When he stepped back and nodded, she nodded back. Ready. Set. Go—
He kissed her quick, even though he probably shouldn’t have, and then he took off, ducking out of the pantry area and shooting forward down a twenty-foot passageway. Nyx was right with him, sticking close by.
When he put up his hand and halted, she stopped along with him.
No sounds up ahead. No smells. No alarms, either.
On his signal, they slipped out into the Command’s compound proper—which was nothing like the prison at large. Here, all the passageways and rooms were finished, the rock walls and ceilings hidden behind proper plaster, the lights set into panels, the floor tiled. There was no mold anywhere and no damp, earthy smell, due to a heating system that ran constantly, pumping fresh, warm air into the cold subterranean lair. There were other creature comforts, too, such as running water, and the light boxes with the moving pictures, and other technological things the purpose of which were tied to the prison’s business endeavors.
“There are different sectors herein,” he said in a low voice. “The guard bunks, the work area, and the private quarters.”
“Which one do we go to?”
“The private quarters.”
They moved in concert, him in front, her in back, their bodies sleek and silent on the balls of their feet, guns down by their thighs. On one level, he was surprised at how easily they formed a working alliance of function. On another, given the way they’d had sex, he should have known. Their bodies moved well together in any and all situations.
As they closed in on the private quarters, he became utterly paranoid that they were being followed. While that appeared to be untrue, he braced for a guard to jump out into their paths up ahead. However, if he was right about the time—and given the guards’ shift change, he had to be—the Command would be in the work area, for it checked in on productivity personally at the beginning and end of each work cycle. The Command took the product far more seriously than the prisoners, and one might have wondered why the business end of the prison wasn’t taken somewhere else, somewhere safer and less complicated. A workforce was needed, however, so the prisoners were necessary, and they were free, after all, no wages to worry about. Indeed, he was well aware that the only reason the incarcerated were fed and given even rudimentary medical care was because of the shift requirements of the product stations. What was more, based on Nyx’s report of the year they were in, he had a feeling that many prisoners had exceeded their sentences. Workers were required, however, and so they stayed trapped in this timeless, dim nether land.
It was unconscionable. All of it.
As he came up to a bifurcation in the hallway, he held up his palm again and they both stopped. Pause. Pause . . . pause.
Nothing. No sounds, no scents.
On his nod, they continued on. The private quarters were well guarded when the Command was in situ. When it was not, the place was a ghost town. Even still, as he led Nyx with efficiency and silence toward their destination, passing by all manner of doors and offshoot halls, his heart pounded in a disproportionate fashion to the amount of exercise he was experiencing.
And it was not only because he was preparing to run into the guards or an off-schedule Command. As he closed in on the Wall, he realized that there was another reason he had insisted on coming with Nyx on this mission. Another reason he wanted to get back here.
As they went around one of their last corners, he faltered.
Tripped.
Caught himself on the plastered wall by throwing out a hand.
“What is it?” Nyx whispered. “Are you ill?”
Up ahead, the cell that had been constructed some twenty years before, that had been kitted out with things from the world above, presented itself like a diorama. A stage set. An exhibit illustrating life the way it had been lived.
The Jackal approached the bars with shaking hands and a pounding heart. As his mouth went dry, he tried to swallow so he could offer some reply to Nyx. None came, especially as he peered in through the iron bars and the steel mesh.
There was no one in there. Not on the soft bed with its clean sheeting and blankets. Not at the writing desk with the books and the notation pads and the pens. Not in the porcelain bathtub nor dressing area behind the screen.
Breathing in through his nose, he caught the familiar scent, and tried to reassure himself that there was still time—but in truth, time had not been what hindered him in this ultimate duty he must fulfill.
Abruptly, he thought of Nyx’s determination and courage.
“Who lives in here?” she asked softly.