?”

“Exactly. Once they recycle it and recharge it, it's valuable, and it goes through all kinds of secure holds, here, here, and here. And then it gets programmed before they ship it out. But before all that, it's just jelly, sitting around.”

“I still don't get why—”

“My guy,” Jan interrupted, “tells me that if we get the drained stuff, he can charge it for us. Raw, charged, unprogrammed electroleum. And it turns out electroleum can be used for more than lighting, if you get my drift.”

Moira watched as the other boy tilted his head, thinking. Then something dawned on him and he grinned, holding up the flask. “You mean this stuff…”

“The one thing they do know: It just absorbs and reflects energy, chap. Handled right, it can be explosive. Can you imagine the looks on the faces of the Alphabet Boys when we come at them with electroleum grenades?”

The other guy hooted. “We'll run everything from Chelsea to midtown! Even the bobbies won't be able to stop us!”

“Well, yeah, that's the idea.” From where he stood and where she hid, Moira could only see Jan's back, but she could tell from his tone of voice that he was grinning and had a wicked gleam in his eye. “Look, I've been keeping this all pretty close, but I need you in on all the details. You have to run the recovery team. You'll come up on the facility in a boat on this side. Me and the rest of the boys come through the superway out to the island and distract security while you chaps drain the nonsecure tanks. See it?”

“Yeah. I see it.”

“It goes easy as a tart,” Jan said. “We suck the tanks dry and we scarper. Half for us, half for the guy who recharges the electroleum. Done.”

“And then we take out the Alphabet Boys.”

“The Alphabet Boys. The Chelseas. All of 'em, chap.” Jan chortled. “We run it all, chap and
frau
, from here to North Park, from Houston to Conflux and back again.”