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So did Jurnek, who received a nod of ‘go ahead’ from the ex-wraith. “We believe we know where they are,” the Bolt told her with a frown of worry on his otherwise unfazed face.
Chapter 6
Nadia gazed up at the Wall. It rose high in its ninety-degree angle, finally looming over the city far above before vanishing into the reflected sky up there. She turned to see the other side, but they were so far from the Shade and the Shimmer in the Wall over there. The Veil only protruded through the bedrock inside the Shade and was likely the cause of that dreary place.
But here, on the other side of the city, with so many high-rises between them, the opposite side of the Wall couldn’t be seen. It was an area Nadia hadn’t been in much over the years. It was far from the Cube, and most of the people Shadow Wraiths were sent to hunt down, hid in the Shade or the city. This part of it wasn’t somewhere that drew criminals and murderers. It was a quiet area of the city. The rent was usually cheaper, but it was also farther away from everything. There were few shops and offices around. Just the apartment buildings.
It wasn’t truly the Wall itself that had caused the area to stagnate. It was what this section of the Wall hid. Where it led.
“And you’re sure about this?” Harmiston asked despite the Bolts telling them of this back at Neelofar’s shop. Nadia could understand him. This was not a place she had considered when looking for the Wraiths.
“Yes, Chronicler,” Kuryk said with patience. He’d had more time to adjust to the idea, though. Kuryk, Jurnek, and two female Bolts had come to show them the way, and what proof they had about the Wraiths’ whereabouts.
Harmiston nodded and craned his neck to look up at the junction of the Wall and the fake sky. “To the surface then,” he said and focused on the wide and open cavern that was the main access-way to the old world above Agartha.
The Bolts were certain, though they’d never seen a Wraith up there. Still, it was as close as she’d gotten to any kind of useful information in three weeks, so Nadia was willing to listen and have a look. According to the Bolts, the Wraiths had been taken from the Cube and loaded into trucks while still unconscious the day of the attack. Nadia already knew about them being removed. She’d noticed it from Harmiston’s apartment, but the Bolt’s who’d returned home that day had witnessed it from the roof of one of the mansions on the other side of the Cube and the Palace. They had been smart enough to spot the trap and had spied around the area. That day had been one of turmoil and chaos, and the hybrids had not noticed the young spies outside their newly won domain.
The Bolts hadn’t seen exactly where the unconscious Wraiths had been taken, but a few had followed the trucks in this direction before the attacks in the city had forced them back. After that, they’d searched everywhere in the area, even setting up a base for a few days, but the Wraiths were nowhere to be found. The Bolts had even questioned the local crematoriums, but no one had received that amount of work. The Bolts had concluded that if the Wraiths had died, then their bodies had not been seen to in a traditional manner. There was no place to bury so many in Agartha either, so they had to have been moved somewhere else.
The Veil had been one theory, but why drive in the wrong direction with such a dangerous cargo then? The moment the Wraiths woke up, they would have become trouble for Kassemyr’s people, hybrids or not.
It was at this time, when they had been about to give up, that a few Bolts hiding from a patrol of hybrids one night, saw them enter the open tunnel that led inside the Wall. Normally, it was closed off with large barn doors. This was no longer the case and Nadia stared at the heavy iron doors barely hanging from their hinges.
“Have you ever been to the surface?” Harmiston asked Nadia. The Bolts looked at her with curiosity. She knew they hadn’t reached that point in their training yet.
“Once. Though barely out of the tunnel. The air up there is toxic. We were taken to see what our ancestors did to us all, and why we have to protect the city at all costs. There is nowhere else for us to go if the city becomes uninhabitable.”
“The mages won’t let that happen,” Kuryk said.
“Hopefully not. But it will be a long time before any Agarthan can return to live up there.”
“So if the Wraiths were sent there …?” Harmiston prompted.
“If anyone can survive up there, it will be them.”
The Bolts nodded their agreement, and they all began walking closer to the entrance. They were, however, not going in there.
“See that three-story building there?” Jurnek asked while pointing.
“Behind it?” Nadia asked. She received silent confirmations, and they all headed in that direction.
Unlike the tunnels under the Royal Palace and the Cube, which went in many directions, this one went only two ways—up and down. Entering such a tunnel when it was controlled by the hybrids would be a fool’s errand and a suicide mission. But the Bolts, whose statures were smaller, were used to thinking differently to make up for it.
It had taken them a day to find the air wells.
The city of Agartha relied on its mages to keep everything going and that meant access to air and water, among many things. Air wells were long narrow tunnels that reached the surface but were not meant for people to pass through. The air was pulled down and cleansed on the way by the mages, and they were part of an intricate system to feed the city with the precious air needed to keep everything and everyone going.
Nadia and Harmiston were led by the Bolts to a manhole hidden among some scraggly-looking bushes near the wall. The Bolts removed it and then crawled inside. Nadia smiled at Harmiston, who visibly shuddered at the thought, and then followed them before he came too. They eased the lid back in place over them and then tried to ignore the foul smell of the sewer. It didn’t float by them, but nearby. Nadia could hear the trickle of it but not see it.
“This way,” Jurnek told them and, thankfully, led them away from the smell. It wasn’t long before he showed them an opening in the bedrock at the place Nadia estimated to be where the Wall met the city grounds.
The Bolt shimmied inside, and everyone followed. Nadia eyed Harmiston’s shoulders with skepticism but thought he would fit.
Five minutes later, she knew she’d been right, but she heard him struggling here and there.
The shaft was steep and in a tight space, but the Bolts crawled onward, sure of their way. When they were above the city ground, the air became better, and Nadia felt the pleasant touch of a breeze of fresh air. Grates were set in various spaces in the wall, allowing for air to pass, but the metal mesh was hard to see out through.
“Beware,” one of the girls said, after a long while of this. She was the last Bolt before Nadia and Harmiston. “We’re coming up on the checkpoint.”
