CHAPTER 15
Sydney
TIME WOULDN’T ALLOW ME to charm all the syringes at once, seeing as I could only do it in my rare moments of privacy. I managed five at first and distributed them to Emma and the select few Emma thought we could trust.
I felt emboldened after Adrian had told me he’d gotten Keith’s address from Carly, and I couldn’t wait to talk to him tonight about further progress. Knowing he and Marcus were advancing toward their goals drove home the importance of dealing with the “emergency protocol” situation as soon as possible. Equally pressing was knowing I would make the most progress if my stolen ID card was still working. For all I knew, once that guy reported he’d lost it, the Alchemists would disable it, and sabotaging an entire system was going to be difficult if I couldn’t even use the elevator. I needed to act fast.
Emma was impressed to hear I’d been in the operations room but had little help to offer with the larger problem. “The gas controls weren’t there?”
“The controls were,” I said. “Including the power to render us all unconscious at once, anytime and anyplace. But I need access to its more basic parts—like where the gas comes from in the first place. How it gets into those pipes in the ventilation system.”
She shook her head, looking legitimately sorry she couldn’t help. “I have no idea. I don’t know anyone who would.”
I did, and I brought it up with Duncan later in art class. Whereas Emma had been perplexed by my inquiries, Duncan was shocked. “No, Sydney, stop. This is crazy. Bad enough you disabled it in your room! The entire floor? That’s madness.”
We were still working on clay bowls, our assignment now being to make a set of identical ones, which went right along with the Alchemist ideology of conformity. “What’s madness is that with a push of a button, they can knock us all out within seconds.”
“So?” he asked. “They’d only do that if there was a revolt or something. No one’s that stupid.” When I said nothing, his eyes widened. “Sydney!”
“What, are you saying you want to stay here forever?” I demanded.
He shook his head. “Just play the game, and you can get out. It’s a lot easier and a lot less trouble than staging some ill-fated prank.”
“Get out like you did?” My retort made him flinch, but I only felt a little bad.
“I would if I could,” he muttered.
“I don’t believe that,” I said. “You’ve been here so long, you should know the game better than anyone else. You should be able to say and do exactly what it takes to get your walking papers, but instead, you do exactly what it takes to stay put! You’re afraid to act.”
The first glint of anger I’d ever seen in him flashed in his eyes. “To act on what? What is it exactly you expect me to do, Sydney? What’s out there for me? There’d be no security. They track re-educated Alchemists forever. To not get sent back here, I’d have to either push all my morals about Moroi aside or constantly watch my back to hide my true feelings. There’s no winning for us. We’re screwed. We were born into a system we don’t agree with, and we got caught. Here, out there, it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing left for us.”
“What about Chantal?” I asked quietly. “Isn’t she out there?”
His hands, which had been so deftly working the clay, faltered and dropped to his side. “I don’t know where she is. Maybe she went to re-education in some other country. Maybe she killed herself rather than live a lie. Maybe she went on to some worse punishment. You think solitary confinement and monotonous art projects are the only weapons they have? There are worse things they can do to us. Worse things than purging and public ridicule. Being bold sounds great in theory, but it comes with a cost.”
“Chantal was bold, wasn’t she? And that’s why you’re afraid.” The grief on his face was so intense, I wanted to hug him … yet at the same time, I wanted to shake him for cowardice too. “You’re so afraid of acting! Of ending up like her!”
Swallowing, he returned to work on his bowl. “You don’t understand.”
“Then help me to.”
He stayed silent.
“Fine,” I snapped. “I’ll figure out the gas control system myself and won’t bother you anymore. I suppose you might as well go ahead and throw this away too.”
I knelt down as though I’d dropped something and swiftly transferred a capped syringe from my sock to his, neatly covering it with his pant leg before anyone saw. “What’s that?” he hissed.
“The last of my current stock of syringes with the ink-repelling solution in them. I’d saved this one for you, but you’ll probably be happier not using it. In fact, maybe you should just go ask them for an extra-strong re-inking so you don’t have to think for yourself anymore.”
Chimes signaled the end of class, and I turned to go, leaving him gaping. That evening, while getting ready for bed in the bathroom, I was able to charm a few more syringes that I smuggled back to my room. I also did the gum trick again, sticking it in place in the door to disable the lock after lights out. I might not know exactly where the main gas controls were, but based on the explorations I’d done, I could make some educated guesses. Emma noticed when I stuck the gum in the door’s side and said, her voice barely audible, “You’re serious about this?”
I gave her a sharp nod and settled into my bed with a book for our prescribed reading time. When the lights went out later, I again waited long enough for the Alchemists on guard to fall into their shifts before I sprang into action. I rearranged my bed and pillow, murmured the invisibility incantation, and then tucked my stolen ID into my shirt before quietly slipping through the unlocked door. In the corridor outside, I was faced with a scenario similar to yesterday’s: little activity and the same guard stationed in the hallway nexus.
I crept down to the elevator and stairs, swiping my ID over the door to the latter. Its security panel turned green, and I breathed a sigh of relief that I still had access. Although the stairwell door wasn’t perfectly silent, I was able to carefully open it and slip through much more quietly than when I used the elevator with its telltale ding. I just had to be cautious in opening it the minimum amount needed for me to fit through. Once in the stairwell, I noticed something I’d also observed in the elevator. There was no way up. The only way to go was down.
How do we get out of here? I wondered for the hundredth time. It was the question I’d been mulling over since getting here. We had to have gotten in somehow, and obviously, the Alchemists who worked here got in and out. Duncan had explained to me that they had their own quarters elsewhere and lived there for months-long shifts until staff rotations replaced them. How did that happen? It was a puzzle for later, however, and for now I focused on heading to the operations and purging floor. I checked every door I reasonably could and found nothing matching the kind of mechanical room I’d been hoping for. Conscious of the time, I returned to the stairwell and reinforced the invisibility spell, buying me an extra half hour. I wouldn’t be able to do it all night, not with the energy it required, but it would at least allow me to check out the next floor down.
I hadn’t been on this floor in almost three weeks, and for a moment, I stood frozen as I stepped out into the hallway. This was the floor my cell had been on, where they’d kept me in darkness for three months. I hadn’t thought much about it since joining the others, but now, as I stood and stared at the identical doors, it all came back to me. I shivered at the memory of how cold I’d been, how cramped my muscles had grown sleeping on that rough floor. The memory of that darkness was chilling, and I was kind of amazed at what a difference the crack of light from the pocket door in my current room made. It took a surge of willpower to shake off those old memories and walk down the hall, remembering my goal.
I hadn’t noticed this when released, but each door was marked with the letter R and a number. Was the R for reflection? There were twenty of them in total, but I had no indication if they were all occupied. I didn’t dare scan my ID card and try to open one. Some gut instinct told me only someone with high clearance could open them to begin with, and besides, if they were monitored, any crack of light would instantly show up on a surveillance screen. So, I simply walked past them all, despite feeling sick inside that others might be only a few feet from me, suffering as I had.
Once I cleared those rooms, I came to stand in front of a set of double doors labeled REFLECTION CONTROL. Many administrative and operations doors had glass windows, but this one offered no indication of what might lie behind it. I was wavering on whether I should try to scan my card and slip in when the doors suddenly swung open, and two Alchemists emerged from within. I quickly moved out of their line of vision, and thankfully, they headed the opposite direction from me at a brisk pace. The heavy doors swung shut too quickly for me to get in, but I managed a good look inside before they closed with a clang.
Several Alchemists sat in little booths with their backs to me, facing dark monitors and wearing headphones. Large microphones were embedded in their desks along with a control panel I couldn’t read. This was where the solitary prisoners were monitored, I realized. Each prisoner must always have a watcher, with that microphone masking their voice and the panel allowing control of the gas and lights. I’d suspected they rotated personnel, and here was my proof. I hadn’t had time to get a full count, especially with part of the room blocked from my view, but I’d seen at least five watchers.
What I had also seen, with absolutely clarity, was an exit sign. It had been on the far side of the room, past the watchers and monitors, but there’d been no mistaking those glowing red letters. My heart rate sped up. This was it, the way in and out! For a few seconds, I wondered how easy it would be to slip in and stroll right out of this place. Not that easy, I soon admitted. For one thing, this wasn’t a simple room to infiltrate. Those doors didn’t allow for darting in and out, and they made enough noise when opened that someone would likely notice them opening by themselves. Even with no Alchemist directly monitoring them, some personnel were sitting far too close for my comfort.
There was also the likely fact that no one could just “walk out” of that exit. I wouldn’t have been surprised if there were real guards, more card readers, and probably numerical codes for exit and entry. The Alchemists had already set up a considerable fire hazard in having so few exits to begin with. If they felt so strongly about prisoner security that they were willing to take that risk, they certainly weren’t going to leave that exit exposed.
Still, it was hard to walk away from that door, knowing what lay beyond it. Soon, I told myself. Soon. A further scan of the hall revealed nothing else of note, and I headed back toward the stairwell. As I did, its door opened, and Sheridan stepped out. I immediately flattened myself against the wall, averting my eyes downward. In my periphery, I could see her pause as though she were searching for something, and then she began walking again. When she was past me, I lifted my head and watched as she continued down the corridor, almost at a leisurely pace. At last, she reached the end, stood there a few moments, and then doubled back to the control room doors, which she soon disappeared through. I hurried into the stairwell before she came back, taking the last option left to me: down to the last level.
The elevators went no farther than this level, and the stairs ended here as well. This was the only level I’d never been on, and I couldn’t imagine what happened down here. What else was there for them to do? The doors I found offered no answer. They looked identical to the reflection time ones, and I almost wondered if I’d simply found another set of solitary cells. These were labeled with the letter P and numbers, however, and I found no corresponding control room to illuminate what that letter stood for. What I did find were three doors labeled MECHANICAL 1, MECHANICAL 2, and MECHANICAL 3. Behind them, I could hear the buzz of generators and other equipment. They had no card readers but did require an old-fashioned mechanical key.