The Water Wars - Cameron Stracher [56]
There was a thump and then a bang, and suddenly the outer door swung open.
“Will!”
He turned the handle on the door. “It’s not even locked,” he muttered with what sounded like disgust. With no knob to open the door from the inside, there was no need to lock it from the outside. But now that it was ajar, I wasted no time joining him.
The hallway was dingy and grimy. No sign of life. The walls were covered in chipped white paint and orange rust. We passed open doors and empty cells. If the prison had held other captives, they were long gone. We moved stealthily toward a pair of double doors at the end of the short hallway. Will put a finger to his lips, although that was unnecessary. My feet glided over the floor without weight or friction. It felt as if my body had escaped gravity, floating just a few centimeters above the surface. Despite the pain in my shoulder and our desperate situation, we had escaped.
Now we were on a steel island, policed by a private army.
We moved like ghosts. Nearby there was water: moisture in the air, on the crease of my neck, in the folds of my elbows and knees. The crinkly, crunchy dryness that was usually my skin felt elastic here, plumped with a thousand invisible molecules. I plucked at the back of my hand, just to make certain, and it sprang back into place without a wrinkle.
When we reached the double doors, they were unlocked. We pushed through into a hallway as clean and white as a medical ward. Even the air had a different smell: freshly filtered and oxidized. Electronic sensors dotted the walls, and there were tiny cameras positioned in the corners. I pointed to one, and Will nodded—he had already seen them. If there were cameras, there were screens somewhere with people watching. But no alarms rang, and no one rushed from the shadows to stop us.
Will hugged the wall, and I followed. The creaking sound was more evident here, and the floors were definitely swaying—it wasn’t just my imagination. There was another sound too, like a wireless broadcast. Voices rising and falling, but without the soothing music found in the water conservation programs in the mornings. We moved toward the sound along the wall as it curved, then widened into a common area. The voices became more pronounced: stern, scolding, lecturing, like teachers at school—except no one seemed in charge. They spoke over each other, interrupting and arguing, and no voice took the lead for more than a few moments. I had the feeling it would not end well for the losing side. Will held up one hand, and I stopped, trying not to breathe. My heart thumped as loud as a drum in my chest. From the other side of the hallway, two men emerged into the common area. They wore a dark blue—nearly black—uniform, and their muscles rippled through their shirts. Both had communicators in their ears, security shields dangling from their necks, and heavy firearms on their belts. I squeezed against the wall, trying to press myself into two dimensions. The men were nearly upon us, and I was certain we would be caught and returned to our cells—or worse.
Then there was an electronic squawk, and one of the guards began talking into the air. He signaled to the other guard, and they reversed direction, walking in a heavy-booted fashion back the way they had come. In a moment all was clear.
I relaxed and slid down the wall. Will made certain the guards had withdrawn, and then we eased forward carefully until we reached the common area. There were several couches gathered around a blue glass table and two wireless screens on the wall broadcasting a news feed. The doors were now directly in front of us, and a second set of doors to our right—that’s where the voices were. I stayed close to Will, my hand on his elbow. He pushed gently at the release latch, but the doors were locked. There was a small window above eye level, about as high as Will could reach on his tiptoes. He leaned against me for support and stretched.
His slow intake of breath was like the sound as all the air exits a balloon.
“What is it?” I whispered.