A trio of dark figures stood at the mouth of the alley.
They weren’t shadows—I could see that right away. They stood watching us with deliberation and poise, lacking the animal eagerness and focus of the shadow people. They were thick and bulky forms, and their heads were bulbous.
I couldn’t do it. I was spent. One companion unconscious, the other wounded and despairing, and me—I was just me, what could I do against this new breed of monster?
And then my focus snapped into place and I realized they were men, wearing suits and helmets. Protection against the void. I could hear the sounds of their breathing, harsh and artificial. One took a step forward, and his tinny voice came through some filter in his helmet.
“You three, get moving. You’re coming with us.”
They bound my hands behind my back with rough, scratchy rope. Tansy they left unbound after verifying that her right arm truly was useless. Though they tied Oren’s hands as well, they were forced to half-drag him along. At times he seemed to regain some level of consciousness, managing to walk a little, but the few times I saw his eyes open they were staring and vague, unfocused. He didn’t know what was happening.
I hadn’t seen Nix, but I no longer felt it on my shoulder. I hoped the pixie had fled or hidden itself in my pack.
They asked no questions and marched us along in silence. Trina’s words came back to me, what she’d said before the sun had set and everything had changed.
We had assumed they meant the shadow people. But they were shadows themselves. What could be so horrible that even the shadow people feared it?
Our captors led us to a round iron disc in the ground. One of them pulled out something that looked a little like a crowbar and inserted it into a hole in the disc, prying it up and open enough for a man to pass through. The smallest of the three figures dropped down into the blackness below, and then they dropped Oren down afterward. I heard him land with a sickening
The man holding me pushed me to the hole’s edge. “Down you go,” came his tinny voice.
I wished my arms were unbound so I could use them for balance. But one glance at the impassive, reflective surface of the helmet and I knew there was no point in even asking. So I stepped forward and dropped through, striking the ground and rolling as I hit.
We were in some sort of sewer system beneath the city. The close air pressed in, strangling and dank. The other suited men dropped in and closed the hole over our heads. The tiny bit of moonlight vanished, leaving us in darkness more complete than any I’d known before.
Somehow, the suited men knew exactly where they were going, missing every bit of broken stone and exposed pipe as though they could see in the dark. I heard Tansy stumbling and cursing almost as much as I was—her natural grace and coordination were no use when she couldn’t see and was being forced to march along quickly. I couldn’t hear Oren, but had to assume from the dragging sounds behind me that they were still bringing him.
Eventually we stopped, the hand that had been propelling me forward now shifting to grab the collar of my shirt and haul me back. I still couldn’t see anything, but I heard footsteps moving forward, followed by the grating shriek of rusty metal. I heard Tansy give a grunt of pain as one of them brushed past her, jarring her shoulder.
A weight stumbled against me, a familiar smell on the air. I fought the urge to jerk away, instinct warring with what I knew to be true.
“Oren?” I whispered. “Are you awake?”
For long moments, there was only the shriek of metal and the sound of his breathing. Then, voice so hoarse I almost couldn’t understand him: “Lark?”
And then hands were shoving us forward again, into what felt like an even smaller space. The hinges shrieked once more, and a door clanged shut behind us.
A fog descended over my thoughts. Muffling iron surrounded us on all sides, the metal insulating my senses. I was worse than blind. Devoid of every sense, cut off, everything silent and still as death. I gasped, trying to force air into my lungs, and could only breathe the smell of metal, sharp and cold.
Dimly I heard Tansy say something, and then the answering bark of one of the men. A light came on, dazzling my eyes. Our captors stripped off their suits, revealing ordinary people underneath. Their clothes were worn, but nowhere near as ragged as ours—but for the sweat and grime of wearing the suits, they seemed normal. Another door opposite opened and we were shoved through. I couldn’t see right, couldn’t hear. All around was iron, worse than the Iron Wood, worse than my cell in the Institute.
I went where they shoved me, kept my feet only because falling would mean touching the iron beneath me. Even Oren felt like metal when his body brushed against mine—I couldn’t feel the familiar tingle of energy between us, sensing only death and stillness.
After an eternity they shoved us forward and then clanged a barred door behind us. I ricocheted off the back wall of the room. No, not a room. A cage. Bars on all sides. Trapped. I scuttled to its center, as far from the four iron walls as I could. We were all together, Oren sprawled on the ground and Tansy leaning against the side wall, glaring through her one good eye.
A key turned in a lock.
“Wait,” I gasped, as hoarse as if my lungs were on fire. “Who are you? What are you going to do with us?”
Two of our three captors kept walking, but one hung back. I realized it was a woman, now that she’d taken off her suit.
“You’ll stay here until he asks for you. If he decides you die, you die. If he has a use for you, you live.”
“He,” I echoed, starting to shiver as shock settled in. “Who?”
“Prometheus.”
CHAPTER 6
They’d left a light on, just enough for us to see by. It glowed a steady white-gold—
Though my head still rang with the silence of iron, my other senses were beginning to return and try to compensate. I hadn’t realized how much I’d gotten used to being able to feel the magic around me, and how much there was to sense even in a magicless void.
I dropped to my knees where Oren was slumped on the ground, ignoring the way my instincts told me to get as far away from him as possible. “Are you okay?”
He pressed his palms against the stone floor and shoved himself upright. His face was haggard, making him look older. The blue eyes were distant, confused. Though there was no sign of the monster in his gaze, I could still see the ferocity— that belonged to Oren as well. Not just to the beast.
“What’re you doing here, Lark? Why aren’t you—” His gaze swung past the bars, the whites of his eyes showing his panic at being closed in. “Where are we?”
I glanced at Tansy, who was watching us with clenched jaw. She shook her head, and I turned back to Oren. “I don’t know. Underneath the ruins of a city. You were—” I stopped, unable to say it.
Oren swallowed, gazing at my bleeding ear before turning so that he could see Tansy, taking in her injuries as well. “Did I—”“No,” I said quickly, interrupting him. “You saved us.”
He grimaced, brows drawing inward. “That doesn’t sound right,” he muttered, lifting a shaking hand to rub at his eyes.
