Reese's Quest

by Blair Drake

  Be swift and fearless in the dark. He now knew he had to control his emotions as well as his energy. It was the only way to keep him and Raven in the dark when it mattered.

  The darkness in front of them changed a bit as they walked, and morphed into something familiar.

  “Do you think that’s the last bridge?” he asked.

  “It might be. It might be another stairway leading down to the portal. I don’t’ remember what it looked like on the map. That whole section of the diagram seems muddled in my mind.”

  “What happened to your photogenic?”

  “I looked at that map a couple of days ago. I usually remember things, but a lot has happened since then.”

  “What good are you?” he teased.

  She stopped walking.

  “Kidding. Really,” he said quickly. “It was a bad joke.”

  “Some joke.”

  “I don’t feel my energy right now.”

  “Then you passed the test.”

  “This was a test?” he asked as they began to walk again.

  “Endel wanted to help you harness your energy. Looks like you have.”

  “It feels weird.”

  “What?”

  “Feeling nothing. I felt a little like this the first time we went over the bridge. This is…just weird. When I was running, energy would flow through me. But it used to happen when I was walking, too. Right now I feel nothing. I normally feel this movement that makes me want to run. And when I close my eyes, I can feel it flowing through me. I know that sounds weird.”

  “It doesn’t. I saw what you did.”

  “What did I do?”

  “As your breathing became more rapid, you must have been running in your mind. The energy in the room became stronger, and the humming was louder. The lights got so bright at one point, before you even opened your eyes, that I had to shield my face. I felt like it was being burned.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded her head. “In the back of the scrap yard when you were running with me on the cart…”

  “What?”

  “You were afraid for me, weren’t you?”

  “I thought we already talked about that.”

  “Yes, we did. But when you were running, the lights all around us flared and it got bright. Didn’t you see it?”

  He shook his head. He slowed his pace as they got closer to the darkness where strange shapes came into view.

  “I’m never going to forget you Reese Calamita.”

  Her smile was weak but still as sweet. But she looked sad and he wondered why.

  “Let’s go.”

  He started to walk, and then stopped and waited for her to come with him. But when he turned and looked at her, he saw the tears in her eyes.

  “What did I say?”

  She smiled. “You took care of me when you were lost too. That means a lot. No one besides Endel has ever cared about me for a long time.”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  She heaved an exaggerated sigh. “There you go again, masking your feelings as if none of this means anything.”

  “Okay, so I’m an asshole. I thought we already established that, too.”

  She smiled as she walked toward him. “I think you like me, Reese.”

  He suddenly felt as if she were reading his thoughts and it made him uncomfortable so he shrugged. “Yeah, of course.”

  “Trust is a hard thing. It’s not something people down here do very often. I’ve learned to be suspicious of everything. Of everyone.”

  “So where do we fall on the trust spectrum.”

  “I trust you. We need to keep going forward and cross that last bridge. I don’t know if it’s really out there. But I’ll go out there with you.” She giggled. “Just don’t go getting a big head over the whole thing, okay?”

  He blew out a quick breath and shook his head. “Yeah, whatever.”

  “I think you’re going to miss me, too.”

  The sad look was back.

  “You’re talking nuts. We’re going to get out of here together. That’s what we planned on doing. Somewhere beyond this darkness is a bridge that is going to lead us to a portal. Then we will be free.”

  She smiled weakly. “Let’s go.”

  Reese pressed the talisman stone once, then twice, then again. It was dead. Nothing happened. No white light, no blue light, and no crimson.

  He held himself back from smashing the talisman to the ground and digging his heel into it. “He left us.”

  Raven shook her head. “Endel wouldn’t do that. He said he would help us all the way to the end.”

  “Yeah? Then where the hell is he now when we can’t find this damned bridge? Why isn’t he coming to our aid now?”

  “We may not have gone far enough.”

  “I can’t see a thing more than ten or fifteen feet in front of us. I need light.”

  He paced in front of Raven who was now huddled in a ball on the ground, tucking her knees up to her chest, and wrapping her arms around them. He was hungry again, and that was never a good thing for his mood. They’d eaten plenty of whatever they’d served at the holder’s house last night. He figured he’d be able to get through this last part of the journey and just wait to eat when he got back to the Cliffs. But the more they walked, the more Reese questioned if they were ever going to find the bridge that led to the portal.

  Time was running out. His watch was gone. He had no concept of time anymore, just like Raven had said when he’d first met her. There were bells and that was the only measure of time passing. Out here in the nothingness of darkness, there were no bells. It was hard to know how far they’d gone.

  “Endel never wanted to help us,” he fumed.

  Raven lifted her gaze to him. “Of course, he did. He’s helped us so much.”

  “Yeah? Maybe this is what he wanted. To help us die out here.”

  Raven grunted her frustration. “That’s crazy talk.”

  “Everything about this place is crazy. It’s marked for death. I don’t care what kind of people live down here. Don’t they know what kind of place this is? There’s no real light. No sunshine or fresh air. Everything is wet or musty or dusty. It’s hell.”

  “No one comes out this far. You heard what Rocher said. These people work in the city and stay there. They know what their boundaries are, and they don’t go outside them.”

  “What the hell kind of life is that? I’m sick of boundaries. I’m sick of having to be dumped somewhere with no way out.

  “Why are you doing this, Reese? We’ve come so far.”

  He shook his head. “The only truth you know is what Endel told you. What if it’s all crap?”

  Raven abruptly stood up in front of him. “Endel is trying to help us. Why can’t you see that? Everything he has done has been to help us get to the portal.”

  “Then why didn’t he come with us? Have you ever thought about that? He stays at that little shop on the border of the safe part of the city. He catches all the little misfits that come through the tunnel, and he sends them on their way. And then he abandons them.”

  Raven shook her head wildly. “No. No, he wouldn’t do that.”

  “Yeah? You said there were others. Others that didn’t listen and got lost. How does he know that? Maybe they didn’t listen. Or maybe they did every damn thing that Endel told them to do and died because of it. Did you ever think of that?”

  “That’s not possible,” she said quietly as she thought about his words. “Endel has never steered me wrong.”

  “Endel wasn’t there with you when we almost died in that liquid magnet vat. He wasn’t there when those mechanical creatures came at us and you almost fell into the black hole when the bridge collapsed.”

  “He talked to you right after. I remember you talking through the talisman.”

  Reese thought back to that first day on the bridge. “Wait. You didn’t make a bridge to get out of the black hole. You fell in. I thought…I thought you were going to die.
”

  “You pulled me up.”

  “But you said you changed into the bridge over the liquid magnet. Why didn’t you do that when you almost died the first time?”

  “I didn’t trust you with my secret then. I thought you’d abandon me.”

  Her words hit Reese hard. Abandonment was something they both knew well and hated. Raven had seemed to accept it better than Reese had. But just because she appeared unscarred on the outside didn’t mean there weren’t plenty of scars on the inside.

  “You almost died, Raven. What if I hadn’t been able to help you? Why didn’t you use your powers to get out of there?”

  She peered up at him. “I was shocked. I hurt my arm. Don’t you remember? Please stop it, Reese. We’re almost there.”

  Reese laughed with no humor and shook his head as he paced. Anger was better than the emotion threatening to choke him. “You go on believing whatever it is you want to believe. I don’t believe any of this anymore. I believe that this maze of tunnels and traps are just that. Those are the minefields Endel was talking about. For all we know he’s got this whole place rigged with cameras and is just sitting there watching this whole thing unfold and having himself a great big laugh at our expense.”

  “You’re just upset.”

  “Damn right I’m upset. Aren’t you? Where is Endel? We’re at a dead end and the only thing that is really dead is this talisman. Endel abandoned us.”

  He rubbed his hand over his face, and wanted to cry. But not in front of Raven. He wasn’t a crybaby and he wasn’t gonna start now. His anger was enough to keep him from completely crumbling.

  Raven peered up at him with her blue eyes that were pleading with him. If he lived a hundred years, those eyes would haunt him.

  “We can’t give up. Don’t you have faith? Before you came here, you didn’t know how to do any of the things you did. You didn’t know that anyone had powers beyond your world.”

  “What good did it do us? We’re in a dark hole and we can’t even see which direction to go. For all we know the bridge is a half mile down another tunnel and we’re just walking deeper into another cavern of liquid magnet.”

  “Endel didn’t abandon us, Reese. He gave us the tools we needed to get through this. We had two tough challenges. We might have forgotten a step or gone through a wrong door. But we’ll find it. We can find our way.”

  Guilt stabbed at him. Raven was so trusting of him. She believed in him like no one ever had. And he had no idea how to save them.

  Then she took a wide step back and held her head, tapping on her forehead as if she were trying to knock sense into her skull.

  “Knock it off,” he said.

  “I missed something,” she said. “It has to be. I’ve forgotten a step. I’m trying to remember the map. We took the stairs. We stayed at the holder’s house. Was it the wrong door? Did Endel tell you anything else the last time you spoke with him through the talisman?”

  He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her lightly. “I said stop it.”

  Her expression was defiant as she glanced up at him. “I won’t let you give up, Reese. I can see you doing it. We’ve come this far. I won’t let you, do you hear me?”

  Reese let go of Raven and began to pace again. “Okay, okay.”

  He looked around the tunnel for a sign of something more familiar. The odd shapes he was seeing in the dark weren’t what he’d thought they were. It wasn’t a railing or a set of stairs leading anywhere. It was just shapes.

  Was this what Raven’s life had been like? Every day a series of tunnels to run through, and hide in? Empty tunnels that led nowhere?

  Reese didn’t want his life to be like this. Okay, so he hadn’t been happy at home or at school. He didn’t know what there was beyond school, but there was always the possibility of getting into Gray Cliffs University. He had the grades. Lalane certainly tried to steer him in that direction even though he wasn’t giving her much reason to think he was serious. And as bad as all of that sounded just a few days ago, it was infinitely better than living here.

  His shoulders sagged. “I don’t want to live the rest of my life here.”

  “The only way to get out of here, is to keep going. Keep trying.”

  “And if we die out here?” he asked.

  “Then you won’t be dying alone. I’m here. Hey, we made it this far, we might be able to make it back.”

  Reese sat down on the ground and rested his elbows on his knees. He dropped his face into his hands. “I can’t think. I don’t want to think about this right now.”

  Raven touched his back as she sat down next to him. “We have no choice.”

  The talisman in his pocket began to hum once again. It started out slow and low, and then the sound grew louder until his pocket shook with the vibration. He reached into his blazer pocket and pulled out the talisman. The stone was glowing blue.

  “You have no faith, yungin’,” Endel said. “Your anger is too strong. I can practically feel you seething all the way down here.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  The sound was distorted as Endel snorted. “You don’t even know what you don’t know.”

  Reese smacked his palm on his head out of frustration. “Can we stop with the riddles please? We need some real answers. I’m done trying to solve a puzzle when I can’t see the pieces.”

  Raven looked at him with her wide eyes. “Tell me what he’s saying.”

  “Riddles and puzzles and…”

  “What?”

  He shrugged. “How do we get out of here?”

  “I don’t know where you are,” Endel said.

  “Terrific.”

  “I do know you’re not where you’re supposed to be.”

  “I could’ve told you that.”

  “And your attitude still stinks.”

  “You’d have a bad attitude too if you’d spent the last few days being chased by mechanical creatures and nearly being drown in a black hole.”

  “It wasn’t a black hole,” Endel said. “It was—”

  “Liquid magnet. Yeah, I got that part. It was black and it nearly swallowed me. You call it what you want. All I need to know is how to find out where we are.”

  “I told you everything you needed to know. If you missed something, you can backtrack and you won’t be in the wrong place anymore.”

  “I could have figured that out myself.”

  “Attitude. Once again you’re not listening.”

  Irritation raced through him. “You know, I’m getting really tired of this. I’m sure you’re having a blast watching me fail. But if you don’t give a shit about me, at least think about Raven. You sent her down here with me, remember? I thought you cared about her.”

  “Don’t use that manipulation with me. It doesn’t work.”

  “What the…”

  Raven touched his hand lightly and whispered, “Ask him what comes after the tunnel parallel to the cavern.”

  “You already know,” Endel said, answering her question without his asking. “Everything I taught you both in that energy room will work to your advantage if you let it. If you continue to be cocky and let your emotions overrule your emotions, then you will fail.”

  “You mean die,” Reese said.

  “That, too. Choice is yours. But just remember, what you do, yungin’ also affects dear Raven. If you die because you fail, then she will die too. She can only do her part. She can’t do it alone.”

  The talisman started fading, and then brightening to a white color instead of the bright blue. Then it went dark.

  “Endel? Are you still there?”

  Nothing.

  “What did he say?” Raven asked.

  What could he tell her that wasn’t going to freak her out?

  “That everything he taught us is what we need to get through this.”

  Raven looked away as if she were searching her mind. “I say we keep going.”

  “We don’t know where we’re going.�
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  “Go blindly over the bridges. Be swift and fearless in the dark, and you’ll both make it. Isn’t that what Endel said? It makes sense. We can do this.”

  He chuckled, although he didn’t really feel like laughing. It was just stress coiling around his belly, driving him crazy.

  “I can manage the swift and the dark. I’m not sure fearless is an option.”

  Raven chuckled softly. “Two out of three isn’t bad.”

  Chapter 15

  Reese held Raven’s hand as they ran in the darkness. He kept his eyes closed and tried to remember the track at the school, making sure to breathe steady and slow. Raven kept up with him, but just barely.

  “There’s a door, Reese,” Raven said.

  His eyes flew open and he was surprised he could actually see. He wasn’t sure if he’d turned on some electrical system or if the light was coming from another source.

  “Where are we? Do you remember this?”

  Raven shook her head.

  Reese grabbed the handle and yanked it hard.

  “Shit! It’s locked.” Reese slammed his fist on the door as anger surged through him. The lightbulbs in the tunnel blazed and then dimmed with his outburst. They were getting close. To have yet another barrier in front of them was more than he could take. “We’re locked in here. What the hell are we supposed to do now?”

  Raven turned, and peered down the tunnel behind them. “Oh, no. I hear them coming.”

  Her words were like a sucker punch to his gut. “Who? The soldiers?”

  “Yes. They patrol the tunnel when the portal is open.”

  He stared at her and realized for the first time that Raven knew more than she’d been telling him. “You’ve been holding back on me.”

  She swallowed. “I didn’t really know the portal would be open. The door is only locked when the soldiers are patrolling. That’s when the portal is still viable. They aren’t here when the portal is closed. That’s why we haven’t seen them.”

  “And the bridge?”

  “We went over it. In the darkness. You didn’t even know. Go blindly over the bridges. Be swift and fearless in the dark, and you’ll both make it. We made it, Reese!”