Wildwood Imperium (Wildwood Chronicles 3)

“One charge, top floor. Wait till the kids are out.”

“One charge, top floor.” He’d stopped there. “What if the kids aren’t out, tra la tra lee?”

Jacques had shaken his head, hadn’t he? “No singing,” that’s what he’d said. Another reminder. Had he answered the question, though? Unthank had asked him again:

“What if they aren’t out?”

“The kids will be out,” Jack—Jacques—had said.

“And if they’re not?” Unthank had pressed. He’d remembered.

Jacques stared at his old compatriot, hard. He perhaps hadn’t expected blowback from a reportedly crazy person. “Then we’ve got a few more martyrs for the cause.” That’s what he’d said. “All in the service of bringing down the greatest industrial power this country has known. We’re dealing the killing blow here, Joffrey. No time for cowards and quitters.”

“No time,” repeated Unthank. “Yes. No time.”

And so here he was, panting wildly as he walked the eight stories to the thirtieth floor, the thing in his pocket weighing more and more with every flight he climbed.

CHAPTER 20

The Kiss; Across the Threshold

Martha Song was dreaming. Or at least she thought she was. She was standing in front of a large crowd of people, receiving an award. Someone was standing near her; she turned to see who it was and immediately recognized the man as the mayor of Portland himself. She’d never actually known who the mayor was—Unthank had kept the orphanage under a pretty serious information lockdown—but it was as if her unconscious self was implying that the man in front of her—tidy three-piece suit, horn-rimmed glasses, neatly pomaded hair—was, in fact, the mayor. She must’ve remained suspicious, as, out of the ether, a sash suddenly appeared over the man’s shoulder, reading MAYOR OF PORTLAND. The bespectacled man pointed to the sash, smiling.

“Oh,” said Martha. “Hi.”

“It is my utmost pleasure to present to you, Martha Song, the key to the City of Portland,” the mayor said, speaking into a funny spaceship-like microphone. The jubilant crowd that stretched out into the horizon cheered loudly. The mayor continued, “For your hardships, for your sacrifices. Just so you know they have not gone unnoticed.”

“Well, thanks,” said Martha, bowing her head so that something could be placed over it. It felt strange, the award, and Martha put her hand up to her face, feeling the wispy tendrils of a long, gray beard.

She looked up and saw that she was suddenly in the middle of a very dark chamber, made of smooth stone. A small glint of light came in from a barred window, high above. Her hands were dirty; she saw that she’d been using them to dig a tunnel. The opening to this tunnel presented itself, clawed out of the corner of the stone wall. She spat into her palm and crouched low, preparing to continue her labors.

That was when she was shaken awake. An alarm was sounding. Soft, thudding explosions could be heard somewhere, far off, like pillows dropping from a great height. She opened her eyes.

“Elsie?” she managed. Another thing presented itself to her: The back of her head was slightly damp and pounded with a very rare kind of dull pain. The blur of her eyes gave way, and the girlish contours of the nine-year-old’s face came into focus. “How did you—”

“We don’t have time!” shouted Elsie. She was out of breath; it seemed that she’d just undergone some great travail to be there, looming over Martha like an orbiting planet. “What happened to Carol?”

It all came wheeling back to her: They’d just been sitting there, in the room. The room that was not the dusky basement of some craggy castle, but in fact the weird room that led off from Brad Wigman’s office. They’d been there, Martha and Carol, when the first explosion rocked the building, sending a tremulous shake up to this, the top floor, like a shiver up a spine. They’d been in the middle of reading, hadn’t they? She’d dropped the book and locked eyes with Carol, even though Carol couldn’t see. That was when the door to the room had drawn back and that man Roger had appeared, strangely dressed in some kind of ceremonial robe.

“He closed the door behind him,” Martha continued to explain, lifting herself onto her elbows, “murmuring something about a book, about how easy it had been. Then he grabbed Carol, really hard, by the arm. I jumped up to stop him and he hit me over the head with something. A bottle, maybe? I don’t know. It hurt. I fell. Everything kind of went dark. And that’s when you showed up.”

More of her fellow Unadoptables were now appearing, as if materializing from the walls. She rubbed her eyes and tried to refocus. “Oz? Harry? Ruthie? What are you all doing here?” She couldn’t help but feel a warm glow of relief spread through her chest.

The three other children, all piled into the small room, had the same look of desperation on their faces as they studied the room’s every corner with the flightiness of spooked jackrabbits.

Another thing was happening, something that Martha realized had somehow figured into her dreamlike unconsciousness: Someone was pounding on the wall. Martha sat up; the other children froze. A voice came through, a voice dipped in a dialect that sounded like something one might hear pealing away as one rode a belled troika across the Russian steppe.

“I demand the door is opened!”

The children all recognized the voice: It was the voice of their old orphanage matron, Desdemona Mudrak.

“No!” shouted Elsie, taking initiative. “Not until you tell us what happened to Carol!”

Silence reigned on the other side of the wall; Desdemona was evidently rejiggering her circuits to these strange new phenomena. Apparently Carol was not in the room, but instead had been replaced by one of the other orphans—an orphan who had not, to her best recollection, been in the room before.

“Who is speaking?” she called.

“It’s Elsie Mehlberg, Miss