“What are you doing?” My voice is a snarl, through the nylon and my gritted teeth. I can’t take Julian and the Scavenger at once. If he interferes, it’s all over.
“Give me the rope,” he says calmly. For a second I don’t move, and he says, “I’m helping you.”
I pass the cord to him wordlessly, and he kneels down behind me. I keep the Scavenger pressed to the ground as Julian binds his hands and feet.
I press my knee harder into the Scavenger’s back, holding him still. I picture the spaces between the ribs, the soft skin and layers of fat and flesh—and beneath it all, the heart, squeezing and pumping out life. It would only take one quick jab. . . .
“Give me the knife,” Julian says.
I tighten my grip on the handle. “For what?”
“Just give it to me,” he says.
I hesitate, then pass it back to him. He cuts off the excess nylon cord—he is clumsy with the knife, and it takes him a minute—and then passes both the knife and the strip of nylon back to me.
“You should gag him,” Julian says matter-of-factly. “So he won’t be able to call for help.”
He is amazingly calm. I tip the Scavenger’s head up and wrestle the makeshift gag into his mouth. He kicks out with his legs, thrashing like a fish pulled onto land, but I manage to get the fabric knotted behind his head. The bonds are flimsy—he’ll get his hands free in ten, fifteen minutes—but that should be enough time.
I climb quickly to my feet and sling my backpack over my shoulders. The door to the cell is still gaping open. Just that—the open door—fills me with a sense of joy so complete I could shout. I imagine Raven and Tack, watching me approvingly.
I won’t let you down.
I look back. Julian has gotten to his feet.
“You coming, or what?” I say.
He nods. He still looks like shit, his eyes bare cracks, but his mouth is set tight in a line.
“Let’s go, then.” I tuck the knife, sheathed, into the waistband of my pants. I can’t worry about whether Julian will slow me down. And he may even be helpful. At least he’s another target; if I get pursued or jumped, he’ll be a distraction.
We close the cell door carefully behind us, which quiets the sounds of the Scavenger’s muffled cries, the scuffing of his shoes against the floor. The hall outside the cell is long, narrow, and well lit: four doors, all of them closed and all of them metal, run along the wall to our left, and at the end of the hall is another steel door. This throws me a bit. I’ve been assuming our cell was simply annexed off one of the old subway tunnels, and we would emerge into darkness and dankness. But we’re obviously in a space that is far more elaborate, an underground complex.
The voices I heard earlier are coming from behind one of the closed doors on our left. I think I recognize the low, flat growl of Albino. I pick up only a few words of conversation: “… waiting … bad idea from the start.” A staccato response follows: another man’s voice. At least I know where the albino is now, although that makes the girl with the piercings unaccounted for. That means at least four Scavengers were involved in our kidnapping. They’re obviously getting organized: a very, very bad thing.
As we progress, the voices get louder and clearer. The Scavengers are arguing.
“Stick with the original agreement…”
“Don’t owe … to anyone…”
My heart has lodged in my throat, making it difficult to breathe. Just as I’m about to scoot past the door I hear a loud bang from inside the room. I freeze, thinking immediately of gunfire. The door handle rattles. My insides go loose and I think, This is it, right here.
Then the voice I don’t recognize says loudly, “Come on, don’t be upset. Let’s talk about this.”
“I’m tired of talking.” That’s Albino: So whatever happened inside, it wasn’t a gunshot I heard.
Julian has frozen beside me. We’ve both instinctively flattened ourselves against the wall—not that it will help us, if the men come bursting out into the hall. Our arms are just touching, and I can feel the light fuzz of blond hair on his forearms. It seems to be conducting a current, small electrical pulses. I inch away from him.
The door handle gives a final rattle and then Albino says, “All right, I’m listening.” His footsteps retreat back into the room, and the spasm in my chest relaxes. I make a motion to Julian. Let’s go. He nods. He has been clenching his fists. His knuckles are tiny white half-moons.
All the remaining doors in the hallway are closed, and we hear no more voices, and see no evidence of other Scavengers. I wonder what the rooms contain: Maybe, I think, there are prisoners in all of them, lying in twin cots, waiting to be ransomed or killed. The idea makes me sick, but I can’t think about it too long. That’s another rule of the Wilds: You have to take care of yourself first.