Revelations (The Elysium Chronicles)

by Souders, J. A.

  I lift an eyebrow at him.

  He shrugs. “You’re not the only one who can protect her.”

  Evie makes that sound again. “I don’t need protecting,” she says, but her voice wavers. There’s no doubt in my mind that if she was herself right now, this wouldn’t even be up for discussion. She’d be in front of both of us, strapped to the teeth and ready to take no prisoners.

  I grunt in response, but turn my attention back to the doors as they slide open. I’m not sure what I expect, but it isn’t what I get: freezing cold water flooding into the car. It gushes in so fast the only thing I can do is inhale a single breath before it closes over my head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  EVACUATION GATHERING LOCATION! PLEASE PLACE SAMPLES INSIDE NEXT TO PALM READER!

  —SIGN ON STORAGE ROOM DOOR

  Evie

  As the water closes over my head, the memory of something similar flashes in my mind, but I shove it away. There’s no time and it’s not like it’ll help. I force my eyes open, then wish I hadn’t when the seawater sears my eyes, but I have to be able to tell which way is up.

  Something tugs on my hand, pulling me out of the car, and I almost scream, but manage to clamp my lips together to keep from letting loose and losing the much needed oxygen. The familiar roughness of the hand tells me it’s Gavin and while I try to look around for Asher, it’s a lost cause. It’s too dark and I can’t see anything.

  My lungs burning, I kick as hard as I can, letting Gavin pull me. Just when I can’t hold my breath any longer, we burst through the surface, our heads hitting the ceiling. Seconds later, as Gavin is practically begging me to tell him I’m okay, Asher surfaces next to us, gasping for breath. He frantically looks around and when he sees me, I can see him relax. He swims closer, panting a little.

  “You okay?”

  Coughing, I nod and ignore the pain in my chest. “Just in a little bit of shock.”

  He turns to Gavin. “What the hell, dude? Are you trying to kill us?”

  Gavin only gives him a look. “If I’d known that was going to happen, I wouldn’t have brought us down here. It wasn’t like this before. I don’t know what’s going on, but we have to get out of here,” he says.

  We all turn around in circles, but I can’t see anything. None of this looks familiar to me, though I’m starting to get small flashes. Gavin running, me slung over his shoulder. Shooting some kind of blue light at people running behind us. Clouds of ash where the people stood.

  Something brushes my leg and I scream as my imagination forms the image of one of those blood- and gore-covered brutes, wrenching me under the water. Then, because I still haven’t caught my breath, I break into harsh coughing.

  “What?” Gavin pulls me behind him and looks around frantically.

  “Something … brushed my leg. I don’t know what it was.” I accidentally inhale a mouthful of water in my panic and nearly choke.

  Gavin shoves a wall of water at Asher. “Come on. Stop playin’ around.”

  Asher holds up his hands before slamming them back into the water to paddle. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t do it.”

  “What the hell was it then?” Gavin’s eyes are taking on that frenzied look again, but it doesn’t take long to find out his answer. An obviously dead body floats by just under the surface, its eyes wide and unseeing. We all watch as it continues its meandering path past us. And I’m pretty sure the reason it’s moving is because wherever the leak is, the water is still coming in.

  “Oh Jesus,” Gavin says, while Asher starts gagging and flapping his arms around in an obvious attempt to get away from it. He only ends up drawing the body closer.

  My body feels numb and there’s a pressure deep in my head as it buzzes from the shock.

  Gavin focuses on me. “Can we go back to the Surface now?”

  I want to say yes. I want to say forget this, forget all of it, but I shake my head. “I can’t. I need to find the answers.”

  He sighs, but looks resigned. “Well, we have to get out of here at least.”

  “If this is like any of the buildings in Rushlake, there should be stairs near this elevator,” Asher says, trying to stay calm, and Gavin nods. “So who wants to look for it?”

  Another body floats by and I shudder so hard I bite my tongue.

  They both stare at each other; then Gavin holds his hand out in a fist. I open my mouth to tell him he can’t force Asher to try and find it, but then Asher holds his out too, just short of touching Gavin’s. I watch, completely confused, as they lift and lower their hand three times; then Gavin splays his hand out flat at the same Asher brings out his index and middle finger in a sideways V.

  Gavin nods. “Right.” Then he takes a deep breath and his head disappears under the water before I can say anything.

  I paddle over to Asher. “What was that?”

  “Rock, paper, scissors. The ultimate decider.” He manages a shaky smile and I shake my head and wait, metaphorically holding my breath until Gavin’s head appears again.

  He pops up, sucks in a breath and goes back under before anyone can say anything. He does this five more times, taking longer and longer and making me more and more anxious until he finally comes up with a look of triumph.

  “Found it!”

  Relieved, I swim over to him. He takes one hand, and Asher takes my other. We all suck in deep breaths, and go back under, letting Gavin guide us to the stairwell.

  It takes both Gavin and Asher working together to open the exit door, but then we’re slipping through the crack and swimming up. This time when we surface, we’re in a much smaller space and there are stairs leading up.

  We swim over to where the stairs meet the water, and start climbing. I go much slower than them, though, because no matter what I do I can’t get these visions out of my head. They’re just flashes. I can’t make out what they are, but they slow me down, nonetheless. Gavin and Asher pause to wait for me, and so I suck in breaths and go as fast as I can.

  Each time we reach a new floor, Gavin pokes his head out the door to check if we’re at the floor with what he calls the Tube station. According to him, he’ll know it when he sees it because it’s the only floor that is completely open. That kind of terrifies me. Open to what? We’ve already been almost drowned. I don’t really want to try that again. Maybe Gavin’s right. Maybe it is time to head back to the Surface. Between the stuff that almost ate Asher’s foot and now practically drowning in a sea of dead bodies, I have to admit that Gavin was right about it being dangerous. He was probably right about a lot of things. Yet … we’re so close to the answers I want. The answers I need. I can feel it. If we leave now, I’ll never know who I was. Who I am.

  So I don’t say anything about turning back. I keep going, but when we stop for what feels like the hundredth time, a huge wave of déjà vu hits me. My head swims and I have to lean against the wall.

  Asher turns around to smile at me, and a hallucination hits me so hard, I stumble.

  The hallway is so dark I can’t even see Timothy, but I know he’s there. His uneven gasps blow across my cheeks.

  “Are you going to tell her?” he asks.

  “First thing in the morning,” I reply, feeling a familiar tickle in my stomach, and smiling.

  “You won’t forget,” he teases.

  Before I can reply, he kisses me again, pressing me back against the cold concrete. I push harder into the warmth of his body, closing my eyes.

  When I open them again, I’m back in the stairwell, gasping for breath, those black dots back in my vision. Asher is watching me warily.

  “Everything okay, Evie?” he asks. Gavin must have slipped out of the stairwell to do his quick look-around.

  I wave Asher away, not wanting to waste what little breath I have to assure him I’m fine when I’m not completely confident I am.

  His brows furrow, but he doesn’t say anything. He only continues to watch me. Gavin returns and I push quickly off the wall, as if I’ve only been
biding my time and not trying to figure out what in the world that was all about. He shakes his head before heading up the stairs to yet another level.

  Between the ordeal at the hospital in Rushlake, the race back to the village, and now almost drowning, exhausted doesn’t even begin to explain how I feel. I want to groan, but I still haven’t caught my breath and I’m sure even that would be too much, so I just put one foot in front of the other. I stumble when I don’t lift my foot up high enough. I put my hands out to catch myself, but Asher catches my arm and pulls me back up to my feet. I give him a grateful smile before I turn back around to try that step again and notice Gavin watching us.

  That hallucination—me, pressed against another boy—makes me feel incredibly guilty, and I duck my head and start trudging up the steps again.

  I can feel Gavin’s curious gaze, but he keeps moving after a second or two.

  At the next landing, Gavin looks out the door and whoops. “Found it!” He dashes out the door.

  “Finally,” Asher says, and follows.

  I follow, just at a bit slower pace. When I step out the door, I can definitely see the difference between the other floors and this one. It’s absolutely gorgeous, for one. The floors are all concrete, but the walls! The walls are floor-to-ceiling windows, the outside is all lit up and I can see the ocean. It’s so peaceful, I think, walking over to it. I press my hand against the cool glass, and watch as a school of brightly colored fish swim by.

  A grouping of brightly colored and strangely shaped rocks gather on the bottom of the window sills. This. This feels right. Finally, I think. The glass feels so marvelous against my hand, I decide to press my face against it too. A moan escapes me at the feel and I hear a chuckle behind me.

  “That good, huh?” Asher asks.

  Gavin clears his throat from the other end of the large hallway and I open my eyes to see him smiling at me. “If you’re done molesting the glass, we should get to the Tube.”

  Asher chuckles and, flushing, I push away from the wall, but keep a hand to it as we walk toward where Gavin is.

  Just before the hallway turns, there are more splashes of that green goo again. Almost the entire floor, from wall to wall, is spotted in the strange pools. But when I get close to them, I shudder. Each one looks like a body. Flat, green, liquid bodies. As if someone painted them onto the floor. Some are larger than others, like some are children and some are adults. Some have their arms close to their torsos; others have them stretched out as if reaching for the puddle next to it. I don’t know why, but the scene has a lump forming in my throat and tears stinging my eyes.

  Gavin frowns down at them. “This is so weird.”

  “What is?” Asher asks.

  Gavin looks up at me and I blink the tears quickly away so he can’t see them. “This is where all those people were, remember?” he asks.

  “No,” I say flatly, trying not to let it bother me that he obviously forgot I don’t remember anything from here except those flashes.

  His eyes close for a minute. “That’s right. I can’t believe I forgot.” I shrug and he stands, brushing his hands together. “Never mind. It’s not important. Come on, let’s get to that Tube station.”

  I stare at the green bodies for a bit longer, letting his words tumble through my mind, trying to remember something, anything, so I can begin to understand, but nothing comes and Asher tugs on my arm to get me to go. I have to practically run to catch up with Gavin in the next room, but when I do, I stop short.

  I remember this room. Or at least one similar.

  I’m waiting in the dark, peering out over a thousand faces. I’m leaning against a brick wall. The area around me looks like the streets in Rushlake City, only with short squat one-story buildings lining each side of the street instead of the several-stories-tall buildings that were in Rushlake. The street in front of me is filled with people with identical faces, all staring up at a woman. The woman who frequently stars in my nightmares.

  Mother.

  She’s making a speech on the platform in the Square about working together and how everyone is just one cog in a giant machine. A commotion to my left draws my attention. A man close to me is arguing in whispers with the woman next to him. She’s vigorously shaking her head and glancing in my direction.

  In response, I step out of the shadows and up to the couple. The crowd around them disperses quickly, watching me as carefully as I watch them and the pair I’m walking to. They’re both taller than me, but when they see me looking up at them, they freeze, identical expressions of terror on their almost identical faces. I don’t say anything, I don’t have to and I know it.

  But the man suddenly glares at me. “Monster,” he whispers. The woman’s face goes completely white.

  I signal the two guards next to me to apprehend him. They each take an arm, but he shrugs them off, and follows me into the dark of the shadows. We walk into a maintenance tunnel and behind a stairwell. I lift the weapon on my side. He only lifts his chin as I press the trigger. The click of the hammer hitting the cylinder echoes throughout the stairwell.

  Oh, Mother. I think I killed someone. Not accidentally, either.

  Gavin starts swearing at something, but I don’t look up. My chest is squeezing like it did in the stairwell and my heart won’t slow down. I can’t seem to catch my breath. I bend over and shove my head close to my knees like Asher had done in the sub, but I still can’t breathe.

  “Are you okay?” Asher places his hand on my back and crouches down to look me in the face.

  “Fine. Fine. Just need to sit and catch my breath,” I wheeze out, but that proves too much for me and even as I suck in more air, my head spins. Then I feel like I’m falling right before the darkness comes.

  * * *

  When I wake, it’s as if I’m hearing things from underwater. Their voices echo, bouncing around each other until they finally come together as they’re supposed to.

  “Did she hit her head?” That’s Gavin.

  “No. I caught her right as she fell forward.” And there is Asher.

  Slowly I open my eyes to see them both staring down at me. I try pushing myself up, but only manage to feel like a turtle on its back. Gavin and Asher help me up, then ask me what happened. I hesitate. Gavin doesn’t want to be down here at all. If he knows I’ve hallucinated twice in less than an hour, and that I think I’m one of the monsters he was talking about, he’s going to insist we go back, or worse, go back without me, leaving me.

  But I’m sure these hallucinations, these flashes of memory, are proof I’m doing the right thing. So I lie. I tell them I couldn’t breathe and that it must be left over from almost drowning. And instead of insisting we go back, they decide I need a short break. I try to insist that by passing out I already had a short break, but they won’t listen.

  “Besides,” Gavin says, “we’ve kinda reached the end of the road.” His voice is relieved and his eyes are bright. For the first time since we got here, his entire body seems relaxed, not rigid and tense. “In order to get where you need to be, we have to use the Tube. That’s the track.” He gestures to the sloping floor with the strange metal plates on it. Then he looks at me. “The last time we were here, we shut and locked the door to prevent Mother from sending anyone else over. But it didn’t work. And now it seems they’ve sealed them back up.” His lip twitches and I can tell he’s trying not to smile.

  I push myself to my feet. We’ve come this far, and I can feel we’re getting closer. I walk up to the door and press on the red button on the side, but it doesn’t budge. Make a noise. Anything. Frowning, I stride back up the sloped floor and cross over to the booth. I didn’t make it all this way to give up so easily.

  Inside it is a bunch of levers and knobs, but I don’t know which does what. Gavin, on the other hand, does this indecisive little back and forth motion with his body before sighing, then taking my hand and pressing it against the cool glass plate. I jump when a light flashes underneath my palm, but he won’t let
me take my hand from it. He keeps it pressed against the glass. As soon as I realize it doesn’t hurt me, I turn to watch Gavin, who is in turn watching the door, obviously expecting something to happen.

  “Access denied,” a computer voice says, startling all of us.

  Gavin swears again under his breath and I can’t hide my own disappointment. This can’t be the end. “There has to be some other way to get to where we need to go.”

  Gavin shakes his head. “If there is, I don’t know what it is. We came through here before and at the time, you said it was the only way. Considering how dangerous it was, I have to believe you were right.” Again, I can’t help but notice that he doesn’t seem all that disappointed by the turn of events.

  Asher kicks the console hard enough for an alarm to start screaming on it. I slam my hands to my ears, while Gavin punches Asher in the arm. He yells something at him, gesturing wildly, but I can’t hear him over the shrill alarm.

  Then, the entire thing turns off and a computer voice speaks. “Due to unauthorized tampering, this console will shut down until re-activated by an authorized service technician. Any further damage to the machine will result in harsh punishment. Vandalism will not be tolerated at the Elysium Resort and persons accused of such an act will be fined and sent to the Detainment Center until you are relinquished to Surface authorities. Have a nice day!”

  We glance at each other, but before any of us can react to that, there’s a mechanical humming sound. Gavin and I dash out of the booth to find where it’s coming from, only to see that a wall is being lowered from the ceiling, blocking the way back to the stairs.

  “They’re locking us in!” Gavin exclaims. “Come on! We’ve got to go.”

  He yanks me down the hallway and to the corner and Asher is right behind us. I wonder if we’ll make it. Considering how heavy that wall must be, it’s moving fairly rapidly. When we get to it, we have to slither underneath. With no time to hesitate, I slide under followed by Gavin, and then Asher. Not even ten seconds later the wall slides into place and there’s a loud clang of what I’m sure is a lock clicking.