After a hearty breakfast of vitamin soda and not much else, Mal struck gold while combing through darkroom for any lingering supplies to destroy: two jab saws in the back of one of the lower cabinets, carelessly left behind in the wake of the recent renovations. Without missing a beat she tucked one of the six-inch blades into her waistband, before carrying the other openly into the studio. She rapped her knuckles against the wall opposite, finding a spot that sounded promisingly hollow; she took a moment to locate the camera, sending it a knowing look before plunging the knife in and sawing ferociously through the plaster. When she paused to catch her breath, she stepped away briefly to retrieve the fire extinguisher: it would be more efficient to perforate the outline of a door and knock out the rest with the tank's heavy bottom.
By the time Render stormed into the studio, her initial efforts had exposed a thick pad of pink insulation, and she had moved three feet down to start again, hoping to find something less tedious. She turned to face him when she heard the magnetic lock disengage, holding the tank awkwardly in her arms, and watched with great satisfaction as he stopped short to violently cough on the floating clouds of dust. His hands grasped blindly for the plexiglass snorkel on his belt, eyes no doubt blurred and irritated with the particulate — she pulled her shirt down from her face to show off her broad smile and let the tank swing down to her right side, denting a triangular hole into the wall behind her.
“Aris, good to see you!" Her left hand groped through the air before wrenching the saw out of the wall. "Excuse the mess, I thought the place could use some redecorating. Your thoughts?”
“You cannot cut holes in the walls, Mal.” His voice was strained with anger and the lingering irritation in his throat. The gills of his snorkel flexed as he coughed once more; he sucked in a deep, powerful breath before continuing in a gritty voice, “The dust is harmful for the baby.”
“You know my terms for cooperation.” At odds with her cavalier tone, she let her hands shake as she hurriedly dusted the white powder from her clothes, playing the part of a chagrined teenager caught on the back-foot. She dropped the tank, just barely missing her toes, and pitched her voice with a nervous tremble. “I want to see Gwenh. You already took away my baby’s father — you have no right to take away her godmother, too.”
He looked away, swallowing hard with guilt: satisfaction curled in her gut, her half-lies having landed with the intended effect. “She’s in a bad way right now. Withdrawal, detoxing, it’s an ugly process—“
“I don’t want to hear what you have to say, if it isn’t giving me what I want.” She pulled her shirt back over her face and turned to her work, aiming a hard kick at a clinging piece of broken drywall to knock it loose. As she raised the blade once more, Render's bony hand clasped like a vice around her wrist and squeezed, forcing her grip to loosen; the saw clattered to the floor, and he quickly planted his foot on the handle and flung it behind him. Realistically, it didn't matter: the second saw was still tucked into her waistband, within easy reach if she needed it, but her hand refused to even twitch in its direction. It belonged to someone else, and she had to keep it safe until it could be delivered to its rightful owner.
“You cannot throw tantrums just to get your way, Mal.” He sounded exasperated, teetering back from the edge of anger.
“Seems to be working so far.” She twisted free, darting around him to grab the knife in her swift retreat — once re-armed, she moved down the wall at a leisurely place, choosing a spot at random to scar with the rough outline of a door. “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, or the next day, but I’ve got nothing but time on my hands — you’ve made sure of that.” She forced herself to work slowly as she spoke, methodically dragging the tip of the saw through the top layer of paint, waiting patiently for him to run the numbers and calculate just how much she could cost him in property damage. She turned her face away as another thought occurred to her, made her falter: the next step would be to show him what damage she could do to herself and a hypothetical fetus, and she wasn't sure she had the stomach for that.
Render sighed heavily — whatever number he came up with, it was clearly enough to bring him to the table. “Leave the knife.”
She plunged the saw into the drywall without argument, dusting off her hands perfunctorily. He turned away to hide his wince, gesturing for her to follow, the severe set to his shoulders doing little to hide his displeasure. There was a moment, when the magnetic lock was disengaged but the door was not yet open, that her hand wanted to take the second knife from her waistband and plunge it into his back; her imagination ran through the fantasy like a home-movie, jerky and too close to the action as she killed him quickly, silently, hiding his body within the studio and taking his key-card for herself, finding Gwenh and hauling her to safety—
Her moment passed, the door opening and two guards standing at attention as she and Render joined them in the hallway. She buried her relief under many layers of retroactive logic, telling herself that she needed to wait for Zed and Kaia and Tai-Song to be out of the crossfire before making her move, that it wouldn't help anyone to kill Render at this stage. Even though the question broiled angrily under the surface, she pointedly refused to consider whether she'd be capable of killing Render, when there was nothing standing in the way — there was only one right answer, it just wasn't the right time yet.
***
When the cell's heavy door was wrestled open, letting a wedge of harsh light into the darkened room, Mal could see that Gwenh was lying completely still on her narrow bed, eyes screwed shut, panting as though each whistling breath stung. She didn’t move when the guard barked at her to look alive, or when Mal stepped inside and called out her name; the door swung shut, and in the cloying darkness the sound of her laboured breathing was excruciatingly loud.
Mal shuffled carefully toward the bed, but not carefully enough; her shins struck the metal frame with a loud clang, and Gwenh moaned at the sound. She knelt beside the bed, wincing at the concrete against her knees, doing her best not to make any more loud noises, or breathe too deeply: the scent of stale sweat and old blood stung her nose like the vapours off of whisky. Her fingers trailed along a twitching shoulder and a compulsively gulping throat, palm pressing against her clammy forehead like a compress. Gwenh tossed her head back weakly, sighing with small relief as her hand shuffled down and applied the slightest pressure over her eyes.
“I need my smokes.”
"I'll see what I can do." She guided herself through the dark until her lips were just a hairsbreadth from Gwenh's ear, and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Tai-Song is dead.”
She grabbed onto Mal's wrist and squeezed: the pressure of her grip was barely a flutter compared to her usual strength. “You’re sure?”
“I saw his body.”
Gwenh's sigh was less noise and more of a whimpering shudder of breath on Mal's cheek, her tears leaving spots of wet against her fingers. “Too young, my friend, but forever brave.”
There was a camera in the upper corner of the room, no doubt infrared and fixed firmly on them, blinking with a faint red light. Mal lifted her free hand to mask her mouth, wishing she knew any Welsh at all, hoping endlessly that keeping her voice low would be enough. “Zed has him, she'll get him out. You’re my responsibility.”
Her grip tightened, slightly stronger now, and it did nothing to hide the fear in her voice. “Leave me behind.”
“No, it’s okay, I’ve got a plan—”
“And those have always worked out so well.”
The words stung more than they should have, and Mal felt like she was fifteen years old again. "You told Zed I was good at plans."
Gwenh sighed quietly, sounding sixteen and never more defeated. She pried Mal's hand from her eyes, shakily turning to lace their fingers together as she tucked their joined hands against her bony chest. “Let’s hear it.”
“I have people waiting, on the other side. Zed will get herself and the body out, and my people will help them get back home. That will only take a couple days, maybe less — they'll reach out once it's done, and then you and I can follow.” She fought to keep her words steady; Gwenh would hear the uncertainty in her voice, if she let herself waver. “I’ll smash up the cameras, and then I’ll come get you—“
“Suppose the goons interrupt you?”
“I’ll fight them.”
“Mal, you’re three inches tall."
"I'll take one of their guns. Height won't matter then, will it?"
"Yeah, but you're such a bleeding heart it makes me want to cry just looking at you — what are you going to do with a gun?”
“Point and shoot, it can’t be that hard.”
Gwenh laughed, and then groaned in pain. "Just leave me behind."
"Why should I?"
She shook her head petulantly. "Because you owe me. I didn't want to be left behind, back then, but you did anyway — if you actually want to make it up to me, the least you could do is honour my wishes now."
Mal wanted to collapse in on herself and vomit into the nearest trash-can. "That's a fucked-up thing to say to me."
"As if you listen to anything else." She squeezed her hand in contrite apology, her voice steady and certain: “This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to escape. You saw what happened to Tai-Song — the same thing happened to James, and Mira, and Deep, and Farah, and Nour. If you bring me along, you'll be the next one on the chopping block, the next one he makes me forget.”
“But Render likes me.” That story was starting to wear thin, even for Mal. Her free hand nervously petted Gwenh’s hair, smoothing back the wild, sweaty wisps and running down the length of her knotty, lopsided braid. “Maybe seven is your lucky number.”
“I can’t lose another friend.” She ducked her head and kissed her knuckles, soft and tender and so unlike the single, stiff kiss they’d shared as teenagers. “Don’t worry about me — look after yourself first.”
“I don't understand: don’t you want to go home? Don’t you want to see Goose again?” She couldn’t fathom how she could possibly be fumbling this stage of the plan — this was supposed to be the easy part. "You can’t expect me to just leave you here with him—”
“Of course I do, and of course I can.” Gwenh slowly inched onto her side to face her, tiny increments like the second-hand ticking by on a clock. “Isaiah’s dead, because of me.”
“Don’t talk like that, that's not fair—"
“I killed him, didn’t I?” Her voice was defeated and small, and she didn't reach out to prompt Mal for a response or confirmation, not when she already knew that she had it right. “I’m dangerous.”
Navy’s accusations came to mind, and sparked an indignant anger within her. “It wasn’t your fault, you were being manipulated—”
“I still held the shears. I still lost control.” She sounded dead, through and through, and that more than anything terrified Mal. “I need to have control of myself before I come back. Okay?”
Half a keening cry erupted from Mal's throat. “Please don’t make me leave you behind,” she begged, squeezing her hand as though she might get up and walk away. “Please, Gwenh, not again.”
“Come on, Mal, I can take care of myself.” Her cajoling tone wavered. "Don’t you trust me?"
“I trusted you to keep up with me.” Why was she even entertaining this? It was probably just the withdrawal talking, feeding into a paranoid delusion. She ought to just wrap Gwenh up in her blanket and carry her out over her shoulder — so what if she never forgave her? She would at least be alive to hold the grudge. “Forget it: if you’re staying, so am I.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Gwenh snapped. “If you stay, we're exactly where we started — he controls me using you, he controls you using me. I need you to go against your better instincts here and leave me behind, unless you want to kill him.”
She flinched at the mere suggestion. “I don't— I can’t—”
“Then you have to leave me behind, so I can do it. You can help by getting yourself somewhere safe, so I don't have to worry about you.” She squeezed her hand again. “The only way I’m walking out of here alive is if he’s already dead. I’ll meet you by Sulien’s grave, once it's done.”
Mal felt herself rearing back to argue, to cajole and convince, to do anything it took to make her obey, no matter the consequences; the raging, spiteful words were mere centimetres from exiting her mouth when Gwenh’s grip turned entirely painful, her fingers arching and digging nail-first into the spaces between Mal’s knuckles. She almost cried out, but the brief show of force was gone before it could do more than surprise her.
When it passed, Gwenh was too out of breath to speak — Mal's thoughts returned to Constance and her white-knuckled grip, the tenacity it must have taken to uproot her entire life to get away from someone she relied on for everything, someone who had cheated her out of what she was owed so completely that she had to struggle inch by inch to take it back.
She sat back on her heels, pulling the slide from her shoe and pressing it into Gwenh's hand. “For luck.”
“This smells like feet.”
“Tough. Don’t let anyone see it — not the cameras, not the guards, not Render. I’ll explain everything—“
“Later,” she finished, soft and firm. She shuffled, and the parcel was hidden somewhere Mal was not privy to. “How are you going to get yourself out?”
She chewed her lip: the plan she had been avoiding thinking about too hard was seeming bare and thin under such sudden scrutiny. “He thinks I’m pregnant, and he's attached to the baby.” Her lower back ached, sweat prickling over her shoulders as a hot flash came and went. “My period’s due soon — I have a day or two before I start to bleed. He'll think I'm miscarrying, and he’ll call an ambulance to take me to the offsite hospital.”
“He might just send you to the fourth floor.”
“He won’t. I’ll make sure of it.”
“What is it, a little blood? Crying? He might not panic the way you want him to, early miscarriages aren't usually life-threatening.” Gwenh’s hand wrapped around her nape and pulled her closer, until their faces were millimetres apart; Mal swore she could see the brown of her eyes glowing in the flat darkness. “What if I attacked you? That way, you won't need to convince him that something's wrong, and he won't ask questions if he thinks you're in serious danger.”
She chewed her lip raw. It wasn't a terrible idea, except— “He’ll come down on you for it.”
“I can handle it. It’s not like he’ll kill me.”
“Gwenh—“
Gwenh's other hand wrapped weakly around her back as her head tipped into the cradle of her shoulder; this close, Mal could feel the silent tears wetting into her shoulder, and again the instinct to rescue threatened to override everything else. There was nothing to do but ride it out as she wrapped her arms carefully around Gwenh, making room for her to burrow against her chest and tangle her shaking hands into the loose fabric of her blouse. The terror didn’t lessen, but eventually Gwenh ran out of tears, lifting her head and pressing a kiss to her jaw. “He’ll be coming to check on us soon. Now or never.”
“Wait, wait—“ She quickly pulled the knife from her waistband, scratching open the skin on her hip in her haste, and tucked it under the pillow; all the while, she stuffed down the urge to scoop Gwenh into her arms and make a run for it. “Just in case.”
“You know I love you.” She tugged Mal closer for another kiss on the cheek — after parting, she tipped their foreheads together to catch her breath. “It'll be okay — I'm right behind you.”
"Okay." It's not okay, it's not okay, why are you leaving her behind— "How do you want to do this?"
"Stay there." The bed creaked as she forced herself to sit upright, slumping into Mal's outstretched arms. When she spoke at her normal volume, her voice was so raw that it broke over every syllable. "Let me hug you goodbye."
The process was slow, and Mal had to muffle a nervous giggle as Gwenh slowly wrapped her arms around her head and neck; Gwenh shushed her irritably between panting breaths, leaning heavily on her for balance even after she got into position. After long enough that their embrace was straining credulity, Mal reached up to touch her hand.
“Ready?”
Gwenh nodded and took a deep, measured breath, changing her hold into a headlock and slightly increasing the pressure. Mal yelped in feigned surprise and did her best to squirm convincingly; Gwenh snarled and squeezed her closer, forearm banding around the nape of her neck. To onlookers, it looked as though Gwenh meant to strangle her, even if the pressure was barely more than a flutter.
“I’ll kill her!” Gwenh's broken voice rose to a painful shout; Mal thrashed, cries muffled by the fabric of her shirt. “Give me my smokes, or I’ll break her neck!”
The door slammed open, one guard rushing in to subdue Gwenh, the other pulling Mal back into the well-lit hallway. Render clucked in concern as he touched her face, trying to assess the damage; Mal slapped his hands away from her skin, repulsed at the cold touch, and whirled around to look back at Gwenh. The first guard had thrown her back onto the bed, pinning her down while the second bound her wrists and ankles with soft restraints — with more time and more light, it appeared that she had lost at least twenty pounds, her bones pressing against her skin like light through paper. Her arms and face were raked with long, oozing scratches, blood thickly caked under her fingernails, and by the darker specks flaking off of her face and neck, she hadn't been allowed to wash since they’d last seen each other.
Their eyes met briefly, as Gwenh sagged with exhaustion and collapsed against her restraints, just before the guards stepped away and pulled the door shut. Her head lolled toward Mal with immense effort; even though her eyes were sunken and bloodshot, and her pupils were the size of pins, there was nothing clouding her sharp gaze.