My stomach knots.
There needs to be a door, an opening—something. I need to get out to the jungle again and find the ruins. I need to get back out there and figure out why it’s so familiar. But the gate’s larger than I originally thought. It skyrockets, nearly reaching the height of this glass wall with rods peaking into sharp triangular points, dotting around this structure in a giant semi-circle. The only way past the gate is through it, and though I’m thin, I’m not sure I’ll be able to fit through the railings.
There’s movement below. A mass of blue blurs slowly disperse around the Castle, carrying or dragging similar objects as before. I press my forehead and fingertips to the glass to get a better view.
“Lovely afternoon, isn’t it?”
I spin, finding a tall man with long, shiny black hair. His cascading locks are pulled into a half pony tail, falling just past his shoulders and onto a custard robe that reaches the floor.
“My name is Jeb. I’m the Guide,” he walks towards me, his hands behind his back, “and you must be…”
I retreat a step, back toward the pane of glass, intuition constricting my voice. There’s plenty of room to run if need be, but if he’s anything like Clarence, I’ll get nowhere quick.
Jeb pauses with a frown. “Haven’t you remembered yet?”
If I was on the ground, I could make for the gate. I could hide among the other blue blurs and dash toward the jungle when no one was looking. But how to get down there? Right now it’s just us. And that fact raises a sickly feeling in my gut.
“Clarence tells me your name is Fallon.”
“Where am I?”
“In the medical unit on the top floor of this base. You were brought in yesterday and left to recover. Please,” he advances a cautious step, “how are you feeling?”
There’s a pounding in my head, but whether that’s from blacking out in the jungle or something that happened since then, I have no idea. I have no idea about anything anymore. And I’m not keen on him knowing this.
He frowns. “Not well?”
I bring my fingers to the back of my head, cautious about any information divulged. “Dizzy.”
“That would be the Pill.”
“Pill?”
He produces a small vial of glistening lavender liquid, pinching it between his finger and thumb. “Medicine. To keep our humans happy and healthy. After what happened to your planet, we must take every precaution available. I do apologize about the Pill… it does tend to have a bit of an after effect. Shouldn’t last long.”
“So you’re…” I gulp as images from yesterday flash by. “What are you?”
“A Dofinike—a separate species, though not entirely dissimilar from your own. But, I suppose your term for us would be… alien.”
So it’s true, then. Everything that happened. That’s happening. But if he’s the alien, what were those creatures yesterday? How many different extraterrestrials are here?
“I saw two… things at the gate,” I round the closest table, keeping it between us. “What were they?”
“You must be talking about Yerza and Norpe. Yes, they shouldn’t have been messing around like that. I can understand why you ran off,” he walks to a half wall and presses a tiny button no larger than a fingernail. The outline of a square appears and suddenly, a glass box emerges to fill it. He dispenses the vial onto a shelf in the box, presses the button again and the box disappears back into the wall. He turns to me. “There weren’t supposed to be any more drops yesterday—Clarence brought you in by complete surprise. Usually, they take their human form when our guests arrive. They, shall we say, ‘didn’t get the memo.’”
“You can change back and forth?”
“Pardon?”
“From human to Dofinike?”
“Human form. Yes, we find it helps ease the transition, especially in our younger guests. Seeing familiar faces—so to speak—expedites the trust and that’s why you ran. You didn’t know it was safe.”
“They were carrying weapons.”
“Hardly,” he laughs, walking past me to peer out the window again. “What Yerza and Norpe carry are staffs. Sure they can wound and probably in the hands of someone with a bit more intelligence, they might cause significant damage. But at best, they’re for show.”
“To show what?”
“Well,” he sighs, “as you can see, Harrizel can be a dangerous environment if not well navigated. What’s the point of saving your race if you escape out there only to be killed by sheer curiosity? The staffs are intended to keep you rounded up, keep you where it’s safe. Now come with me,” he hooks his hands behind his back, walking away from the solid pane of glass. “There’s much to go over.”
“You’re taking me downstairs?”
“Eventually,” he turns with an odd expression. “There are a few things I need to show you so you can adjust to this new environment quickly.”
What kind of things do I need to know before we’re on the ground? Will I even survive that long? What if those blue blurs aren’t even people? What if they’re just robots or other Dofinikes posing as similarly dressed humans so we’d go willingly with Jeb? I just need to make it to the ground. Then I’ll have a chance. I’ll find the door to the gate—or some other break in it—and I’ll flee again.
Just make it to the ground. Make it there and you’ll be fine.
“I can’t wait all day, Fallon.”
There’s no choice but to follow.
Just make it to the ground.
Reluctantly, and fighting every intuition boiling through me, I join Jeb’s side.
He leads me out of the endlessness and into a darkened corridor on the other side, the two spaces separated by a single pane of glass. Still able to see into the infinite room of metal tables on my right, this new hall sleeps in the shadows cast by the dark, plum-black stone to my left, curving up in an arch above me. The only light draws from tiny golden spheres which float around what appear to be metal branches glued to the wall.
I move closer and see it’s not metal at all, but a silvery tree slithering up the dark stone like a snake. It branches into several thin wires, looping about but never expanding more than a foot from the wall. The small spheres hover here, offering about three feet of whitish-yellow light that glows around me.
“Gizella trees,” Jeb indicates, “excellent natural light source, though not found around here. Terrible inconvenience to bring them in.”
I lightly brush my fingertips against one of the closest branches. It’s smooth except for its long, lined wrinkles and feels very similar to carved metal, except for its slight breathing. The wiry, metallic branch seems to expand slightly and then release again at my touch.
“These?” I extend my middle finger to one of the light spheres. As I’m about to touch it, it zaps me with a sharp electric current. Immediately nursing it in my mouth, Jeb chuckles behind me.
“Yes, you don’t want to touch those. They’re babeebs—they don’t like to be disturbed.”
“They’re alive?”
“Of course they are!” he places himself at my side. “They’re tiny organisms that live off the Gizella trees unless another life force is closer.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” he extends his hand, signaling down the rest of the corridor. I follow it and find the entire plum-black wall lined with these silvery trees, dotted every four to five feet down from one another. “We use them to light our way around this base. But if there isn’t a Gizella tree where you need to go—say, to your bunker—you simply scoop a few up and over, like this,” Jeb gracefully dips his hand inches under the babeebs and lifts them atop his head, where they hover a few inches above. “Only one or two is sufficient. You don’t want to leave the rest of us in the dark.”
“And they’re on the base floor as well? Are they outside?”
“No—we use them solely to light the interior. Just like your kind, we rely on the sun for outdoor exposure,” he walks on, hands cu
pped behind his back. “There are two in your room, so if you bring a few babeebs when you go, remember to take them with you when you leave. We once found a human coveting around forty or so! Can you believe it?”
“Why?”
“Who knows? But to ensure your safety and the safety of others, there are routine sweeps of your room, so don’t bring in anything you wouldn’t want us to find,” he glances back with an endearing smile. This strikes me as odd, but I keep silent. “And these, here,” Jeb gestures to the left, “are the evibolas.”
He points to an arched door way of deep, sparkling blue. We stop, my eyes adjusting as I take in its moving splendor. It’s like looking into the night sky, at the moving stars across varying hues of the universe. Beautiful.
A tall man, dressed similarly to Jeb, walks through the veil, the deep blue evaporating like mist behind him. He has short yellow hair and seems genuinely surprised to see me. He glances at Jeb and, finding immediate comfort, walks off.
“These are the quickest way of transport—for Dofinikes, that is,” Jeb is quick to clarify. “Your primary mode is the stairs, located at each corner of the base. But for today,” he takes a step toward the archway which has regenerated the navy fogged shield, “they’ll serve our purpose.”
I’m interested in asking more about the evibolas, where else they can lead, but with the passing of the yellow haired man, another question emerges instead, one I want answered more.
“How many Dofinikes are there?”
“Hmm?” he barely glances at me. “What’s that? How many Dofinikes?”
“Clarence mentioned there were about four hundred humans,” I keep my best poker face in play. “I’d imagine there’d need to be quite a few Dofinikes to take care of us and…” I gulp, “maintain order.”
“Well let’s see…” his eyes roll up, quickly counting, “there must be about the same, I should imagine. We mainly stay up here, in the labs and hospitals. We don’t have much interaction with the humans unless they are ill or hurt or something is wrong.”
“Why?”
“Well…” Jeb exhales, tossing his hands behind his back again, “we feel this is a gentle process for you. Your race is rebuilding itself. I’m sure it needs as little meddling as possible.”
“You’re not meddling if you’re helping.”
“Yes, I do agree with that, but we want to encourage your…” he clears his throat again, “relationships. How are you going to develop your race if we’re constantly being mistaken for humans? It’s less messy this way. And we’ve already gone over why it’s better to assume our human forms. Yes?”
Relationships. That’s a euphemism if I’ve ever heard one. Suddenly, the realization that they’ll want me to repopulate punches through me like a cannon ball. All the air’s been stripped from my lungs and I have to work to keep my expression dulled.
Just make it to the ground. Make it to the ground and you won’t have to worry about any of this.
“So, we don’t see you in your true forms… ever?”
“Well not, ever. As you know, no one is perfect. Trouble does arise from time to time and when it does, we have to restore order.”
“How?”
“Tetlak is head of the guards. He’s absolutely stubborn and refuses to submit to human form so when he appears, the situation tends to dissolve itself. Between you and me,” Jeb throws me an honest look, “I’d keep from getting on his bad side. Terrible mood.”
What does that mean?
“Beyond today and—hoping you never get hurt or ill—you won’t be up here,” Jeb spins, “I’ll show you to the human areas where you’ll spend the majority of your time.”
He walks right through the sparkling blue arch, which sits like a thick mist, separating us. I’m quick to follow, passing the navy haze of glistening stars and into a darkened area no more than a few feet in width.
Jeb is ahead but turns to me, indicating I join his right side.
Obliging, I stand next to him, the floor humming beneath us. We’re in complete darkness and just when I think nothing’s going to happen—it does. Nothing happens. Until Jeb walks back out of the darkness, hands calmly clasped behind his back as he strolls out the same way we entered.
I follow him into an enormously low-lit room—the size of a school gymnasium—darkened like the upstairs corridor with the same plum-black stone walls. The corners of the room host gallant stairwells of pure obsidian, Gizella trees crawling up the steps and along the walls, attempting to climb their way free as babeebs linger on their silver branches, illuminating the hovels with their golden glows.
A massive trunk sits centered in the space, its tangled roots hovering feet above the floor. It glows iridescent lavender with reflecting hints of turquoise and green, boasting at least a yard in circumference. Just above the trunk, a swarming nest of Gizella roots bloom from the center of the black ceiling. The silvery snakes sneak across the marble, reaching all ends with a hive of babeebs suspended under the main nest, just over the trunk—a spotlight on a stage.
“This is the Auditorium,” Jeb keeps his hands clasped, leading me forward, “this is where you’ll have your weekly meetings with Beshib before Leisure Time begins.”
“Who’s Beshib?”
Jeb turns, an excited grin on his face—he’s been waiting to tell me.
“He’s the one who first pioneered your race’s rescue—without him, you wouldn’t even be here! You’d probably still be attempting life in that filthy planet you left behind,” Jeb shakes his head with disgust as I suppress an urge to snap. “At the end of every week he addresses the humans with a reminder of what you left behind and the rebirth the Dofinikes are offering. It doesn’t last long—ten, fifteen minutes, really. Then, Leisure Time begins and that’s when you can relax, openly socializing.”
“We can’t socialize during the day?”
Jeb averts his eyes. “The day is for Rebuilding. We’re trying to give humans a way to revive their species.”
“Is that what they’re doing out there? Building? I saw them carrying—”
“Yes,” he interrupts, walking again, “we’re expanding upstairs. Clarence continues finding more survivors. It’s wonderful, really, but we lack the space to house them. Then, of course, there is the repopulating here on Harrizel to comply with. The building is necessary.”
“So manual labor?”
“Fallon,” he sighs, “try not to think of it as labor. But as Rebuilding. Helping your species have homes when they get here. You have a home. That couldn’t exist without the work of your brothers and sisters.”
Yeah, a home I’m not even going to keep once you take me outside.
Jeb’s fast pace has managed to put some distance between us. A quick trot and I’ve caught back up with him. “So no talking during the day? No socializing?”
“A bit of socializing quickly turns into lack of work. Without strict attention and focus, nothing would get done. It’s for your benefit, really.”
“And Beshib? He’s the one making all the rules?”
Jeb sighs again, exhaustion in his voice. He’s had to explain this before. “I know this sounds like we’re against you but it’s really for your good. Here we clothe you and feed you, provide you with shelter and if I may be so bold, with family. We only ask for your compliance. The world you came from is not as kind.”
He starts walking but I’m at his side again. “So what happened?”
“Excuse me?”
“What happened? With the war?” I stop and he stops with me. “Clarence didn’t tell me anything.”
“Surely you remember?” When I don’t respond, Jeb exhales as a solemn frown crosses his face. Lowering his head, he speaks in a soft voice, his eyes on the black marble below us. “Terrible. What humans did to one another. Killing mercilessly. Destroying their planet… destroying each other. Your world, at one point, was overpopulated and then… it was all gone. Or just about.
“We, Dofinikes, are travelers by nature a
nd came across your planet. We saw what you were doing to each other; saw how you were killing one another. We saved whom we could. But it wasn’t enough. You nearly destroyed yourselves. We keep going back, keep finding people who hid out, who are still hiding. We won’t stop.”
Jeb turns and continues heading for the center of the room. I follow in silence and replay his words. ‘Destroying their planet.’ An image of the house and trees resurfaces. What part of the world is he talking about?
“This is the stage,” he lifts his arms as we come to the massive floating trunk. It mirrors the ceiling Gizella roots in width, the trunk acting as the central focus in the room. “Beshib will address you here for Lecture. It’s best to arrive early for ‘good seats,’” Jeb chuckles before heading back to the evibola.
As we move past, I stop, noticing something that escaped my attention before. The four main walls—though all deeply dark—aren’t the same color. Without asking Jeb for a second to investigate, I claim it regardless, approaching the closest wall for examination.
There’s an opening in the center—an entrance to something beyond. Both sides of the wall consist of the same plum-black stone but are checkered with a deep, hunter green, the pattern reaching from stairwell to stairwell. At the top of the narrow entrance, a plaque of the same deep green with a scripted black W, sits on the wired arch connecting both sides of the wall.
“I see you’ve noticed the Maze,” Jeb says behind me.
“Maze?”
He nods, taking his place at my side and gazing up to the darkened entrance under the black W.
“Or so your kind would refer to it. It is, in fact, merely an escape for your Leisure Time, should you… need it. I’m afraid, however, it’s being utilized to serve other purposes…”
“Such as?”
I glance around the gigantic room, finding the other three walls share the same narrow entrance, all up to the ceiling where a plaque of a different letter—and corresponding wall hue—sit. Across from this wall lies the maroon E, to the left and from where we just entered, the golden N and to the right, the eggplant S.
Escape from Harrizel Page 4