Page 105 of The Puppet Master
Wax drips onto my knuckles, hot and slick, as the ground dips and turns to bare rock. Puddles swallow my steps.
The tunnel splits.
I choose left and move faster, already bracing for the possibility of doubling back.
That’s when the first groan crawls out of the dark.
I still. My shoe slaps water before I can stop it. Another groan answers—then another—sound folding over itself, echoing off stone.
I hold the candle up and catch the shape of a camera mounted high on the wall. My heart stutters.
But it’s dark. My hood is pulled low.
“Oh, shut up, Smiley. No one wants to hear it,” someone croaks, The words gargle up their throat. The voice of a heavy smoker—if they allowed that here.
I lean the candle against rock and stalk around the corner to tally the Keepers.
Zero.
My eyes narrow in the dim lighting, lanterns spaced ten feet apart down a long stretch of tunnel. Two rows of bars line either side and extend beyond sight. Somewhere behind the bars, someone groans. Agonized.
“I said shut up.”
There’s a thump. Silence—temporary, just until my ears tune into the soft collective sound of a hundred bodies breathing as one. The faint shift of dirt, splintered coughs.
My body has the explanation before my brain. The urge to run pulses through my legs and buzzes up my spine. But I don’t. I edge along the cells to peek in at the people inside. Most are lying or sitting, many in the fetal position. One starts hacking while another cries.
Men.
All men.
Dozens of them.
Hundreds potentially, if I walked far enough into the black.
The hardened wax on my knuckles cracks as I flex my hand. Many of the prisoners notice me, but only a few get up to go to the bars, snarls on their dirty faces, some disfigured.
I turn around when I feel someone watching me, but of course, there’s no one there. No one except the Dregs. No one except the slaves.
“Sawyer?” A man stumbles up to the bars, dark hair in wild curls to his shoulders. “Is that you?!”
Wilcox.
“Oh, thank God.” His voice shreds on the words as I approach. Mud and tears streak his face as he slams into the bars, fingers white, nails split and filthy. He smells wrong—sweat gone sour, rot clinging to him like a second skin. “Please, you gotta get me out of here.”
Other men wander up as hope sparks. Conversation bounces off the walls in what is too weak to call excitement.
“What the fuck did they do to you?” My voice is high as I take in my business partner. The tattered shirt Wilcox wears swallows him. Large purple bags droop beneath his eyes and do nothing to distract from the hollow of his cheeks. He doesn’t look like he’s eaten or slept since I last saw him.
I look down at his toes when my memory takes me back to his ceremony. His feet are black enough to disappear into the dark.
“It was thatbitch,” Wilcox says over a man’s howl. “She set us up. If we don’t get the hell out of here, they’ll throw you in here too, so come on…Please.” He tries to rattle bars that won’t budge while a sob shakes his chest. He doesn’t tell me where to get the key to the cell, and I don’t ask. I don’t need to.
The Keepers have it.
And god knows when they’ll be back.
My shoulders coil, and my arms grow tense as bricks at my sides. I look down the tunnel where I came.
