The Archer: Arrow's Flight Book # 2

by Casey Hays

  And I suddenly remember her. She was a couple years older than me, and I don’t think she ever said one word to me, but I remember her. Her death was announced in the city newsletter: A local girl found, possibly murdered by an Outsider, it read. The first and only time something like it had ever happened in Eden. It wasn’t sentimental. It didn’t carry an air of condolence. It was written in the form of a warning to all of us that Outsiders are dangerous. A reminder that we are all vulnerable before the Shift.

  Nobody knows this better than I do.

  Because of her death, my parents didn’t let me go on my first hunting expedition for an entire year.

  “And the guy?” I ask tentatively.

  “I don’t know. But as a Rover, there’s a chance I could find some answers.”

  My eyes meet his, full of understanding. “And this is the other reason you’re helping me, isn’t it? Because of her?”

  He smiles, but it’s more of a grimace than anything. He rubs his palms across the table a few times.

  “You remind me of Sarah. Persistent, bold. Not willing to follow the rules. To stay confined inside the walls. She’d been on two trading expeditions before she disappeared for good. My parents only knew about the one they allowed for her birthday. I signed her out the second time. I could never tell her ‘no’.”

  He smiles again, takes in a deep breath.

  “Not everyone is thrilled about what may lie outside. But people like you and Sarah? You’re free spirits. You can’t live like caged birds no matter how big the cage is. You have to fly. I recognize that in you.”

  I’m touched by his words because I sense how difficult it is for him to say them with me sitting here reminding him of his dead sister. I can only imagine how hard it would be if the roles were reversed, and we were talking about Ava. I swallow, realize I’m still squeezing my bow in both fists, and loosen my grip.

  Without thinking about it first, I fish the knife out of my pocket and whisk it open. I slide it across the table to Kyle.

  “Have you seen that symbol before?”

  He takes up the knife, studies it. Looks at me.

  “Should I have?”

  I shrug. “Someone threw it at me while I was on the outside. Stabbed me right between the shoulder blades. I didn’t see who; it came out of nowhere. But my friend, Justin, tells me that symbol belongs to a northern tribe called the Set-Typhon.”

  Kyle stares at me.

  “I think they might be shady, so I thought . . . maybe this might give you a starting point, you know, to find out what happened to your sister.”

  “Set-Typhon,” he repeats running a thumb along the flat of the blade. He nods. “Thanks. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  We sit in silence surrounded by our first gestures of trust.

  “You know . . .” I begin. “I . . . I brought a baby back with me the other night.”

  Kyle’s head shoots up. He blinks once. “Why?”

  I swallow. “She belonged to a friend from another village. She was sick. I brought her to Doc hoping he could help her.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. But she died. Of toxin.”

  He nods. “That happens.”

  “But that’s just it,” I say, glad to finally be sharing this with someone who might take me seriously. “She’d never been to Eden, and she had the symptoms. That’s why I brought her to Doc. She was already dying from the toxin.”

  He narrows his eyes. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.” I lower my voice. “Something isn’t right here.”

  I contemplate telling him about Ava, but I check myself. That’s not a secret I care to divulge just yet. Not until I know to do so won’t bring any kind of danger to my sister.

  “Another reason I need to be assigned to the Rovers,” he replies.

  I look into his eyes, and I see the sincerity behind his statement. And in this moment, I know how important it is for Kyle to get that assignment. I need him to get that assignment.

  He stands with a sudden abruptness, the legs of his chair grating harshly against the wooden floor. He folds the knife and shoves it into his pocket.

  “We should be good to go soon.” After a long pause, he says, “Your turn.”

  “What?”

  “Tell me why you want out of this city so desperately.”

  I take a moment to steady my breathing.

  “Someone . . . is waiting for me.”

  At least, I hope she is.

  “Besides your buddies?”

  “Right.”

  “So you’re taking this risk for an Outsider?” He whistles softly through his teeth. “Wow! She must be something special.”

  He winks then, and he doesn’t pry.

  “Are you ready?”

  I don’t answer. My nerves decide in this moment to twist themselves into a tangled mess of apprehension.

  I can’t really say that I am.

  Chapter 25

  I shouldn’t be afraid.

  I reason with myself, remind myself that I’m stronger than this. And what do I have to fear? The outside can’t hurt me. It’s tried . . . and it’s failed.

  I follow Kyle through the library, blindly allowing him to take the lead for now. I’ll be forced to take it back and go on alone soon enough. I can’t think straight, not with this huge undertaking looming ahead. I concentrate on the back of Kyle’s short-cropped head, take one step, then another. My bow hangs limp in my grip.

  It’s my conscience that scares me. I know this even as I try to push it under, keep it buried deep inside where I can’t see it, can’t feel it. But it gnaws at me, throwing images of my family up in my face. It reminds me of what they will suffer when I break the Code.

  I shouldn’t be having these thoughts. These doubts. They only make me weak and take away my courage. They come at me like a classroom bully bent on breaking me—forcing me to surrender.

  I know what my family endured when they thought I was gone for good. And I know they will wonder again. They will come looking for me, and if and when they find me, I will face my conscience then.

  But for now, I won’t surrender to it. I can’t. I shove it away with finality.

  The main reading room is deserted and dimmed to an eerie glow. The tall shadows of the bookshelves spilling across the thinly carpeted floors resemble huge rectangular coffins. The silence creeps about us—deeper than any silence I’ve experienced in my life. A silence that condemns.

  I run my tongue across my dry lips, hold my breath to still the thudding of my heart that is magnified in the muted air.

  Kyle takes us to the farthest corner of the room where he peels back a heavy rug, and there it is: The entrance to the tunnels.

  He pulls a latch, and the massive wooden door creaks open, seemingly taking up a huge chunk of the floor in the process. I squat and peer into the vast darkness, and my fears rally around me. A draft of cold air whisks up to hit me in the face. I’ve considered every possible consequence of climbing inside. I’ve weighed the risks, the outcome, what breaching the wall—breaking the Code—could mean for me, for those I love, and I’ve come to the only conclusion that exists: no choice is a good one. Finally, I do the only sensible thing. I turn inward to the whispery pumping of my own heart, and I reason with it. And it urges me to go. Take the risk, return to Kate, and think afterwards. One way or another, there will be plenty of time for thinking afterwards.

  The blackness jeers at me from the yawning mouth of the entrance, permitting me one more chance to bow out. To turn away and crawl back home.

  But these thoughts are shattered by the image of Tabitha lying beneath the dull, swinging bulb. I’m forced to swallow the lump that suddenly forms in my throat. I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. And there’s the other thing. I have to get back to her mother. It can’t wait. I have to do this one last thing—for Tabitha.

  I swing one leg over the side of the hole and yank my pack in after me. Kyle grabs for my arm, pinning me in place.
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  “Don’t forget. Central runs a system check every twenty-eight minutes from the control room. Every twenty-eight minutes exactly, and it scans all entrances to ensure containment is stable. You got that?”

  “Yeah. I got it.”

  He hands me a flashlight and a stopwatch that is already ticking away the seconds like an ebbing life. “You cannot open the hatches during the scan. Don’t even attempt to. You cannot be in the chamber during the scan, or the monitors will detect your body heat and send probes to check things out. And that will be it for you. Any detection of toxin in the equalization chamber is suspicious. It will alert Central that at the very least, the inner hatch was opened. So watch your time; get in and get out fast. And be sure to secure the outer hatch.”

  I nod, mentally running all of his prior instructions on operating the hatch through my brain. The stopwatch clicks. Twenty-two minutes until the next scan.

  “And . . .”

  I stop in my descent, look up at him. I’m anxious to get moving while I still have the nerve.

  “I’ll see you soon.”

  The words are full of steady assurance. I believe him.

  “Good luck with the assignment,” I say. “And thanks for this.”

  “Yep. Good luck to you, Ian Roberts. I hope she’s worth it.”

  The thought of her steadies my nerves.

  “She’s worth it,” I say with complete confidence.

  For that reason alone I’m willing to take this risk.

  The tunnels are a winding maze beneath the city that twist and turn and confuse the brain. No straight shot from one end to the other. That would be far too simple. The roof is low, and even lower in some areas. The walls narrow severely from time to time, and I’m forced to duck and wedge my way through tight spots. The going is slow. Kyle left me with a general idea of which route to take to the best of his knowledge; he has never been this far in, and only guides me from memory of maps he’s seen in official meetings. I find myself turned around more than once. Everything is the same: black and endless.

  The plan? Exit on the north side and hustle for the trees. Undercover, I can wind my way back to the river and find the others. Of course, this is contingent on whether I keep my wits about which way is north. And this is the dilemma.

  I dig through my pack for my compass. It’s old. The needle is wobbly, and the face is cracked. Still, it points north-ish, I think.

  The tunnel slants and I find myself trudging deeper and deeper into the underbelly of the city. It brings with it an eerie sensation of being buried alive, and my uneasiness grows with every step. It doesn’t matter how indestructible you may be; it doesn’t matter how hard it is for someone to kill you; there’s always that nagging fear of death lingering like a pestilence in the back of your mind; hiding behind every move you make, every sound you utter. It’s part of human nature to think about the end. Because all of us will come to one eventually, one way or the other. Even me.

  I will die. I don’t like to dwell on it, but sometimes events bring it to the surface—the fact that I’m just as vulnerable as the next person if I’m pressed to the limits. My body, as indomitable as it is now, will give out. Not with slow decay. Not with disease. And not by injury. Nothing so natural. No. Rather, I will simply turn off. Like a computer. This is how I imagine it in my mind. I’ve seen it before.

  My grandfather was one of the strongest men I knew clear to his last breath. Sure, he had aged. We all do. He’d slowed down to a degree. He was gray and beginning to show signs of wrinkles, but that didn’t seem to hinder him. He was still strong, and he was healthy. But one day, when I was seven, they found him sitting on his front porch, as strong and whole as ever. Dead. And he’s not the only one.

  It raises the most profound question of all. A question which remains unanswered. How do we die?

  I’ve known that babies succumb to the toxin. It happens. But those are explainable deaths. Something killed them. But my grandfather? What, if anything, killed him?

  And further, why? What makes us stop working? What makes us not come back on again?

  What happens afterwards?

  Perhaps this is what scares me the most.

  A sudden shudder vibrates up my spine, and I turn abruptly with an odd sense that someone is here with me, slithering through the tunnels like a giant snake in pursuit of its next meal. Perhaps Death himself has decided to join me and prove his worth. I swallow, swinging the beam of my flashlight over the narrow walls. Nothing.

  No more thoughts of death. I scold myself, take a deep breath and conclude to keep my mind focused on finding the exit. I’ve never been too fond of dark, tight places, and allowing my imagination to run away is not helping.

  Soon, I will see Kate. She will be alive, and I will touch the softness of her skin, feel her warmth, and know that her heart still beats. I concentrate on this, and I keep moving.

  I flash my beam of light over the stopwatch. Fifteen minutes. Only fifteen minutes has passed since I left Kyle at the top? I could have sworn I’ve been plodding through the blackness for over an hour. I peer at the compass, which still points generally north. Not that I’d have any other alternate route to take. Straight ahead is the only recourse.

  I stop, pull a bottle of water from a side pocket of my pack, and drink half of it.

  In that instant, as I rest in the quiet darkness, a shrieking—shrill and sharp and loud—suddenly floods the tunnel with its voice. I jump, cracking my head solidly against the ceiling of the tunnel, and my blood runs cold. The open bottle hits the floor and spatters the remaining water. I stand deathly still, not even breathing.

  My first thought: They’ve somehow discovered I’m under the city, and any minute they’ll be here to drag me straight to lockdown. My second: Is that an alarm? When has an alarm ever blasted in the city? I didn’t even know we had one.

  The noise grows louder, filling the air all around me. I drop my pack and crouch next to it. Best to wait and not get caught in the path of the scan, if this is what it is. I glance at the stopwatch. It reads four minutes left before the scan. Frowning, I watch it tick down to the last second. It resets itself: twenty-eight minutes, and the countdown begins again.

  All the while, the siren blares, and the pain in my ears escalates. I stand, move further down the path, but there’s nowhere to escape the blast. It’s everywhere.

  An uncomfortably familiar feeling begins to invade me. It smells very much like the insanity that threatened to overtake me in the Pit. And the longer the siren screams, the more these feelings steal in to fray the edges of my mind. My muscles tense, nerves going rigid. The screaming siren involuntarily raises the hairs on my arms. I feel my own fear floating in the air around me, and I don’t like. I squeeze my eyes shut. This is no time to panic.

  I have to keep moving. I have to get out of here.

  I scoop up my things and take off, winding deeper into the tunnel. I have to be close to an exit hatch. Of course, this is based on nothing. I could be no closer than when I first left the library for all I know. But I have to believe it, and I have to make it true in order to bear the relentless screaming of the siren that dangerously matches the madness of this torturous underground labyrinth.

  I’ve been in here just over twenty-eight minutes, and I think I’m losing my mind.

  Another fifteen minutes of misery, and I see the tunnel open onto a small alcove up ahead. And the first hatch that opens to the equalization chamber comes into view, and it’s like air to a drowning man. I fight the urge to run. Running is not advisable. It’s not even possible. I duck under another low hanging portion of the ceiling.

  The siren has not eased up, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find that my ears are bleeding. I step into the cramped alcove. It is so difficult to concentrate through the noise, but I focus. I check the time. Eleven minutes until the next scan. I turn my attention to the various levers on the hatch that will release the gaskets.

  Kyle explained it clearly. The gaskets at
the front gate are activated by computer, but down here, they have to be released manually. I spot the key lever and twist. The lock pops, and step one is complete. Raise the left lever all the way to the top to release the gasket. I hesitate, my fingers hovering over the lever. This is it.

  In the midst of the siren filling my ears and the stopwatch staring at me accusingly, a sudden burst of apprehension stops me completely. Eight minutes to scan, and I consider once again whether this is the best idea.

  Kyle was adamant. As long as I move through the process quickly—as long as I don’t get stuck in the equalization chamber waiting for the air to level—I should be fine. No one will even know I’ve been here. And as long as I seal the gaskets properly, and don’t open the outside hatch too soon, there will be no leaks. No worries.

  But this is where my doubts collide with Kyle’s assurances. Tabitha died because of this toxin. I suddenly can’t help but wonder if these underground hatches are the reason. What if—regardless of what my dad has said—they are leaking? What if the gauges are defective, and what appears to be normal oxygen levels inside the chamber is actually a false reading? Could this be possible?

  It’s crossed my mind that it would take a lot of toxin to do what it did to Tabitha. Which makes me question whether any of our gauges are giving accurate readings. Maybe the whole system is defective.

  I suddenly and whole-heartedly believe this. And a twinge of anger stabs me viciously.

  I press a hand against the door, stare at the lever as these thoughts tumble around inside my head. The seconds tick on. Despite Kyle’s precise instructions, I’ve never done this before. My heart answers with a solid thud deep in my chest.

  In that moment, my dream flashes through my memory. Kate in the rain, crying out to me. Me unable to tell her how sorry I am for betraying her trust.

  And she disappears.

  This is all it takes for me to raise the lever. There’s a swooshing of air as the gasket looses its grip on the hatch, and I’m turning the handle, over and over until the hatch wheezes in surrender. I pry it open and slip into the chamber, closing the inner hatch quickly. It thuds loudly, and the siren’s screaming is muffled slightly.