“HEY, BURRO, HEY!”
Way above me there was a pocket of acidic boiling water, waiting to sear and singe me, to rake itself across my nerves. But down deep in the black water, it was cool and I was safe. Someone was trying to wake me, to drag me up. A sweet young voice, and I hated it. I hated anyone who wanted to pull me up through the acid and burn me.
I tried to sink deeper, to swim away, to grow heavy.
“Ah, fucking . . . Come on, burro, hey! Come on, not much time!”
Whoever it was began shaking me. It was strange; I was aware of being shaken, aware that someone was trying to rouse me, but I was able to ignore them and remain unconscious, in a sense. If I could just ignore them long enough, they would go away.
“They are coming!” she hissed, and my perfect cold black sea began to agitate and brighten. “Soon!”
Something in her voice sank down like fishhooks and grabbed on to me, pulling me inexorably upward.
“Ah, fuck,” I hissed, refusing to open my eyes. “Stop that.”
The feeling of her hands disappeared, and a second later she slapped me across the face, hard enough to make stars pop up behind my eyelids. I sat up, opening my eyes and fighting the urge to vomit.
“Ah, finally.”
I felt tight and hot, like my skin was too small for my skeleton. The pain in my head slowly sank back to merely near-fatal levels, letting me think.
I was in a basement—no, a crawl space. The floor was dirt, the walls were brick, and the joists of the floor above were not even an inch above my head; if I’d been a little taller, sitting up would have put me right back on my ass. The whole place had a damp smell, and it was freezing. The moment I realized how cold it was, I began to shiver.
There was a small opening on the far wall right at my eye level, little more than a slit for ventilation. It let in just enough sunlight to see by, making it clear that I wasn’t alone. Aside from the Girl, there were at least a dozen other people with me, all prone—either unconscious or dead.
I rolled over and scrambled to the nearest one. The Girl hissed in protest as I pushed her aside. I ignored her, inspecting the bodies around me, looking for Hiram, for Fallon, for Mags. I didn’t remember a thing after I’d taken my hit, and the battle in Hiram’s hallway hadn’t exactly been going well for my side.
But none of the bodies were familiar. Sweating, head pounding, I turned back to look at my new friend. She was young, her long black hair hanging in her face, her jeans and T-shirt torn and dirty. Her face had the sunken look of someone who hadn’t eaten in a while. As I stared blearily at her, she held a finger to her lips.
“Quieto,” she whispered. “They will be back.”
I struggled to collect myself. My brain felt scrambled, and I had to swallow three times before I could remember how to make sounds. “Where?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Can you move? You gotta move, man. They’re coming.”
“Who?”
She grimaced. “You wake up in a fucking basement after taking a beating, and you got questions.”
She was right: The time for questions was later. Preferably years later, when I was sitting on a beach somewhere with Mags after we’d finally pulled some grift that paid.
Mags. Forget my survival, I had to get out to make sure Pitr Mags didn’t starve to death hiding in Hiram’s closet, whimpering.
“How long?” I croaked.
“You? Couple of hours. Me—if maybe I can think you give a shit—three days.” She shoved me. “Come on, burro, they will come soon.”
I nodded. I didn’t really need to know who they were. No matter what the answer was, I wanted to be somewhere else when it came. “Where’s out?”
She gestured and started to crawl. I scurried after her, swallowing bile and trying to ignore the head-splitting flashes of pain. Her clothes were loose on her, like she’d shrunk. She led me to a trapdoor set in the floor above. I gave it a tentative push, but it refused to budge.
“Locks,” she whispered. “Lots of them.”
I nodded again. I wanted to say that today was her lucky day, because the Intro 101 class of How to Be Idimustari was bleeding to open locks. I started searching the dirt, scooping through it with my hands. My lifestyle meant that my knowledge of basements, crawl spaces, and other dark places was extensive. Contractors tended to drop their garbage in them as they worked. In a matter of seconds, I had a nasty piece of green glass, the remnants of a long-ago beer enjoyed by a long-dead bricklayer, and used it to slice a deep cut on my forearm.
The Girl recoiled. “Of course you’re crazy!”
With some gas in the air, it would be easy to snap the locks, but I needed a light touch. Sending the trapdoor sailing into the air as though we’d lit a stick of dynamite under it might bring unwanted attention. I looked at the Girl.
“What’s your name?” I whispered.