Episodul 173 · Four

— Faint in two, Krista said. One —

Metal clicked in the corridor behind him. Keys, striking one another with each hurried step.

— Soles, Maxim said. Somebody’s coming.

The rope held steady at his belt. Soles stayed sideways to the thread, with his weight over both feet; if he turned now, he would give it the same opening it had used to throw him. Tesa’s boots scraped toward the washroom doorway.

— Stay there, she said to the newcomer.

During the next faint Soles glanced back. Tesa stood in the doorway with her good hand up, between the corridor and Krista at the pillar. Beside her, Maxim still had both hands on the rope and a boot against the frame. A guard waited beyond them, in uniform and without a coat, the keys hanging from his hand.

The guard smiled into the room.

— Four, he said.

Soles faced the thread again before the bright returned. They had been counted. He disliked the relief in that man’s voice more than the keys.

— Hey! Maxim said. Stay where you are.

The footsteps went away instead, quickly, toward the grille. Tesa took a step after them; her sole scraped again as she stopped.

— He’s going to the gate, Maxim said.

The rope stayed taut. Soles needed Maxim where he was, and Krista needed to keep the count. Tesa was the one person who could move, and if she followed the guard, there would be nobody between the corridor and the two of them who could not look away.

— Krista, Tesa said, not loudly. Look around. Now look back.

Krista’s count broke for one breath. Then she called the next faint, her voice level again.

At the far end of the corridor, iron scraped across stone. The grille hit its post. A key turned in the lock and turned again.

— Someone has to watch the exit, the guard called, perfectly calm.

Soles could see the pillar beside Krista and the strip of corridor beyond Maxim. The yard lay past the grille. So did the gap in the outer wall Maxim had counted as their second way out.

— Locked, Maxim said. Both ways are behind it.

Four, the guard had said. He had waited for all four of them.

In the washroom, the thread brightened.

Tesa stayed in the washroom doorway while Maxim held the rope. To reach the locked grille, one of them would have to leave the other with it.

— Hold this, Maxim told her.

The rope shifted at Soles’s belt. Tesa had it now. He felt the difference at once. Maxim held a rope the way he held a wardrobe on a staircase, as if it were about to try something. Tesa held it with the taped hand over the good one, ready to give and take back. Maxim’s uneven steps went up the corridor and stopped at the grille.

— He’s sitting against the bars, Maxim called. Facing out. Keys in his open hand, and I can’t reach them.

The guard’s answer carried down the wet corridor.

— It’s warm here. It’s very quiet. I can watch from here.

— Pass me the keys, Maxim told him, in the voice he used on customers whose fridges would not fit through their own doors. I’ll find you a blanket.

— I’m not cold. The guard sounded pleased about it. That’s the nice part.

Soles remembered the Hunter’s warning, the one he had repeated to them in the truck. It won’t feel like pulling. It’ll feel like being allowed to stop.

— His lips are gray, Maxim called. Breathing’s too slow.

Soles had seen a man go gray like that once, in the army, after a night exercise in the snow: a recruit who sat down against a wall to rest for one minute and had to be carried in. He had looked comfortable too. That was the worst of it.

Soles wanted to step back. The thread brightened as he shifted his weight, and he settled sideways again. He could return to the pillar and still be on the wrong side of the gate, with the guard dying beyond it.

— I can open that gate, Tesa said.

He had watched her make the heavy bag jump. Here, the force would feed the thread before the lock had finished falling.

— If you do, it grows, he said. Hit it. I’ll take what it gives back.

Maxim came back at a limping run and took the rope from Tesa. He tied its loose end twice around the base of the pillar, pulled the knot tight, then followed her up the corridor. For the length of that corridor there was only Krista at the pillar, the count in her voice, and him at the end of a rope tied to stone.

— Still here, she said between two numbers, as if he had asked, and her voice did not slip on either of them.

Soles kept his knees loose. Being ready would not make the cost smaller.

He could hear them at the grille: Maxim’s voice gone soft and practical, the guard answering in the slow, contented way of a man talking in his sleep, Tesa saying nothing at all. Then her boots shifting on the stone, finding their place. He knew that sound from the gym, the half step back before the bag, and his stomach knew it too. Krista called a faint. He let it pass. She called a bright, and the thread swelled toward him like something leaning in to listen.

The blow rang down the corridor. Metal struck stone, and Tesa cried out through her teeth.

— I’ve got him, Maxim called.

The thread flared. It went thick as a finger, and the pressure struck Soles in the chest. He slid back a full step before the rope caught him. Under the thread, with a sound like ice breaking on a pond, the crack ran another hand’s width toward the basins.

In the washroom doorway Tesa bent over her good arm, clamping it against her ribs. Maxim hauled the guard past her by the jacket. The gate was open. The cost had arrived.

That’s the price. There. Now pay it.

— It’s faster, Krista said. Three bright. Three faint. Two. It’s not —

He tried to enter on the faint. The pressure caught him before his foot settled and threw him back against the rope. He regained his footing and tried again; the second throw drove his left shoulder into the pillar. His arm went numb to the fingers. He flexed the hand. Nothing answered but a distant prickle, like a limb that had been slept on.

— I can’t count it, Krista said. Soles. It’s not regular anymore. It’s watching you.

She was right. Every time he leaned, it leaned. Every time he turned, it was already there. Footwork was a conversation, and the thing in front of him had learned to finish his sentences.

He stood at the end of the rope with his arm dead and his hip shaking and thought about the guard sitting down against the bars, happy, with the keys in his hand. The place did not throw the guard. It kept him. It did not fight the people it was keeping.

Don’t let it keep you, the man in the wall had said.

Right. Then let it think it has.