Movement in the bushes behind her. Fighting panic, Sophie scrambled to a rotted fallen tree and crawled underneath, wedging herself in the gap between it and the ground. Rough bark scraped her cheek, and she could feel her T-shirt and jeans absorbing dampness from the mud below. She wasn’t completely concealed, but maybe they wouldn’t spot her.
Leaves crunched on the far side of the clearing. Sophie peeked out. Two thrinaxes had emerged from the woods. One was bent nearly double by the weight of something slung over its shoulder. Their heads turned from side to side, scanning the clearing. Sophie held her breath and squeezed her eyes shut, praying they wouldn’t see her. Seconds later, the sound of retreating footsteps. Sophie opened her eyes: they were moving past; she hadn’t been discovered. She’d remain hidden until they were definitely gone, then try to figure out where she was.
The thrinax in the lead shifted right, and she caught a glimpse of what it was carrying: Declan. His arms dangled lifelessly, and blood stained the back of his hands. He looked dead.
Sophie gasped involuntarily.
It wasn’t a loud noise, but the forest was so silent she might as well have screamed. The creatures stopped and turned back toward her. Their eyes flickered as they approached. One bent low and reached long talons under the log, latching on to her leg. She kicked and clawed at the ground as it dragged her out, tearing up clumps of dirt as she fought to get free.
The thrinax was too strong. Sophie cried out as it gave her leg a sharp tug; she slid into the sunlight. As it bent low over her, a claw raked open a narrow seam along the length of her arm. The last thing Sophie saw before losing consciousness was a horrible mouth gaping open to reveal dangling tentacles and rows of teeth.
Declan blinked a few times—the room seemed awfully bright. His tongue felt too big for his mouth, too, and he was terribly thirsty. Clearly he’d had too much to drink last night. His head throbbed. This was worse than a hangover; he must have gotten into a fight, as well …
“He’s waking up,” someone said. “Declan? How do you feel?”
“Like shite,” he said truthfully. Sophie and Anat swam into focus; they were bent over him, looking concerned. He groaned. The memory of where he was flooded back; and when it was.
“Are you hurt?” Sophie asked anxiously.
“I don’t know. Am I? I feel wrecked.” He tried to take a physical inventory, but everything felt sore.
“Minor cuts on your hands,” Sophie said. “Maybe a blow to your head. Do you remember what day it is?”
“Never figured that out, did we?”
“Nope.” Sophie sounded relieved. “But you remember that, so you’re probably fine.”
“I’m a long way from fine,” he grumbled. “Since apparently we’re still trapped in this bloody nightmare.” He managed to raise himself up on one elbow. “Where are we now?”
“Back at the Collider.” Anat stood over Sophie’s shoulder. She didn’t look pleased to see him, but then she never looked pleased about anything. He, on the other hand, had to admit that he was pretty feckin’ happy she was alive.
“Hallo, Anat. Did you have as much fun as we did out in the great unknown?”
She made a disparaging noise. “No fun. You?”
“Could’ve been better.” He eased up to sitting, wincing as the movement caused his head to throb with pain. “So we’re at the facility again? How the hell did we all get here?”
“They carried us,” Sophie said grimly. “Be glad you were unconscious for most of it.”
Now that she mentioned it, Declan remembered bouncing along as the ground below moved swiftly past, his nostrils full of the stench of matted fur. “Carried us? Why?”
“Yosh was born here.” Anat’s face was smeared with dirt and her hair was tangled, but other than that she appeared none the worse for wear. “She’s with them.”
“What do you mean, with them? Christ, I really must’ve hit my head,” he muttered. “Neither of you is making any sense at all.”
Sophie glanced at Anat, then said, “I guess that Yosh grew up here, after the cataclysm thing that Bruder described. She’s not really from Japan.”
“Not our Japan,” Anat added.
“Right, many worlds and all that.” Declan rubbed his forehead with one hand. What he’d give for an aspirin right about now. “So you’re saying she knew what was going on all along.”
“Right. And she can control those thrinax things. You were right, about her stopping them when she screamed. They’re kind of like pets, right?” Sophie looked to Anat for confirmation.
“Pets,” Anat spat. “Nasty killer pets that eat people.”
“Right,” Sophie said faintly. “Anyway, they dumped us in here.”
“Where’s Nico and his dad? Did they get away?” he asked, taking in the rest of the room. It was a small space, just a few meters wide, empty save for a table pushed up against the wall. Some sort of utility closet, maybe?
“No, they were captured, too,” Sophie admitted. “But, they separated us when we got here. Anat arrived about an hour ago.”
“Huh.” He ducked his head between his knees, mainly because if he didn’t, he’d either start vomiting or pass out. “So what happens to us now, then?”
“They’ll probably kill us,” Anat said matter-of-factly. “The cynogs will eat us.”
“Cynogs?”
“That’s what Yosh calls the thrinaxes,” Sophie explained.
“That’s just grand.” Declan rubbed his eyes. “Don’t suppose I could trouble one of you to knock me out again? This is all a bit much.”
“We’re getting out,” Anat said, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
“Oh, yeah? And how will we be doing that?”
“You broke out of your room, right?” Sophie said. “Do you think you can get us out of here?”
Declan fought off a wave of wooziness. Right. Time to get it together. “No vents?”
“Not in this room. We already checked.”
Declan lifted his head and squinted at the door. The thought of standing up was overwhelming. But the two girls were staring expectantly at him. Sophie’s enormous green eyes were filled with anxiety and fear.
“Let’s have a look.” His first attempt to get to his feet failed miserably—he swayed and dropped immediately back to his knees.
“Let me help,” Sophie said, rushing forward.
“Suppose you do owe me a bit of carrying around, eh?” he said weakly.
She smiled as she helped him up. By leaning heavily on her shoulder, he managed to get to his feet. She walked him to the door. His legs felt funny, they kept trying to step across each other. “Must’ve taken a pretty solid knock,” he remarked as the room spun.
“You have a big lump on your head,” Anat announced. “Probably a concussion.”
“Lovely.”
He planted both hands against the door and leaned over, examining the bolt. It was almost identical to the one in the room he’d first woken up in, which was a stroke of luck.
“Can you pick it?” Sophie asked anxiously.
“Sure.” Declan fumbled in his pocket for his kit. His fingers felt clumsy too, and he hoped he hadn’t spoken too soon. The last lock had taken hours, and he’d been in top form then. He kind of doubted they had that much time on their hands. Still, he declared, “Won’t take a minute.” He dropped to one knee and took a deep breath. Digging through his kit, he removed the two picks he’d used last time. One was slightly bent, but hopefully that wouldn’t matter. He felt Sophie and Anat hovering at his shoulder.
“Bit tough with an audience,” he grumbled.
“Sorry,” Sophie said. “We’ll just wait over here.”
They stepped toward the back of the room and started talking in low murmurs. On the plus side, the two of them were finally getting along. He tuned them out, focusing solely on the lock.
Time slipped away as he concentrated. Even the throbbing in his head dissipated as he fell into the familiar zone. Hi
s field of vision narrowed to the bolt and the picks. He pressed his ear to the door, listening for the sound of tumblers shifting, jimmying the picks slightly in one direction, then another. After each failed attempt he started over, silently praying that the picks wouldn’t snap off in the lock. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the tumblers responded and he heard an audible click.
“You did it!” Sophie exclaimed, rushing forward to wrap her arms around him.
“Always knew God gave me this gift for a reason,” Declan said, swiping a hand across his forehead as he sank back on his heels. He felt shaky, exhausted. “Not exactly eager to see what’s there, though.”
“I wish they hadn’t taken Nico,” Sophie said. “He might know more about this place.”
“Well, they did,” Anat stated bluntly. “And we have no weapons. Be quiet and stay behind me.” She stepped past him and grabbed the door handle. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” Declan muttered. He leaned on Sophie as they followed Anat out of the room, trying to muffle his footsteps.
They found themselves in what looked like an employee break room: a dusty vending machine against the far wall, assorted tables and chairs.
“No dinosaurs yet,” he said in a low voice. “That’s encouraging.”
Anat shushed him with a frown. They eased across the room to the opposite door. She pressed her ear against it, then pulled it open. Declan peered over her shoulder down a long, narrow hallway similar to the one they’d first used to leave the building. Bare concrete floors and walls were cast in an eerie red light by shoulder-height emergency bulbs. There were metal doors off either side of it, all unmarked. Anat moved forward stealthily, silent as a cat. He and Sophie tried to match her furtiveness, but in spite of their efforts footsteps echoed and reverberated.
Suddenly, he heard voices approaching.
“Someone’s coming!” Sophie hissed.
Anat jerked her head toward a door on the right. She opened it a crack and peeped around it, then flung it wide and darted inside. He and Sophie barely managed to follow before it closed behind them. Pitch blackness. Vertigo. He stumbled and nearly fell, but Sophie caught his arm, bracing him. Together they leaned against the wall, breathing hard.
The sound of people entering the hallway they’d just come from.
“If you don’t do it, we’ll kill your son.”
“Is that Yosh?” Sophie whispered in his ear.
It was hard to tell; the voice sounded familiar, but different. Not that Yosh had been much of a talker to begin with, so he couldn’t say either way. “Maybe.”
“Shh!” Anat hissed.
“If I activate the Collider, there’s a chance we all die. Besides, there’s no guarantee it will even start. The power demands alone are well beyond what’s available.”
That voice he did recognize—Bruder. So they wanted him to start the machine again. Funny that they all seemed to have the same idea.
Yet even when faced with monsters, Bruder still refused to give in. Declan couldn’t help but be impressed. The bastard had a set of stones on him, he’d give him that. If their circumstances were reversed, Declan would be doing pretty much anything they asked.
“We’ve already taken care of that,” Yosh said impatiently. “The solar panels will provide all the power you need.”
“And you know this because you’re a trained physicist?” Bruder’s voice was filled with disdain. Declan suppressed a grin. He was liking Nico’s dad more by the minute.
“So we’ll kill you and your son,” Yosh said in a hard voice. “Is that what you want?”
A pause, then Bruder replied, “Even if we could precisely recreate the circumstances of the cataclysm, there’s no guarantee that will send you back to your point of origin. We could all be swept into an entirely different dimension. You might die if I do this.”
“We’re willing to take that chance.”
Their footsteps receded down the hall, the voices fading with them.
“They’re trying to do it again,” Sophie said after the last echo had disappeared. She sounded just as scared as he felt.
“Grand idea,” Declan said stonily. “Wonder what exciting place we’ll land in this time.”
“What if it works?” Anat asked quietly.
The room was too dark for him to see, but he discerned a note of something unexpected in her voice: hope.
“Bruder doesn’t seem to think so, and he’d know, yeah?” Declan didn’t add what he thought: if Bruder was so reluctant even when his son’s life was being threatened, the chances of something truly awful happening must be extreme. But at the moment, he was having a hard time mustering the strength to care whether or not they restarted the Collider. His head was pounding, and his throat ached from thirst. “I say we focus on getting out.”
“Agreed. See if you can find the lights,” Anat said. “We need weapons.”
“So no luck with the gun store, then?”
“I found a Glock there,” Anat said, her voice more forlorn than he’d ever heard it. “But that bat zona took it from me.”
“Shame, that,” he muttered. “A gun would’ve come in handy.”
Sophie’s hands brushed lightly across his chest as she fumbled across the wall. “Sorry,” she apologized.
“No problem,” Declan said, but her touch had sent a small electric current through him. He swallowed again.
Suddenly, the lights flicked on; the glare made him wince. After his eyes adjusted, he could see that they were in another storage closet. This one had an industrial bucket in the corner with a mop jutting out of it and a metal shelving unit stacked with cleaning supplies. Everything was coated with a thick layer of dust.
“What’s that?” Sophie asked.
He followed her pointing finger. Bits of cloth were piled in the corner.
“Looks like a stack of rags,” he said. “Probably for cleaning.”
Anat stepped closer and peered down at them. She nudged them with her toe, then recoiled as they shifted sideways before sliding to the ground. “Not rags,” she said in a low voice.
“But what …”
Sophie sucked in air sharply at the same instant that Declan made the connection in his mind.
A faded T-shirt and a pair of filthy shorts … and stacked beneath them was a small pile of mottled bones.
“Oh, Christ,” he breathed out. “Zain.”
We’re all going to die, Nico thought, looking up as his father and Yosh reappeared. He was back in the enormous room they’d first encountered when they left the infirmary; was that just two days ago? It felt like forever. Four of those thrinax creatures surrounded him. His guards, he was assuming. They’d carried him here, then dumped him on the floor before taking up these positions. The perimeter was filled with a couple dozen more thrinaxes. Scattered among them were men and women of all ages. No kids, though. They looked surprisingly normal: dressed mainly in polyester, their hair universally cut in the same no-nonsense bob as Yosh. Some were scratching the thrinaxes on the heads or backs. There was an odd, low murmur everywhere, kind of a buzzing noise. It was hard to tell if he was really hearing it. Oddly, it seemed to emanate from inside his head, as if he was wearing invisible headphones. The thrinaxes made occasional clicking noises, like giant crickets.
Ten minutes after he’d arrived, Sophie had been carried in kicking and screaming. Minutes later Declan showed up draped over the shoulder of another thrinax; he hadn’t been moving at all and was either unconscious or dead. Nico’s dad had been last, but they hadn’t gotten a chance to talk. The minute he was dropped to the floor, Yosh came out of nowhere and led him away.
She hadn’t even glanced at him. When he saw her, his heart sank because it meant they’d been attacked, too; Anat would never have left the slight girl out there on her own, defenseless. And Anat wouldn’t have been taken easily, he thought grimly. She must have fought hard, and the outcome had probably not been good.
Nico squeezed his eyes shut at the
thought. He’d really liked her. Anat was beautiful and strong, the only member of the group he’d cared much about, to be honest. He’d been an idiot. They should have stuck together. At least then they might have made it to the mainland.
Yosh and his father stopped fifty yards away from him, whispering furiously at each other. Six thrinaxes encircled them, but they maintained a slight distance. It made no sense. The same bloodthirsty creatures that had chased him through the woods were now calm, controlled. He wished his father had explained more about them, or that he’d thought to ask. My own fault, Nico thought, for not having what his dad termed an “inquisitive mind.”
Why had Yosh and his dad been singled out? Who were the rest of these people? And where were Sophie and Declan? Had they already been eaten? He shuddered at the thought. Maybe they were going to ration the group out slowly, keeping a few of them alive for a couple days. He had no idea how much food these things ate. He wondered how many thrinaxes would be sharing bits and pieces of him.
His father’s voice suddenly rose to a shout, “Threaten all you want, I won’t do it!”
Yosh crossed her arms. “Get the son,” she commanded.
Nico furrowed his brow. What was she doing? Light dawned as two thrinaxes swiveled their heads toward him. Yosh is in charge, he realized. She’d betrayed them all. He struggled as the creatures grabbed his arms and began dragging him toward Yosh. His father’s whole body went rigid, but he didn’t say anything.
Claws dug into his biceps. “Stop! I’ll walk!” he sputtered. But they lifted him up, dragging him forward until he was toe-to-toe with Yosh.
“Hello, Nico,” she said.
“Tell them to let me go.” He fought to keep the quaver from his voice.
Yosh cocked her head to the side, then glanced at the thrinaxes. They simultaneously released him; he stumbled and nearly fell before righting himself. Nico shook his arms to get some feeling back. Then he drew up to his full height and demanded, “What do you want?”
Yosh glanced at the creature on his left.
Without warning, a claw lashed out. Nico felt a sharp stabbing sensation along his right side. Startled, he looked down. Blood was streaming through a new hole in his shirt.
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