Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [104]
Domino was alone in the dark, in a space so narrow I would’ve thought twice about using it myself. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face, and I shuddered to consider the rats, roaches, and other assorted nasties he was pushing aside in order to follow my directions. All things being equal, he was probably better off without a light. Without a light, he couldn’t see the spiderwebs he was breaching with his hands and his head; he couldn’t see the riveted seams that were rusty around the rims, and always looked ready to split and break.
“How you doing in there?” I asked.
“Okay,” he grunted. “Wait. I think I’ve hit the end.”
“You have. Sort of. It’s going to go up now. You’re going to have to climb.”
“What?”
“You heard me, monkey-boy. There are seams in those joints about a foot and a half apart. It’ll take some learning and you’re going to have to play it very, very cool—but there’s no way around it. You’re going to have to climb.”
“I … I don’t know.”
“You can do it,” I vowed. “You’re lanky enough and strong enough, and you’ll be fine.”
“What’s lanky got to do with it?” he asked.
I could hear him adjusting himself, sitting upright in the place where the vent took a sudden upward turn at a sharp, narrow joint. I said, “Keep your voice down. You’re between the floors, but you’re not in another dimension. Be careful or they’ll hear you.”
“Okay.”
“Good boy. Now work your way into that shaft and brace your back up against one of the sides. Then stick your feet out and brace your knees and toes against the opposite side. You understand what I’m saying?”
“I think so.”
I hoped I wasn’t about to let him down, because in truth, I had no idea if he was capable of climbing this way. “This next part’s going to get a little noisy, but you’re going to be going up inside one of the walls and if anybody hears you, they might assume rats.” And for very good reason, I thought, but I didn’t say that part out loud. “As long as no one hears you talking.”
“Got it.”
“You said you’d stuck the phone in your shirt pocket before—can you do that again and still hear me?”
“Yeah.”
The phone went through yet another shift, brushing up against his shirt and his hands and casting back that metallic echo from within the squared-off tube.
In a fairly soft whisper he asked, “Can you still hear me?”
“I can still hear you,” I said back, in something closer to a normal tone of voice. It had to carry from his pocket to his ear after all. “Now this is what you do—”
“I think I got it,” he cut in. “Use my butt and my feet to hold myself, and my arms to pull and push myself up.”
I was silent, then I said, “That’s pretty much it. You catch on quick.”
“I’m not stupid,” he assured me.
My instinct was to retort, “I never said you were.” But I was pretty sure that somewhere, at some distant point in the past, I had almost certainly said precisely that. So I let him have his little victory, proving me wrong. “Let me know when you get to the top.”
“Will … there … be … another split?” he asked, muffled groans and slipping mumbles interrupting his words.
“No. It’ll veer off to the left, and then it’s a straight shot to the ventilation hut on the roof. You’ll have to kick your way out, but that thing is sixty years old if it’s a day and I’m pretty sure you can handle it.” I said all this glibly, as if I’d remembered all along that the ventilation system was capped outside. In fact, I’d completely forgotten—and I’d also forgotten that this was a fourteen-year-old boy, and not a vampire who could pop the thing off with a twist of his wrist.
“All right,” he said. He sounded about as sure as I felt, but I went on faking it, because what else could I do?
“Seriously, don’t worry about it. It’s rusted all to hell, if it’s even still in place. It’s just one of those old spinny things that lets the air out and keeps the rain from getting in.”
“Like a fan?” he asked, and the squeal of his shoe on the metal made my teeth hurt.
“No, not like a fan. It’s not going to eat you alive or anything. It’s just a little metal piece … more like