The Water Wars - Cameron Stracher [63]
Although it was now closer to winter than summer and we were on the water, the air was warm and still. Two centuries ago the beach would have been chilled and frozen and the water as cold as ice. Now snow was rarer than rain, and frozen seawater was rarer still.
“The holding cells are on sub-three,” said Sula.
“They kept us on the main level,” I said.
“Those are temporary quarters. The secured level is at sub-three. If they need to extract information, that’s where they get it.”
“You mean torture?” asked Will.
Sula nodded. Her hand went involuntarily to the harpoons she carried in a rubber satchel that crossed her back. A knife and three canteens hung on a belt around her waist, along with a handful of explosives and a device she called a “destabilizer” that would knock men off their feet.
“There’s all kinds of security,” said Will. “Once we get in, how will we get out?”
“Leave that to me,” said Sula.
She led us through a maze of corridors as if she knew them by heart. Up an emergency stairwell to the sub-levels. From there another corridor to the deeper recesses of the blue octagon. As we walked we could hear the machines: constant and deep, a low pulsing that thrummed in my bones. The stairs and handrail vibrated, and the dirty yellow lights flickered and blinked. Sula walked with grim determination, like a woman returning to the scene of a crime. Will limped as he followed her. I tried to keep my mind off the pain in my shoulder by recalling the color of the sheets in my bedroom, the way the floor creaked when our father rose in the morning, the smell of my mother’s hair when she unclipped it from her barrette and let it fan across the pillows.
Finally we emerged into the gloom of sub-level three. There was hardly any light except for what filtered through the poorly riveted walls and the glow cast from two sodium lamps at either end of a narrow hallway. The smell was loathsome, as if the ocean had coughed up its dead and decayed, then retreated. I could barely breathe. Will stumbled but grabbed the wall and held himself upright.
Sula raised one hand, signaling quiet.
We listened, but the only sounds were the familiar ones of pylons creaking in the tide, the rattling of rusty metal, and the ever-present drone of seawater under pressure, turning dross into gold.
“Why is it so quiet?” I whispered.
Sula shook her head.
Perhaps everyone was asleep or unconscious. Maybe the prisoners had been moved. Or maybe there were no longer any prisoners. Maybe the bodies had been dumped into the ocean to decompose and disappear.
Our eyes adjusted, and then we could see a single light leaking from beneath a closed door—the only sign of life, but at least it was something. Sula unclipped an explosive cap from her belt. “Stand clear,” she commanded.
I nearly tripped as I backed into Will. He was holding on to a steel box that protruded from the wall. We barely had enough time to cover our faces when the cap blew, spewing smoke and steel into the corridor. The door swung open, spilling light into the hallway. Plastene and metal flakes filled the air, twirling, sparkling, then settling into darkness.
Sula advanced cautiously, hand on her harpoon. I trailed two steps behind. We stepped gingerly around the strewn metal, over the fallen door, and into the yawning opening of the cramped torture chamber.
There, facing us, gun drawn, sat Nasri.
“Welcome,” he said. Then the lights went out.
CHAPTER 18
I was never certain which came first: the gunshot or the scream. My head hit the floor, and all was still. In the darkness there was only the blur of motion—faint outlines and shadowy imagination. In that split second between vision and nothingness, I couldn’t distinguish between the two. Was I injured? Was I dead? I was surprised by how peaceful I felt, how tranquil and serene. I lay on the floor, and all was preternaturally calm, as in the moments before a sandstorm. It was Sula’s voice that awakened me from my reverie.