Jay Budgett - The Indigo Thief

She stared at me blankly. “You didn’t ask for it, dear.”

“I asked for matches!”

Kindred rolled her eyes. “I think we can both agree this is hardly a match.”

So this was why Phoenix didn’t let her into the field.

I grabbed the lighter and straightened the dynamite along the wall. Sparky fiddled with the fuses, configuring them so they’d all three go off at once, like Phoenix had done with the gum wrapper bombs.

When everything was set, I said, “Get as far away as you can.”

Kindred and Sparky started running. I heard rubber slap against concrete, and flashed the light toward Kindred’s feet. She was wearing flip-flops. Pink flip-flops.

And this was why Phoenix didn’t let her into the field.

I lit the fuses, then hurried after the others, back down the tunnel from which we’d come. I wasn’t sure how long those fuses were, so I ran like hell. Soon I was passing Kindred. She pulled off her flip-flops, held them in her hands, and hurried to catch me. Both of us ran together toward Sparky in the tunnel’s black abyss. Kindred panted next to me. My lungs burned, but I knew I could run faster. I pushed myself harder.

Kindred’s footsteps slowed behind me. I reached back and grabbed her hand. “D-do it,” I said, my breathing coming in spurts, “f-for the muffins.”

Her sprint matched mine again. The dynamite sounded. The resulting explosion lit the tunnel and lifted our feet off the ground, throwing us airborne. I twisted to my side as I fell in an attempt to soften the landing. Kindred flayed her arms to the side and hit the floor in a belly flop.

Around us, the tunnel shook and moaned—it was going to collapse. Its walls were too old to handle the explosion. Again, I wondered who’d built the tunnel, and if it had been the Moriers. Why had they been so eager to get to the Light House?

Sparky’s footsteps echoed—he was running back toward us. “Get up! Get up!” he yelled. I shined my watch’s light in his direction. “The whole tunnel’s coming down! The ceiling’s falling in chunks—the blast destroyed its whole damn infrastructure.”

We got to our feet, and ran again—but this time, back toward where we’d set off the explosion. The air was hot and smoky, and smoldering concrete lined the walls. When we got back to where we’d set the dynamite, the brick wall previously blocking our path was nothing but a pile of rubble. We pushed through.

Above us, ceiling chunks crashed to the ground. The walls shook again. I prayed that Phoenix was right—that this branch of the tunnel led to the Light House. The only other alternative was death.

We sprinted for what seemed like another mile. Every few seconds, the ceiling would crack and concrete would rain down around us. By now, I was sure the way back was blocked by fallen rubble. There was no turning back, only moving forward. Toward the Light House, the Federation’s capital building.

The air grew damp and musty as we ran, smelling like stagnant water and rotten eggs. The tunnel’s walls narrowed, and the ceiling above us ceased its cracking. This area seemed unaffected by the explosion. When my hands felt the tunnel’s flat walls give way to evenly spaced pillars, I stopped for a moment and shined my light between the pillars.

Stacks of skulls stared back at me.

I stumbled backward. The watch flew from my hand, throwing its light across the tunnel

Kindred sobbed. “Oh—oh my god.”

The tunnel’s walls were no longer lined with concrete, but skulls. This tunnel didn’t lead straight to the Light House at all.

It led to catacombs.

Phoenix’s words echoed in my mind: There was a genocide .

So this was where they’d stored the bodies—where they’d buried the millions of blue-eyed people who’d died all at once. The ones that they’d told us were “killed” by the first wave of Carcinogens in the months following the Final World War’s end. These skulls belonged to the people who were sacrificed in order to bring about the impetus for the creation of the Indigo vaccine. Their deaths had caused a mass panic, which in turn had led to Indigo’s miraculously rapid development.

In school, we were taught that the bodies of the first batch of Carcinogen victims were sent out to sea. They’d lied. Here were the real bodies. The real corpses. Not out at sea, not burned, not buried. No, the people who had done this must have wanted something more—something symbolic. So they’d built the empire’s capital on catacombs created from the victims’ corpses. They built the Light House on top of the bodies—as a symbol, to those few who knew, that the Federation was standing not because of the people it saved, but because of the people it killed.

The Federation didn’t rely on Indigo at all—it relied on the careful cultivation of fear, lies, and the deaths of its people.

Footsteps echoed in the hallway just ahead. I lifted the light and saw a girl my own age, her head cocked to one side. Her eyes stared back, unblinking and glazed—she was blind.

I raise a finger to my lips, hoping Kindred and Sparky were smart enough to remain quiet. The blind girl might not even notice we were there. We could escape.

“Well, hello there!” Kindred called to the girl. “What’s your name, dear?”

This was why Phoenix didn’t let her into the field.

The girl leapt toward Kindred and pressed a knife against her neck. “You have three seconds to explain how you got in here before I slit your throat.”

“Three seconds,” the girl said again. Blood appeared where the knife dug into Kindred’s throat.

“Kindred Deer!” she shouted. “My name’s Kindred Deer! Put the knife down—PLEASE—sweetie. I don’t mean you any harm.”

“Don’t call me sweetie,” said the girl. She cocked her head in our direction. “And the others?”

“You can hear us?” I asked. “But we didn’t say anything.”

“Well, you just did. I had a feeling someone was there.”

Sparky slapped my arm. “Nice going, KB.”

The girl smiled. “There’s two of you?”

I punched him in the shoulder. “Nice going, Sparky.”

The girl shrugged. “I could hear you breathing anyways.” She pushed the knife harder against Kindred’s throat. “Now, names.”

“Sparky Stratcaster.”

“Kai Bradbury.”

The girl shook her head. “Not possible—he’s dead. The Feds got him yesterday. Your real name?”

Kindred coughed. “Could you—uh, dear—loosen the knife a wee bit? It’s a bit sharp on my throat and you see—ah, perfect, thank you, dear—his real name is Kai Bradbury. He’s the one and only. He’s got the cheeseburger socks to prove it.”

To our surprise, the girl suddenly lowered the knife. “Friend,” she said, stepping in my direction. Kindred ran and hid behind a pillar, then jumped back when she realized she was pressing herself up against human skulls.

Again, the girl spoke to me. “Friend.”

I stepped back. “Uh, friend?”

She nodded. “Charlie said you’d be my friend.”

Something leapt in my chest upon hearing someone say Charlie’s name again.

“She said her friend Kai would be my friend, too.”

Charlie was still alive, and this girl knew her—she’d know where to find her and how to get us there, too. I wrapped my arms around the girl’s shoulders. She patted my back.

“Friend,” she said again.

I nodded. “Friend.” The girl might’ve been blind, but she knew how to navigate the darkness. In Phoenix’s world, that was a good thing. If we were going to save Charlie and the others, we’d need this girl’s help.

I grabbed Kindred’s and Sparky’s hands and put them into the girl’s. “They’re friends, too.” Tim smiled and pressed one claw against the girl’s hand. Her eyes widened in surprise, but she took it and shook it gently.