Desperation in Death (In Death #55)(2)

The showers in the Intimacy Area ran plush—a small benefit. Cameras recorded, of course, as the small benefit never included privacy.

But water ran hot, and steam rose.

Mina spoke in whispers under it as she shampooed.

“I’m Mina. I’ve been here six months and ten days, I think.”

“Dorian. I’m not sure, maybe five months.”

“I’ve seen you in some of the classes. You have to pretend better. If you keep getting tossed in the box, drugged up, or smacked around, you’ll never escape.”

“There’s no way out. I’ve tried. I’ve looked.”

“If there’s a way in, there’s a way out.” She sent Dorian a sidelong look as she carefully worked conditioner through her long red hair. “Maybe I’ve got a plan I’m working on, but I think it needs two.”

Then she smiled, poured liquid wash onto a pink pouf. “You’re doing really well in French class,” she said in normal tones.

Since Dorian didn’t need to get hit with a brick to catch on, she shrugged. “I really like the French class. Polite Conversation is boooring.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad, and it’s nice to have conversation. You know, you could maybe help me in French, and I could help you with the other. Improvement means more time in the Relaxation Area, which is totally iced.”

Which was beyond boring, but Dorian shrugged again. “I guess. Is it allowed?”

“Auntie let me help a trainee with reading, so I guess. I’ll ask.”

“Yeah, you ask. She likes you.”

“I’m likable.” Her pretty, heart-shaped face lit up with a smile that fell short of her eyes. “I like being likable. One day I’ll have a master who’ll like me, and give me beautiful clothes and lots of orgasms. I can’t wait!”

Dorian saw the lie. Mina wanted out, and so did she.

So they formed an alliance.

As Dorian saw it, they had nothing much in common.

She was Black—or mostly—and Mina was as white as white got. Through snippets of conversation, she learned Mina had lived in a nice house in the ’burbs of Philadelphia.

She’d been scooped up walking home after soccer practice from her school. Private school. She had a younger brother, and two parents, four grandparents, and three best friends. She had a sort of boyfriend, too.

Dorian had lived on the streets for months before she got scooped. She’d run away from her hard-handed mother and her mother’s series of idiot boyfriends and a craphole tenement in Freehold.

She’d made it to New York only a few weeks before the scoop and had just started finding her feet. She’d found her freedom, then bam, she’d come to strapped to a bed inside the Academy.

She’d thought hospital at first, because it looked like one.

Auntie told her differently.

As she saw it, she and Mina practically came from different planets. But they had a few things in common. Hatred for the Academy and a desperation to escape it. And smarts.

Over the next weeks, the alliance grew into a friendship.

Dorian learned to pretend, and learned the benefits of pretending.

She got praise, she got little rewards. And better, even better, the sharp eyes of the instructors, the guards, the matrons, of Auntie didn’t look so often in her direction.

She built up a little trust. Not the big pile of it Mina had, but enough. If someone said something careless around her, she filed it away and told Mina.

Mina did the same. And piece by piece they put together a blueprint of the Academy. In their heads only, but they had smarts.

Then Mina found out about the tunnels.

“Number 264 killed herself. Or she’s dead anyway. She used bedsheets and hanged herself.”

Dorian felt her chest burn. “Which one is that?”

“One of the newer ones. We’re luckier because we’re in the Pretty Ones and they don’t hurt us as much as they do the Servants and Pets. Yesterday I was with Auntie, in her office, for a special evaluation, and one of them came to the door. She went out, but I listened.”

“If she’d caught you—”

“She didn’t, and there aren’t any cameras in her office. Nobody watches Auntie. She said use elevator three to take the body down to the tunnels tonight, after Lights Out, and to the crematorium. She said how the dead girl was a street rat anyway, and a waste of time and resources.”

The burn in Dorian’s chest erupted into fire. “I’m going to kill her one day.”

“Dorian, grip it. Tunnels. That’s a way out for sure.”

“You need a swipe for the elevators.”

“That’s where you come in. That’s what you do, right?”

Maybe she’d worked the streets, the tourists—and maybe exaggerated her skill just a little—but this was different.

“You want me to lift a swipe card?”

“The plan doesn’t work without it.” Mina’s absolute confidence radiated, and infected. “You get the swipe as close to Lights Out as you can.”

“Even if I get the swipe, it doesn’t work inside our rooms. We’re locked in at night.”

“Tonight we won’t be. I’ve got that part. You get the card, and at ten-thirty, take the elevator down to the infirmary. Pick me up there, then we go all the way down, and we get out.”