He stood and sensed a room around him, though he couldn’t see it. His fingers explored the pain on his stomach. Wetness there, a gash three inches long between his sternum and belly button. Not
“Hand me the flashlight.”
Light bloomed again, and he wielded it like a sword, cutting bright swaths across the room. He was in one of the lower wet labs. Brown liter bottles of hydrochloric acid, xylenes, and acetone sat on the shelving above the long, black, chemical-resistant countertop. A periodic table of elements hung on the wall above two sinks. A trio of centrifuges squatted near the corner. The door to the hall was closed.
He set the flashlight down on the floor and leaned out the window.
“Your turn.”
“What happened to your stomach?”
“Don’t put your weight on the window frame. I’ll pull you through.”
“Are you all right? It’s bleeding.”
“I’m fine. C’mon, I’ll lift you. I’ll try not to get any blood on you.”
“A little late to be worrying about exchanging body fluids now, isn’t it?”
She extended her arms toward him, and he reached past her open hands to her forearms. He gripped her tightly and lifted her off her feet, pulling slowly. When her head was through, he looped one of her arms over his shoulder and placed his hand on her stomach, lifting and guiding her over the glass. Only her shins dragged across the window frame, and without the weight required to gouge through the thick fabric of her slacks. He set her on her feet.
“Thanks,” she said.
He picked up the flashlight and walked to the door. The knob turned with a squeak, and he clicked the flashlight off, opening the door just wide enough to stick his head through. He felt like a burglar. The hall was dark in both directions. He listened. Silence. Accepting that his senses were practically worthless under the present circumstances, he risked the flashlight again, pointing it down the hall. Nothing moved. They were alone.
He stepped into the corridor, leading Vidonia. He’d walked these halls a thousand times in his years as program head. He knew them like the halls of his own house. But now, as they jogged behind the bouncing beam of the flashlight, Silas was struck by the overpowering unfamiliarity of it all. Darkness changed everything.
They ran on their toes, almost soundless.
They slowed as they neared a corner. They were almost at the lobby now. He eased his eyes around the hard edge—only darkness. He slashed the light across the open expanse and chairs jumped out at him, coffee tables, two enormous potted plants. Large ceiling fans sat idle in the rafters. The hall on the opposite side stood vacant. He motioned to her. They crossed the lobby, walking fast.
“If this comes out okay,” he whispered, “we’re heading to an island.”
“Deal,” she said. Her breathing came louder now, faster. She was in good shape but didn’t have a runner’s sleek build. She had to work harder for the distance.
“I mean it,” he said. “Someplace warm and sunny, where the mail takes two weeks to reach you.”
“Let’s aim for three weeks.”
The light bounced, throwing strange shadows. When they arrived at the landing, Silas took three stairs in a single stride. A hard right turn, and they were almost there.
“They wouldn’t have cleaned out the cage, would they?” Vidonia asked.
“Not without my direction,” Silas said.
He slowed the last fifteen steps, and then they were at the iron bars, breathing.
For a bad moment, he thought it was locked. And without electricity, he knew it would stay locked. But when he shined the light, he saw that only the mechanical bolts were thrown. The third lock had never been engaged after the gladiator was placed into transport. A stroke of blind luck. Silas lifted the double latch, and the door swung inward.
He entered the enclosure, wading into the thick straw, swinging the flashlight like a scythe.
He pointed. “That’s the blood I was talking about. I saw it just as the gladiator was being put into transport.”
Vidonia bent, picking up the loose tangle of straw glued together in red. She pulled the clot apart. “It’s definitely blood, and something else.”
“What kind of something else?”
“I’m not sure. Dried secretions of some sort.”
Silas nodded.
They waded through the arc of light, bent, looking closely into the tumble of shoots and shadows. Even in good lighting, Silas hadn’t been able to find anything. The monocular stab of illumination that Silas now carried was not even within range of what could be considered good lighting. What chance did they have now?
Minutes passed. Silas lifted the heavy wooden logs one by one, carefully checking beneath. They double- checked the piles in the corners. Half an hour later, when Silas recognized that they were going over territory for the second time, he stopped.
“There’s nothing here,” he said.
She straightened, looking at him. “There’s got to be.”
“There isn’t.”
“There’s no place else it could be?”
“No. The gladiator was confined to this room for weeks before the competition. This is where the blood is. Whatever we’re looking for should be here. And it’s just not.”
Silas spun the flashlight around, climbing the wall, raking across the heat vents and bars, and upward to the ceiling. Moonlight filtered in through the electrified wire meshing high above—well, it wasn’t so electrified at the moment. The cool night air was pouring through the gap in the ceiling, and the red wetness that clung to his T-shirt chilled him to the bone. He hunched his shoulders, wishing for a sweater.
The flashlight lanced across the enclosure to the wall again, searching, and finally came to rest on the heat vent.
The grating didn’t look quite right.
Ever so slightly, it tilted to the left.
“I think I found something,” Silas said.
He bounded across the room, plowing the straw into fat horizontal bands around each leg. He had to push the pile to the side with his hands when he got close to the wall. The vent was a dark rectangle just above eye level, a foot tall by two feet wide, covered by a thick steel grating screwed into the wall. Silas reached up, and the grating came away in his hand. The screws were bent, the threads stripped smooth and useless. He tossed it to the hay and stood on tiptoes, shining the light inside. For the first time in his adult life, he wished he was taller. He could see the top of the duct, gray and metallic, for some distance into the wall, but the bottom was below his line of sight.
Silas looked around for something to stand on. The logs were on the far side of the enclosure. It was one thing to roll them aside; it was quite another to pick up a thirty-foot cylinder of wood and haul it twenty-five feet through a lake of straw.
He put the flashlight on the floor, sending light skidding up the wall.
“Could I borrow you for a second?” Silas said.
Vidonia moved to him, and he caught her under the arms, lifting her. She craned her neck.
“I can’t see anything.”
“There’s nothing there?”
“No, the light.”
“Oh.” Silas set her back to the floor, and she picked up the flashlight. He lifted again.
“Silas?”
“Yeah.”
“I see it.”
“You’re sure.”
“Definitely.”
“What does it look like?”
