Code Breakers: Beta by Colin F. Barnes

shielded or encrypted too.”
    “Makes sense.”
    As Malik reached down to help her up, she couldn’t stop herself from smiling at him. Partially with the relief of being saved, but also that it was him that came to help her. She couldn’t have imagined how difficult it must have been to stay hidden all this time, trying to find her. She felt terrible for even thinking he could have been complicit in her capture.
    “Thanks, Mal, I mean it. I thought...”
    Malik gave her a wink. “I couldn’t just leave you, could I? Come on. Let’s get these bodies hidden before we’re spotted.” He glanced around. Sasha looked past him and saw the shadows of people moving around on the upper levels. They wouldn’t be able to see their current position, but if the ronin were to come down the stairs, then it wouldn’t take long.
    They dragged the bodies out of the open part of the ground floor and placed them into an abandoned room. They shifted the bodies beneath a series of rusted workbenches standing against the back wall of the room. They covered them over with a filthy tarp found on the floor. Sasha took a wakazashi from one of the ronin—a short-bladed weapon similar in style to a katana.
    “Do you know the way out?” Sasha asked.
    Malik’s face screwed up. “I have a vague idea. It was mostly dark when I was scouring the place for you. It’s easy to lose your way, but I came in from over there.” Malik pointed to a corridor on the far side of the open area. It looked like it led perpendicular to the corridor where the guards were taking her. Away from ‘the Engineer’ was a good thing.
    Wasting no time, she grabbed Malik’s hand and rushed to the open door. Just as they passed through, she saw a group of workers, or whatever they were, come down the stairs. They were currently chatting amongst themselves and didn’t see them—or at least she hoped they didn’t.
    They both sprinted into the darkness. Malik led her through a number of narrow access ways, turning this way and that. Sasha noted that Malik used a number of pipe formations and other engineering infrastructure as landmarks to navigate his way. He came to a stop when the corridor split off in two directions.
    “Fuck, I don’t know which one I came through,” Malik said.
    Sasha approached both entrances. She heard voices and footsteps coming from the one on the right. “We go left,” she whispered and beckoned him on.
    A hundred or so metres through the tunnel, Malik suddenly stopped and fell onto his front. A snap of a metal mechanism. The wet sound of flesh. The crunch of bone. Malik bit on his fist, his eyes wide, and his face tensed with agony.
    “What’s the matter?” Sasha whispered, thinking he twisted his ankle, but when she got closer, she saw that a heavy metal trap had bit into his calf, just below his knee. The damn trap was welded to the floor. Its steel jaws firmly clamped around the bone.
    “Holy Christ, hold on, Mal... Just hold on.”
    Malik wept with pain as he held back his screams.
    The sound of voices echoed through the tunnel, bouncing off the metal of yet more pipes and service conduits. There were no lights on, but she could see the faint glimmer of a flashlight at the far end. She took her new blade, wedged it between the steel jaws of the trap and tried to prise it open, but the strength was too much and threatened to snap the blade.
    “Shit, Mal, I can’t get it open. What do I do? What do I do?”
    “The blood... Stop...” Malik’s face was awash with sweat, his eyes closed tight as his body tensed with the waves of pain. Sasha felt so useless, but she tried to focus, remembering her combat training: focus on the task at hand, be logical.
    The voices were getting louder. They would be on them in minutes, if not sooner.
    She couldn’t get the jaws open.
    Staunch the flow of blood! Ripping the leg material from her suit, she tied it around the wound. With each turn, Malik yelped into his fist, which bled under the