Hayden cackles. Full on throws back his head and natters like a chainsaw. I think of the wound on the back of his neck, squeezing open. Wince.
“What kind of name is Perdu?” Hayden says. His eyes are bright, almost fevered.
“He said he was lost and we needed to call him something,” I snap. “So we called him Perdu. Shut up.”
“Right,” Hayden says. He returns to bottle filling, but he’s shaking his head. “So who was Perdu? Do tell.”
I look at the others for help.
“He left,” Lilly says quietly.
Hayden glances between us, trying to figure out what’s going on. “Well, did you talk to him? Did you figure out what he was doing down here? Gah, you could have had all of this figured out by now!”
“We did talk to him,” Jules says. It’s the first time he’s said anything to Hayden. He sounds miffed. “He said there was a secret exit due north. He also thought he was born in 1772, and when we were hiding from the trackers he opened the doors on us while we were sleeping.” Jules giggles, a surreal sound, not even remotely happy. “Something got him.”
“There’s that word again. Something. Something got him.”
“Yes, Hayden, something got him,” I say, turning away. I go back to picking through the shelves. “There was blood all over the floor. Pieces of—Look, that’s what animals do, okay? Not people.”
I find a flashlight. Two flashlights. Four chunky black batteries.
“You said he was a creepy pale guy bleeding everywhere. Was he hurt when you found him?”
“Yeah.”
“So who says there was anyone else? Who says he didn’t open those doors and kill all the trackers himself?”
“Because of a lot of reasons. We think they were killed right after we hid in there. Perdu was hurt. He was terrified—”
“Or he was a really good liar.” Hayden finishes filling another bottle and throws it hard and fast it to Lilly. She catches it. Barely.
“He could have been hit by a trap room.”
I glare at him. “You weren’t there, Hayden. You don’t—”
“On second thought, maybe I do know something you don’t,” he interrupts. “We’re on the eastern edge of the palace. There’s only one route that heads north from here: that hall that’s now filled with poisonous blue fumes. We’d have to backtrack through trap rooms and head west at least a thousand feet before we get to the next gallery heading north. If the exit is that way, and you’re claiming it is, we can go now, look for another route, and risk capture. Or we can do something they won’t expect. We stay here and go through the rigged hall.”
“And you have five hazmat suits where exactly?”
“We won’t need hazmat suits. I passed another trap room a while back. Same type of blue poison gas. Something had activated it, fumes all over the place. When I ran past four hours later, it was clear. No fumes. I could walk right into it, totally safe. If we assume it was activated within two hours of me first passing it, that means at some point after the six-hour mark, there’s a window of safety where the fumes have cleared and the trap room hasn’t reset itself yet. Here’s what I’m suggesting: we lie low. Wait for that hall to clear. Then in six hours we haul out of here and make a run for it.”
“A run for what?”
“The exit, Nancy Drew.”
“That’s a lot of assumptions. We tried waiting before. It didn’t end well. Also, we won’t be moving. They might think we’re all dead.”
“Good.”
I stare at him. I still can’t believe he’s real. He’s right here, skin slick, unhealthy looking in the wan light of the ceiling. Eye twitching. That bloody smear on his neck.
He crawls over with the last of the bottles and hands one to me, and I reach out and touch his wrist just below the sleeve of his sweatshirt. That would have been weird a few days ago, but nothing seems that weird anymore. I feel his skin, slightly greasy and clammy, but warm. Alive.
He jerks away. “It’s me, Anouk,” he says, right eye going twitch-twitch like a camera lens. “I’m not dead.”
Six hours is way too long to spend in a six-by-fifteen-foot space. It feels even longer when you have to share that space with four other people. Time basically stands still to taunt you. We’ve eaten gross, vacuum-packed MRE food, scraped cold out of the packaging. We all went through the ordeal of using the toilet. The panic room has a flushable one that folds out of one wall, like on a boat. Thank heavens for the little air vent up near the ceiling or we’d all have suffocated.
Right now everyone’s crouched against the walls, exhausted, staring at nothing. Jules is humming a pop song, off-key, the same bars over and over. After a while he pushes himself onto his elbows, and says: “Will. It’s your turn. Tell us your story.”
I groan. “Jules, stop. Will just got his hand maimed. Could we please pretend this is a serious situation?”