Jay Posey - Three

“Three,” whispered Three over his shoulder.

There was a long pause, almost long enough for Three to think Wren had gone on to sleep. He hadn’t.

“Should I call you Mister Three?”

Three smiled to himself.

“Just Three,” he answered. Then almost as an afterthought, added, “Should I call you Mister Wren?”

Three could hear a hint of smile in the boy’s reply.

“Just Wren.”

After that, it was quiet for a long time.

Cass stirred awake, felt the dull ache of a night’s sleep on a marble-hard floor, let her eyes float open. Expecting the total darkness of the storm-water system, she jolted when she realized she was outside. The sun was a sliver of fiery orange on the horizon, dawn breaking under a mercury sky. She took groggy stock of her surroundings, blinking heavy eyelids. A courtyard. Brick. Squat buildings, three or five stories high, crumbled around her. Heavy mist the color of concrete swirled off the ground at knee-level. Sleep fell away, and a realization broke over her like an arctic squall.

Wren was gone.

Cass exploded to her feet, and whipped around to get her bearings, looking for any sign or trace of her boy, finding none. She stood frozen, panicked, afraid to call out. Afraid not to.

Then, a voice sounded behind her.

“It’s alright,” a man called. “He’s with me.”

Cass recognized that voice. She spun.

“Asher!”

There, leaning against a wall across the courtyard, was her nightmare incarnate. Tall, lithe, wearing his wolfish grin, Asher’s stillness coiled with menace. He was shaggy-haired and sharply handsome, with young, smooth features, and a boyish charm that could put almost anyone at ease. But not Cass. She knew what he was, and what he could do. She’d seen it for herself. Her hands balled into knuckle-cracking fists.

“Where is my son?”

“Don’t worry about little Spinner,” Asher said. “Ran and Jez are watching him.”

Rage boiled up within Cass; rage, and an ice-cold fear. She had sworn to Wren she would never let them take him back. Her heart broke at what he must be going through now, alone, without her.

Asher scanned her up and down with a brief, casual amusement, then turned his interest to picking the lint from his long black coat. She judged the distance. The courtyard was maybe twenty meters wide. Too far. She’d never cross it fast enough.

“It’s not too late for you, you know,” he offered, not looking up. “All could be forgiven.”

His eyes flicked up to her then, over her body, predatory. Hungry.

“For the right price.”

A wave of revulsion crashed through her, and Cass fought to still herself. It wasn’t enough. Asher caught the flicker of disgust on her face. She might as well have said it aloud.

“Not even for a chance to be with your own kid?” said Asher, with a humorless laugh. “Same as always — too stubborn for your own good.”

“I swear to you, if you so much as think about hurting Wren—”

“Spare me the cliché,” he interrupted, flicking a speck of dust. “It bores me.”

He straightened to his full height, brushing one sleeve lightly with the back of his hand, and then tugging its cuff down past his wrist. Cass’s mind raced. She might as well try for it. Maybe she’d catch him off guard.

“Fedor said you’d be like this,” Asher sighed. He fidgeted with his other sleeve, glanced off at the horizon. “I wanted to argue, but… I guess I can’t force you to make good decisions.”

Asher seemed briefly lost in thought. This was her only moment. Cass rerouted synapses, flooded herself with adrenaline, readied to pounce.

“Besides,” he added with a scoff. “Someone else has been missing you far more than I have.”

Cass tipped forward to launch herself at him.

Her toes never even left the ground. Steel fingers seized her shoulder from behind, paralyzing her.

The scream died in her throat.

Cass opened blind eyes to the nothingness that surrounded her, stifled a gasp, tried to get her bearings. For a moment, her last memory of Asher lingered, sharp, as real as the flight from the city wall, the Weir, the man. But in a flash, it was fleeting, fading, replaced by the reality pressing down around her. The damp blackness, the weight and warmth of Wren sleeping in her lap, the stone floor beneath her. Still, wakefulness didn’t rid her of the intense grip she felt on her shoulder. The whole train of thought took only a fraction of a second, and in the next instant she realized the man was by her side, hand on her shoulder, lips pressed to her ear, his growling whisper hot on her face.

“We’re in trouble.”

Her instincts snapped alive, sudden clarity and focus even in the darkness.

“Wake the boy,” he said. “But keep him quiet.”

Before she could ask, he evaporated into the darkness, leaving only a release of pressure on her shoulder, a trace of warmth and wetness like a passionless kiss on her ear. Cass bent gently, pressed her cheek to Wren’s, nuzzled him awake. He stirred in her lap, inhaled sleepily, but didn’t speak, wouldn’t until she said it was alright. She had taught him that long ago. She helped him to unsteady feet, and then rolled up to her knees, tried to work the hard knots out of her back and thighs. There was a dryness in her mouth, a stretching feeling at the back of her throat almost like the need to yawn, a certain restlessness deep in her lungs. The quint was getting low. Already. That much had used to last her days. Now, her body seemed to be burning through it faster than she could find it.

The man rematerialized.

“Do you remember the way to the stairs?” he whispered.

Cass nodded, forgetting he couldn’t see her.

“Good,” he said, before she had a chance to speak. “We’re leaving.”

Cass checked her internal clock. 06:17 GST. Sun wouldn’t be up for another half hour, at least.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

A distant, digital croak answered for him. Cass stiffened, felt the hairs rise on her neck.

“There was another one,” Three said. “It brought help.”

Another croak echoed down the tunnel, eerie in its origin, otherworldly with its reverberation.

“Let’s move,” said Three. Cass actually heard him shuffle backwards this time, presumably out of the alcove. She took Wren’s hand in one of her own, and used the other to feel her way out, leading him along behind. The barest movement of air, a trace of coolness, signaled when she’d reentered the cavernous tunnel. Back to her right, towards the stairs, the endless blackness continued. Off to the left, however, a faint twinkle of blue glowed at her, bobbed, a wisp in the willows. It was joined by a second. Then a third.

Cass felt Wren pull away from her, and instinctively her hand clenched tight.

“It’s alright,” Three whispered, barely letting the air escape through his lips. “I’ve got him.”

Cass reluctantly let Wren go. From the rustling, she gathered that the man had slung Wren up on his back.

“Hold on, and stay close.”

Cass slipped her fingers through Wren’s belt, and bumped up tight against him.

“Here we go.”

Like a gentle tide, Cass felt Wren receding from her, so smoothly and silently, at first she thought she was falling backwards. She caught herself, and stepped forward, feeling clumsy and jostling in her gait compared to the flowing pace of the man in front of her. After a few steps, however, she found a rhythm that, if not matched, at least complemented his, and together they slipped off in the darkness.

The trio floated down the tunnel towards the stairs, haunted by the occasional squelch of white-noise echoing from the Weir behind them. Though they weren’t sounding any closer, Cass was unnerved to notice they weren’t sounding any farther away either. The squawks and croaks usually came in clusters, almost as if it were a conversation composed entirely of static. And now that she was paying more attention, she could pick out peculiarities in the sounds, or voices, if she dared call them that. One was thinner, drier; somehow more brittle. The others were fuller-throated, less harsh in aural frequency, but more fierce and guttural in tone.