The Wire Hanger

Chapter Nineteen

“What the fuck,” said Noah. Before us were rows and rows of metal shelving, not unlike the vegetable shelves in the cellar where we’d started, except that these had been fitted with heavy drawers, all neatly labeled.

            “It’s a filing system,” said Delilah, moving forward. “This is a records room. Not a prison.”

            “They have to be here,” said Noah, his voice all frustration. “I saw them on the map.”
            “Actually, you didn’t,” said Delilah. She had crouched to read the writing on one of the drawers; the rest of us hadn’t moved. It was oddly cold in the room, as though it were on a different vascular system from the rest of the Centre and wasn’t heated.

            “What?”

            “You saw their ID bracelets,” said Adah, her voice floating towards us in the dark. “You think that is them. But they are not them. The mark of the beast is on us all and cannot be removed, but we are not yet born with them.”

            “Of course,” breathed Jezebel in a furious whisper.

            Delilah pulled open a drawer. Jezebel beamed her flashlight in Delilah’s direction, walking towards her slowly. Inside the drawer were stacks of trays, each tray holding an ID bracelet and a name typed out on an index card. There were ten trays to a drawer, and more drawers than I could count. A chill went down my spine. It was unimaginably eerie to see an ID bracelet on its own – they were only ever on someone’s arm, so it was like opening the drawer and seeing a severed limb. Like I was in a dark, cold room filled with the hands of the dead.

            “Elizabeth Vazquez,” Noah read the name on the index card out loud. “Of course.” He smacked his head with his palm. “How could I have been so stupid – those names didn’t come from nowhere –“

            But then a hard, deafening sound came from outside, like a house collapsing coalescing in one second of noise. “Time to go,” said Jezebel grimly. We piled outside to find Obadiah, gun cocked, aiming somewhere up in the atrium.

            “Look out,” I hissed, “to the left.” In the room where we’d been, there were dozens of Protectors, flashlight beams crossing the walls in every direction. Not the way we’d come, then.

            “Guns a-blazing, right boss,” said David, and took off running to the right. There was a staircase straight through the middle of the atrium and since everyone else followed him, I did too. We were still mostly covered by darkness, but as we got to the top of the staircase I heard a shout go up.

            Down the staircase, down another floor, then towards the main entrance to the subway system. The air was filled with the acrid smell of gunsmoke and the frequent noise of a shot fired, although they didn’t seem to be getting near us. I realized that I didn’t actually know whether my father had ever fired his gun before. He probably had now.

            David shoved us through a service door just inside the subway station; it was a dank cement staircase, the kind that was beginning to feel like home. I had just made it in, with a couple of people still behind me, when I heard a thud and a quiet, “Oh.” I turned and Delilah had sunk gracefully to the floor, blood pooling out behind her.

            “Come on,” hissed David, “get in here.”

            “Delilah,” I said. The world was suddenly moving in slow motion.

            “Get IN.”

            I did so, my legs moving on automatic. Felix shoved his way past me to get to the head of the crowd, typing in a code at the door at the bottom of the stairs. Then Obadiah came barrelling in, pointing his gun until the very last second the door closed and bolted. We followed Felix through the door at the bottom, which led us back to Lower Queen, and looked at each other.