"I'll be right back," I whispered to Winona, knowing she couldn't hear me, then set a dusty box to hide the hole I'd made in the wall.
The stairs were a sure way out, but I wasn't leaving without Winona, and she was too noisy on them. Not to mention that the front door upstairs would be locked, with an alarm attached. Attracting official attention would be great, but it would take fifteen minutes for anyone to get out here, plenty of time to be recaptured and relocated. HAPA was scum, but their people were well trained and efficient.
What I really wanted was a quiet, unalarmed basement window to sneak out of. Hesitating, I turned away from the slight glow and picked my way deeper into the basement. There probably wasn't an elevator or a second set of stairs, since Gerald hadn't set up any cameras in this direction, but maybe there was a window.
Ducking under an iron water pipe, I felt my way, looking for the faintest glimmer of starlight. Thick walls of old fieldstone held up the ceiling, supplemented by modern pipe supports. File boxes, dingy office furniture, and old displays, getting older the farther I went, that had once been upstairs filled the space.
"That looks promising," I whispered when the concrete floor became dry, dusty tile, and I found what looked like an old shower stall. Squinting, I looked over the tattered shower curtain and a broken commode that looked as if it hadn't seen water since the Turn. Across from them were two tall lockers, dented and with the latches broken. Janitors' shower? My heart pounded when I saw the black-painted square surrounded by the rough stone walls of the original foundation. It had to be a window - right at my head level.
Excited, I went back into the mess behind me to find something to stand on. The rolling chair on casters was out, but the heavy wooden crate with PLANETS stenciled on it was ideal. Ivy. I missed her - she must be worried sick. Jenks, too. Wayde probably wasn't having a very good day, either, though my capture was not his fault. The heavy box scraped lightly on the tile as I dragged it backward, and I winced. The dust tickled my nose, and I made one of those prissy-girl sneezes, almost blowing out my ears.
I finally got the box in place and scrambled up. "Please move," I begged the gods of irony, and my breath slipped out when the thin panel of glass shifted upward, the strips of metal grinding on the tracks.
Cold air bathed my face. The night was calm, the hum of the interstate traffic faint and distant. There was a raggedy foundation bush in front of me, but I could see the empty parking lot to my left, and an open field and woods to my right. It would be a tight squeeze, but I was fairly sure both Winona and I could make it. Once outside, we could be halfway to somewhere before they knew we were gone.
I took one last breath of freedom, then pulled the window shut lest the fresher air give me away. As I stepped awkwardly from the crate, my cold ankles twinged. Time to get Winona.
My pace back through the dark, winding basement was faster, and I stopped at the umbrella stand holding a set of "planet poles," picking out the thickest, shortest one as an unbalanced club. It slid from the rest with a soft scrape, and my pulse quickened. I might not have any magic, but I could still knock heads, and I hefted it, feeling empowered.
More slowly, I moved in the brighter gloom, seeing the empty counters and softly glowing lights from the machines as I crept by the three lumps sleeping on low cots. Jennifer's curtain was gone. Gerald was on his back, set apart from the two women, his mouth hanging open and snoring slightly. My grip on my stick tightened. I had a thought to bean him one in his sleep, but then the rest would wake up. No telling what Chris would pull out of her magic book to hit us with. If we could do this with no one the wiser, then all the better.
Winona sat up from the floor as I hesitated over Gerald. Her eyes threw back the glow from the machines, like a cat's, and I froze. She was okay. Leaving the sleeping thugs behind, I crossed the room to her. Winona didn't stand, instead scooted to the door on her butt, and I wondered if they'd hurt her. "Are you okay?" I barely breathed as I crouched beside her.
"I'm fine," she said, and our fingers touched through the mesh. "My feet make so much damned noise, it's better if I don't get up." Her ugly face smiled, making me shiver. "I heard you get out. I thought you'd left me."
I gave her fingers a quick squeeze, then pulled back. "I was finding a way out." I looked behind me to the sleeping people. "You heard all that? How come they didn't?"
She shrugged. "I can hear everything."
Impatience slowly tightened from my toes to my aching head. "Eloy?" I asked.
Winona brought her eerie cat gaze back from the cots. "He left after they soldered a new lock on the cage. They put charmed silver on me, too. I can't tap a line now."
I exhaled in dismay, and I spun on my heel, still in a crouch as I looked at the empty counters. There was a bolt cutter somewhere, but it would be noisy to look. "Key?" I asked hopefully, and Winona made an ugly face.
"Chris has it."
"Dart gun?" I whispered, and she shook her head.
"Eloy."
I frowned. Figured. He was probably waiting in the bushes somewhere playing soldier. It might be better to get her out of her cage first, then worry about getting her charmed silver off.
"Okay," I said as I put my lips next to the mesh. "I'm going to pick the lock. The window is in the back at an old shower. Left is the parking lot, right is the woods. Once you're there, keep running. They'll never catch you."
"What about you?" she insisted, and I cringed, thinking she was too loud.
"I'll be right behind," I said, trying to smile. "But if things go wrong and I can't run - "
"I'll pick you up," she said, her head down as she scratched at her middle.
I took a breath to protest, then blinked when she appeared to push her entire hand inside herself. It was her pouch, and I stared when she pulled out a pair of wire clippers.
"Where did you get that?" I hissed, shocked, and she grinned her sharp-canine grin at me.
"They left it out," she said. "I fell on it and no one noticed. I wasn't going to take the zip strip off until I knew we were escaping."
She held the clippers out through the mesh, and I took them, thinking cutting the mesh would be easier than trying to jimmy the lock - provided that it wasn't noisy. Eager, I awkwardly angled the business end of the clippers back through the wires and around her wristband. It was only one of the cheap plastic-coated zip strips that the I.S. used, not like my industrial-strength band, and it wouldn't fry her brain when it came off. With a soft thump, the sharp metal pushed through, and Winona sighed in relief.