by Blair Drake
“It’s not working. We can’t stay here,” he said, choking on the heat of the chemicals coming up around them in a fog. “We have to try to get out of here.”
“Is the talisman glowing?” Raven asked.
“Talisman?” Reese looked at her as if she were crazy. “Who cares? Endel isn’t here. He can’t get us out of this.”
She nodded and choked back a sob. “Okay, see if you can climb up and then reach for me.”
“Back to plan B,” he said as he turned and looked for a place he could secure his foot in the wall. “Give me a second and I’ll help you.”
He jumped up and missed grabbing on to the platform. If he could only find that one place where he’d been able to hold on before, he’d be able to pull himself up. He gave it another go and as his hand connected with the ledge, sparks flew from his fingers, and hit the wall above them, making shards of sharp rocks rain down around them. But he held tight, dangling on the side of the ledge with one hand as he fought to find a foothold that would support his weight, and give him enough of a foundation to push himself up to the top of the ledge.
“I’m almost there,” Reese called out, keeping his eye on the ledge above.
“It’s filling. Hurry!”
With all his might, Reese reached his other hand up and held to the ledge, and then pushed off where his foot was wedged into the wall. But the stone gave way and he quickly fell back. He felt like he was falling from a great distance, but in reality it was only a few feet. He splashed into the slime and went under, having just enough time to hold his breath before taking the plunge as Raven had earlier.
“Reese!”
The sound of Raven’s voice was muffled as slime filled his ears, and the sound of a motor running grew louder beneath him. And then above him.
Reese got his footing again, and pulled himself up from the muck, wiping his eyes and spitting the disgusting slime from his mouth as he moved. To his horror, the platform had dropped by several feet. He was so deep into the slime that it might be impossible for him to jump out of it enough to reach the ledge.
Twisting his body around quickly, he expected to find Raven behind him, or around him somewhere. She was shorter than he was and the slime would most likely be up to her neck. But she wasn’t anywhere around him!
“Raven!” he called out. The light in the walls flared as he screamed out her name. “Raven, talk to me!”
Everything inside him was alive and on fire. He couldn’t control it. He didn’t want to control it anymore. Raven was gone! He couldn’t see her anywhere. He listened, but all he could hear was the sloshing of the muck and he moved and the groaning of gears.
He frantically searched the surface of the thick muck around him, walking slowly, although every fiber of his being wanted to dive below, and search for Raven quickly. But the muck appeared to be a solid liquid. She wasn’t going to be able to survive if she stayed below the surface for too much longer. He moved with purpose, ignoring the stickiness around his eyes, and kept searching. If Raven was beneath the dark surface, maybe he could see her hand or some movement that would help him find her.
“Raven!” he called out again. “Raven, talk to me! Where the hell are you?” He felt a sob working its way up his throat. He wasn’t a crybaby. Ever. Not even when he’d gotten on that train to the Cliffs alone. He wasn’t going to start now when so much was at stake.
But he couldn’t do this anymore. He was blind in a place where he needed light to see. How could he keep going without knowing where he was, and where he was going to end up?
Raven was gone. She’d disappeared and all he could think of was that they’d both die in a vat of sticky black nothingness. No one would know what happened to them. Maybe this is what had happened to the others. Maybe no one was meant to make it out of this damned place. Maybe all those legends Endel talked about were pure shit. There was no kid who’d made it out and had come back.
Refusing to give up, he called out again. “Raven! Can you hear me?”
Standing still, he listened. He couldn’t hear any struggling or splashing in the slime. It was as if Raven had fallen down a black hole.
Anger surged through him. He didn’t want to be here. He needed to find Raven. She could be hurt, or worse. Emotion rattled him to the core. He didn’t want to think about the worst.
He sucked in a caustic breath of air to keep his emotion tamped down. But it only increased his panic. His lungs burned from the fumes surrounding him. Lifting his face to the ceiling, he couldn’t tell if his eyes were playing tricks on him or if the ceiling was moving like the walls had earlier. The sensation seemed to force his head up as if it were purposefully being pushed toward the ceiling to see something. But Reese quickly realized it wasn’t that at all. The ceiling was moving, coming down at him. And whatever energy was causing it was attracting him.
Taking each bit of air into his lungs in small, slow breaths, he went with the sensation, lifting his gaze to the ceiling, and trying to make out what he was seeing. Unlike all the walls of the tunnels in the city that had smooth concrete surfaces, the ceiling looked jagged, like the spikes he’d seen coming up through the grid of the platform.
Spikes that would come down on top of him and rip him to shreds just as easily as it had ripped the fabric of his pants. He moved through the muck as quickly as he could but already felt the liquid thickening, making his legs heavier with each step.
He wasn’t sure he’d make it to the ledge before the spikes reached him. Heart pounding, he gave one more search in the area around him for Raven.
“Raven, we have to get out of here! Where are you?”
Nothing.
Everything inside of him wanted to give up. He couldn’t find Raven. She was gone. Disappeared! And he was stuck in a vat of some kind of muck that he could barely move through. He pushed himself further, but the liquid was getting thicker as fast as the ceiling was growing spikes and coming down to meet him.
A quick scraping of something against the rock pulled Reese from his despair. He gave a quick glance above, and saw a metal grid unfolding along the ledge and extending out into the center of the pit he was stuck in. Hope filled him with alarming speed. If he could reach up and grab the grid, he might be able to pull himself out of the slime and then run to a safer position.
Heart pumping and with lungs that felt as if they were about to burst, Reese trained his eyes on the grids as they opened one by one, coming closer to him with each flip of the grid. And then it stopped right above him and a ladder with just a few steps dropped down low enough for him to reach up and grab it. He wasted no time pulling himself up to the ladder and then climbing the few steps with legs that felt like lead until he reached the grid bridge.
The ceiling was coming down at him faster now. He paused just a few seconds to search the slime below to see if there were any signs of Raven. Tears sprang to his eyes, blurring them when it was clear she was nowhere around him. The platform was still turning, but the grid bridge was stable enough for him to walk on. He ran across the bridge and headed for the ledge, turning once to look back just because he needed to be sure Raven wasn’t there. Once he was on the ledge, he flattened his back against the wall and closed his eyes.
Raven had said he’d caused this. Well, if he really did, then he could stop it. In his mind, he sat on the ground by the track at school like he’d done many times after a run. He tried to steady his breathing, but he couldn’t stop the rampant beating of his heart.
With his eyes still closed, Reese listened to the sounds around him. There was a clock ticking somewhere. Another damned clock. He hadn’t seen it, but he definitely heard it now. And it was working. That was a good sign. None of the energy he’d unleashed broke it.
Somewhere in the distance, Reese heard what sounded like the whistling of the teakettle. His grandmother used to have tea every morning. He’d forgotten about that until just then. After his father had left them and his mom had gone to work, he’d stay with his grandmothe
r. The sound was comforting and brought emotion bubbling up his throat. The whistle kept going as if the teakettle was waiting for someone to answer its call.
His mind wandered to the buildings he’d seen in the city, and then in the scrap yard. There were moving engines turning a wheel. Yes, he’d seen some contraption like that when gnarly guy laughed at them when the steam burst out of that engine and practically scorched Raven and him. There was steam power here. He opened his eyes slowly and blinked. He was standing against the wall by the big archway he and Raven had walked through.
Damn! He was right back where they’d started. He still needed to get through this hellhole to get to the last bridge leading to the portal.
He took a sniff of the air. There were all sorts of smells in this underground city and most of them were downright horrid except for the bread that he’d been drawn to this morning. Was that really that long ago that he’d run through the city for a small bite to eat? He was starving now. And there was no chance he’d get food any time soon.
His clothes were covered with slime and much of that had hardened, making it tough for move. He pulled away from the wall and whatever it was that he’d been bathed in suddenly shattered like glass.
The stench of tar and mold filled his nostrils. And burning. Something was burning and it stuck horribly.
His heart hammered in his chest as he gripped the wall trying to find something he could pick up and throw into that black vat of nothingness he’d just escaped.
“Raven!” he called out in a whisper at first. When he could trust his voice again, he spoke louder. “Can you hear me, Raven?”
He was taking a risk calling out to her here. Someone close to the archway might hear him. But she had to be there. Somewhere. She’d been right there in the thick of it with him. Dear God, she can’t be gone!
“If you can hear me, Raven, call out to me.”
He scanned the area with wide eyes, blinking when the fumes and emotion brought more tears. Where the hell was she? She can’t be dead!
Panic bubbled up inside him just as hot and strong as the steam of the teapot in his grandmother’s kitchen. Reese refused to let himself boil over with panic. He refused to believe Raven was gone. She’d survived so long down here on her own. How could she be gone?
“I’m not…leaving here without you,” he called out into the nothingness as if she could really hear him. He walked a few steps toward the archway. “We’re supposed to do this together, remember? We getting out of here together. We’ll make it to the portal, Raven. We will. Talk to me.”
And then he heard something. The bridge that had magically appeared and saved his life folded back into place and disappeared into the darkness. He moved quickly to the archway where there was more light, no longer caring if he’d be caught my any of the gnarly men working in the scrap yard.
“Raven!” he called out loudly.
The sound of footsteps were soft at first, and then they grew. He remembered that was the sound he’d heard when he’d first met Raven. It was like a ripple on a pond. Small and then grew stronger. He couldn’t explain it. But he knew it was Raven.
“I’m here, Reese.”
He blinked hard and stared into the nothingness. Through the fumes and ghost fog, Raven appeared.
Chapter 12
Sweet relief flooded him and threatened to knock him over. Out of the darkness, Raven walked slowly toward him.
Reese couldn’t hold himself back. He ran to Raven as soon as she came into view, and scooped her up in his arms, holding her tight. To his amazement, she didn’t pull away.
“I thought you’d never get off that bridge,” she said, laughing.
He pulled back so he could look at her, and make sure she was real. “I thought you were dead.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“You were gone! I turned and you—”
“You know, if you keep talking that loud, they’re going to find us.”
Confused by her reaction, he took a step back and collected himself. His shoulders sagged as frustration replaced relief. “What the hell took you so long? I’ve been calling you.”
“I heard you. And I’m pretty sure everyone else who might be in the vicinity heard you too.”
He glanced past her to the darkness beyond. “There isn’t anybody down there. No one would be crazy enough to go down here.”
She smiled. “Nobody but you and me.”
He chuckled, releasing the frustration he’d felt moments ago. “I never said I wasn’t crazy.”
“I see that about you.”
“How did you get out of there? I mean, we were sinking into that black stuff. I don’t even know what that shit was.”
“Liquid magnet, I think.”
“No, it can’t be. Did you see the ceiling? It was coming at me as if it was attracted to me. Not the other way around.”
“Exactly, it was attracted to you. It was a magnet. I told you it was you causing it.”
“But…it was crawling up all around you, too,” he said. Then he looked at her. Her clothes were just as clean as they had been before they reached the cavern. “You were in all that gunk. How come you’re so clean?”
She drew in a deep breath and then shrugged. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”
“I just asked you. How come you won’t tell me anything about yourself?”
“I did. I told you what happened to me and why I’m here. Do you really want to know? I mean really.”
“I just asked. Why would I do that if I didn’t want to know the answer?”
“You’ll laugh at me.”
“No, I…why would you think that?”
“Because I’m not like you. Can we just take a moment and figure out what we’re doing next?”
“Tell me how you got out of there?”
She lowered her gaze to the floor as if she’d been hurt by his words and that only confused him more.
“Think about it for second,” she said. “How did you get out of there?”
“I don’t know. I just kept grabbing for things and then you were gone and I kept grabbing and then I saw a bridge, and it was just growing. I just grabbed onto the ladder that came down it, and I climbed out.”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah. Same here.”
“But I didn’t see you.”
“What makes you think that was the only way out? I found a way out, and now I’m here. Isn’t that enough?”
Reese felt a vibration in his pocket, but it didn’t bring relief the way he thought it would. Now Endel was calling him! He yanked the talisman out of his pocket and his heart stopped as he stared down at his wrist. He brushed his right hand over his left wrist. It was strangely naked.
“What is it?” Raven asked.
Reese took a moment to get over the initial shock. “My watch is gone,” he said in a low voice.
Raven’s mouth dropped open, but she didn’t say anything. Reese was glad. He didn’t know how to feel, and he wouldn’t know what to say if she said something comforting. He wasn’t comforted by any of this. He was just pissed.
He flattened his palm and looked at the talisman stone. Red.
“A little late for a warning, don’t you think?” he said, not waiting for Endel to talk first. “You lied. You said we could make it to the portal! You never told me we’d walk into a deathtrap where the ceiling would slice me in half or we’d drown in a mote of molasses. We almost died!”
“It’s best you watch your tongue, yungin’.” Endel’s distorted voice came through the talisman. “That wasn’t molasses and you didn’t die, did you? If I had told you everything you’d encounter on this journey, would you have gone?”
“Yes! I want to get the hell out of here!”
“So you can go back to your school?”
“Hell, no. As soon as I graduate, I’m out of there. I’m leaving Gray Cliffs Academy and everything about it behind me. I’m free of it all.”
“Calm down, Reese,” Rav
en said, touching his hand.
“You won’t get to do that unless you conquer this journey and make it to the portal.”
“We didn’t conquer anything. We damn near got ourselves killed just now, and now we’re right back where we started from. We never got through this dead space here. And I’m not in any rush to go through this again. In fact, I’m done. It’s over.”
Raven gasped. “Reese, quiet.”
“This is bullshit! Endel doesn’t even know if there really is a portal on the other side of this cavern or whatever it is. Just because it’s on a map, doesn’t mean it really exists. We’ve had strange metal creatures and this stupid cave of tar to get through and I’m sick of it all. I don’t know…”
Reese let his voice trail off, afraid of what he would say next. The walls were glowing again. He looked down at the talisman in his palm, and saw that it was flashing crimson. Raven’s eyes showed steep panic as she stared at the talisman.
The surge of anger felt good to release, but it happened at a cost. He turned quickly and looked outside beyond the archway. Had anyone else noticed? Raven had. He felt energy thick and strong flowing through his veins just as surely as the hot blood that energized every time he ran.
He didn’t want to run anymore. He was tired of all this running. He just wanted to go home, to wherever he ended up after he got out of this underground city and bid Gray Cliffs Academy goodbye.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Raven said quietly. “You can’t give up.”
“Who cares?” he said, feeling anger resurge through his body “I’m here, and so are you. I have no idea where exactly this place is but I know neither one of us is supposed to be here. All I know is that for the past forty-eight hours this store owner who thinks he’s a genius sent us on a wild goose chase through tunnels that lead nowhere!”
“I am a genius,” Endel said through the talisman after Reese’s tirade stopped. “However, you, yungin’, are not. Just like all the others who thought they were smarter, stronger, and cockier than me, you can end up dead. Is that what you want? Is that what you want for Raven? Or do you actually want to help her escape this prison she’s been living in that you profess to hating so much?”