DAY ZERO

The plan

"Did you get out Grandpa?"

Old David looked at the boy. "What do you think?"

"He got out," Eli said confidently. "He always gets out."

"He had a plan," Amara said. "Right?"

Old David smiled. One of the younger ones climbed up onto the arm of his chair and leaned against him.

"Was it a super duper plan Grandpa?"

He patted the boy's head. "It was a spectacular plan," he said. "If I do say so myself."

They all leaned in.

"So what happened was..."

When they were dragging David back from that room, he wasn't thinking about his ribs or his face or Joseph's boot. He was watching the doors.

Every door they passed. The locks on them. Old mechanical locks, the kind that hadn't been standard for decades. Not smart locks, not biometric panels. Just metal and pins and a keyhole.

Old school.

He filed that away and said nothing.

When they pushed him back into the work area he found Tobey and Kai and kept his voice low while they worked around him.

"I've been watching the doors," he said.

"And?" Kai said.

"The locks are all manual. Old key locks. Nothing electronic."

Kai was quiet for a second. "I can work with that."

Tobey looked at both of them. "You know how to pick locks?"

"Yes," Kai said simply.

"Of course you do." Tobey shook his head and picked up a crate. "Of course he does."

David kept his voice down. "Here's what I'm thinking. Tonight when they separate us, if we're in different cells, everyone acts asleep until the guards settle. Kai you watch for when they go quiet, when you hear snoring you move." He glanced toward the south corridor. "Pick your lock first. Get out. Come to my cell, open it. While you're picking mine I'll teach you enough to pick Tobey's, then between the two of us we'll handle the rest of the doors."

"And Lia?" Tobey said.

"Last. Her cell is probably deeper in. More doors between us and her."

"Joseph might be in there," Kai said. "By that point in the night."

David kept moving a crate from one stack to another. "I know."

"So you're accounting for that."

"We have scores to settle," David said. "I'm accounting for it."

Kai looked at him for a moment. "Sometimes I genuinely don't know what's going on in your head," he said. Something close to a smile on his face.

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Tobey asked.

Kai picked up his end of the shelf they were moving. "Good thing. Probably."

"What about the kids?" Tobey said. "All of them. We're not leaving without the others."

"We get the guns from the jeep. We come back in and we threaten every goon in this place until they open every door they've got." David looked at Tobey. "No killing unless we have to."

Tobey nodded. "Good. Yeah. Good."

"But prepare for the worst," Kai said.

They all went back to work.

They were separated that night.

Three different rooms on the same corridor, boys packed in together on the floors. David ended up next to a kid who couldn't have been more than fifteen, already asleep the moment he lay down, exhausted in the boneless way that comes from weeks of hard work on not enough food.

David lay on his back and stared at the ceiling and listened.

Guards talking outside. The sound fading as the night settled in. Snoring starting from different corners of the room, one after another.

He waited.

Kai had picked up a thin strip of metal during the work shift. Nobody saw him do it. He'd spotted it under a shelf unit they were moving and stepped on it and kept walking and nobody noticed.

He lay still until the corridor outside was quiet. Properly quiet, not just low, actually quiet. He listened for the guard nearest his door and found his breathing had gone slow and even.

He got up.

He dressed in the dark, felt his way to the door, crouched in front of the lock. He worked by feel, slowly, the strip of metal finding the pins one at a time. It took about four minutes. The door gave.

He opened it an inch.

One guard visible. Sitting against the far wall with his chin on his chest.

Kai watched him for a full thirty seconds. The man didn't move.

On the small table beside him was a keyring.

Kai came out of the room low and slow, crossing the corridor in four steps, lifted the keyring off the table without touching anything else, and stood still.

The guard breathed in and out.

Kai exhaled.

He looked at the keys. Eight of them. Different sizes. He looked at the doors along the corridor and started working out which key belonged to which door by the size and shape of the lock. Took him less than a minute. He found David's door, slid the key in, turned it slow, and opened it.

David was already standing.

He looked at the keys in Kai's hand. "Good man," he said quietly.

"Found them on the guard."

David took two of the keys. Looked at them. "Which one is Tobey's door?"

Kai pointed. David nodded and they moved down the corridor. David got the key in on the second try and opened the door.

Tobey was lying on the floor with his eyes open staring at the ceiling. He looked up at them.

"Took you long enough," he whispered.

"Get up," David said.

Tobey got up. He looked at the keyring. "We have keys now. That simplifies things."

"Gate key too if we find it." David looked at Kai. "Guard room?"

"South end of the corridor."

They moved.

The guard room was small. One man inside, head down on the table, fully asleep. A panel on the wall with hooks and more keys. David stood over the sleeping man and looked at the panel and found the one labelled GATE without any trouble. He took it.

Tobey pointed at the sleeping guard and mimed hitting him over the head.

David shook his head.

Tobey shrugged and they backed out.

"Gate first," David said. "Get the jeep. Guns. Then we come back for Lia and the kids."

"Where is she?" Tobey said.

"West wing. I watched which direction they took her." He looked at both of them. "We move fast, we stay quiet, and we don't stop for anything until we're back inside with weapons."

They moved down the corridor toward the gate.