A haze passed over Bryn’s expression. She put a hand to her head. Rett’s fingers went automatically to a scar under his short hair. How did I get this?
Bryn swayed, and Rett moved to steady her. She grimaced with the same pain that knocked against his skull.
“Never mind,” he said. “Let’s just sit down.”
“I’m thirsty.”
He helped her over to the couch. “Sit here and I’ll look for some water.” He glanced at the ladder again. There’s water up there. I know it.
5:59 A.M.
In the room atop the ladder, Rett found a lever in the dark. He leaned his weight down on it until something moved behind the wall and a clunk came from the roof. He waited for something more to happen.
A line from Bryn’s song went through his mind: Three gulls circle, four clouds float.
He lifted a hand to the wall, slow as a sleepwalker, and traced the outline of what he knew was painted there in the dark: a cloud and scattered raindrops. The paint was smooth under his finger. How did I know? he wondered. How did I know something was painted here?
A chill went down the back of his neck. I’ve done this before. The thought nagged at him as he climbed back down the ladder.
“Sorry, no luck,” he called.
Bryn was nowhere in sight, but it was easy to guess she had disappeared behind the half-lifted wall opposite. Rett ducked under the wall to find her rummaging through some cabinets.
“You don’t waste time, do you?” Rett said, looking around at the equipment strewn over the floor.
Bryn glanced back at him before returning to her work, a shadow of resentment lingering in her gaze. “It was like that when I came in here.”
“Okay,” he said, a little defensively. “I promise I wasn’t angling to stake my claim to rain ponchos.”
She pushed the bin of ponchos toward him without comment and went on searching the cabinets. He blinked down at her offering and couldn’t decide whether he owed her a thank you or a sorry.
“So,” he tried, “you didn’t feel like sticking around Walling until you were eighteen and a proper adult?”
“Does taking health and safety matters into your own hands make you a proper adult? Because I think I might already be one.” She pulled a long metal pole out of the cabinet and hefted it to check its weight, preparing herself for whatever danger might await them.
“Now I’m changing my mind,” Rett said, watching her slow-swing the pole in practice. “I think I prefer a sheltered childhood after all.”
Bryn leaned back to scour the metal room with her gaze. “Depends on the shelter.”
“Good point.” Rett swallowed against the sticky pain in his throat. “At least Walling had water.”
“Why’d you ask to leave early? You had someone’s couch in mind, or where were you going to live?”
“I’m supposed to be on the East Coast. My mom’s at a workhouse, or anyway, she will be until they close them.” Or have the workhouses already closed? How long have we been here? He massaged a sudden ache in his chest. “She … she’s sick. I’m going to go take care of her.”
A barrage of questions went through his head. He waited for Bryn to ask them: What will you do if she’s already gone? Or: What if you can’t do anything to help? Questions Rett couldn’t answer. Because his mother hadn’t told him what her plans were. Because …
Because …
Some vague feeling of anger passed through him, like the ghost of it. He’d written those emails, before she’d gotten sick again. Written things he shouldn’t have said: You never came back … I’m better off without you anyway … I don’t need you …
Only one of those things was true.
He waited for Bryn to say something.
Her amber eyes warmed. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Rett felt like he’d been walking down a narrow stair and had missed a step. He turned, freeing himself from Bryn’s magnetic gaze. “What about you? Did you leave Walling so you could start a new life in a metal dungeon?”
“I’m planning to meet up with my boyfriend. He’s two years older than I am, so he was already getting the boot.”
Rett tried to make sense of the disappointment suddenly washing over him. What do I care if she has a boyfriend?
“He’s one of the biggest reasons I survived five years in Walling,” Bryn went on. “He has a really great talent for finding bizarre alien movies online. Any time we felt sorry for ourselves, we’d watch Ripley get covered in alien saliva-slime.” She gave Rett a wry smile that sent electricity through his heart.
“But where will you go? I mean, the two of you. Without any money.”
She tensed.
“Sorry, it’s none of my business,” Rett said quickly. Like she doesn’t have enough to worry about right now.
But she didn’t even seem to hear his apology. Her eyes had gone hazy with some thought. “I wasn’t going to leave empty-handed. I wouldn’t have done that. I had a plan…”
“Was this your plan?” Rett asked with a glum smile.
Bryn went on ignoring him. “You need money for your mom, right? To help her get better. And I wouldn’t have left unless I had some way to help me and my boyfriend get by.”
Rett felt another stab in his gut at the word boyfriend. “So we both need money. Is that why we’re here? What, there’s something … valuable here that we came to find?” The moment he said the word find, he knew there was something to the idea. Yes, yes! I’m supposed to find something!
Judging by the way Bryn’s gaze snapped to his, she felt the same way.
All at once, they launched themselves at the junk spilling out of the cabinets. They yanked out coils of rope and tangled power cords and slippery plastic sheets as if they were disemboweling a compliant creature. They turned over bins and pawed through empty backpacks and boxes of compasses and worthless empty water bottles. Rett even slid his hands all over the insides of the cabinets in case they had missed a hidden drawer or shelf. The most he discovered was an itemized list of the supplies they’d already found. He ran an eye over it: 12 feet of rope, 9×9 plastic drop cloth, 6 nylon backpacks, 6 pairs of binoculars, 6 shovels … It finally registered that the cabinets held only supplies they didn’t need, nothing valuable, not even water—which Rett would have happily accepted over anything worth actual money.
But Bryn didn’t seem fazed. She shot to her feet, a glowing green tube in her hand, and announced, “I’m going to search the rest of this place.” She ducked out of the room without waiting for his reply.
The metal pole she’d found lay among the scattered debris. Rett lifted it by its leather strap and wondered why it gave him an uneasy feeling.
We need to get out of this place.
But how? Door’s jammed shut.
A thought came to him that made his stomach shrink: What about the skylight?
He hefted the metal pole, a decent weapon. He had the feeling there was something out there, something bad.
But the skylight might be their only way out.
If it even opened.
He suddenly remembered the itemized list he’d found. Hadn’t he seen something on it about binoculars?
He hunted through the debris until he found a bin full of them—real binoculars with metal casings and leather straps.
Back in the main room, he lifted the binoculars to inspect the skylight overhead. The glass was dotted with rain, reminding Rett again how thirsty he was. Just underneath the skylight, off to one side, a narrow ledge was marked by odd symbols: two wavy lines and a row of overlapping circles. Strange, Rett thought. He moved the binoculars and found something else: a small crank that likely opened the glass dome. But I already knew I’d find that. I already knew the skylight opened. He moved to the edge of the room, haunted by the impression that something might come through the glass at any moment.
Something about the symbol on the underside of the ledge tickled at the back of his mind. He used the binoculars to inspect it ag
ain. Then he saw on the wall near it a chalky white line, stark against the dusty metal.
A wavy symbol, a chalky water line …
But why would the place fill with water?
He tried to understand what the segmented blob was trying to tell him. “Something’s going to break into pieces?” But the symbol wasn’t just a blob. When he focused the binoculars, the blob sprouted a pair of—
Antennae?
“The water gets rid of bugs,” he murmured.
A sound from the open doorway to his left interrupted his thoughts: the click of a drawer shutting.
Rett stepped into the doorway to see what Bryn might have found during her search.
She quickly turned from the desk. “Nothing in there.”
“Well.” Rett frowned. “Except the gun, you mean.”
“Right,” she said quickly. “I meant nothing new. Nothing we hadn’t seen.”
Rett watched her toy with the ends of her sleeves. What is she so nervous about?
Bryn nodded toward a narrow door to one side of the room. “Should we check in there?”
“Go ahead. Looks like there’s only room for one.”
The door opened with a pop. “Just a bathroom,” Bryn reported, “but it looks like there’s another door through here. Maybe just a closet…”
Something in Bryn’s stiff posture made Rett worry. If she finds something, will she tell me about it?
A feverish need to search the place for himself sent Rett out of the dark office. He darted back to the lounge area and slid his palms over the wall, feeling for any hidden switches or—
There! A panel slid away, revealing a blue spigot. Water!
Rett slapped at the spigot. Nothing came out. Damn.
The couch cushion he knelt on shifted under him. He yanked off the cushion to discover Mylar-wrapped bars wedged into the hollow seat. Each was marked RATION BAR.
Rett yanked one out. Underneath the lettering was some kind of serial number and an expiration date. “Still good for another decade,” he mumbled to himself. “Let’s hope we’re not stuck here that long.” He pocketed the bar, too thirsty and queasy to consider eating it, and then pocketed a few more.
What next? He’d already searched the room at the top of the ladder. Could there be anything else here he’d missed? What’s that white stuff? A smear of white chalk marked the edge of the wall that had been lifted into a slot over the room. Rett reached up to touch it, and the white stuff came away on his fingertips. He lifted his hand again to pull down the wall and examine it.
But just then, a light came on overhead. “How did I do that?” Rett wondered aloud.
“You didn’t,” Bryn called from the office. “I did. I found a fuse box … And what’s this?”
The clack of wood on metal echoed through the small space. Rett darted to the office just in time to see Bryn tug aside a partition they’d both missed earlier.
Another room lay beyond. The bed and the sharp smell of cleaner and medicine were enough to tell him it was some kind of medical area.
Bryn slumped against the wall, one hand clutching her head.
“Bryn?
“Something happened here,” she rasped. “Do you feel it?”
Rett scanned the room again and a memory flashed through his mind: a hospital room, a bank of bright lights. “Not here. Somewhere else. Some place bigger than this.”
Bryn blinked up at the overhead lights. A faraway look came into her eyes. “They put something in our heads.” She touched the scar that Rett knew must lie along her scalp.
Rett touched his own scar. A surge of remembered pain overtook him. He clenched his eyes shut and saw a face, a white lab coat. Heard a voice: “If you ever find yourself in danger, remember the song. It signals the mechanism.” The woman in the lab coat touched his head, carefully, near where the mechanism had been inserted into his brain …
Rett willed the pain away and the memory vanished with it. Bryn stood staring at him, still touching her head, grimacing with fear. Rett reached and moved her hand away. “Don’t think about it,” he said. His stomach churned, threatening to revolt. What did I let them do to me?
Don’t think about it, he told himself as he pushed away the memory of pain splitting his skull.
But his nightmare thoughts came to life: Blood bloomed on his fingertips.
Rett gaped at the sight. How…?
A vision of a black talon surfaced in his mind.
Then he realized where the blood had really come from: Bryn’s palm welled with it, so much that it dripped onto the floor.
“Bryn.” Rett took her hand in his again and led her out to the main room while she stared at her injured palm in shock. “Wait here.”
Rett ducked into the supply room. When he came back with a roll of gauze, she was gone.
“Bryn?”
Only spatters of blood on the floor where she had stood moments ago.
Then, her voice: “Look, Rett.”
Rett jerked back in surprise. Why am I so jumpy? It’s just Bryn.
She sat curled on the couch, cradling her injured palm in her good hand, a nylon backpack hooked over her arm. She gave him a weak smile and gestured at the Mylar pouches spilled along the seat next to her. “I found water.”
6:20 A.M.
“You remembered something.”
Rett held Bryn’s hand in his, palm up, as he finished wrapping the gauze and tucked in the loose end. “Yes,” he answered slowly. “I remembered…” Rett wasn’t sure if the reason his mind was buzzing was that he was still holding Bryn’s wrist or if the memory had left him shaken. “I remember someone saying that if I ever find myself in danger, I should use the song you were singing earlier to signal the—the thing in our—” A fresh bolt of pain went through his head.
“Here.” Bryn took her hand from his to offer him one of the water pouches between them on the couch seat. “We’ll think about everything else later.”
Rett pulled the tab almost mindlessly, but then thought better of drinking the water himself. “You first.”
Bryn lifted her eyebrows as she took the pouch. “‘Women and children first’? Very chivalrous.”
His face heated. “Injured first, I was thinking. And I’m pretty sure I’m younger than you, so if anyone’s the child here…” His hands were already fumbling to open another pouch. “Anyway, cheers.”
They drained their pouches and then Bryn said, “I could swear you’re older than I am. Maybe your wisdom just shows better on your face.”
“I can honestly say this is the first time anyone’s ever accused me of being wise.”
“You know how to wrap an injury.” Bryn held up her hand, which was wrapped with so much gauze, anyone might think she’d put on a mitten.
“That’s just me showing off my skills at winding things. I’m pretty good with yo-yos and electrical cords, too.”
“Electrical cords? You wind a lot of those?”
“If you wind them up and keep them out of sight, people are less likely to hurt you with them.”
They both fell silent. Great conversation skills, Rett told himself. Really cheerful topic.
Bryn didn’t take her gaze off him, but her eyes turned murky, almost gray. “You broke that guy’s hand. Garrick.”
Rett hid a jolt of surprise. “Garrick was the kind of guy I hid electrical cords from.”
Bryn scrutinized him for a moment longer, her expression unreadable but her uninjured hand moving closer to his on the seat. She slowly nodded. “I guess we do all kinds of things to survive.”
Rett knew he should take comfort in her sympathy. But her stony voice made him wonder exactly what kinds of things she meant. He saw her in his mind, hunting desperately through the supply cabinets in the other room. The image unlocked a memory of her from Walling Home. Best not to bring that up, he thought, noting her dejected slouch.
“Anyway, I could have really impressed you with my yo-yo skills,” Rett said. “Too bad there aren’t any of th
ose around.”
She gave him a small smile. “Isn’t that convenient.”
“And checkers. I would destroy you in checkers.”
“Anything else?”
“I could draw you a terrible comic if we had some paper.”
“Only a terrible one?”
“My skills are … still sharpening. I only started drawing my own comics because I traded away all the issues I brought with me to Walling. Except for the last issue of Shine Fall. You ever heard of it? It’s for younger kids but…” He shrugged. For a moment, he was eight years old, marveling over illustrations of Hikaru’s daring adventures while his mother read the captions aloud, her voice a promise of warmth and safety.
“I only ever liked the scary comics,” Bryn said. “The kind you read by flashlight on camping trips until your stepdad complains the light is keeping him up.”
Rett grimaced at the scratched walls. “I’m pretty sure I have plenty of inspiration for scary.”
Bryn brought something out of the pack Rett hadn’t noticed she was rummaging in. She pushed the notebook toward him and said, “Give me your scariest.”
“Really?” He unclipped the pen from the cover and flipped through the blank pages. “I’m warning you, I’m not great at this.”
She watched him sketch. His skin warmed under her gaze. “What did you mean about using a song to…?” Her voice trailed off.
“Someone told me that song you were singing is supposed to help us,” Rett said as he sketched. He paused. “That means someone knew we would end up here.”
“There must have been a plan, then, and we just can’t remember it. Why don’t we remember anything?”
“Except the song,” Rett said. “You remembered that.”
“Music’s easier to remember than other things.”
Rett got a flash of his mother’s face glowing in the morning light while she sang, heard a broken phrase from the song she played on repeat when they most needed to forget the things they’d heard on the news. Yes, music’s easier to remember.
“Do you think if you sing the song, something will happen?” Rett asked.
“Nothing happened earlier. Not that I could tell.”
“Try again. Please?”
The Echo Room Page 8