“Better,” he said.
I still couldn’t get my mind wrapped around the fact that we’d taken a few months to reach Tehran. If it had taken that long, then why hadn’t those Dark-Net dudes told us about it? Probably because they weren’t like ordinary people. I wasn’t sure exactly what they were. Should have asked Bey about them.
I walked over to the little table, poured water from the clay jug into the clay cup, sipped. It was like drinking really good wine, chilled. I glanced at the cup. It was water.
“You try the water?” I asked Alex.
“Yes. It’s really—”
“Like a ritzy chilled wine?” I finished for him.
He pushed himself up. “Like nectar of the gods. Super sweet. Made me feel like I was on fire, in a good way.”
That was a good description. “Yeah, you’re right.” We smiled at each other.
So, what did you see?” he asked me.
I sat in a chair by the door, facing him. Trying to explain what I’d seen. It seemed even more incredible now. I told him about the inside of the ziggurat, the model of the Sacred Spring.
“You’re pretty excited about an underground city,” he said.
I frowned. “Why can’t I be?”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Okay,” I said, “I get your point.” I thought about it. “I guess it’s Loris. She’s…”
“What?” Alex asked.
“She has a lot of insight,” I said.
He chuckled. “Appropriate for someone who leads at least this part of the fellowship.”
I told him about the kids.
“They had a power, like those people in Mossville?” he asked.
I nodded. “It was a plant power, like mine.” I told him what Christianne had said about the source of the gift.
“Plants?” He made a face.
“Hey, plants have power.” I mock twiddled my fingers, like I was summoning vines.
He pretended to be choking.
“Very funny,” I said, but I couldn’t help laughing
He grinned.
For a moment there, I forgot where we were. It was just me and Alex having some fun back-and-forth. It didn’t last.
“What’s the plan?” Alex asked me after we stopped clowning around.
I took a deep breath. “I’m going to stay.”
He did a double take. “Really?”
“Yes.” I leaned forward in my chair. “At least for now.”
“Then what?”
“I’m hoping to convince them to leave,” I said.
He whistled softly. “You mean all of Sanctuary?”
I nodded.
He shook his head. “Mat, you never think small, you know that?”
My face reddened. “Well, we can’t leave the kids here.” I looked at my hands. “The other possibility is that I stay longer.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“If this place turns out to be the real deal, it could be a new home.”
He walked over, squatted down in front of my chair. “If that’s the case, then I’m staying, too.”
I smiled. Somewhere along the line I’d stopped worrying about where his loyalties were.
It was obvious.
They brought us dinner, knocking on the door, and then, when I’d opened it, they had already left, leaving a tray with two bowls of what looked like thick paste, mushrooms, and white carrots. Not my first choice, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. It actually tasted delicious, like a mushroom pasta dish. Alex agreed.
We didn’t talk much more that night, I needed some time just to hang with him without filling up the air with lots of words that didn’t mean much.
The next morning the same deal as dinner. A knock on the door. I opened it to see no one there, but a tray with two bowls waited on the walkway outside. This time it was rice, with broccoli and tofu. Figures they wouldn’t have any meat down here, but I would have killed for even one strip of bacon.
A little while after we finished eating there was another knock on the door.
“A bit early for lunch, don’t you think?” Alex asked. He was pale, and sweat ran down his face.
“You okay?” I asked, worried. He always seemed so healthy.
He nodded. “Just flushed.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but there was another round of knocking on the door. I opened it.
Christianne stood there, with Hala, the leader of the “Imbued” kids.
“Loris said you wanted to help,” Hala said.
“That’s right.”
“No matter what it might be?” Christianne asked.
“Yup.” I smiled, but the two girls looked at me suspiciously.
“I don’t believe you,” she said.
“I mean it,” I said.
“We have to trust her,” Hala said. “It’s the way.”
“Don’t have to like it,” Christianne grumbled.
Great, I already had a suspicious kid not trusting me.
I turned to Alex. “You should probably rest.”
Christianne and Hala peered around me. “He looks sick,” they both said in unison.
He looked paler, and sat on the edge of his bunk.
“You going to be okay?”
“I’ll be fine.” He waved a hand at me. “Sorry I can’t help with whatever you are doing.”
My breath caught. He really didn’t look good.
“I think maybe breakfast didn’t agree with me,” he said.
“Rest,” I said.
“I can do that.” He laid back on his bunk, closed his eyes. “Thanks,” he mumbled.
I followed the girls out. I was really worried about him. Alex was always so strong, so enduring. But now he was sick.
“Do you have a doctor here who can check him?” I asked the girls.
“We have a doctor,” Christianne said. “I’ll go get him.” She turned to Hala. “I’ll meet you at the front.”
Hala nodded. Christianne darted off.
Hala took me through another set of winding stairs, streets, alleys, and plazas. Sanctuary could have housed an army, but I only saw a few people here and there. There couldn’t be more than a couple of hundred people in the underground city. Given the number of buildings, I guessed as many as ten thousand people could live here.
I asked Hala about Sanctuary, but she only gave me short answers. She said she came here a while ago, that she was an orphan.
We reached the entrance. Loris waited there, with Keisha.
“Hey, Keisha!” I said.
She nodded. “Glad you decided to stay, Mat,” she said. She seemed distant.
“Me, too.” For once, I wasn’t lying. I felt another twinge of guilt. I’d always been lying to her before. She was my best friend. I needed to stop lying.
Christianne showed up then. She whispered something to Loris, who looked at me, concerned.
“I’m sorry your companion is ill,” she said. “Doctor Ling will examine him. She’s very good.”
“Thanks. I hope it’s nothing, and he feels better soon.” I fought to keep the worry out of my voice. It was probably just the food.
“She’ll let us know,” Loris said. “Try not to worry.”
“Sure.”
“We’d like you to help with concealing the entrance,” Loris said.
I must have looked surprised.
Loris smiled. “Use your power to grow foliage to help conceal the entrance,” she said, her tone patient. “I have faith in you.” She touched my arm.
My anxiety about Alex dropped away. I nodded, grateful she trusted me.
Hala and Christianne both smiled at Loris, suddenly looking like actual girls. “Can we stay and help?”
“Yes, you can,” Loris said. That surprised me. A couple of kids outside—what if SAVAK showed up? But as soon as the worry came into my head, it was gone again. Loris knew what she was doing. I was sure of it.
The five of us went outside. The entrance was still in shadow, beneath the
high hills and the rocky overhang. The canyon spread out before us. The scrubby-looking trees were still sleeping, murmuring faintly in my head. The bushes along the dry riverbed sighed. It was still pretty early in the morning.
Loris touched my arm. “I’d like you to grow trees right here. Hala can help you.”
Her words filled me with confidence. But the bone-dry ground would be brutal. Doubt crept into my mind. The trees would wither and die within days.
“There’s no water,” I said.
“There’s a new spring below,” Loris answered. “Certain Imbued can summon water.”
“What about me?” Christianne asked.
“Tell them where to put the trees. I want them thick, so it will be a maze.”
I looked up. “Too far from the overhang and SAVAK will notice the ground changed,” I said.
She shook her head. “They never come here.” No cockiness in her tone, just stating the facts.
“But this is a desert,” I pointed out.
“This is about more than concealment. It’s about faith.”
I frowned. Faith and I didn’t get along. But, it was her call. I shrugged and closed my eyes, stretched out my sense into the scrubby trees. Some kind of pine, I guessed. Their roots went deep down. Growing whole trees, that was going to be tough.
But I said I would help.
Someone tugged on my arm. I opened my eyes. Christianne held up a cup. The liquid inside glinted green. I sniffed it.
It smelled like water, maybe with a hint of pine. “What’s this stuff?”
“From the Sacred Spring,” Christianne said.
I glanced at Loris, raised my eyebrows.
She nodded. “It will help you use your power.”
Water from the Sacred Spring. Well, this was one way to find out if it were something special. I tipped the clay cup back, tasted the liquid. My eyes widened. The taste—like cool water, pine needles, green tea. My hair stood on end. My muscles tensed then relaxed.
The ground felt more solid beneath my feet, I swear it was like standing on the bones of the Earth.
“Pretty good, huh?” Keisha asked. There was just the barest grin around the edges of her lips. A glimpse of the Keisha I knew.
“So, what are you going to do?” I asked her.
“I’m going to make sure that the ground is not so hard where you grow trees.”
“You were the steel witch, not the rock witch.”
“Funny. These rocks have bits of metal in them, and the ones that don’t, will.”
Her power must have grown stronger since the last time we’d been together.
Hala drank from a cup. I felt the faintest tingle from her direction. The sacred spring stuff was making her more like an Empowered and less like the Imbued team? I didn’t understand any of this.
Time to get started. I closed my eyes again. This time it was like slipping into a pool filled with water. I could sense the seeds, and the potential for seeds buried in the ground.
I felt Hala’s power intertwining with mine. It was like an echo in my mind, and the trees responded to the echo like they did to my power.
“Begin closest to the entrance,” I heard Loris say.
I urged a tree to spring forth, and it did. I opened my eyes and watched it uncoil from the ground. Hala stood next to me. Her eyes squeezed shut.
We did another tree. A third. And so on, Christianne telling us where to grow the trees. Keisha waved her arms at the ground. I think she was moving the metal around, making the rocks shift and soil could flow into the gaps for the trees to unspool from the ground. Then, once we’d grown a tree, she shifted the rocks back.
Green life rose from the hard earth.
“That’s enough,” Loris’s calm voice broke through my concentration.
I widened my eyes. Trees filled the space beneath the rocky overhang, which reached out a bit farther than before.
The sun was high in the sky. We’d been at this for hours. My body ached, but not nearly as much as it should have.
Keisha stretched, walked over, patted me on the arm. “You looked dazed, Mat.”
“What happened to the time?”
“Flow state,” Loris said. “You, Hala, Christianne, and Keisha all focused on your respective tasks. Lost yourself in your work.”
This felt like when I’d worn the amplifier, only my heart wasn’t about to burst.
A familiar sound came from far away, past the high hills to the west.
A VTOL aircraft, going into hover mode. It was distant, maybe a couple of miles away.
I met Keisha’s eyes. She looked worried.
“We need to get inside,” I said, fighting to keep my voice low. They couldn’t hear us from where they were, but old habits died hard. Don’t panic was the first rule.
It was either SAVAK or Support.
Loris and the girls didn’t argue. They must have heard it, too.
We all filed inside, past the narrow space in the rock. The wall closed behind us.
Damn, but that had been cutting it close. The anger I thought I’d left behind since coming here reared up inside me.
“That was cutting it too close,” I said, clenching my fists at my sides.
“We were in no danger,” Loris said. “Sanctuary is well hidden. Trust in your own power, Mathilda.”
I started to retort that that was wishful thinking, but something about the way she said it made me less angry. I ducked my head. Loris led us back into Sanctuary, the girls chattering to her like nothing had happened.
Keisha walked beside me, looking a little irritated, but didn’t glare at me, instead looking at the others.
Loris and the girls left us at the main plaza. There were a few people in the plaza, lost in thought. One man was sitting cross-legged, meditating, while a woman did Tai Chi and another man held a yoga pose.
“We need to talk,” I whispered to Keisha. I pulled her to one corner of the square, away from everyone else.
I saw a girl in the window of one of the ancient towers, eyes closed, hands up, like she was waiting for rain.
“This place doesn’t have much time,” I said in a rush.
Annoyance crossed her face. “None of us do, Mat.”
“I’m not talking in the long run. I mean now.”
“That was a joke.” She ran her fingers through her short, wiry hair. “You lost what sense of humor you used to have.”
“I don’t feel like laughing right now,” I said.
“Same old, Mat. Always worried.”
I shook my head. “That’s not fair. After we arrived yesterday, I started to feel different. Calmer.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Could have fooled me, Mat.”
I clenched my fists, bit back an angry retort.
She looked smug. “Just like that, you’re mad. Like always.”
She couldn’t see it. “Look,” I said, fighting to keep my voice even. “I am worried. I told Loris that this place is exactly the kind of place the Hero Council and Support would come after.”
Keisha cut me off, scowling. “Support.” Her words echoed off the stone. “That’s all you talk about. That and getting Ella out.”
I reached out and grabbed her arm. “You, too. I’m worried about you. I’ve seen this happen before.”
She shook off my hand. “This isn’t the Renegades.”
All the calm I’d felt yesterday was gone. Just like that. “It’s exactly like the Renegades,” I said, my heart racing.
“No, Mat, it isn’t. You just think it is.” She stormed off.
I took a deep breath, but my heart still raced.
12
I stood alone in the plaza. Keisha had left me stranded. I went to an ancient fountain, and sat on the edge. The light from overhead was bright now, like the light above ground in early morning.
No one here seemed to understand death. Death can come in an eye blink. Death didn’t mess around, not once it has its hooks into you. Death might take its sweet time claiming you,
or it might take you as quickly as a light flicking out when you’ve hit the switch. Death doesn’t care. Death is certain. Death can take everything you care about, everyone.
Why couldn’t they see that? I’d seen death at work. Yes, I saw it claim friends of mine back in the Renegades, when I’d been a sixteen year old with a new superpower, who just wanted a place to belong with her new friends and their powers, a place where we could just be free, and live our lives, a place where we didn’t have to fear the chance we’d be dead, or worse, in prison for the rest of our lives.
Loris said this wasn’t Hideway and they weren’t the Renegades. But it sure seemed like it, to me.
Then there was Alex. I wondered how he was. Loris had said Doctor Ling was going to check on him. I needed to go back to him. I thought I could find my way to our little apartment. I looked up, and saw the cliff with the windows, a few hundred yards away. I walked down a street in that direction, the old cobblestones hard under my shoes. I didn’t know how people walked around here.
I reached the stairs leading up to our room, and went up.
I knocked on the door, waited a second in case he was undressed, then opened it a crack. “Hey, Alex, it’s Mat.”
Silence. I pushed the door open, went inside. The tiny apartment was empty. Where had he gone? Maybe Doctor Ling had helped him feel better, and he decided to go out.
I suddenly felt exhausted. Normally fatigue would have slammed me a lot closer to when I’d pushed my power so hard, but something in that veggie drink they’d given me must have postponed the crash. Exhaustion hit me full force now. I went to my bunk, stretched out.
A knock on the door woke me up. I rubbed my eyes, rolled to my feet. The light outside had dimmed. Night already?
I went to the door, opened it. There was a tray of food, two bowls, with the paste and mushrooms and what looked like hazelnuts. Plus some dates in little clay cups.
I saved a bowl for Alex, but ended up wolfing down all the dates.
I waited the rest of the evening for him to return, but he didn’t.
What had happened? Had he staggered off somewhere in his fever? Maybe fallen into a crevasse, or down some well? I paced back and forth. Had he died? I imagined his body, lying in some deep pit, lost forever. I’d never see him again. I really cared about Alex. I don’t know what I’d do if something terrible had happened to him.
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