“You acted bravely,” Darius agreed. “I just wished it could’ve gone differently.”
Kai looked back and forth, trying to keep up with too much information. His eyes landed on the old man, Darius.
“Who are you?”
“He’s a friend of mine,” Neena answered first, blotting away some of her sweat.
“I fix the colonist’s tools,” Darius elaborated.
“Darius and I heard what was going to happen to you,” Neena explained. “We decided to wait outside the Comm Building to see if we could help. We followed the guards dragging you for a while, until they stopped near the cliffs. Darius went to the closest cave, while I stayed behind to see if I could help.”
“We didn’t have much of a plan,” Darius admitted, “but our hope was that I would lead you into the caves, where you’d be safe hiding out until they forgot about you. Our hope was to distract them, not to fight them.”
“Of course, we knew that might be unavoidable,” Neena clarified. “At least you are free.”
“What now?” Kai asked, looking around at them with new worry in his eyes, realizing the scope of their predicament.
Neena and Darius exchanged a glance. Neither had an immediate answer.
Chapter 39: Kai
They waited in the chamber for what felt like a long while, listening. Every so often, they heard the echo of a footstep, or some distant conversation, but none of The Watchers drew close. Yet.
“How many caves are in this place?” Kai asked, waving his hand to indicate he meant the entire formation.
“Lots of these passages connect together,” Darius whispered. “Two people could explore them for days and never run into another, if they both started at the same time. I know these caves better than anyone in the colony.”
Picking up on a worry in his eyes, Kai said, “But that doesn’t mean we’re safe.”
“The Watchers know these caves, or at least, I suspect some do.” Darius gestured around the small chamber. “If they happen upon this room, we have nowhere to go.”
“The Watchers will block the cave entrances,” Neena said. “They won’t stop searching until they find us.”
“Everything we do is a risk,” Darius said, “but I feel as if we have two choices. We can leave soon, and hopefully get ahead of their reinforcements. Or we can wait until the search wanes. But who knows how long that will take? And we don’t have enough food and water to sustain us long.”
“Do you think they’ll give up on us?” Kai asked.
“That depends on how badly they want to capture us,” Darius said. Looking at Neena, he asked, “Do you think they recognized you?”
“It was dark, and I was wearing this,” Neena said, pointing to the shawl around her neck. “I don’t think they knew who I was.”
“I don’t think that changes the outcome,” Darius said, thinking about it. “They will either suspect someone in the colony was involved, or perhaps someone from Kai’s colony. That will give them more reason to keep looking, and to fear, as if they didn’t fear Kai enough already.”
“Eventually, they will discover we are missing, and put the two things together,” Neena finished for him. “You might be safe longer than me, because they will suspect me first, but in the end, it won’t matter.”
“So what should we do?” Kai asked.
They looked toward the entrance of the chamber. The footsteps seemed to have petered off. Kai’s heart still hammered. For all he knew, men were waiting on the other side of the cave entrance, ready to bury knives in their guts. Or maybe the reinforcements had already come, and an army waited outside of each cave entrance.
He felt as if he had put a temporary stay on his death.
“How many of these guards—Watchers—are in your colony?” Kai asked.
“Two hundred,” Neena said.
“Enough to cover the exits I know about,” Darius said. “And plenty left over to search the desert.”
“It seems as if the longer we wait, the worse our predicament gets,” Neena said.
“My fear is that we will be trapped long enough for them to figure out who we are, and use it,” Darius said. “I have no family, but you do, Neena.”
Worry crossed Neena’s eyes.
“I think our choice is made for us,” Kai summed up. “So how do we get out?”
“I know of some more obscure passages,” Darius said. “We can take them to the other side of the cliffs and see what we can do. If we are lucky, we can escape into the desert. Maybe we can use the cover of the cliffs and get to the rear edge of the colony, slipping back to Red Rock without notice.”
“Obviously, I can’t go back to Red Rock,” Kai said.
Darius watched him grimly. “Unfortunately, you’re correct. When we get to the eastern desert, my advice is to run and not look back.”
Chapter 40: Gideon
A knock ripped Gideon from sleep. Sitting up, he smeared the bleariness from his eyes and swung his legs over side of the bed. The knock came again: not loud enough to be insubordinate, but loud enough to insist that there was an important reason for such a late disturbance. He opened the door to find Thorne standing at the threshold.
“I’m sorry to wake you, sir.”
“What’s going on?” Gideon looked over Thorne’s shoulders, as if he might find more men, or his Heads standing behind him. Thorne was alone.
“We had a complication.”
“A complication?” Gideon had no time for pleasantries.
“The stranger attacked my men near the caves. He escaped.”
Gideon’s heart pounded as he processed the implications behind that message. “He was supposed to die.”
“My men failed,” Thorne said, “and I make no excuses for their ineptitude. But it seems there is another detail. The man didn’t act alone. Some others helped him.”
“Others?”
“We aren’t sure who these people are, but they fled with him into the caves. Our thought is that they might be people from New Canaan.” Thorne’s eyes blazed with a worry that Gideon seldom saw. “I have my men searching the caves. Others are watching out over the desert. The involved guards will be reprimanded—perhaps punished—but right now, we are utilizing every hand and pair of eyes to find them. Our hope is to discover them before we cause too much commotion.”
The last of Gideon’s sleep left him. “Do you think the girl with whom he arrived might be involved?”
“The thought struck me, as well,” Thorne said. “I can send a Watcher to her house and ensure she is there.”
“Do that right away,” Gideon said. “It will help if we know for whom we are looking.”
Thorne nodded.
Too many spiraling thoughts ran through Gideon’s head. An escaped man was one worry, but an attack was another. A prickly, nervous feeling worked its way through Gideon’s body as he thought of some of the old conflicts about which his father had told him stories.
Wars.
The word was almost as strange as the conflict it represented. Hopefully Thorne’s suspicions about more men from New Canaan weren’t true.
“Wake the other Heads of Colony, so we can inform them, too. Let me know as soon as you have more information.”
“Yes, sir.”
Chapter 41: Kai
Kai’s eyes scanned everywhere as he followed Neena and Darius into a new cave. Every turn came with new fear that a light would appear in the distance, leading to their capture, or a pair of animal eyes would shine from the shadows. For all Kai knew, creatures existed here that he’d never seen, just as Neena had never seen the Abomination.
They heard and saw nothing, other than the soft sounds of the rocks they crushed underfoot.
Darius held the light high, leading the way, while Neena kept hold of the old man’s arm. Before leaving, Darius had given Kai a knife from his bag. Kai clutched it close. The knife might as well be a shovel, digging their graves. Neena and Darius had blades, too, but if they encountered an
y more than a few Watchers, they would be outnumbered and captured, or killed.
They kept a steady pace, contending with Darius’s crippled leg, following the old man toward an end no one could see. Kai felt as if he were in a maze. For a while, he memorized the turns, but it quickly became apparent that he’d never find his way out without help.
He had no choice but to trust his comrades.
Reaching a branch in the tunnel, Darius held up his torch, revealing some more scratched, old symbols. The old man’s head never stopped turning. Several times, he slowed, paying attention to landmarks that looked like simple rocks to Kai. Other times he peered down two caves before choosing one. It felt as if they were in some place far below the ground and the colony, away from everything Kai and Neena knew.
No one spoke.
Reaching a long, narrow tunnel, they stooped. The top of the tunnel scraped against the part of Kai’s back where his shirt had ripped, giving him a chill that he hadn’t had since the desert.
When the ceiling finally rose, Darius stopped to catch his breath.
Neena held his arm. “Are you all right?”
“I’m not used to moving so fast,” Darius admitted, his breathing thick and ragged. “I need another moment.”
He bent and clutched his knees, while Neena kept an eye on him.
Glancing around, Neena asked, “Are we near the chamber where you discovered Akron?”
“No,” Darius whispered. “That was another way.”
“Too many chambers,” Neena said quietly.
“Akron?” Once again, Kai felt as if he were eavesdropping on a strange conversation.
Neena looked over at him, still holding Darius’s arm. “He was a boy our leaders killed in the tunnels. They did it to cover up a monster’s skeleton, a skeleton that resembled the Abomination.” Seeing the expression on Kai’s face, she said, “A lot has happened, since we last saw each other.”
“It sounds like it,” he said, processing what she told him.
“Our thought is that our leaders knew about the monster and your colony, and have been hiding it from us,” Neena continued.
Kai closed his mouth on another question. Obviously, now was not the time for a long discussion.
“How about the eastern cliffs?” he asked Darius. “Are we close to those?”
“We are about halfway,” Darius answered, through a labored breath. “Come on. Let’s keep moving.”
**
They wound through more tunnels, refraining from conversation and following more of the strange marks. Darius’s pace was noticeably slower. The fear of The Watchers was replaced by a new concern: what if the old man lost his stamina and couldn’t continue?
They might be stalled out in the caves, waiting for capture.
Of course, they couldn’t leave the old man behind. From a logical perspective, he knew the way out, and from an emotional one, he’d helped them. Kai didn’t know much about his relationship with Neena, but she cared about him.
That thought made Kai think about his feelings toward her. From the moment they met, her determination had surprised him more than her smooth skin or her brown eyes. She had feared him when she first came across the desert, and he had feared her, too. But a respect had grown out of that fear.
Even his lies hadn’t stopped her from coming to help him.
A feeling of gratefulness washed over him as he watched her helping Darius. Without her, he might’ve ended up dead in one of these caves. Of course, his foolish fantasy in the jail cell was just that: even if they made it out of the caves alive, he would never see her again.
After walking for what felt like half a day, but was probably a much shorter time, Darius lifted a shaky hand and pointed to the distant darkness.
“We are coming up on the last turn before we reach the exit,” he whispered. “After that, it is a straight path into the desert. The exit is a thin sliver in the side of the formation, near its south side.”
Kai’s heart beat faster as they crept forward, keeping to the walls. He clutched his knife. About ten feet from the corner of a sharp turn, Darius stopped them with a raised hand. “They’ll see us, once our torchlight splashes around this bend, if they are there.”
“Maybe one of us should go ahead without the light,” Neena suggested. “I’ll do it.”
Kai’s argument was trapped in his throat as he watched her get farther from the torchlight. Her slim figure became a shadow, and then she was gone.
Kai glanced behind them.
He glanced in front.
In either direction, he saw nothing.
Of course, he couldn’t see around the bend.
The fear hit him that he might never see Neena again. She might be stabbed or killed before they had a chance to react, or run.
He looked sideways at Darius, whose eyes burned with the same worry. Shadows danced and flickered from the torchlight.
More than a moment passed before her figure reappeared.
Or was it her?
Kai stepped in front of Darius defensively, raising his knife as a figure came closer, creeping on stealthy feet. Kai’s heart hammered. Even a fight with a lone man would surely draw others.
It wasn’t until he saw Neena’s long dark hair that he confirmed that it was she.
Relief washed over him, until she hissed, “Run!”
Chapter 42: Kai
Neena, Kai, and Darius hurried away in a tight formation. Kai kept a step behind Darius and Neena, even though his instincts screamed at him to run as fast as he could. In the event that someone attacked, he’d protect his companions.
He owed it to them.
Voices echoed from around the bend behind. Boots crunched over stone.
The guards must’ve spotted or heard Neena.
Kai looked through the darkness ahead, trying to retrace their path. How long until the tunnel curved? He couldn’t recall the exact distance, just as he couldn’t remember any of the branching tunnels. Too many looked the same.
They moved along as quickly as they could, balancing stealth and speed. Swooping in, Kai grabbed Darius’s left arm, while Neena took his right. The man’s scrawny limbs felt as if they might slide from their grasps. Kai clamped Darius’s arm tightly, knowing they were only a single fall away from capture.
They ran until Kai’s stomach grew tight and a stitch ached his side.
The voices from behind them grew louder.
“Come on!” Neena urged.
The path on which they ran seemed impossibly straight. And then Kai saw a curve. They took a handful of steps, winding with the wall. Passing the curve, Kai felt a little safer, but not safe enough.
“Where can we go?” Neena hissed at Darius.
“The path offers no good turns, except…” Darius said.
“Except for what?” Neena insisted.
“I know of one other passage, but it is a risk.”
Neena looked over her shoulder, where shouts carried around the curve in the distance. “We’ll die if we stay on this path. They’ll catch up to us.”
Darius didn’t argue. The tunnel widened as the curve finished. Rather than going straight, Darius pulled them toward a dark recess in the cave’s wall. Several frightened lizards skittered from the torchlight as if it had already scalded them. Darius lowered the torch, looking for something in the wall.
“There was a passage here…” Darius said, looking confused.
Kai tensed. A second time, he wondered whether the old man had lost his sense. Or maybe his memories had faded. And then Darius found a shadow in the wall.
“Follow me.” Darius stooped down, crawling on his hands and knees into a crevice Kai hadn’t seen.
Bending down with the torch, Neena exposed the small hole where Darius had disappeared. Neena looked back at Kai.
“I’ll follow you,” he told her.
With no time for arguments, she crawled after Darius through the tunnel, taking the light with her. As soon as he saw the bottoms of her boo
ts, Kai scurried in after, listening to the resounding echoes of the closing men. Rocks scraped Kai’s knees. The walls and ceiling pressed at his sides. It felt as if the tunnel might collapse around him. And then they were out and on the other side.
Kai stood and looked around, spying a huge chamber, before Darius hissed, “Douse the torch!”
Neena followed his instructions.
The chamber turned black enough to make Kai think he’d died. The thick air pressed on him like a suffocating blanket. Even on the darkest nights, Kai could see the outlines of his fingers. Here, he saw nothing. Muffled boot steps and shouts floated on the air.
The men were close to the small passage through which they’d crawled.
Kai held his breath, the need for quiet replacing the need to run.
Someone’s smooth hand found his. Was it Neena’s? Kai clenched the knife in his other hand, anticipating the moment he’d plunge it into enemy flesh, once the men crawled through and found them.
On the verge of freedom or death, he trembled.
The hand holding his shook.
Finally, the footsteps and cries faded.
After a moment that felt as long as an eternity, Neena whispered, “Are they gone?”
“I don’t know,” came Darius’s answer.
They waited a long while, until the only sound they heard was the distant screech of a bat. Darius’s voice broke the quiet.
“They will search this area harder,” Darius whispered. “We have no choice but to keep going.”
Flame sparked to his right, revealing Darius’s old, weathered face, ten feet away. Once his eyes adjusted, Kai got a better look at the room into which they’d crawled.
They’d entered an enormous chamber. Steep, black walls climbed far higher than the torchlight, with ledges jutting out from various spots on the walls. A few more feet past Darius, the floor gave way to an enormous abyss. Kai’s stomach dropped as he walked over to Darius, looking out over a plunge that seemed as if it went forever. A single, shoulder-width rock ledge on the side of the wall seemed to be the only place to cross it.
“Are you saying we have to cross there?” Neena asked, incredulous.
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