Rogue

  But there was nothing peaceful about their current strategy, which involved darting through the halls like panicked rabbits. All previous attempts at secrecy and stealth had gone right out the massive green window as soon as the guards started to chase them. The Juniors were screaming, Uncle Mort was shouting instructions, and Lex’s heart was pounding so loud she was sure that people strolling through the park dozens of stories below could hear it.

  “Left!” Uncle Mort was turning around every couple of seconds to shoot Amnesia blow darts at the guards, but as yet he hadn’t been able to penetrate any of their thick black uniforms. “Left again!”

  Lex blindly followed his instructions—or at least, her legs did. The rest of her was scrambling, trying to think of a better plan that wouldn’t end with everyone she cared about getting cornered and thrown into the living hell of the Hole. Think, think—

  “No!” she shouted in a moment of clarity, the schematics of the building reappearing in her mind’s eye. She raised her voice so that even Ferbus could hear her, all the way up in the front. “To the right!”

  It would be a long shot, but it could work.

  She pumped her legs—regretting, yet again, that solid ball of spaghetti she’d consumed the night before—and overtook Ferbus at the head of the pack. “This way!”

  It was only a few doors away now. The guards were falling behind. They were going to make it.

  Lex fell upon the door and pounded it with everything she had. The others slammed into it as well, making such a ruckus that those within couldn’t possibly ignore them.

  And they didn’t. There was a peephole next to Lex’s nose, and although she couldn’t see through it on her end, she could tell by the shadow under the door that someone inside was looking out. “What do you want?” a muffled voice demanded.

  “Let us in!” she yelled. “Please! Hurry!”

  The door opened.

  Lex dropped to the floor, nearly trampled by her friends as they rushed in behind her. She looked up and counted the running bodies—four, five, six—

  “That’s it,” Uncle Mort said, shutting the door. A second later, Driggs came whooshing in.

  Lex looked up. The Juniors’ dorm had appeared large in the schematics, but in person, it was even bigger. The common room was decked out with a wide-screen television, all sorts of electronics, and really expensive-looking modern furniture. It looked nothing at all like the dingy digs of the Crypt back in Croak. This place was a palace.

  But the furniture wasn’t what was staring them down, waiting for them to speak. Arms crossed and eyes hard, the thirty or so Necropolitan Juniors resembled a miniature army; given the fact that some of them might be future guards, this wasn’t surprising.

  “Say something,” Pandora said, prodding Lex. “This was your cockamamie plan in the first place.”

  “Um, thanks for letting us in,” Lex said, hoping to take the more diplomatic approach for once. Her old standby, punching, seemed ill-advised at this juncture. “We really appreciate it.”

  Their faces didn’t move, so Lex had no idea what they were thinking. They had opened the door, which on the surface seemed like a good sign, but it could just as easily mean that they were planning to trap them and turn them in. “There are very few people we can trust in this city,” Lex went on, “and I thought that if anyone would be on our side, it might be you guys.”

  The Necropolitan Juniors kept staring. One of them cracked his knuckles.

  Just then the large television on the wall sprang to life. “Good morning, Necropolis!” Knell’s homey face blared once again. “I trust that y’all are relaxing and soaking in this fine Saturday morning. Be sure to stop by Buckshot’s Shooting Gallery this weekend—buy five rounds, get one free!” She laughed, then pursed her lips. “I do have one prickly bit of news, unfortunately. It seems that despite my best and exceedingly generous efforts, the fugitives from Croak have not turned themselves in. I highly, highly encourage any individuals who have seen them, heard from them, or are currently harboring them in their very living quarters, to surrender these dangerous felons immediately. Should any Necropolitans be caught disobeying these orders, their punishment will be swift and severe.”

  All smiles again. “Have a wonderful weekend! And if you happen to be dining at Sunset’s for brunch, do save a shrimp cocktail for me!”

  The screen clicked back to the Saturday-morning cartoons it had been playing before the interruption.

  “You heard the woman,” one of the Necropolitans said. “End of the line.” He wore square-rimmed glasses, the eyes behind them beady and mean, making him look like a particularly nasty species of eel. He was obviously one of the oldest, because when he barked at a couple of smaller Juniors—probably rookies—they instantly obeyed. “Search them.”

  “But she’s lying about us,” Lex said, her tone growing stronger as the rookies’ hands poked through her hoodie. “We’re trying to help. Look, you know what’s at stake here. You know how the government feels about Juniors—they think we’re all as dangerous and explosive as Zara, that we’re trying to incite a rebellion—”

  “You are inciting a rebellion,” another Junior countered, a girl with accusing, pointy eyebrows. “Aren’t you?”

  “Well, kind of,” Lex said, a hint of desperation creeping in, “but we’re trying to save the Afterlife—”

  Another girl burst out laughing. “Right,” she said. “Like we can trust the word of a mass murderer.”

  “That was Zara,” a boy jumped in. He, too, appeared to be one of the oldest, with darker skin and muscular arms. He sounded confident, as if he held just as much sway as Eel Boy.

  Lex could have corrected him by saying that yes, actually, she was a mass murderer, but decided not to interrupt. It seemed rude.

  “Besides,” he went on, “why would they lie about this? The Afterlife is changing, we’ve all noticed it!” He pointed at the grayish view out the windows.

  “Shut up, Toby,” Pointy Girl said. “You’re starting to sound like Skyla.”

  The rest of the Juniors looked split. Some of them were staring at Lex with the same brand of alarmed spite she’d grown accustomed to . . . but some of them weren’t. Some of them looked worried.

  The rookies, meanwhile, had confiscated all the Croakers’ scythes, plus the guns Uncle Mort had in his bag and the Amnesia vials in his pockets. “Is this Amnesia?” Eel Boy said, holding up a vial. “Cool.”

  “What are we going to do with them?” Pointy Girl demanded.

  “Turn them in,” he replied. “Obviously.”

  “No,” insisted Toby. “Guys, you’ve gotten the stares too. You’ve heard the Seniors talking under their breath. They don’t trust any of us Juniors. But it’s not us they’re scared of—it’s change! If Knell isn’t willing to hear these guys out, then we at least need to help them be heard!”

  Even Lex wanted to roll her eyes a bit at the corniness of his speech, but she appreciated the sentiment.

  “Oh, let them go,” President Knell drawled.

  Everyone froze and stared at the television. The president’s face had appeared once again, but this time she seemed to be addressing the room directly. Judging by the expressions on the Necropolitan Juniors’ faces, this had never happened before; they looked as though they hadn’t even known it was possible.

  “Let ’em go!” she repeated, baring her teeth in a snarl. “Either the guards arrest them, or they go through the ringer of Executive.” Her smile got bigger. “I, for one, would like to see just how far they think they can get.”

  With that, the television switched off completely.

  Now the Necropolitan Juniors were really confused, and none more so than Eel Boy. Sensing that he was losing control, he shouted a desperate “Knock ’em out!” and crushed the Amnesia vial under Uncle Mort’s nose.

  A glazed look came over Uncle Mort’s face. Eel sat him down on the sofa and quickly moved to grab Ferbus, while others seized the rest of the Croakers. Thoug
h Driggs tried to become solid and stop them, he couldn’t do it in time. Within twenty seconds Pointy Face had smashed Amnesia vials into each of their faces, rendering every one of the Croakers catatonic.

  Except for Lex, who—having pulled the same trick herself on the hostess—had snuck out of the room the second she saw Eel Boy raise that first vial.

  She ducked into the first door she came to, which turned out to be a bathroom. Slipping on the wet tiles, she crashed to the floor, then lunged to shut the door behind her.

  But she was too late. A foot came poking in, followed by Pointy Girl’s face. “Found you,” she said with a grin, breaking the vial against Lex’s lips.

  Lex slumped to the floor.

  Unable to move, she stared straight out the window and into the Afterlife, watching its clouds roll by, gray and ashen with a hint of silver. She briefly hoped that Cordy might find her there and send for help, but that wish quickly dissolved, as did the rest of her thoughts. The last thing she remembered was the cool green tiles against her cheek, each one emblazoned with the mighty crossed-scythe symbol, mocking her helplessness.

  ***

  A deafening noise snapped her back. Five seconds later it pounded again, so loud the room shook.

  “Oh, marvelous,” she heard Uncle Mort say from the common room. “A battering ram.”

  Lex’s throat clenched. Either the guards had found them or the Necropolitan Juniors had turned them in. She didn’t remember anything of the last fifteen minutes, but she knew enough to realize they had to get out of there, now.

  Just then the door burst open, hitting her in the back. “Ow—”

  “Shh,” Toby said, roughly pulling her up. “Come on, before they change their minds.”

  “What?” Lex said, bewildered as he pushed her into a clump of her fellow Croakers. “What’s going on?” she asked Elysia.

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember anything,” Elysia said. “Maybe they decided to help us escape? Did Toby really win them over?”

  “He had a little help from me,” Driggs said modestly. “After that weird-ass Big Brother speech from Knell, they were a little more inclined to believe us. And, uh, I’m a ghost. I was pretty persuasive, until the guards arrived.”

  While one of the Necropolitan rookies redistributed the Croakers’ scythes and weapons, Toby led them all to a utility closet lined with shelves of cleaning products. He flung the brooms and mops out of the way, then pointed at a grate in the ceiling. “That shaft goes up to the Executive level. Once you crawl out, you’ll be in a black hallway. Turn left. We’ve been there before—it’s part of our Junior induction process—”

  “Wow,” said Elysia. “Ours is just a water balloon fight.”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s not hazing. Training is an official graduation requirement.”

  All the Croakers went pale at the same time. Of the two ways up to the top of Necropolis, the training side was not the one they would have chosen.

  “Don’t tell them any more,” Pointy Girl interrupted with a mean smile. “If the legendary Croak Juniors are so great, they should be able to breeze right through.”

  Lex did not care for her tone.

  Uncle Mort, on the other hand, did not seem to care about anything other than getting out of there. He’d already scaled the shelves and was now working to remove the grate.

  “Ferb, you go first,” he said, grabbing his hand once the duct was open. “Unlock the grate at the other end.” Ferbus nodded and pulled himself up the shaft, his feet dangling for a moment before disappearing. Uncle Mort helped the others up one by one, working a little faster with each pound on the front door.

  A minute later, a cry sounded from the ducts. “What happened?” Uncle Mort yelled up into it.

  “Nothing!” Dora said. “Everything’s fine!”

  “No, it’s not!” That was Pip. “Pandora cut her leg on a piece of metal that was sticking out! She’s bleeding pretty bad!”

  “Forgot to mention that part,” Eel Boy said with a smirk. “Sorry.”

  Uncle Mort glared at him, then looked back into the duct. “I’m coming up.”

  “I told you to stay put, you meddling ninny!” Dora’s voice came back. “I’m perfectly fine!”

  “She’s not!” Pip said.

  “You want a wrinkly elbow to the face, kid? Because a wrinkly elbow to the face is exactly what you’re about to get!”

  As they kept fighting, Uncle Mort gave a weary look to Lex and Elysia, the only ones left. “That woman’s leg could get chopped off and she’d say she’s fine.” He reached for the hatch and wriggled himself in, then turned around and looked down. “Come on, I’ll pull you up.”

  Lex grabbed his arms and was halfway up when she heard a loud slam. The guards had broken through the front door.

  “Hurry up!” she yelled, trying to climb faster. “Elysia’s still down there!”

  “Guys, a little help!” Uncle Mort yelled to the Croakers behind him.

  More shouting came from the ducts, including the sound of Ferbus trying to push to the front to help. But Driggs got there first. He appeared next to Uncle Mort and reached down, straining to become solid as he did.

  For once, it worked right on cue. “Lys!” he shouted the instant he was tangible. “Grab on!”

  Shaking almost too hard to move, Elysia slapped her hand into his, her eyes wild with fear. Still dangling from Uncle Mort’s hand herself, Lex could only watch as Driggs scrunched up his face and started to pull—but then seemed to falter, as if he were struck by a wave of panic.

  “You’re fading!” Lex said, watching as a ripple of transparency swept over his body.

  “I know, I—” He shook his head and concentrated harder—

  Until finally some strange force burst out of him, the shock wave causing Lex’s dangling body to swing and nearly slip out of Uncle Mort’s grasp. For a brief second, Driggs was completely solid—

  And then he disappeared.

  Elysia crashed to the ground, her fear temporarily replaced by wonderment. She seemed confused, as if she were trying to remember a dream that she’d only just woken from but had already forgotten.

  She looked up at Lex. “I feel weird.”

  As guards flooded through the dorm, however, the terror kicked back in. Some of the Necropolitan Juniors were trying to beat them back, but the guards simply stunned them, leaving a pile of incapacitated teenagers in their wake.

  By the time the guards got to the closet, Elysia was hysterical. She thrashed and kicked at them, to no avail; they easily grabbed her around the waist. Her tear-streaked face was glued to Lex’s, screaming, begging for help.

  “No!” Lex shouted, straining to break free from Uncle Mort’s ironclad grip. “I have to get her!”

  But with a grunt and a final pull, Uncle Mort yanked Lex the rest of the way up into the hatch. After that, all she could do was watch, horror-stricken, as the guards dragged Elysia away.

  ***

  As promised, the hallway on the other end of the duct was indeed black. It now also featured a sizable hole where Ferbus had punched it.

  “We have to go back,” Lex repeated for the tenth time. She was standing over a drained-looking Driggs, who’d popped back into existence as soon as they’d all safely piled out of the shaft and into the darkened hallway. He was switching between solid and transparent in quick, jerky pulses, as if he’d totally lost control. “We have to go get her!”

  Uncle Mort sat on the floor next to Dora, staring intently at the bandage he was applying to her leg. “We can’t,” he said, his voice thick. “You know we can’t.”

  Lex did know. But she couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear the guilt of abandoning her best friend.

  This can’t be happening.

  “Do you realize what they’re going to do to her?” Ferbus shouted at Uncle Mort, his face even more wrecked than when he’d first seen Driggs as a ghost. “Throw her straight into the Hole. If she’s lucky. What if they torture her for
information?”

  “Keep it down, Ferb.”

  Ferbus looked as though he might punch a hole straight through Uncle Mort as well, but he shut his mouth and stepped over to the grate. “I’m going back for her.”

  “You are not, dammit!” Uncle Mort grabbed him and slammed him into the wall, their faces inches apart. “Because then you’ll get caught, and someone else will have to go back to get you, until there’s none of us left and we’ll rot in the Hole for the rest of our lives and we won’t even have a nice Afterlife to go to after that because we never lasted long enough to save it.”

  Pip let out a shaky breath. “But this is just like Riqo and Broomie all over again!”

  “They knew the risks,” Uncle Mort replied, letting go of Ferbus but still speaking directly to him. “And so did Elysia. No one forced her to come. She was here because she wanted to be.”

  Every word he uttered made Ferbus angrier. “Mort, I swear to God—”

  “You think I like this?” Uncle Mort said. Something in his voice changed—it wasn’t hard, as it had been a second earlier. A crack had formed. “You think I like having to say these things to you, to justify all the hideous shit that happens to you kids whom I would gladly—gladly—give up my life for in a heartbeat? You think I don’t want to go back and get her just as much as you do?” He touched his scar absent-mindedly, talking just as much to himself as to Ferbus. “Someone has to be the strong one. Someone has to keep us going, keep a clear head, focus on what has to be done without emotions getting in the way. That someone happens to be me. I hate it, but I have to do it.”

  Ferbus didn’t meet his eyes. He looked down, his gaze ultimately resting on the grate to the air duct. “I know.”

  Then Lex thought of something. “Her Spark!” She lunged for Uncle Mort’s bag and tore it open.

  Not a single one was glowing.

  She collapsed with relief, weakly handing the bag back to him. “She’s still alive.”

  This did nothing to console Driggs. “I don’t know what happened,” he said, his head in his hands. “I had her. I made one last-ditch effort to gather my strength and pull her up, and then—I don’t know, it’s like I blew a fuse.” He turned to Ferbus. “It’s my fault. I’ll—I’ll—”