The Gender Fall (The Gender Game #5)(20)

He rolled his eyes and reached out to grab my shirt, steadying me. Thanks, I transmitted in reply.

You gotta remain as still as possible, Owen replied, his focus on the darkness below. When you start to shift your weight, that’s when you start spinning.

Ah. I paused, suddenly curious. So, was this part of your Liberator training?

Owen cast me a sidelong look. His transmission was cagier than I’d come to expect from him. Not… really. Call it information learned through more questionable means. A product of a misspent youth.

I absorbed that information in silence, keeping my flashlight pointed down. The sentence was ambiguous, but it seemed to say Owen’s upbringing had been outside the legal system. Somehow, I couldn’t picture it. Owen seemed too honest and genuine to really thrive in a criminal lifestyle. Then again, anything was possible. Maybe he had changed into the person he was now after the Matrians had taken his brother.

My flashlight cut across a break in the cliff face below us. Is that it? I asked Owen, pointing with the light.

He nodded and immediately relayed our discovery to Amber. Great, was all she said in reply. While our descent had seemed slow, with no context to judge our movement in the darkness, it was now clear we were approaching the gap quickly, and I began to move back and forth on the rope, swinging the way I’d just learned not to.

Almost too soon, the gap was there before me, and I planted a foot on the ledge, leaning forward to keep my balance. I got my other foot under me, and then turned to grab Owen, hauling him roughly onto the ledge with me. He unhooked my rope for me, and I helped him with his.

Owen relayed our success to Amber, and I turned, shining my light around. We were standing in the lightly humid air in the mouth of a cave. Not just any cave, but a wide one—my flashlight had a range of maybe thirty feet in the dark, and I couldn’t detect any of the sides from where I stood.

Curious, I moved forward, keeping my flashlight pointed ahead. The rock was damp, but porous enough that it wasn’t slippery. I moved forward maybe fifty feet, and then stopped when my light hit a wall. I swung it right, then left, pausing when the light cut across a massive airlock door.

My eyes widened, and I took a step forward, taking it in. It was similar in design to the one from the facility where the boys were kept. Still, the fact it had somehow been set up here was beyond odd. It was almost unbelievable. Suddenly, a lot of the hero worship the Liberators felt for Desmond started making sense. I could imagine how they must have felt—scared, alone, uncertain—only to be confronted with this mad feat of engineering and technology. How grand Desmond must have seemed. How connected she must have been to make this happen, miles and miles from anything resembling civilization.

But Desmond had an alliance with the Matrian elite. Maybe this base wasn’t just made of sheer moving power on Desmond’s part. How much help had she gotten from her benefactors? Did they know it was here? Could they guess we would come?

A glitter above the door caught my attention. I pointed the flashlight upward and encountered the metallic, predatory glare of a security camera. I’d known we would be watched, but it still unsettled me to see it. Unease prickling my back, I swept the beam of light elsewhere, trying to find more cameras, to see if there could be a blind spot… My light hit the edge of another one aimed near the door, cut down at a sharp angle, and I took a step back, just in case. I found another two cameras pointing right, their angles revealing a hard-to-spot path leading off onto a large piece of rock that seemed to stretch out slightly beyond the cliff, slanting into open space. I assumed it took a turn at some point, to make it navigable going down—this must have been the way people usually climbed up to the base.

Guys, I began, we’ve got cameras. How long do you think—

An excited shriek interrupted my report, and I turned back toward the ledge at the cave mouth. I could see the light from Owen’s flashlight pointed out from the ledge, and caught the fine movements of the rope. Amber whooped again in excitement, the subvocalizers perfectly recreating her exuberance right in my ears as she rappelled down the cliff above us.

Really? I growled through the device, and her voice turned bashful—but not quite repentant.

Oops! Sorry!

I could see Owen smiling through his mask, and I moved over to him, ready to help him pull her onto the ledge. But it was apparent neither of our efforts were needed as Amber kicked off the rock a final time, swinging out and away in a graceful arc before doing something with the rope that arrested her fall. She glided into the mouth of the cave, landing five feet from the edge, both her feet planted firmly.

All right, I’m jealous, I said as I helped Owen slip the rope from her, and she grinned wildly through the mask. Owen grabbed the lines and held them out over the cliff face; Amber keyed something into a little blinking control pad that tucked neatly into a pocket of her jacket, and the lines jerked and began slowly winding back upward.

The cave remained silent but for the scuffling sounds made by the three of us, the regard of the cameras weighing heavily on me. It was almost worse knowing the Liberators had probably seen us—and still hadn’t done anything. What could they be planning?

No welcoming committee? I commented, trying to keep my tone light, as we moved toward the airlock.

Owen and Amber looked at each other and shook their heads. I’m sure they’ve seen us by now, Owen said, but we’re not trying for stealth. We’ve gotta show them we have nothing to hide.