“What do you want me to do about it? He took my magic from me.” My voice cracked, and I struggled to swallow down the lump that had formed in my throat.
You are a demigod, and thus, your magic will regenerate, because you have the ability to create energy from nothing. But to do so, those inferichite cuffs have to be off of you, Coyote replied.Once you get out of this cell, there will be a hallway on your left you will need to take. At the end of that hallway will be a door, and if you can enter it, you will find what you need.
Coyote’s form wavered, and the colors in his fur began to vanish.I am weak, Ava. I must return to the Ancestral Lands, before it is too late. We will do what we can to help you from the other side. I wish I could say you are not on your own.
Coyote cringed and gasped out,But you are. I wish you luck. We are all depending on you.
He vanished, and the cell became darker than ever before. The loneliness that overwhelmed me once Coyote was gone almost inspired me to give up. I might be able to do this on my own, as long as I had him around to at least cheer me on. But now that I knew the entire afterlife was depending on me, it wasn’t like I had a choice.
“Thanks for putting on the pressure,” I grumbled. I thought about the huge task in front of me, and nearly decided not to do it. How did Coyote expect me to break out of Cellblock 9, a place that had never been broken out of, without magic and without the ability to walk? He was asking for the impossible.
I remembered the Warden’s cruel expression as he’d taken what he’d wanted from me, then told the guards to throw me away. Absolute hatred ignited in me and blazed up an inferno inside of my spirit that my Fire magic had never come close to touching.
The Warden thought I was no longer a threat? Big mistake, buddy. He was going to regret not killing me when he had the chance.
I took a deep breath, assessing my options. First, I had to get out of this cell. Then, transportation. If I didn’t get access to a wheelchair of some sort, I wasn’t going anywhere fast.
“Gotta do everything by my damn self,” I grunted. “Here comes Ava to save the day!”
Someone owed me a massage after this. I slid onto my belly and pulled myself around the cell, looking for some sort of object I could use. I located nothing. I shook the rusty bars, but the door was firmly locked.
I examined the lock on the door. Kallie had taught me how to pick locks, and how the ones at the Institute worked. From what I could see, the lock on this cell was similar to the ones we had on our rooms on the main level. It had an automatic deadlocking system where once the door was shut, it latched on its own, and deadlocked by itself. It appeared to have two bolts; a lock bolt that was spring loaded to extend into a strike plate so the door remained closed, and a deadlock bolt, which prevented the latch bolt from being moved without a key.
If I could wedge something into the latch bolt, I might be able to pry the door open. Time had done part of my job for me, as the cell lock was worn from use and attempted tampering by other inmates.
I wiggled the door again, and I noticed that it was slightly loose, though still locked. Kallie had told me some of the latch bolts at the Institute were so old they failed to fully engage, so they could potentially be slipped open with things like soap, floss, or even pieces of paper. I needed something to slip into the lock, so I could get it around the latch bolt and pop it off.
Whatever I could use needed to be on me, because there was nothing in here. I looked down, then reached for my shoe, quickly untying the lace from my sneaker. Once it was undone, I did my best to jam the shoelace through the lock, threading it around the latch bolt so I could do what I could to pry it free.
It tookforever.The work was tedious, moving the shoelace back and forth intricately to slip it underneath the latch bolt. The door squeaked as I worked, and I cringed, hoping none of the guards would hear me messing with the door and come running.
I’d been working on the door for almost an hour, and was nearly ready to try something else, when finally— in such a way that I didn’t expect it— I heard aclick,and the door slightly opened. My jaw dropped open in complete shock as I slightly swung the door back and forth. It worked!
I wound the shoelace around my hand and pulled myself through the cell, then shut it quietly. If the guards came down here and the door was closed, it was so dark that they might not even notice I was gone.
This was the part that was going to suck— crawling around on this dirty ass floor. I wrinkled my nose and tried not to pay attention to how soaked and filthy my clothes got, dragging my legs through puddles that ancestors only knew what was in them. I tried telling myself I was crawling around in a cave, on an archaeological dig with my grandfather, and not slithering around a high-security cell block on a last-ditch effort to save my life, and it helped… kind of.
I got to the end of the hallway, though my arms were burning from dragging my body all the way down it.Coyote said turn to the left, I thought. I poked my head around, though my stomach bottomed out when I saw two guards. They were standing around a pile of bodies, looking down.
“What a mess. I can’t believe I got stuck doing this,” a younger guard complained. He looked like a warlock. Probably wasn’t much older than me. The other guard was middle-aged, and probably a merman.
“These bodies aren’t gonna take care of themselves. Dump them out back, rookie, before we report you again for slacking off,” the older guard said. “Captain’s not gonna be happy if these corpses aren’t moved to the yard pronto. It’s already caused some trouble, so you’d better have it cleaned up by the time we get back.”
The warlock grumbled as his supervisor headed down the opposite hallway, but he bent down to pick up a body. With a closer look, I realized with horror that the bodies lying on the floor were all female inmates.
At the same time, my devious mind began to figure how I could use this to my advantage. Coyote said I needed to get to the door at the end of the hallway, but maybe if the guard carried me out to the prison yard, I could find help.
Once the guard left while carrying another corpse, I did my best to crawl down the hallway and to the bodies of the other girls. I hated doing this, but these girls might have something on them that would help me escape. I began searching bodies. I cringed as I touched the ice-cold corpses, hoping I’d discover something in one of the jumpsuit pockets.
My fingers curled around something small and sharp. It was a shiv, made up of a razor blade taped up to the end of a toothbrush. It was the only weapon this girl had down here, and it had probably taken her months to scrounge up the materials. She’d died before she had a chance to use it.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I grasped the shiv in my hand, concealing it from view. I forced myself to lay face-down amongst the bodies, praying the guards would buy the ruse.
It was absolutely gruesome, posing still amongst the corpses of the other young girls and pretending to be dead. I shut my eyes, ignoring the vacant, wide-eyed stare of the girl next to me, whose soul had left her form hours ago. She, and the other girls here, were probably stuck in the in-between place before the Blessed Haven, wondering why they couldn’t get in.
I was doing this to get out of Cellblock 9, but I wanted to make things right, too. I couldn’t help the girls that had died in Cellblock 9, but I could help Charlie get their souls to the right place, so nobody was going to stop me from getting out of here. I forced my limbs to remain still, although they wanted to quiver in fear, as I heard footsteps return from down the hall.
“How’s it going, rookie?” The merman had come back to check on his progress. “Hell, are you slow. This is going to take all night.”
