“My name’s Hex,” Merlin’s cellmate said, swinging around to greet him. This person looked barely twenty—which seemed young until Merlin remembered he was seventeen. “What did they pick you up for?”
“Disturbing the thing that passes for peace,” Merlin spat. “And yourself?”
“I stole seventy-two pi?atas,” Hex said, deadpan.
Merlin’s lips pinched with fresh puzzlement. “Why did you need seventy-two pi?atas?”
“I didn’t,” Hex said. “I just needed to do… something, you know? Stealing Mercer goods was what my hands decided on. And a dozen of the pi?atas were done up to look like the Administrator, so my friends got a good crack at him before we got caught.”
“You would fit in well with my new friends!” Merlin said.
He wanted to explain about Ari, and how she was going to save them all from Mercer. But there was no time to waste—if plague had come to Urite, the contagion would move faster than Merlin ever could.
Setting his hands against the burning-cold ice, he hummed a warm bit of a lullaby, and watched as the cold gave way to his blazing anger. Water puddled at his feet, and soon he could crack his way through the thin, paltry remnants of the ice.
“That’s something I’ve never seen,” Hex said, cocking an eyebrow as if that was all he’d give Merlin for melting the damn wall. “You still don’t want to go out there, though.”
“What could possibly make ‘in here’ a better option?” Merlin asked, wiping his hands off on his crinkly uniform.
Then he heard the sounds from the hall, ricocheting off the cold walls.
The coughing, retching, whimpering that added up to death.
Merlin walked up and down the hall, touching the ice panels that separated him from the pre-dead. They lay there behind sheets of ice, their pain so complete that few of them even looked up as he passed. Their eyes were clouded, throats swollen closed, lymph nodes so shiny and inflamed they looked like grapefruits—except for the ones that had already burst. Plague spots turned tender flesh dark.
Pain, everywhere.
So much that Merlin felt it in his own skin.
He had seen plague, and believed that he’d outlived it. There were so many foul ways to die, and this was one of the worst. Merlin knew that his magic could do nothing to stop the sickness. He’d never been a healer. His physical magic was blunt, external. He couldn’t reach inside a person and untwine sickness from their cells.
He ran back to Hex.
“The guards must have vaccines. Or a cure that can be used in the event of infection,” Merlin added, already thinking of how he could steal from their stores to keep himself healthy. And Ari’s parents. Hex, too. He wished that he could find enough to go around, but he highly doubted it. The idea of leaving so many people to die raged through him like another form of sickness.
The guard who’d confiscated Merlin’s robes came around the corner with two others. They registered the melted door at the same moment. Merlin and Hex ran. Two of the guards rushed forward, grabbing Hex and Merlin before they could make it down the hall.
The third guard was right behind them.
He pricked Merlin with something—a deep, lasting jab.
And that’s when Merlin understood. This plague wasn’t passing through contagion. It wasn’t the uncontrollable sickness of yesteryear. Mercer had tamed this vile death like a pet, and they were giving it to these prisoners, one by one.
And now, they’d given it to Merlin.
He cried out as the needle pressed into muscle, a hollow soreness.
Hex was grunting and twisting. The guard hadn’t jabbed him yet. Merlin spun the sound of his pain into a song, shouting the lyrics to “You’ve Got a Friend” at the top of his lungs—a turn of events that made the guards stare. Or maybe it was the fact that Merlin’s red hair was growing back into place, falling down in front of his eyes. His face shifted, nose thinning and cheeks turning rounder.
Sparks flew from his fingers.
He apologized for breaking his promise not to use magic as he took down the guard with the needle. Then another apology—“sorry, quite sorry”—as he zinged the one holding Hex.
“Why are you being so nice to them right now?” Hex asked.
“I’m British!” Merlin cried. Some things were hard to shake, even after centuries away from home.
He turned his fingers on the guard who’d been holding him, and the guard leaped back, his hands up in surrender.
Good. Merlin needed someone to play along.
“Would you like to take another swing at Mercer?” Merlin asked Hex. “Grab his heat gun.”
Hex trotted over and took it from the guard’s side, playing with the features until a long spout of flame came out, inches from the guard’s face. “Oops,” he said, not looking repentant.
“Where are Lian and Vera Helix?” Merlin asked. He would never find them on his own in this icy labyrinth.
“Let me look,” the guard said, cagily, as he reached for his watch.
“Grab that!” Merlin shouted, but before Hex could torch the watch, the guard had pressed a red button on the inside.
Every guard in Urite had been alerted to their presence.
Merlin took out the guard with another finger-spark, and ran. But he had no idea where he was going, and this place was impossible to navigate, every hallway the same, each one lined with the dead and dying.
And now Merlin was starting to feel ill, sweat cropping up in all sorts of places. The bubonic plague had taken a week to incubate, but judging by the way his insides felt like they were swelling and withering at the same time, Mercer had sped that process up a bit.
“I won’t die, I won’t die,” Merlin chanted on thin breaths as he jogged.
“Yeah, buddy,” Hex joked. “Keep telling yourself that.”
He had saved Hex, at least. Ari would be proud of him for bringing her a new rebellious knight. Maybe Val would make Merlin some chicken soup, or whatever fake medieval stew they made on Lionel when people got sick. And they would have Ari’s parents back. All he needed was to find them.
And get them out.
And…
And…
There were always so many steps. His feet slowed, his wheezing starting to burn his lungs, his throat crowded with pain. He remembered now just how miserable quests had always been.
“Don’t go down that way,” Hex said, grabbing Merlin by the back of his uniform like taking a puppy by the scruff of his neck. “That’s the guard station and med bay. Tons of Mercer types.”
Merlin nodded. And then, through the haze of sickness, he thought of another step he had to add to his plan. He couldn’t leave all of these people here to die, at the hands of Mercer. This company did not care what happened to the people of this universe as long as they had their power. And Merlin was finding, with each day, he cared more and more.
Ari was the hero. But Merlin was here, and he could help.
He hobbled toward the guard station, the exact direction he wasn’t meant to go.
“Hey!” Hex cried. “Did you hear me?”
Guards rushed at them, a whole battalion. At the same moment, Merlin caught sight of what he needed. A room with the words MED BAY written on the door, and behind the ice-walls, case after case with medical warnings stamped all over them. He hummed and pointed and splintered the cases. The guards looked back at the med bay as if a bomb had exploded behind them—and were met with the sight of a thousand plague needles flying straight at their faces.
Merlin stopped the syringes an inch from sticking anyone.
“Now,” he said. “I need the location of two prisoners. Lian and Vera Helix.”
The guards traded looks, but none of them made a move. They didn’t have Mercer telling them what to do, and Merlin could see how dependent they’d grown on their orders.