Jay Budgett - The Indigo Thief

“Wow,” she said. “S-so many new friends. So many new friends at once.” She caught her breath and muttered quickly. “I can burp my ABC’s.”

I had no idea what to say, so I just sort of smiled and nodded.

“How excellent!” said Kindred. For the first time, I was glad she was in the field. “Perhaps you can tell us your name, too?”

“Sangria Penderbrook,” the girl answered, “but I prefer Sage.”

“Then we shall call you Sage!” said Kindred triumphantly.

“Before today, I only had one friend—Charlie Minos. But now I have four—or, uh, five”—she clearly wasn’t sure yet what to make of Tim’s handshake—“and I think that’s quite a lot.” Then she closed her eyes and started to burp. “A—B—C—”

“Excellent start!” interrupted Kindred. “You will definitely have to show us more later, dear. But first, make us wait. Suspense makes everything better, wouldn’t you agree?”

Sage sort of nodded. Evidently, she wasn’t used to people interrupting her, or maybe just listening to her in the first place.

“We’re searching for our other friends,” said Kindred. “Maybe they can become your friends too? How does that sound? You could have four more new friends for a grand total of nine friends. Now wouldn’t that be extraordinary?”

Sage nodded—she was shaking. The thought of having nine whole friends was too much for her. She might have been my age, but whatever they’d done to her in here must have stunted her maturity.

“But we’ll have to be careful,” said Sage. “They’ll kill you if they see you. People aren’t supposed to be down here.” She paused. “Should I continue my ABC’s now?”

“No, no, dear,” said Kindred, shaking her head. “Suspense—that’s where the real show is. Keep us in suspense, dear! And while we’re letting the suspense build, we can get you some more friends.”

Sage nodded, and without another word, turned and headed down the tunnel. The rest of us looked at each other, shrugged, and followed.

Sage clearly knew the layout of the catacombs well. As she guided us along, she explained that she’d been through them many times. Once, she told us, they made her bury someone down here, but she was young, and started crying. After that, they hadn’t asked again.

Eventually Sage led us to a brick frame and a metal door, which in turn led to a series of mazes and corridors. We were lucky Sage had found us. We’d never have made our way out if she hadn’t.

Sage’s room was on the Light House’s lowest floor—the basement, between the kitchen and the hall that led to the catacombs. The room was the size of a closet, with only enough room for a cot wedged between two walls. Before we moved on, I turned on the extra VLF I’d borrowed from Bertha’s workshop and prayed it would work as well for us now as it had in the Ministry.

“The kitchen staff is asleep,” Sage explained. “There won’t be any guards until we get out of the basement. Charlie’s on the eleventh floor, in the holding cells.”

“And the others?”

“If they didn’t come here by choice,” she said, “then that’s where they’ll be too.”

We snuck past the first floor’s guards with surprising ease—Sage knew their routines well. She had us avoid the elevator and take the stairs, saying it was less likely we’d run into guards that way. But just as we reached the second floor’s landing, two guards pushed their way in. Sage hurried up the steps ahead of us, but Kindred, Sparky, and I were caught at the landing.

The first guard, a fat man, eyed us up and down. “What’s this? You fancy a stroll?” he asked.

His friend, a tall, skinny man with a thick mustache, tilted his head. “Yer wearin’ all black…” His breath stank like liquor. He pulled a flask from his pocket and took a swig. “Whaddya doin’ that fer?”

I saw Kindred taking deep breaths to calm herself. Sparky eyed the stairs that would carry us back to the basement.

The skinny one squinted at Kindred. “Yer not lookin’ so good…”

Kindred’s face went white, and she curled her hands into fists.

“Knuckles,” she said, “prepare yourselves!” She couldn’t be serious—she was still wearing the pink flip-flops, after all. What did she think she was doing? “For today,” she continued, spinning her fists in the air, “we serve knuckle sandwiches.”

With a single jab, she smashed the skinny guard in the face, and he crumpled to the floor. Immediately, she clutched her hand. “Mother—”

“Kindred!” I said.

She blushed. “Sorry, dear.”

Before the other guard could react, she decked him too. He fell harder than the first. As we stole their guns, I noticed that the fat one had a headset shoved in his ear—he was miked. The rest of the guards had surely heard our encounter, and would come looking for us. There wasn’t much time.

We ran up the stairs after Sage, who seemed to know every step and turn of this building by heart. How long had she lived here? At the fifth floor’s landing, we heard guards pile into the stairwell from the third floor’s landing, swarming like bees as they climbed.

Sparky turned toward Sage. “What floor is Security’s main office?”

“Fifteenth floor.”

“Think you can hack it?” I said.

“Affirmative. I suggest we implement a bomb threat procedure.”

“A lockdown?” I asked.

He nodded.

“What good will that do? We’ll be trapped.”

“The alternative,” he said, “is letting the reinforcements, which they’ll inevitably call, take this building by storm. And they’ll be armed with things far worse than these guns. Just look at the walls,” he said. “The Light House is like a giant bomb shelter: if we can’t get out, they can’t get in. It’ll be better if we take this fortress from the inside out.”

I nodded. Better to be locked inside with the building’s existing defenses than allow the entire might of the Federation to be brought in.

When we reached the eleventh-floor landing, I stopped, but the others kept going. “But, Charlie—”

They shook their heads.

“She’ll be here when we get back,” said Sage. Guards were still bursting onto landings on the floors below. They were only one floor behind us now—we had to keep moving. “C’mon, Kai.”

Sage seemed to have realized that what we were doing involved far more than just making her a few new friends, though she didn’t seem to mind. I nodded, and followed her up the stairs.

At the fifteenth floor, the door to exit the stairwell was secured with a retina scanner. Just below us, more guards burst onto the fourteenth floor’s landing, joining their comrades who were, at this point, breathing raggedly. One groaned something about “NEVER. TAKING. THE STAIRS. AGAIN.”

I grabbed one of the guns we’d stolen from the guards and fired at the retina scanner. The bullet ricocheted right off it. One of the guards in the fray yelled: “OH MY GOD, CRAIG! MY SHOULDER!”

The lights in the stairwell began to flash what was by now a very familiar red. The woman’s voice came on the speakers: “ This is not a drill.”

Firing at the scanner had sent the building into lockdown. I smiled weakly at Sparky. “At least we don’t need the security office.”

He shook his head. “Negative. External systems can override normal lockdown procedures from the outside: the reinforcements can still get in. The bomb threat protocol can be activated only from the central security office. It’s the only procedure that can prevent them from getting in.”

“And you know all of this, how?”

His face flushed red. Tim patted his cheek. “Er—I might have hacked the security system a time or two before they activated the new protocols. I’ve got a lot of free time, okay?” I guessed never sleeping would do that for you.