Cisi just grinned.
Akos dragged the sleeping guard over to the side, next to the building, then ran to join the others in the open doorway. The maintenance tunnel beyond smelled like hot trash and mildew, and the odor sent a sharp feeling into his gut, like a needle, for some reason. The air felt thick, like there was too much moisture in it. Teka locked the door behind her and pocketed the key.
Now that they were in, there was no bickering, no joking, no improvising. It was quiet in the maintenance tunnel except for a faraway dripping sound, and it was worse, not being able to hear the crowd outside or the cheers from the arena above. Not knowing if Cyra had made it in, if she had made her challenge already, or if they would ever get out with Ori in tow. This tunnel felt less like a basement now, and more like a tomb.
“Cyra said to move toward the center,” Isae said softly. “She didn’t remember the path exactly. Said she was out of it when she was taken here last.”
But Cyra wasn’t the only person who had been here. Akos closed his eyes, thinking back to the night when Vas had wrestled him from his bed after a few days’ starvation—he didn’t know how long exactly, just that his door was locked and nobody would explain to him what was going on, and his stomach had ached for hours on end. And then stopped aching, like it had given up.
Vas had gotten a few good hits in in the hallway, then tossed him in a floater and flew him here. To this tunnel, to this mildew-trash smell and this particular darkness.
“I remember,” he said, and he slipped past Isae so he could take the lead.
He was still sweating, so he unfastened the heavy fabric covering his armor and tossed it aside. This path was hazy in his memories, and the last thing he wanted to do was go back to that time, when everything had ached and he had felt so weak he could hardly stand. Eijeh had met him and Vas at the back door, and he had curled his fingers around the armor that covered Akos’s shoulder. For a tick it had felt comforting, like his brother was trying to steady him. And then Eijeh had dragged him to the prison. To be tortured.
Akos gritted his teeth, squeezed his knife, and kept going. When he rounded the first corner, saw the first guard in his path, he didn’t even think, he just erupted. Slammed the shorter, broader man into the wall, using his chin to drive his skull into the stone. A knife scraped Akos’s armor, and a tongue of fire issued from the palm of the guard’s hand, put out immediately by Akos’s touch.
Akos slammed the guard’s head back again, and again, until his eyes rolled back and he slumped. A chill passed over Akos, his hair standing on end. He didn’t check if the man was dead. He didn’t want to know.
He did glance at Cisi. Her mouth was twisted with disgust.
“Well,” Isae said—chirped, really. “That was effective.”
“Yep,” Teka said, and she stepped right on the guard’s leg as she kept walking down the next hallway. “Whoever we run into here is a Noavek loyalist, Kereseth. Not worth crying over.”
“Do you see tears on my face?” he said, trying for some of Cyra’s bravado and falling short when his voice cracked a little. Still, he kept walking. He couldn’t worry about Cisi’s opinion of him. Not down here.
A few more turns, and Akos wasn’t sweating anymore; he was shivering. The hallways all looked the same: uneven stone floor, dusty stone wall, low stone ceiling. Whenever they stepped down, Akos had to duck so he wouldn’t scrape his head. The smell of trash was gone, but the mildew was back in force, choking him. He remembered staring at the side of Eijeh’s head as his brother yanked him forward through these passages. Noticing that Eijeh had cut his hair short, just like Ryzek.
I can’t watch you destroy yourself for someone who doesn’t want to be saved, Cyra had said the night before. He had shown her just how deep his insanity ran, and she had refused to go along with it. It was hard to hold it against her. Except he did. Had to.
The door up ahead didn’t look right in its stone-and-wood frame. It was made of black glass, opaque, and the locking mechanism was on the side. A keypad. Cyra had given them a list of combination options—all of them, she said, related to her mother in some way. Birthday, death day, anniversary, lucky numbers. Akos still couldn’t see Ryzek as a person who cared about his mother enough to lock his doors with her birthday.
But instead of trying even one of the combinations, Teka just started unscrewing the plate that covered the keypad. Her screwdriver was as delicate as a needle, polished and clean. She moved it like it was a sixth finger. Popped the cover off the keypad and set it down, then pinched one of the wires under it, eyes shut.
“Um . . . Teka?” There were footsteps coming from behind them somewhere.