by Chanda Hahn
She was gone.
Dead. And he might as well be too. He thought he was empty before . . . now there was only a darkness that was spreading.
In those few moments, he had felt a love stronger than any other. He knew from the very first glimpse of her, she was his, his soul mate. But she was dead. No wonder he seemed so hollow.
He wiped his face and let his anger build as he looked around the room, at the machines, at Candace behind the glass partition. It was too much, the weight of this place, of being trapped like a prisoner, of being abused by these adults. His grief turned to rage.
The leather straps with broken wood were still attached to his arms. He flung them at the glass partition, then stormed to the door and pounded on it.
Candace jerked at Peter’s violent pounding. Warily, she leaned forward and hit the intercom.
“Yes?” she said, trembling.
“You said you record memories?”
“Yes.”
“And you uploaded them, so you have them on record. Show me!”
“I don’t know if I can help you,” she said, flustered. “There are so many.”
“Just show me the last few minutes of my own memories.”
The blank screen in the corner of the room clicked on. Candace began scrubbing the video, fast-forwarding through his memories. On the screen, it wasn’t as clear as it was in his head. It was like watching a video in a snowstorm. He searched and searched.
“Stop!” he commanded. “Go back . . . There.”
He studied her smile in the blurry screen and felt his soul tear in two, committing her image to memory.
“Who is she?” Peter asked.
“They killed her, Peter.”
“Who?”
“The boys from Neverwood. Your so-called friends. They turned on you, betrayed you, killed your one true love, and then killed you. She’s gone, but we’re here. We’re your new family. We will give you a chance to fight for her honor.”
“What is it that you do here?” he demanded.
“I can’t say exactly. It’s top secret,” she deflected. “But we will make you stronger, train you to fight, and you can put your anger to good use.”
* * *
“There’s nothing for you in your past,” spoke a deeper voice from behind the partition. Hook, who had been observing in a dark corner, stepped forward and leaned over the desk so he could speak into the intercom more easily.
Peter had seen enough of the past, and what he’d seen gave him pause. Maybe it was time to give Hook and this program a chance. They gave him back his past, and now he had a chance to have a future.
“There’s nothing for me now.” Peter’s face curled into one of fury. His knuckles turned white as he clenched his fist. His jaw ticked with anger.
“I think we can help with giving you a new purpose.” Hook’s cruel face turned upward into a smile. He clicked off the intercom and spoke only for Candace’s ears.
“You uploaded only what I told you . . . yes?”
“Yes, the image of the girl dying.”
“Good, good. Let’s do everything we can to bury his past with hate. I need him to want to stay here, and if it takes filling his head with lies, so be it.” He clicked on the intercom. “Welcome to Neverland.”
Chapter 7
Peter was placed in a bunk room with two other teenagers—Wu Zan and Leroy, who by the sound of his thick accent was a good old Southern boy. Both boys had occupied the lower bunks in the four-person room, leaving the top two open for the taking.
Peter stepped in and tossed his bug out bag on the top bunk above Wu Zan’s.
“I think you have the wrong room,” Wu Zan stated, spying Peter’s uniform. He crawled out of his own bed and, standing beside the bunks with his arms crossed, looked Peter square in the eye. “Newbs come in on the lower level through basic training. I’ve never seen you before.”
“I’ve never seen you either,” Peter answered, moving to the locker that now had his name on it. He opened the gray metal door and peered inside at the meager but usable items. A mirror, deodorant, toothbrush and paste, and comb still in the packages. There was an extra uniform and street clothes folded neatly. He closed the door and turned to find Wu Zan standing directly behind him, closer than he was comfortable with. At five-nine, he stood eye to eye with Peter.
“He looks familiar to me,” Leroy said in his Southern drawl. He lay flat on his back, hands tucked behind his head, on his lower bunk on the right side of the room.
“We don’t want you in our unit dragging our scores down,” Wu Zan snapped.
Peter eyed both of his roommates. Wu Zan was fit, athletic, his hair dark and slicked back. There was an air of barely controlled rage about him. He reminded him of someone but wasn’t sure who. Leroy was built like a tank; his white shirt barely contained his muscles. His eyes were hazel and his skin a warm brown. He hadn’t moved, seeming content to recline on his bunk. Where Wu Zan bounded around like a jackrabbit, Leroy was the opposite, slow to engage, but Peter didn’t doubt that if he ever did, those hammer-like fists would be deadly.
“I won’t drag your score down. It’s you who will probably drag down mine.”
“Why I ought to—” Wu Zan pulled his fist back.
“Zan.” Leroy stood faster than Peter had thought possible, his large hand gripping his shorter friend’s shoulder in warning. “Leave him be. There must be a reason the captain put him with us. Besides, like I said, he looks familiar.”
“All the newbies look the same to me. I can’t tell them apart . . . or care to,” Wu Zan grumbled, shrugging off Leroy’s arm and returning to his bunk to pout.
“That’s a joke. It will be fine. You’ll see,” Leroy said. “It takes Wu Zan time to warm up to new members of our team. Most of them come up from the lower ranks, so it was surprising that you were placed with us, without any prior knowledge. But I have a good feeling about you. Yes, I think you’ll fit in just fine.”
“Watch your six!” Wu Zan yelled, coming from around the corner. He sped up, his body a blur of super speed as he knocked the attacker back into the wall, protecting Leroy’s back. Leroy was engaged with an army of soldiers marching down the street. With inhuman strength, he grabbed a pickup truck and with ease tossed it like a bouncing ball into the mass of them. The truck exploded in a ball of fire.
“Peter, don’t just stand there!” Wu Zan screeched at the top of his lungs. “Do something.”
Peter had become distracted by his surroundings. His hands seemed clumsy, and he struggled to get in sync with the other two boys. He heard the whiz of a rocket and looked up to see the streak in the sky. He was going to die. He couldn’t stop it. Or could he?
With a running jump, he was off and flying, meeting the rocket midair. He pushed the nose, trying to steer it off course, and it wobbled but then corrected itself, auto-locked on a target. He tried again, but it was no use. He didn’t have the strength to move the rocket. He pulled open the hatch and saw the timer, the controls, and the wires. What to do? Did he cut the wires? Hit a switch?
He pulled the wires, and it didn’t do anything.
Seconds later. It exploded and with it, Peter.
“Nooo!” Wu Zan screamed, throwing the controller on the ground. “I told you, you’d mess with our scores. On the rockets, you can’t pull the wires. They’re heat seeking. It wouldn’t have hit us. That’s why Leroy created the explosion. If you had let me take the lead, we would have been miles away. But no, you had to play the hero.”
Peter pulled off the VR headset and watched as Wu Zan had a hissy fit in the training room.
Leroy smirked, giving him a thumbs-up. “You’ll do better next time.”
“Next time, I’ll have his head on a platter,” Wu Zan grumbled.
The boys had taken Peter to the training room, where they were hooked up to a virtual reality simulator exploring the virtual world of Hollow City in the video game Warfare 8. Neverland had supplied them all with the games as
a way of training their minds for the scenarios that could happen, but their version of the game was different. Instead of creating a modified character, the VR glasses scanned them and inserted them into the game—powers and all.
Peter never guessed the amount of money people could spend on VR stuff. It felt real. All too real.
“Hey, what the—” Wu Zan mumbled, still wearing the VR headset. “Are you seeing this, Leroy?”
Leroy leaned forward in interest. “I see it.”
Peter quickly put his own headset back on to see his dead avatar floating in the middle of the screen. But the life gauge, which had once read zero, was filling back up to one hundred percent and a golden halo now encircled his character. His avatar did a flip in the air and came back to life, giving everyone a thumbs-up.
“I’ve never seen that happen,” Wu Zan exclaimed.
“We’ve never had a soldier do that before. We only get one life.” Leroy lifted his VR goggles, his eyes wide as he stared at Peter.
Wu Zan tossed his to the bed, his face breaking into a huge smile. “You have unlimited lives?”
“I guess. I’m told it’s called panning. When I die, I can come back, but my memories are wiped.”
“Well, Peter Pan, you’re going to be very popular around here. What else can you do?” Wu Zan leaned forward eagerly.
Chapter 8
Neverfalls was a house straight out of an architect’s magazine. It was built into a cliff, hidden on all sides as well as from the air, with the entrance covered by a rushing waterfall. Wendy never wanted to leave.
Tink drove up a rocky path and as they neared the waterfall, she hit a button on a remote, which opened a garage door tucked into the hill, carefully camouflaged with vines, rocks and moss. She pulled in, parking the four-by-four by three others, leaving the key in the ignition. Stepping back outside, Tink closed the door and started heading down a path that led behind the waterfall. Jax and Wendy followed.
“Dad built this place as a sanctuary, a last resort in case we needed to disappear for a while from the public eye,” Tink said, walking just steps ahead of Wendy and Jax. “The contractor who built it did it in stages, and everything was flown in and built on site. There are no roads or easy access out, unless you have a boat. I only wish he could be here with us now.” Trailing right behind Tink, Wendy stepped down the rocky slope. Distracted by the beauty of the waterfall, she slipped and almost toppled forward, but Jax grabbed her arm, keeping her from falling.
“Thanks,” Wendy gasped, her heart racing as she took in the drop and the rocks at the bottom. A bit farther down, the path became even more treacherous, but there was a chain attached to the rocky wall, and Wendy gripped it tight as they began to pass under the waterfall itself.
Tink turned and yelled back at them, but her words were lost to the thunder of the falls.
“What?” Wendy called.
Jax leaned forward to yell in her ear, “She said, ‘Careful, it’s slick.’”
“No kidding,” Wendy muttered and her shoe slipped. This time she caught herself on the chain.
The farther under the falls they stepped, the darker it became, until Tink stopped in front of a metal door. She punched a code in the keypad and the door swung open.
“Welcome to Neverfalls!” she said happily, her arms open wide, greeting them into their new home.
Never before had a place felt more like home than here. She expected a house hidden under the waterfall to be dark and gloomy, but it wasn’t. Skylights placed throughout lit the room, and the light pine and white décor made it seem even brighter and much bigger than it was. They entered a foyer and beyond was a sunken living room with a white fireplace. An open concept house, there was a clear path between the kitchen and the dining room. Wendy turned and saw there was indeed a window, but it looked out into the blue and white rushing water of the falls cascading down the side of the house. Mesmerized by the view, she could hardly look away, then gasped when the dark shadow of a fish swam past the window.
“Bedrooms are upstairs,” Tink said, turning their attention back to her. “We’ll have to double up as this place isn’t as big as Neverwood. It would never hold all the lost boys, but maybe he knew that for us to have to fall back on Neverfalls, we wouldn’t all make it.” Her shoulders dropped, and she scuffed her shoe on the floor.
“It’s beautiful,” Wendy encouraged.
“It’s a house,” Jax seemed unimpressed and headed up the stairs passing Tootles.
“WENDY!” A joyous cry came from the young boy. Then Tootles teleported down the steps and wrapped his arms around her waist. He looked up at her like an adoring child looking at a parent. “You’re here! I’m sorry I couldn’t come for you. I just woke up.” The state of his ruffled hair and sleep-ridden eyes spoke to the truthfulness of his statement.
“It’s okay, you saved Ditto. That’s all that matters.” She gave him a squeeze. “I’m proud of you.”
“Ah, thanks! Hey, guess what? Ditto woke up. He’s doing better.”
“That’s fantastic news.” She smiled, letting out a sigh of relief. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized how worried she still was about him. “Tink told us he was stable, but . . . well, I’m so glad he’s awake now.”
John came down the stairs, his face in awe. “Have you seen this place? It’s amazing.”
“Not all of it, but from what I can see, it is pretty incredible.” Wendy headed to the kitchen and opened the fridge. Empty other than bottled water. What did she expect? Fresh food? The cupboards fared better results. Lots of canned food, boxed food, and dehydrated meals. So at least they wouldn’t starve. She added the rest of her granola bars and junk food to the cupboard, then headed up the stairs to the bedrooms.
Passing an opened door, she couldn’t help but glance in, and she saw Jax unloading his bag on one of the two twin beds in the room. She kept just out of sight as he took out his clothes and put them in the bottom drawer of a small two-drawer dresser, leaving the top empty. A picture frame came out next, and he put it on the nightstand between the beds. Even from this distance, she could see it was a picture of Dr. Barrie, his arms around a young Jax and Peter.
Wendy was about to step into the room and ask about the picture, but Tootles teleported onto the empty bed and began to jump up and down on it.
“Hey, I get this bed,” Tootles called out.
“No, you don’t, pip-squeak,” Jax laughed, and with a gentle shove, knocked the kid off-balance and he tumbled onto the mattress.
“Yeah, I do. I claimed it by farting on it,” Tootles squealed in delight as only a boy obsessed with bodily functions could.
“Well, then I will leave it to you to tell Peter why you farted on his bed.”
Tootles’ eyebrows rose, his mouth dropped open in surprise. “Nope, you’re right. It’s his. I’ll share with Michael. You’re not going to tell Peter I tooted on his pillow, are you?”
“No. It doesn’t matter.”
“Good, because I farted on your bed too.” Tootles jumped up in the air again and laughed.
“Get over here!” Jax lunged for Tootles and pulled him down onto the mattress, and grabbing the pillow, he swatted him with it playfully. Tootles never stayed in one spot long, so it wasn’t a surprise when he disappeared and moved to Jax’s bed, and grabbing his pillow, he plopped on his mattress.
“Just did it again. Mmm, smell the aroma!” He waved the pillow, and Wendy couldn’t hold back her laughter from the threshold.
Jax’s face was mortified at being caught, and a sly smile crossed his face. “Hey, Tootles.”
“Yeah, Jax?”
“Have you christened all the bedrooms yet?”
“No,” he said, his voice rising, and he looked over at Wendy, his grin curling up to rival the Grinch’s.
“Don’t even think about it,” Wendy warned.
Tootles disappeared, and she heard his giggle and a door slam in the next room over. A few seconds later, the door slammed across the h
all. She could only imagine Tootles teleporting into each room and slamming the door to keep her out while he did what he does best. Be a stinker.
Wendy smiled wryly as Jax fluffed the pillow and put it back on Peter’s bed.
“You’re really saving it for him?”
“You may not believe it, but we’ve been through thick and thin. We’re a lot alike, but nothing ever comes between our friendship. He’ll be back. I promise.”
“You better keep that promise,” she said wistfully.
Wendy moved down the hall, knocking on all the closed doors, peeking in until she found a room that wasn’t occupied. Like Jax’s room, it had two twin beds with a nightstand between them and a single dresser. She took her pack and put it on the bed, then immediately grabbed her soap and shampoo and headed for the shower.
She was covered with dirt and grime and Ditto’s dried blood. At the end of the hall, there was a communal shower, but Wendy locked the door. Savoring the time spent alone, she let the hot water run over her scalp and back. Placing her forehead against the tile, she tried to forge a plan to get to Neverland.
How could they, a group of six teenagers—one of them injured—and two children take on a corporation with its own hired mercenary group and monsters plus their secret weapon, the Dusters? It didn’t seem possible. It was a lose-lose situation. No matter how she looked at it, declaring war and going to Neverland would mean more death. More than likely theirs.
After her hot shower, Wendy towel-dried her hair, got dressed and walked barefoot through the tiled house, searching for Ditto and Slightly.
She found Ditto in a bedroom that had been turned into a makeshift hospital and recovery room. He was sitting up in bed, shirtless, his stomach still wrapped in bandages.