He didn’t take his eyes off her as he snapped his response. “Many.”
“Okay. And the Enemy wants to burn the entire multiverse to ashes. Now, call me crazy, but it sounds like you folks have some serious irreconcilable differences there. The only way I see this working out is if both of you went in with the intention of pulling a double cross at some point. Hey, is that today, do you think? Fleiss, do you think the Network might be deliberately trying to screw this up, to make sure your boss never ever gets all of his power back? I’ve got no proof, but I mean, that’s what I’d do if I was them.”
Neither one answered me, but I could see from their faces that I was landing some direct hits.
“I’m calling Mr. Smith,” Elmer said. Fleiss followed him to the door. He stopped short with his hand on the knob. “What are you doing?”
“Not letting you out of my sight. We will call Smith and my lord, at the same time, and the four of us will get this sorted out together. Just to make certain that there are no further ‘misunderstandings.’”
“What about him?” Elmer asked, nodding my way.
Fleiss spun on her heel and stalked toward me.
“There is one thing we do agree upon,” she told him.
Fleiss lifted one leg and pressed her spiked heel to my chest. Then she gave me a shove. I felt myself teeter back, then fall, wind roaring in my ears as I plummeted into the breeding pit.
“Let the roaches have him,” she said. “They’ll take good care of him until we return.”
16.
The folding chair broke under my back when I hit the bottom of the pit. The cheap metal hinges buckled against my spine and sent a jolt of pain up my tailbone. I sank into a morass of rotting trash like it was a filth-encrusted sponge, embracing my struggling body, threatening to suck me down like quicksand. The stench stole my breath, leaving me gagging; my eyes watered like I’d rubbed them with chopped onions. Up above, out of sight, the chamber door slammed shut.
I wasn’t alone. Soggy, decomposing cardboard shifted. Torn garbage bags rustled. Two feet away, I saw antennae wriggling in the corner of my blurry vision.
I squirmed, sitting up, and reached for my belt. I didn’t have to be subtle now, but I had to be fast. And perfect. If I dropped the key into this slop, if I lost my grip for one second, I might never get it back.
I felt an itch along my left arm. I looked back and saw a six-inch roach wriggling up my shirtsleeve, climbing toward my face. I shook, violent, like a dog with a knotted rag, and knocked it loose. It landed on its shell, kicking its segmented legs in the air.
Another scurried over my sock and disappeared into my slacks, crawling up my leg. I forced myself to focus. Nothing mattered but getting my hands free. My fingers pulled my belt back and found the handcuff key. One slow, careful tug and it pried loose from the putty.
Roach legs rustled in my right ear. Antennae flicked at my cheek as the roach’s head pushed its way into my eardrum. I thrashed my head until the bug fell free. Another was on my shirt now, clambering up my chest.
Had to focus. I turned the key in my fingertips—gentle, gentle—shoving away a chitinous shell as a roach tried to skitter onto my hands.
I jabbed for the keyhole. Missed it, metal scraping against smooth metal. Legs crawled across the back of my neck. More on my shoulder. I shook hard, sinking deeper into the rotting muck, knocking it loose. The one on my neck was tenacious, digging in as it climbed my chin. It scambled up onto my face, my mouth, trying to squirm its way between my pursed lips. Another had made its way into my hair, hissing as it crawled toward my other ear.
Third try. The key slid in, turned, clicked, and my wrists were free. I leaped up, sinking knee-deep in the trash, and flailed at my face. I slapped the roaches from my cheeks, my hair, knocking another two from my sleeves. They kept coming, the trash roiling around me as the entire infested pit came to life. The roaches boiled up, mandibles clacking as they squirmed in from all directions, converging on me.
I set my sights on the lip of the pit, ran, and jumped.
My left hand missed, falling short, but I caught the concrete rim with the fingertips of my right. My shoes scrabbled on the sheer wall, struggling to get a hold, any kind of traction. One good heave and my left hand curled over the lip. My back screamed, muscles burning as I gave it everything I had, pulling one arm over the rim. From there I had enough leverage to keep fighting, keep pulling, hauling myself over the pit’s edge one agonizing inch at a time.
I rolled and slapped at my arms and legs, sending stray roaches scattering. One came right back at me, relentless. I jumped to my feet and brought my heel down like a sledgehammer, bursting it like a balloon filled with yellow pus. Another still had a grip on my shirt. I grabbed it, ripped it from the grime-caked linen, and hurled it across the room.
The roaches were climbing the pit walls now, a rising, glistening brown tide. I sprinted to the table and snatched up my cards, my phone, and my wallet. The deck pulsed against my fingertips, sensing danger and eager to fight, but I was pretty sure I didn’t have enough cards in the pack.
The desk light. I grabbed it, hoping the creatures had this much in common with the roaches of our world as I angled back the plastic hood and aimed the light at the pit’s edge. The roaches cascaded down in hissing curtains, tumbling from their grip on the smooth concrete, and scurried into hiding to escape the glare. I used the light to cover my escape, sweeping it across the floor as I backed toward the metal-sheeted door, and drove back a few desperate stragglers.
The door clanged shut. Out in the hallway, I pressed my back to the sheet metal and took deep, gasping breaths of air.
I ran fingers through my hair and slapped at my clothes, muscles jerking with revulsion as I made sure I didn’t have any stragglers clinging to my body. Clean. As clean as I could get, anyway, with my suit soaked in filth. My phone had two bars and maybe twenty minutes of charge time. I wouldn’t even need half.
“Daniel.” Caitlin’s voice was breathless; she’d picked up on the first ring. “Where are you? Jennifer’s men saw the police take you, but Harding is insisting you were never brought into custody.”
“I wasn’t, not by Metro. The Network grabbed me.”
“Are you safe?”
I looked left and right. The boxy concrete corridor stretched in both directions, lit by a single thin bar of light under a white plastic shroud. As soon as Elmer and Fleiss finished their phone call, they’d be back. And then they’d come hunting for me.
“I’m nowhere near safe. I’m over at Donaghy Waste Management; the whole place is a Network front. They’ve got a necromancer on site, and Fleiss is here too.”
“Fleiss?” Caitlin said. “Wait, you said this is a Network—you know what, never mind, we’ll discuss it later. I’m on my way.”
“Call Jennifer, have her round up everybody she can. We need a wrecking crew out here. Oh, and make sure everybody knows—the night shift is clued-in and loyal to the Network. As far as I know there aren’t any civilians here, so come in hard.”
“As I said, pet…I’m on my way.”
The cavalry was coming. I only had one job now: survive until they got here. I picked a direction at random and ran, jogging up the corridor and into the shadows. I had seen Fleiss in her battle form once before; it had taken two rifles firing on full auto, plus my cards, just to drive her off. I didn’t know what it would take to actually kill her. Or if she could even be killed.