“That changes nothing!” She sliced a fist through the air, banging it into the bars.
“Can you get out on your own if we leave you here?”
The angel’s expression twisted with defeated fury. She turned her face away from me and glared at the floor of her cage.
At the other end of the hall, the elevator started to rise. With a yelp, the green girl jumped off and ran to hide behind Rali.
He gave her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, you’re safe with us.”
Pretty hilarious, considering under normal circumstances he would’ve told anybody else something along the lines of safety is an illusion. But I didn’t point that out. He looked like he was having too much fun being her wandering sword hero.
“Lads upstairs musta got tired of waiting,” Warcry muttered. He jerked his chin at the disappearing freight car. “What’d’ya wanna do, grav?”
The angel wasn’t going to change her mind. I’d have to figure out what to do about her later. Right then, I had to help the people I could help.
I looked around at the cages lining the high-ceilinged, narrow hall. I didn’t see any locks. There must’ve been some sort of electronic trigger somewhere in the place to open the doors.
All those fighters trapped in their tiny boxes, Transferogates sucking out their Spirit in a constant stream. They’d survived this long, fighting with nothing but their bare hands and feet, taking out deadly creatures and one another, all to make the Contrails a buck. They had to want payback.
“Hey, everybody,” I said, raising my voice so they could all hear me. “If I can get you guys out and cut off your Transferogates, will you help us clear this place of Heavenly Contrails?”
The angel’s eyes flashed with hatred. “Don’t you dare use my scythe for something so—”
A chorus of “Hell yeah!” and “Of course!” drowned the angel out.
I opened my hand and summoned the scythe. “Anybody who wants to fight can, and anybody who doesn’t will probably be safest if they stay at the far end of the hall.” I looked at Rali and Warcry. “Can you guys hold off whoever comes down while I try to open these cages?”
“Sure,” Warcry said, in spite of his bent-up prosthetic. He elbowed Rali. “Easy, ain’t it, big man?”
“If you believe it’s easy, there’s no reason for me to contradict you,” Rali said.
They posted up by the elevator shaft, and I got to work on the cages.
In such a tight space, it was hard to maneuver the scythe and keep it from cutting the occupant. I knew from experience that the scythe would slice right through skin and bone like it wasn’t even there.
The metal screamed like a spoon pressed up against a chunk of dry ice as I worked, but just behind me, I could hear Rali talking to the green girl.
“There’s a gap between the last cages and the wall that you should be able to get into,” he said. “You’ll be safest there.”
She hesitated. “No. I want to fight, too. I don’t know how long I’ve been trapped down here...” She sniffled. “I hate fighting. But I hate what they’re doing more. I don’t want them to do it to anyone else ever again.”
“You want revenge,” Rali said.
“What good does revenge do?” The green girl’s voice was craggy with tears. “What I want is justice and prevention. I want a better world...one without their evil in it.”
The cage door I’d been cutting broke off and dropped just in front of my steel toes. The woman inside climbed out, a tall Ylef covered in battle scars.
Cautiously, I cut through the body of her Transferogate. A wrong move could slice right through her torso. But even with as careful as I was trying to be, the blade nicked her.
I grimaced. “Sorry.”
“Don’t stop now, meat roach.” Her pale purple eyes darted down the hall. “Get as many of us free as you can before that elevator comes back, or your delicate job is going to get a lot harder.”
I nodded, set my jaw, and finished the cut.
The Transferogate’s suction released and the whole thing hung from the Spirit probe embedded in her side. The Ylef ripped the wires and hoses out and let it drop to the floor, revealing a section of much cleaner cinnamon skin and a thin line of blood.
“Remember what I said—hurry.” She nodded at the rest of the cages, then jogged down the hall to join Warcry, Rali, and the green girl waiting for the Contrails.
The mechanism in the elevator shaft rumbled to a halt. The car was up on L1, probably boarding as many Contrails as they could jam inside, like one of those How many people can fit? challenges back on Earth.
I got back to work on the next cage, moving a little faster. This one didn’t take as long to open because the woman inside was small enough to move to the back corner while I sheared through the hinges.
“This isn’t fast enough,” I called down the hall to Rali and Warcry. The freight car was slower than the Heartchamber elevators, but that still wasn’t enough time to release even a handful of the prisoners.
The small woman climbed out of her cage and tapped on her Transferogate. “Get me free of this constant siphon, and I can freeze the hinges along this wall while you cut those on that wall. Then someone with greater strength than I can break through the ones I’ve frozen.”
“I’ll help her,” the scarred Ylef said.
I nodded, trying to work faster. The smaller woman’s Transferogate dropped away, revealing another thin bloody cut from the scythe. The deadline was not helping my accuracy.
The small woman began freezing hinges with her Spirit and the Ylef slammed a golden Ki-reinforced fist through them, smashing the doors off. I made it through one cage door in the time they did five. The fighters they had released clustered around
