“What the—” I huffed, not ready to believe what I was seeing.
“The Harvester can float,” he said without emotion.
“Now what do we do?” My first instinct was to look elsewhere on the lake for a boat to chase them, but there were no signs of anything remotely like that. My next urge was to start running, but Alex seemed anchored to his spot. Watching.
I admit he had more patience than I did, and I fought the urge to be jumpy and whiny at how much I wanted to get moving. I paced around the hilltop for several minutes until it was too much. He’d gotten very good at making me lose my cool. I was in the middle of a foot shuffle when he answered my question.
“We’ll never catch it, L."
I hated it when he used the short form of my name. Usually.
"The terrain around the lake is brutal. The water is impossible without a boat. We’ve got no aircraft.”
“What about your drone?”
“That little thing? It couldn’t carry the dog, much less the two of us,” he chuckled softly.
“It only has to carry me,” I said as a test.
“There’s the old Elle,” he said while turning to me. “I thought she’d come back sooner or later.”
“What’s that mean? I’m the same me as before.” I felt my face redden, though I desperately wanted to avoid any argument.
He smiled, but his eyes conveyed many additional layers of data—including a heaping of sadness. “The Elle I followed out that rock hole the other day didn’t want me around. Then I sorta thought she did. Then the Elle I followed out that door today seemed to want me around. Then she sorta didn’t. Doesn’t,” he corrected.
“What? No. I didn’t mean it like that.” I sighed. “Seriously, I was kidding. We need to stick together, at least until we find your secret friend.” I tested a smile, which he mirrored.
“It doesn’t matter. That drone is too small to even think about carrying a person. It’s only this big,” he held out his arms as if hugging a big tree, “and I looked at the one that crashed. I could almost pick it up it was so light.”
My still-hazy memory plumbed deep into my childhood for a book about a boy wizard. “Who’s to say? Maybe they’re magical?” I half-laughed, not sure if they were magical. The glow from my staff certainly seemed magical to me. His glowing armor appeared magical when set against all the other mundane pieces of our world.
“A magical floating box.”
“You won’t take no for an answer, will you?” he laughed.
“Just like you,” I shot back. Happy to remind him how many times I’d recently turned down his efforts to make something more out of our time together.
We both sat down on a large rock and watched the Harvester continue on the lake until it turned a corner, out of sight.
4
“Excuse me. Hello?” said a female voice from over our shoulders.
I fumbled for my staff—it took much too long—and practically tripped as I stood up and faced the threat. Alex made the turn faster than I did, but the knife in his hand looked tiny relative to my weapon. I was glad once again I’d chosen it instead of keeping the knife for myself.
When I saw the owner of the voice, I laughed and crowed victoriously. “I knew you had someone on the outside.” I even pointed to her, just to make it clear.
“Elle, I swear. I have no idea what she’s doing here.” Then, quiet enough the newcomer couldn’t hear: “I’m telling the truth. It was the dog,”
It was Wen. A fellow teen a little shorter than me, a couple pounds heavier, with short dark hair and the same unique, pretty eyelids she shared with Hui. I had a million questions for Wen, but I singled out the one I was going to ask Alex as soon as we were alone again. I suddenly was interested to know if Wen and Hui were always a couple after each memory reset in the Complex because they looked so similar.
Wen beat us both. “What are you two doing on the Outside?”
“Oh, no,” Alex cried, “there are two of us. You need to explain why YOU left.” He crossed his arms and held the knife straight up as if waiting for a suitable response. Wen’s eyes went from his to mine. I nodded without thinking about it, which she seemed to use as her release to speak.
“Would you believe me if I said I didn’t know?”
“No,” I said at the exact moment Alex said “Yes.”
We shared a brief look before turning back to her.
“Try again,” I demanded. Alex said “Keep going,” at almost the same time.
We turned toward each other once again. My agitation was written on my face. He wasn’t any happier. “We can’t both talk,” I said in my most reasonable voice.
“Right,” he said, just before zipping back to Wen. “Let’s hear it.”
I stifled an urge to win this battle of wits—knowing I was bested by his quick-thinking—but figured there was no use in complaining. Whatever story they cooked up would inevitably have holes.
“Thank you,” Wen cooed as she walked the final few steps to be with us. She sat on a boulder as if we’d invited her to sit down. Alex sat nearby, though I chose to lean on my staff as I stood there above her.
“I saw you last night, Elle, in the hallway. Later, when the Commander said you killed Mr. B, I—” she took a deep breath, “wanted to kill you myself. I felt in my bones I needed to find you and deliver payback. But then he changed his mind. Said it wasn’t you but you,” she pointed to Alex. For a split second, I thought how important it would have been to check her for weapons. If she wanted to kill Alex, there was probably nothing we could have done to stop it.
He held his hands up in surrender. “I didn’t—”
“I know. I knew it the instant the Commander admitted to his mistake. I was surprised to learn my hatred for you,” she pointed to me, “didn’t translate to him.” She pointed to Alex.
“And it got me anxious and confused. I didn’t even know what it was or how to stop it until I saw the doors to the Complex open to the Outside. Something told me I had to get out. I was already so close, I slid out and ran. Those dead things waiting outside were so fascinated by the big, noisy door they had no interest in me. I climbed to a rock ledge and watched them stand there looking stupid until they seemed to snap to attention and run to the inside. That was about the same time the Commander’s truck came out.”
She leaned over and pawed at some rocks in the sandy soil while she talked down. “The Harvester went one way and you two came out after it. Only you didn’t follow it. I’ve been behind you the past hour to see where you’d go. I wanted to see if you jumped in with the Commander, but I think that opportunity has passed,” she said with a squeaky laugh.
“Then I thought—based on how you were putting hands on each other—you’d come out here to find some privacy as a couple. I, uh, stayed away in case that was true.” She laughed a bit uncomfortably.
Alex and I shared a quick look. His face was hard to read. Normally this would be a joke he couldn’t pass up, so maybe he was serious for once. I turned back to the empty stretch of water where I’d last seen the floating machine. It hadn’t turned around. At least, I thought, it wasn’t coming back for her.
“So you left the safety of the Complex because you felt a vague threat? Why do I have a hard time believing that?”
Wen was still playing with the dirt, as if afraid to face me.
“Well,” Alex said, looking at me. “You left the Complex the first time because someone wanted you to have his kid. I’m not saying you were wrong, but I don’t think we can question her motives.”
Wen kept her attention downward, perhaps aware of the tension between Alex and me. My mouth betrayed my calm exterior. “Well, talk about crazy reasons—you left the safety of the bunker because of a girl.” I mimicked his incredulous tone. “And you followed her out a second time—”
I had to stop myself. I was getting into dangerous territory. I wanted him to come with me the second time. Not necessarily because I liked him, but because I
needed him.
Right. “Needed” him.
I can’t explain it.
Wen didn’t need to know any of that, so I tried to shift gears. “You came out to help me.” I put the emphasis on help, which he was doing the opposite of at that moment.
“I just think there’s more to us than what’s obvious. We all have events in our past that dictate our actions today, even if we don’t remember the specific details. Call it instinct, m’kay?”
Wen shot off her rock and stood above us. “Look, I don’t know what you two have got going on here. I don’t think I care. I came out here to survive. Are you two going to help me with that or not?”
5
We got Wen up to speed on what we’d found out about the Commander, the exits of the Complex, and the dead people walking around the surface. She’d already seen them when she escaped, but it took several repetitions before she accepted what they were.
“When we die our bodies get up and walk to the east?” Wen asked with apparent skepticism.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Mr. Bracken said it was part of a plague that destroyed the world out here, but he explained the same sickness was inside the Complex with us. In Saint Lodestone’s Cemetery. The Commander confirmed that.” My voice got weak. I didn’t want to explain how those creepy monsters killed our teacher.
“And also,” I continued, “the Commander figured out that super-old people have an immunity to that plague. They don’t get sick, and,” I began, knowing how the crazy part would sound, “if you breathe the same air as those ancient people, they pass the cure to you and keep you from aging.”
I expected her to laugh, but she held my gaze and motioned for me to continue.
“Okay, so once the Commander had it all figured out he took off in his machine to go find more old people. We had some of them with us the whole time, but he took them. He said something about wanting to live forever.”
She nodded, but I wasn’t done.
“And there’s one more thing.” I began. I studied her, wondering if she would accept what I was about to tell her as readily as she did the rest. “It has to do with how long you’ve been in the Complex. I know you think—”
“We’ve been there for eighty-seven years, three months, a week and two days,” she stated as simple fact.
Alex and I both looked up with mouths agape.
“I don’t know for sure, I must admit. But there’s a wall we pass on our run around the Complex where someone wrote in Chinese. It instructed me to add one to a count of days starting from when I walked in. Hui didn’t notice it. He’s not curious and fun, like me.” I couldn’t read any sarcasm in her deadpan delivery. “I never knew what it meant until you just asked me that question. My reply to you is how you know the correct answer?”
It took ten minutes to explain it all. How Alex was unaffected by the memory-erasing fog bombs dropped by the Commander to make everyone forget their past. How I was also unaffected by the mist and had to be carted off to get a special delivery of Scotch liquor with a stronger version to make me also forget. Alex and I shared everything, save the fact Alex had used his time to try to get me to go out with him. Oh, and we didn’t mention the fact our teacher had once been young and apparently he and I were an item for a time. Before he aged, and I didn’t.
You didn’t tell them about Sky Dancers, either.
Inwardly I shrugged. I had no reason to tell anyone about strange voices in my head telling me things that couldn’t possibly be true. Sky Dancers up in the clouds were a fairy tale. Just like the Fire Dancers in the lava far below us.
When we were all done talking, the sun had made its way to the far corner of the sky. We all knew a lot more about each other—Wen did, at least. But we were Outside, and our prospects were bleak if the blasted landscape was any indication. There was nothing but rocks in every direction as far as we could see to the horizon. Even the water appeared uninviting. It reluctantly lapped at the shoreline, as if it was an unnatural boundary.
“I want to go get my dog and drone,” Alex finally said, once it looked like Wen was done asking for every detail. That statement required more explanation, leading to another discussion about the suit Alex had beneath his clothes, the pole I was using as a staff, and the blue energy present in each.
“It sounds like you two have been exploring out here for years,” she admitted. “I think I fell in with the right people.” For the first time since we’d met, she produced a wide smile. I couldn’t help but return it.
“Glad you found your way to us,” I replied. “We have to find you a weapon.”
“May I try yours?” she said. I happened to be looking at the water when she asked it, so I assumed she wanted Alex’s knife. The only true weapon we had. But when it got real quiet I turned back to see her staring at me. Alex watched me, too, but with his dumb grin.
“This?” I offered her my staff.
Wen held it in her hands and felt the weight. Then she rocked it from side to side as if testing it. “This is nice. Very well balanced. Do you mind if I?” She motioned she was going to twirl it.
I nodded.
She began tentatively, as if remembering how to hold, then spin it in front of her. But it only took a handful of seconds before she seemed to catch on.
The bar became a blur of silver in front of her before shifting to a sparkling blue as the glow grew larger and larger around it. After half a minute the blue was nearly solid in front of her.
“Why does it glow?” she wondered with a little bit of a pant.
“We don’t know,” I said honestly.
She stopped the twirl, grabbed hold of it, and thrust it forward while dipping her right leg at the knee, like she was stabbing at something six feet away. She screamed at the extension, but it was because of the power of her motion rather than pain.
The blue staff became nearly invisible as it moved with fluid precision from hand to hand, then over the shoulders, around her neck, and down the side of her body. She swung it on the sides, thrust it forward and back, pushed it at invisible targets above her head and near the ground. She swept it low, as if to trip enemies, then thrust from a crouch in an effort to skewer the brains of an unseen enemy.
She finished by jumping straight up only to follow the staff back down. It crunched a head-sized rock and cracked it in multiple pieces with a hollow smack. I almost ruined her deadly exhibition by protesting her use in such a fashion, but I realized the metal was unharmed. In the hands of such competence, the weapon seemed unstoppable.
Wen was panting while on one knee, holding the staff straight up and down as it stuck out of the rock. She looked up at me without a trace of a smile. “I think I’ve used one of these before.”
Chapter 2
After Wen’s display with the staff, we all shared the looks of people unsure of their next words. She stood up but continued to hold the dimming blue rod until it returned to its resting state of metallic silver. The effect was mesmerizing.
“Does it always do that,” she said, finally breaking the magic.
“Um, yes. But I can’t make it glow like that.”
She let the staff lean forward as I stepped in her direction, so it fell into my hands. “How did you learn to do that?”
“I can’t answer that. If what you say is true, my memories have been stolen from me. However I knew to do that, it must have been able to bleed through the programming. I think—”
Alex coughed to interrupt. “Why did you use that word?”
“Bleed?”
“No. Programming. Do you know about computers?”
I heard the word and knew what it meant, even though I’d never seen one in the Complex. For me, my memories were coming back, though not nearly fast enough for my liking. I’d dealt with computers back before I found my way into the Doomsday Bunker.
Wen cocked her head. “I’m not sure what you mean. I—” her forehead strained as she visibly tried to remember. “I used the word because it fel
t right, but I’m not positive why.”
Alex and I shared a glance. “Maybe your memories are coming back, too,” I suggested.
“Yeah,” Alex added. “The strongest memories come back first, it seems.” He looked at me and nodded. “She’s had some of hers come back. Yours could be rebuilding as well.”
Wen’s face seemed to relax. “I wish I could prevent that.”
“You mean you don’t want to know your own past?” I couldn’t imagine why.
“I don’t know. Maybe. But if we’ve been locked up in that cave for eighty-seven years, we’ve long since lost anyone I care about. All I know is the Commander.”
Alex laughed. “Well, there’s something I never thought I’d hear. Someone who prefers the Commander over real life.”
Wen stepped back, to give herself space from Alex—and me, I noticed. “What? He kept us alive. Methods become unimportant when the ultimate goal is survival of the species. Wouldn’t you agree?”
I felt my temper rise to the challenge, but I fought to keep it together. Just as I couldn’t afford to push Alex away, I was glad to have Wen on our team, and I didn’t want to take a chance of pushing her away because I snapped at her.
I took a deep breath. “Yes, he kept us alive. Sure. He told me as much. He was proud of what he’d done. But we have to look at what he’s doing now. By taking those old ladies, he’s condemned our friends to grow old, as he did to Mr. Bracken. I saw him, Wen. It was horrible how he’d aged so fast.” I spoke as calmly as I could, even though I took it personally she was questioning whether the Commander was right or wrong.
She turned my way. “I’m sorry for what he did to you—what he asked of you. I’m not saying I like the guy and want to volunteer to be his friend, but results matter. We’re here talking about it. That’s proof.”
Alex touched my elbow, though he faced her. His voice was conciliatory. “Maybe we should try to get back to the emergency door?”
The dog!
I watched Wen for signs she was going to continue her argument, but, if anything, she backed down faster than I expected. Nothing she could say was going to convince me the Commander deserved an ounce of thanks for anything, though up until a few days ago I imagined the man walked on water. I was deeply proud I’d managed to think for myself and see things as they were.
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