I really didn’t want to think about what had happened to anyone who had been there when it blew up.
“Oh my God, Nelson,” Jackie breathed, echoing my thoughts.
“And whoever else was in there at the time,” Ant answered.
I couldn’t even gather my thoughts enough to think about what it must have been like. That entire side of the block was encased in bright red enforcer tape that read CRIME SCENE again and again. Was it a crime scene, though, if the Ministry was responsible? There was little doubt in my mind that they were. Whoever had put that snare protocol in the Ministry’s auction website had made sure that anyone who tripped it would leave a blazing neon sign over their door—and that was exactly what Nelson had done. I might have been holding out hope that she was fine and that we’d all been overreacting to our last contact with her, but I couldn’t deny it any longer. The cry I’d heard, followed by silence, made sense now, and I choked back a sob.
Suddenly, another horrible thought occurred to me. What if we’d actually heard Nelson die?
My brain skittered away from the thought, refusing to believe that could be true.
“We have to get in there and see if anything’s left,” I managed, forcing myself to think of things that might help us move forward. Those hard drives. They were the other reason we’d come. And Nelson might be… gone… but those hard drives could still be there. And if we were lucky, they’d give us information we hadn’t had before, about the government or the Ministry and their operation. “Does anyone see anything… suspicious?”
Ant gave me something that sounded like half a sob and half a laugh.
“You mean aside from the enforcer tape indicating that we’re standing right next to a crime scene? Or the fact that we’re looking at where Nelson’s office used to be, and the only thing left is a building that looks like a war zone? I mean, are you looking for something more suspicious than that?”
He made another sound, this time more of an oof, and I didn’t have to look back to know that Jackie had poked him in the ribs.
“Oaf,” she said coldly. “Get past it. If Nelson’s gone, we have to get in there and see what she might have left for us. And if she’s still around, we have to get in there and see if she left anything to tell us where she is. Either way, we’re getting in there. Now, open your eyes and see if you see any enforcers hidden in the shadows. Either help or leave.”
I lifted my eyebrows at her tone, glad it wasn’t directed at me, and tipped my head to the side. Jackie was right on all points. We had to get in, regardless of what had happened to Nelson, and see if anything was salvageable. If we could get some of her equipment, maybe even the hard drives…
“Into the shadows,” I muttered, indicating the building next to us with another tip of my head. “This is the part where we wait and watch. If everything looks normal, we make a move.”
The three of us turned and tried to move casually toward the next building, and the deep shadow it was throwing across the sidewalk. The sky was darkening, but it was still that point in the day where there was light in some places. Getting into one of the dark spots would help us avoid notice. It would also give us some time to watch the destroyed building and try to figure out whether there was anyone waiting for us. The thought that this might be a trap was at the forefront of my mind. If Nelson had been arrested, we couldn’t afford to get caught and join her in prison.
We needed to be on the outside so we could break her out again.
When we finally reached the dimness, I breathed a sigh of relief. But only for a moment.
Within thirty seconds, I was guarded again when someone appeared. He wore an expensive haircut, the kind that made him look like he had more hair than he actually did. Dressed in blue slacks and an only slightly lighter blue shirt, he walked right up to us, smoking a cigarette and glancing at the building across the street.
“Hell of a show, ain’t it?” he asked casually, indicating the building. “Feel sorry for the poor souls who were inside.”
I gaped at him, positive that it was a setup and that he was a Ministry agent. Just as quickly, I remembered that we were supposed to be lowly trash collectors doing our jobs.
“Sure do,” I drawled out, wondering what a trash collector would do in this situation. “Know anyone who lived there?”
He shrugged. “Used to buy stuff at the grocery store. Guess I won’t anymore.” He turned his eyes on me and narrowed his gaze. “How about you? You know anyone who lived there? Maybe the girl who kept an office on the top floor?”
My heart almost burst right out of my chest, and every hair on my body stood on end. He knew who we were. I was sure of it. Why else would he ask such a specific question? Did he already know our faces? Were we in some sort of Ministry Database of Bad Guys? Had he actually followed us here? With each question, my paranoia grew, until I was absolutely positive that we were about to be killed on the spot.
Breaking out in a cold sweat, I glanced at Jackie, who was making eyes at me that said, “What are you doing just standing there like an idiot, idiot?”
I realized that I was taking way too long to answer a question that should have been really simple.
“Not me,” I said, tugging on my baggy uniform as if to prove my next words. “Just a trash collector, man. I don’t know people who live in fancy neighborhoods like these.”
I stared at him, doing my best to look innocent, and prayed that he bought it.
He stared back like he could see right through me and then glanced at Ant and Jackie.
“You guys are working awfully late, aren’t you?” he finally asked. “I thought most trash collection happened in the morning.”
I drew a complete blank at that one because I’d honestly never really paid much attention to when the trash collectors worked. Fortunately, Ant had more experience with the matter.
“Just on our way home, buddy,” he broke in. “Off for the night, thank God.”
The man nodded slowly, taking it all in, and finally shifted out of our way.
“You all have a good night, then,” he muttered. “Don’t be getting into any trouble. Someone’s always watching, you know…”
With that, he kept walking, leaving us to melt back into the shadows of the building, breathing hard.
“Holy crap, if I ever think it’s a good idea to dress in disguise and try to break into a building the Ministry might have blown up again, please remind me that it’s possibly the stupidest idea ever,” Jackie hissed, holding her hand to her heart.
I nodded, thinking the exact same thing—and wondering if that was the only agent the Ministry had in the area. We still hadn’t seen any uniformed enforcers, and I didn’t really see anyone else on the street, aside from a stray cat that seemed to be more interested in the garbage than us. Maybe the Ministry had other people in the area, or maybe they’d only assigned the one agent, thinking that we’d be too smart to try to get into a building that looked as though it might collapse right on top of us.
“I don’t know, if all the enforcers and Ministry people are that stupid, it might not be that bad,” Ant said flippantly. “I mean, what did he think we were going to do, volunteer information about having known Nelson? Just slap a sign that said ‘guilty’ right across our chests? How dumb did he think we were?”
“Probably dumb enough to break into a Ministry warehouse and try to hack one of their top-secret sites,” I answered quickly, and Ant laughed.
“Guess you’re right. We’re definitely not winning the award for Most Careful with Our Lives this week, are we?” he said, then paused for a moment. “But I’m guessing he’s the only one we’re going to run into. And as long as we’re risking our lives, shouldn’t we get on with it? I don’t know about you two, but I don’t think this is going to be any subtler if we have to use the flashlights we brought along.”
I looked up at the sky, and then down at the darkening street.
“You’re right,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.
”
Getting across the street was easy. We just crossed it like it was any other street, and like we were any other people going home after a long day at work. We walked down to the end of the block and turned down the next cross street, without looking around, before ducking into the alleyway behind the row of buildings. We’d known it was there because this was how we got out of Nelson’s office before, and being narrow and very shadowed, it was the perfect cover now.
Once we hit the darkness, we started to run toward the structure.
Given the state of the building itself, I was no longer optimistic about finding Nelson. If the explosion had happened while she was in there, then she was certainly either dead or in Ministry hands. But if we could get any of her stuff, we might also have what we needed to start figuring out how to rescue her. She’d said she’d found some loopholes in the government’s record keeping, and if we were very lucky those loopholes might help us get an idea of where they put people they arrested, assuming she was in prison somewhere. I didn’t want to think of the alternative.
The building we wanted was only about halfway down the block, and we were there in under a minute. Then we came to a screeching halt, our lack of planning smacking us full force. We thought that we might run into enforcers here, or Ministry people, and we assumed that we’d have to sneak into the building. What we hadn’t counted on was the building being burnt so badly that we weren’t sure we could get into it without being killed in a collapse.
“What now?” Ant asked, staring at the blackened door in front of us, and then casting a glance up at the charred wall.
I followed his eyes, wishing I had an easy answer. I didn’t, of course. I’d never in a million years thought I’d be doing anything like this. The staircase we’d used in the past was long gone, courtesy of whatever had happened here.
It meant we had to find a different way in. I was assuming that there would be another staircase inside and that it would lead toward her office too. I just hoped that one was in better shape.
“I guess we just go in and try to get up to Nelson’s office without dying,” I finally answered.
Jackie chuckled. “Sounds like a solid plan, Robin,” she said, taking a step toward the door. “I don’t suppose you have the key to get in?”
I didn’t, but I stepped past her, reached out, and shoved at the door. It crumbled beneath my fingers, as I’d thought it might. I glanced back at her with my mouth quirked up in half a smile. “I don’t think we need one. Let’s go.”
We cast looks up and down the alley, but it was shrouded in such darkness now that we wouldn’t have been able to see anyone even if they were watching us. I hoped that they wouldn’t be able to see us either.
When we made our way through the remains of the door, we moved quickly along the charred hallway in the back of the grocery store, toward a set of stairs that led up to the second floor. The entire shop smelled like a combination of old fire, ruined food, and cooked meat. I gagged, hoping desperately that what I was smelling wasn’t human flesh. There was a good chance that the grocer and his family had been in their beds, asleep, when this whole thing went down, but I told myself there was an equal chance that the Ministry agents had gotten them out of the building first, so they could run their operation without any disruption or witnesses.
That seemed more along the lines of how the Ministry liked to present themselves to the public. Of course, my opinion of them wasn’t very high, but I was willing to go with it, if only for my own peace of mind.
We found the steps only somewhat intact. For every stair that still stretched from one wall to the other up the narrow chute that led to the second floor, there were at least two that were either missing or so burnt that I didn’t think we’d be able to step on them. Even the solid-looking wood had to be damaged. I tried desperately to remember whether you could tell if wood was burnt just by looking at it, but the answer seemed so obvious that I was positive I was overcomplicating things. Was it possible that wood could have taken heat damage, but still look whole?
Did it even matter? One way or another, we had to get up to the second floor. I hoped we’d be able to do it in one piece.
“Well, that looks promising,” Ant said, from almost over my head.
I looked up, startled, to see him leaning right over me and staring at the staircase. He looked down at me and blinked once, very slowly. “I don’t think this is going to be much fun.”
I shook my head. “No, but we have to get up there. We have to see if she left us anything. Or if… if…” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the thought that we might find her body and know for sure whether she’d escaped.
“If she left us any clues to her whereabouts,” Jackie finished sternly, and I nodded.
“Right, exactly. If she left us any clues.” I cast one more look at the staircase, then took a deep breath. “Well, I guess there’s nothing else we can do. Let’s go quickly. Try to avoid the stairs that are missing or damaged and hit only the ones that look solid. I’ll go first. If I fall…”
“We’ll do our best to catch you. If we’re not falling, too,” Ant finished.
I nodded once, then sprinted forward before I could reconsider my actions.
15
I moved up the stairs as quickly as possible, sacrificing care for speed. I just wanted to get to Nelson’s office, get whatever we could, and get the hell out of there. I would have given anything at that moment to be back in Jace’s house. I could envision myself leaning against the wall with a cup of tea, staring into the fire in the middle of the room as I allowed it to lull me into a place where I didn’t have to think.
Instead, I was in the middle of a burned-out building, crumbling steps under my feet and no idea who—or what—would be waiting for me around the corner.
I heard Ant and Jackie coming up behind me on the stairs and thought belatedly that it might have been a better idea to go up one at a time, putting less stress on the steps.
Too late for that.
We pounded upward, jumping from stair to stair as we came across the ones that were either too badly burnt or missing entirely. I stuck to the side of the staircase that was closest to the outer wall, thinking that it would be more secure. It was a harrowing trip, and with each step, I expected to go crashing to my death. Leap after leap brought me closer to the top, and when I got to the landing above, I paused.
Everything upstairs was black, burnt to a crisp and unlike anything I’d ever seen. It looked like the entire place had been left in a fireplace and burned overnight. Some of it was still smoking, the tendrils of gray-and-brown mist wafting into the air. I had never put much thought into what the national Evangelists’ religion called Hell, but if I had, this was what I would have expected it to look like.
Charred and dark, with all life and hope smashed right out of it. The place even smelled like death.
Or perhaps that smell was actually death and we were about to find a whole lot more than we wanted.
I put a shoulder carefully up to the wall and leaned against it, needing the support. True, we’d spent what had felt like a lifetime the night before running from the Ministry and witnessing firsthand what they were capable of in terms of coldblooded attacks. But this felt more personal, somehow.
This had been someone’s home.
Someone’s livelihood.
And the Ministry had destroyed it in the blink of an eye because they had discovered that a girl had hacked into their system.
If they were willing to do this for something like hacking, what would they do to us if we went any further?
Jackie suddenly appeared at my side and then Ant with her. I heard a sob and someone gagging. They’d smelled the death, too, and probably come to the same conclusions I had.
I just hoped Nelson hadn’t been here when this happened. I hoped she’d been anywhere but here.
And I hoped those hard drives were still where she left them.
I started moving carefully forward, sticki
ng to the areas that seemed the most untouched, my shoulder pressed against the wall, and my friends followed. If the steps had been more solid next to the wall, then it stood to reason that the floor in the hallway would follow the same pattern.
I’d only ever gotten into Nelson’s office by the external stairs, which meant I knew where the office was. From this direction, and based on the number of doors, it looked like her room had been one of only three rooms up there. As luck would have it, hers was at the far end of the hallway. We had to go down the entire hallway, inhaling sharply at each creak and shift, waiting to fall through the floor at any moment.
I was shocked when we reached her doorway without any mishaps. I was not shocked to find the door wide open. Glancing down at the handle, I saw that the lock had been blown clean off, probably by a well-placed bullet.
Walking over the threshold, I gasped. The place was incinerated. I couldn’t even believe what I was seeing at first. While the building around us had been well and truly burnt, this room looked like it had been blasted with an entirely different sort of weapon. The couch that Nelson had once slept on was nothing more than a pile of ashes on the floor; the desk was barely recognizable. I could just make out the rough, flat shape of what had been the desktop. Chairs were piles of rubble, and the window appeared to be melted.
Her coffee maker was a sad, dripping puddle of hardened plastic.
“Good God,” Ant whispered. “What did they use in here?”
“A flame thrower,” I replied, remembering the spouts of flames from the battle the night before. “I thought last night that the soldiers might have them, and I know they had them on their airships. These were concentrated flames. This was something they were doing to destroy everything.”