Revelations (The Elysium Chronicles)

by Souders, J. A.

  I frown and enter the room, trying to get a closer look.

  “Evie! Get back here,” Asher whisper-yells.

  I ignore him and continue toward the machine. To the right and slightly above the strange metal boxes, there’s a thing that looks like Gavin’s television screen. Below the boxes there are four or so dials. Each dial has numbers and letters below it that look like some kind of chemical compound. And I have no idea how I know that.

  There’s a thick layer of dust on the contraptions, so obviously this place has been abandoned for a while. I open the top drawer of the machine and find syringes, medicine vials, and tubes. With a shudder, I quickly shut the drawer and turn toward the bed. Straps crisscross over the top and, like the machine, it’s covered in dust.

  “What is this?” I ask, trailing a finger over the strange machine.

  “Anesthesia. It’s used to put people to sleep for medical procedures and … experiments…”

  How odd, I think and go back to join Asher, who takes my arm, firmly leading me out of the room.

  Looking up at him, I ask, “Do you suppose that room was used for sexual experiments? Like a study in sexual response, perhaps?”

  He stops in his tracks and looks down at me, his eyes wide. “What? No. Why would you think that?”

  I shrug. “There was a bed, and the straps…” I trail off, blushing at the smile crawling over Asher’s face.

  “And what, pray tell, do you know about sexual practices that involve straps?” There’s laughter in his voice.

  I straighten my shoulders and lift my chin. “I am well-versed in the ways of mating.” I frown. Where did that come from?

  “You are, are you?” he says, still laughing. He threads my arm through his. “Well, then, do tell. I’m obviously not as ‘well-versed’ as you.”

  I have to laugh and lightly punch his arm. “You wish.”

  He laughs back. “Yes. Yes I do.” But he drops it and we continue on our way.

  Finally I spot a pinprick of light, growing brighter and brighter the closer we get.

  Asher and I grin at each other, then rush to what looks like it could be the outdoors, but when we get to where the light is coming from, it’s not an exit. It’s a large wall-sized window. Curtains cover it, so it’s impossible to see what the window shows, but we frown at each other. The confusion in his eyes mirrors my own. If we’re underground, how is there a window?

  We creep to it, and when Asher pulls the curtain away, I gasp. It’s a window that looks directly into water. From the murkiness of it, it’s easy to tell it’s some kind of lake, though the glow of the surface isn’t too far overhead. Asher looks over at me, then places a hand on my shoulder. “You okay?”

  “Of course.” But I swallow at the lump in my throat. This view reminds me of something, and it has my nerves tingling. I can’t recall what it is, and that has me even more nervous. I’m grateful for Asher’s presence. He studies me a bit longer, then shrugs and goes back to peering out into the water.

  “I wonder why this is here,” he says.

  I don’t have an answer, but I don’t think he was looking for one anyway. My legs feel weak and it takes almost all of my strength to continue forward, but I step closer to get a better look. The water is a really light green and if I look up high enough, I can see through it to the surface. It’s too dark to see the bottom.

  The blood rushes out of my head and I feel a bit dizzy. I press a hand to the glass to steady myself.

  I shift so I can see Asher. “I’ve never seen water this color before. Have you?”

  He shakes his head—the way he does it makes me think he didn’t really hear me—and goes back to staring at a metal nameplate on the side of the door. Just as I turn back to the water I hear him say, “Oh, Jesus.”

  Before I can ask him what’s wrong, something slides across the glass. I jump, but figure it’s probably just a fish. It is a lake after all. Maybe it’s even a mermaid. I saw an old water stained and torn picture of one in Ann Marie’s room and I’ve wanted to see a real one ever since. But when I eagerly lean closer, I scream.

  And scream. And scream. I can’t seem to stop myself from screaming.

  The dark object sliding across the glass is a body. Well, what’s left of the body anyway. The bottom half of it is missing and a lot of the skin appears to have melted away.

  Asher spins me around so I’m facing away from the glass and forced to stare at him instead.

  “Don’t look, Evie. Just … don’t look.”

  I stare into his eyes, trying to focus on them, but I can’t. I can’t think. Everything in me is telling me to run. I try to fight it; I know the thing on the other side can’t hurt me. But despite that, I can’t help but think—know—the body is going to break the glass, trying to get to us, and we’ll either drown, or end up being eaten by it.

  Asher rubs his hands up and down my arms, his voice soothing, even though I can’t understand what he’s saying, yet my mind still screams at me to run.

  So that’s what I do. I run. Back into the dark, and as far away from the window as I can get. Asher’s behind me; I can hear his feet pounding behind me and I want to stop. But my body won’t let me. It’s like I’m on a runaway train with no way to get to the controls and stop myself from hurtling through the Tube at Mach 10.

  “Evie!” Asher calls, and while I can hear the desperation, I can’t even slow.

  I just keep running, placing one foot in front of the other, as I try to locate the exit. Even when my lungs burn and spots flare into my eyes, I keep turning corners and pounding up stairs and banging through doors, hoping each one will bring me closer to the one that will set me outside.

  Then, without warning, I burst out into the sunlight. My feet stumble when they hit the different texture of the sand after the concrete of the hallways, but surprisingly I don’t fall. I just continue to run.

  The light blinds me, but even then I don’t stop. I can’t. If I stop, even for a second, the monsters will get me.

  “Evie! Stop! Don’t go any further!” Asher yells from behind me. From the echo of his voice, I can tell that he’s outside like me. There’s even more desperation to his voice now and the pounding of his feet speed up.

  Suddenly the ground underneath me slopes and I lose my footing just as something hits me in the back—hard. I land chest-first on the ground, all the air rushing from my body.

  Whoever landed on me stays on my back and we’re rolling down a hill, our limbs flailing wildly and getting caught on each other.

  “Shit. Shit. Shit,” Asher grunts in my ear and suddenly there’s a jarring motion and we stop rolling, but we continue to slide for a few more meters before we’re able to stop completely.

  I immediately roll over onto my stomach and try to push up on my hands and knees, but I can’t breathe, and can only manage a few strangled gasps.

  Asher is yelling at me again, but I can’t respond and the sunlight is still blinding me so I can’t see him.

  Finally, just as I feel I’m going to pass out, I manage to pull in a shaky breath, and collapse onto the ground, squeezing my eyes tightly shut as sweet, sweet oxygen fills my lungs.

  Asher speaks directly into my ear. “Are you okay? Did you get hurt? Do you have any burns?”

  I shake my head, and just continue to lie there, sucking in all the air I can get. It doesn’t stop the burning in my lungs, or my pounding heart, but the spots in front of my eyes are slowly fading.

  “Okay. That’s good. That’s very good.” There’s a thump next to me and he says, “I’m just going to lay here for a minute and catch my breath. Okay?”

  I nod again.

  For several minutes we lie next to each other, our breaths panting out before they slow and even out. I just want to lie here forever, but unfortunately, the foulest stench is assaulting my nose. I can’t even describe it, but considering what I just saw, I’m sure it’s dead bodies.

  When I can breathe normally again, I slowly open my e
yes, blinking against the bright sun, and even though it’s bright and the sunlight stings my eyes, I can see. Frantically I look around for the bodies to make sure they’re nowhere near me.

  But I don’t see a single one. I frown. The smell is getting stronger and now it reeks exactly like the rotten eggs Gavin’s mother found in the hen coop.

  “Oh, Mother, what is that smell?” I sit up and cover my nose with my hand.

  “Sulfur,” Asher gasps, pushing himself up to a sitting position. “The lake. It’s not a lake.”

  I look at him, wondering if he hit his head on a rock or something on the roll down. “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s no water in it. There must be a lava vent under it or something because it’s all sulfuric acid now.” He gestures to the lake, mere centimeters from our feet. “And if I hadn’t tackled you, you would have run right into it.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  No admittance into Rushlake City will be authorized without this visa. Please safeguard this document as a replacement will not be issued if lost or stolen. Use of this visa constitutes acceptance of Rushlake City Community Standards. Only those individuals listed on visa will be accepted into the city.

  —INSTRUCTIONS ON VISA

  Evie

  To say the thought that I would have run blindly into a poisonous lake doesn’t terrify me would be a lie, so I decide it’s better not to think about it at all.

  “Thank you.” My voice is so soft I almost can’t hear myself.

  Asher continues to look out over the acid water, before pushing to his feet. “We’ve got a long road ahead of us without Starshine and our supplies.”

  “Where’s Starshine?”

  “Probably waiting for us back at the town.” He holds his hand out at me.

  I take it and let him pull me up. “Aren’t we in the town?”

  He helps me up the slope, then gives me this lopsided smile. “See for yourself.”

  When I look at where I presume we came from, I only see a tiny little metal shack not much bigger than the door itself. It’s the only thing for kilometers in every direction. All I see is brown dirt and blue sky. It looks just like when we stopped yesterday and waited for Gavin. The only difference is the gross-smelling not-water lake and the metal shack a few meters from it.

  “Where did it go?” As soon as I say it, I realize how stupid a question it is. Between last night and this morning we could have walked kilometers underground. It’s not the town that moved, but us. I did it again. With a groan, I sit back on the ground. “I’m so sorry.”

  Asher pulls me back to my feet. “It’s as much my fault as yours. I’m the one who pulled you into that space. I should’ve thought that through a little better. If I’d known…” He trails off and I want to tell him there was no way he could have known I would do that. I didn’t even know I would do that. But he continues. “We’d better get going. We’ve already missed most of the morning.”

  He starts in a fast walk and I have to rush to keep up.

  “How do you know which way to go?” I ask.

  He gestures to the sun. “Sun always rises in the east. Rushlake should be southwest of us. This is approximately southwest according to the placement of the sun.”

  “But … we’re going back for Starshine first. And to wait for Gavin, right?”

  He gives me a look. “No. We’re continuing on, because I have no idea where that city was or how long it’ll take to get back there. We’re working on limited time as it is.”

  I stop walking. “We have to go back. We can go back in through the tunnels. We found our way out here, we can find our way back there.”

  He turns around and frowns at me. “No. We’re not. We’re lucky we made it out of there alive the first time. And who knows what the hell we breathed in all that time we were stuck in there. It was an accident that you managed to run in the right direction and we didn’t run into … anything that might be in there. If I’d known what that place was, we never would have stepped foot in there.”

  “Well, then we’ll just need to take…” Then I hear what he said last. “Wait. What? What was that place?” A chill crawls over my skin.

  “Nothing we need to worry about now. We’re out and we’re not going back in.” Asher turns to walk away, but I rush in front of him and stop, so he has no choice to do the same or run into me.

  “You will tell me.” I cross my arms over my chest and lift my chin.

  “You really are a princess, aren’t you?” He sighs. “It’s an old bioengineering outpost. The military used them in the War to design bioweapons and supersoldiers. That bed you saw? They strapped willing—and unwilling—participants to it and conducted experiments on them. Painful, appalling experiments. The straps kept them from escaping during the process.”

  The blood drains from my head, but I stand my ground, despite the fact that it doesn’t feel as solid as it did a minute ago. “That’s horrible, but that place has obviously been abandoned for years, probably decades. And we can’t just leave Starshine and Gavin behind.” There’s a tickle in the back of my throat again.

  “We can. And we will.” He touches the back of his hand to my cheek. “I’m sorry, Evie. I don’t want to leave them behind either, but we’re not going back into that place. There are probably spores from their bio experiments just waiting for some idiot to come across them. Like I said, we’re lucky we even made it out in the first place.”

  “So we’re just going to leave Starshine out here. To die.” My blood boils and I clench my fingers into a fist, holding them tightly to my body. “And what about Gavin? He’ll be looking for us in that city.”

  “Gavin can find his own way. And we’re only going to leave Starshine for now. I’ll send someone back for her when we get to Rushlake. It’ll only be a day, two at the most. She’ll be fine.”

  There’s a pressure in my chest and it hurts to breathe. “Is that all you ever do?” I whisper, half because I’m so mad I can’t speak and half because even that is excruciating to my lungs.

  Asher drops his hand. His whole face goes blank. “What?”

  “Whenever something becomes too difficult to handle, you quit? Whenever someone becomes an issue, you abandon them?” He steps toward me, but I step away from him. “Don’t touch me,” I rasp.

  His mouth firms into a tight line and anger flares into his eyes, but he doesn’t say anything, so I continue, “Is that what you’re going to do to me when I get to be too difficult? Are you going to leave me behind? Just like you did to Gavin? What you’re trying to do to Starshine? Admit it, you’re thinking of leaving me now, aren’t you?”

  Spots flash into my eyes and my head is tingling, like it did just before that last hallucination. I know I have to be careful or I’ll have another one.

  Despite that, I can see the muscle in Asher’s jaw flutter and his hands curl tight into fists when he says, “Of course not! I wouldn’t ever ditch you. I’m doing all of this for you!”

  “You willingly left Gavin to die and now you’re doing the same to Starshine. What makes me different?” I demand. He doesn’t say anything, so I push my face into his as darkness leaks into the sides of my vision. Despite my efforts not to, I have to grab ahold of his arms to stop myself from falling. “Tell me!”

  “You just are. I’m not going to ditch you, ever. Okay?” He shoves a hand through his hair. “But God, Evie, look at you!” He takes me by my shoulders and gives me a little shake. “You’re standing here arguing with me and you can’t even stand up straight, you’re so exhausted. You had not one, but two hallucinations. One that almost got you killed, the other that could have. I don’t even know if you’re going to make it to Rushlake as it is, let alone if we take the time to go back who knows how far. I’m not going to watch you die in front of me. I won’t go through that again. We’re not going back.” He grabs my arm and starts dragging me in the direction he wants me to go.

  I wrench my arm from his and sneer at him. “I’d rather die f
ighting, than live as a coward.”

  He stops and turns. His breathing is just as hard as mine, and I’m sure my eyes are filled with the same conflicting swirls of wild fear and anger. His nostrils flare and he narrows his eyes at me. “I doubt Gavin would agree.” His voice is soft and unwavering even if he is staring daggers at me. “Do you really want him to go all the way to Rushlake only to find that you’re not there? And the reason you’re not there is because you’re too damned stubborn to walk there?” He shouts the last part, startling me.

  Regretfully, I have to admit he could be right. Gavin’s far from stupid. And I don’t want to give him any more cause for worry. With a sigh, I say, “Let’s go.”

  He spins on his heel, and starts forward again. I rush to catch up to him and he walks next to me, but doesn’t touch me. We don’t even talk. I don’t question him again about what direction to go, I just take his word for it. I have to. I have no sense of direction, and no reference for where we are.

  We walk for hours and it doesn’t take long for my body to protest every movement I make. I just want to sit back onto the ground, curl up into a ball, and sleep. That, of course, makes me miss Starshine even more as I probably could have slept the entire trip if she were here. But I keep the thought to myself, not wanting to start another fight.

  We pass a few trees along our route, but it’s mostly just desolate desert for as far as the eye can see. And between the sand and scorching sun, I’m so thirsty that if I were still near that acid lake, I’d be tempted to drink some of it.

  The worst part is Asher has not said one word to me that wasn’t an answer to something I asked, or to warn me about something. I’m a little taken aback by how I’ve already come to rely on his all-the-time-positive attitude.